Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

‘Imagine there was a magic lever that could transform the lived experiences of the 222 million children and youth living in crisis contexts into the peacekeepers and builders of tomorrow. Well, there is: Education.’ - Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, CEO, The LEGO Foundation.

By External Source
NEW YORK, Sep 26 2022 (IPS-Partners)

Taking the stage at this weekend’s Global Citizen Festival in New York’s Central Park, the LEGO Foundation CEO Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen announced a substantial new US$25 million contribution to Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.

Joining her on stage, ECW Director Yasmine Sherif hailed the impact the new, additional contribution will have in realizing the dreams of an education for children impacted by wars and crises across the globe. The LEGO Foundation is the largest private-sector donor to ECW, with approximately US$65 million in total contributions to date.

“Imagine there was a magic lever that could transform the lived experiences of the 222 million children and youth living in crisis contexts into the peacekeepers and builders of tomorrow. Well, there is: Education. To help build this lever, the LEGO Foundation is thrilled to announce US$25 million in new funding to Education Cannot Wait,” said Albrectsen.

The LEGO Foundation shares the mission of the LEGO Group: to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow. The Foundation is dedicated to building a future in which learning through play empowers children to become creative, engaged, lifelong learners. With contributions from The LEGO Foundation and other donors, ECW has reached 7 million crisis-impacted children and adolescents with holistic educational supports since its inception in 2016.

“ECW deeply appreciates this new, additional contribution from the LEGO Foundation, our largest private sector donor. The LEGO Foundation shines as an example of the private sector’s transformative force for humanity. Today, 222 million children worldwide have had their education disrupted by crises; funding like this is essential to get them back on track. We call on all public and private sector partners to help ECW achieve our financing challenge for an additional $1.5 billion to urgently deliver quality education for millions of crisis-affected children,” said Sherif.

Shocking new analysis from ECW indicates that as many as 222 million crisis-impacted girls and boys are in need of urgent education support – up from previous estimates of 75 million in 2016. More than 78 million of these children are out of school altogether, with approximately 120 million not attaining minimum proficiencies in math or reading.

Global Citizen is a long-standing partner of Education Cannot Wait. In advance of this year’s festival the organization called for Global Citizens everywhere to support ECW’s goals to mobilize US$1.5 billion over the next four years to reach 20 million crisis-impacted children and adolescents with the safety, hope and opportunity of a quality education through the #222MillionDreams campaign.

Performances at Global Citizen included Metallica, Charlie Puth, Jonas Brothers, Måneskin, Mariah Carey, Mickey Guyton and Rosalía. Throughout the day, world leaders, major corporations and philanthropic foundations announced new commitments to End Extreme Poverty Now, including notable contribution announcements to Education Cannot Wait.

People looking to make a difference can call for leaders to take action using the #222MillionDreams hashtag, by making individual donations to ECW, and by taking action with Global Citizen and The LEGO Foundation.

Nuclear Test. Credit: United Nations

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Sep 26 2022 (IPS)

A Mexican joke goes: “I kill people for money. But you are my best friend, so I will kill you for nothing.”

This seems to be the dominating thinking of the five permanent members of the so-called Security Council, who, according to their own definition, hold the “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

“The Security Council takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression,” they say, while calling upon parties to a dispute to settle it “by peaceful means.”

Nevertheless, they self-attribute the strange right of launching wars.

“In some cases, the Security Council can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorise the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

In 2020, the report estimates that nine countries spent $72.6 billion on nuclear weapons, $27.7 billion of which went to a dozen defence contractors to build nuclear weapons. Those contractors then spent $117 million lobbying policy makers

These five Security Council power monopolists –United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China– are the world’s major possessors of all kinds of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), be them nuclear, biological, or chemical, among others, some of them would be still unknown.

Their power seems unlimited. In fact, no matter if the other 190 plus countries adopt democratic decisions within the UN General Assembly — any one of the world’s five biggest WMD holders can override them through their self-proclaimed “veto” right.

 

 

The war cheerleaders

Now that the Western politicians and mainstream media are tirelessly spreading panic about the –real or not– threat that a nuclear war is already looming, the UN General Assembly continues to mark on 26 September each year the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

That said, is there any real chance to achieve such an ambitious goal?

 

The facts

The following are just some of the key findings:

• Today around 12,705 nuclear weapons remain. Countries possessing such weapons have well-funded, long-term plans to modernise their nuclear arsenals.

• More than half of the world’s population still lives in countries that either have such weapons or are members of nuclear alliances.

• While the number of deployed nuclear weapons has declined since the height of the Cold War, not one nuclear weapon has been physically destroyed pursuant to a treaty. In addition, no nuclear disarmament negotiations are currently underway.

 

The MAD doctrine

Meanwhile, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence –known as the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) principle, still persists as an element in the security policies of all possessor states and many of their allies.

This MAD means that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender, with second-strike capabilities, would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender.

Despite not being permanent members of the so-called Security Council, there are four more nuclear armed States: India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

The nine of them continue to modernise their nuclear arsenals and although the total number of nuclear weapons declined slightly between January 2021 and January 2022, the number will probably increase in the next decade.

Such a Mutual Assured Destruction simply means that any of the big nuclear powers –or all of them– would be able to kill the whole world, not only their arbitrarily-declared “enemies” but also their best “allies” (read friends).

 

The false promise

The above data comes from the prestigious global peace research body, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) which on 13 June 2022 launched the findings of its Yearbook 2022.

According to SIPRI, Russia and the USA together possess over 90% of all nuclear weapons. Of the total inventory of an estimated 12.705 warheads at the start of 2022, about 9.440 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

 

Nukes on “high operational alert”

Of those, an estimated 3.732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2.000—nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA—were kept in a state of “high operational alert,” according to SIPRI’s 2022 Yearbook Global nuclear arsenals are expected to grow as states continue to modernise.

“These [nuclear] weapons offer false promises of security and deterrence – while guaranteeing only destruction, death, and endless brinkmanship,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on 20 June 2022.

 

The big frustration

Frustration has been growing amongst UN Member States regarding what is perceived as the slow pace of nuclear disarmament, warns the UN on the occasion of this year’s International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

“This frustration has been put into sharper focus with growing concerns about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of even a single nuclear weapon, let alone a regional or global nuclear war.”

 

Who profits from mass destruction?

The 2017 Nobel Peace Laureate: International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), is a coalition of non-governmental organisations promoting adherence to and implementation of the United Nations nuclear weapon ban treaty.

Its report: “Complicit: 2020 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending” unveils one year of the cycle of spending on nuclear weapons from countries to defence contractors to lobbyists and think tanks and back again.

“In 2020, the report estimates that nine countries spent $72.6 billion on nuclear weapons, $27.7 billion of which went to a dozen defence contractors to build nuclear weapons.”

Those contractors then spent $117 million lobbying policy makers and up to $10 million funding think tanks writing about nuclear weapons to ensure they can continue to line their pockets with nuclear weapon contracts for years to come, ICAN reports.

The contractors are all profiled in detail in the Don’t Bank on the Bomb list of nuclear weapon producers.

The International Campaign defines nuclear weapons as “the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. Both in the scale of the devastation they cause, and in their uniquely persistent, spreading, genetically damaging radioactive fallout, they are unlike any other weapons.”

 

Too many ‘nuclear endorsers’

ICAN also reports on 26 countries (plus the five hosts) who “endorse” the possession and use of nuclear weapons by allowing the potential use of nuclear weapons on their behalf as part of defence alliances, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

These “nuclear endorsers” are: Albania, Armenia, Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, The Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Turkey.

By the way: in the aftermath of World War II, the United States warned China that they had enough nukes to destroy the whole world… up to four times. China responded that it had enough nuclear weapons to do so… only once.

Now that the number of nuclear weapons has since then notably increased and that they are technologically modernised, does anybody know how many times the war lords can now destroy the world?

 

Before speaking at the UN Transforming Global Education Summit, Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the SDG Moment in the General Assembly Hall on September 19. “I regard myself as a lifelong student…Without education, where would I be? Where would any of us be?” he asked those gathered in the iconic General Assembly Hall. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Anwarul K. Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Sep 26 2022 (IPS)

Just a week ago, the international community commemorated the adoption of the United Nations Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, a monumental document that transcends boundaries, cultures, societies, and nations.

That inspirational action took place on 13 September 1999, yes 23 years ago. It was an honor for me to Chair the nine-month long negotiations that led to the adoption of this historic norm-setting document through consensus by the United Nations General Assembly. That document asserts that inherent in the culture of peace is a set of values, modes of behaviour and ways of life.

The quest for peace is the longest ongoing human endeavor going on, but it runs alongside many of the things that we do on a daily basis. Peace is integral to human existence — in everything we do, in everything we say and in every thought we have, there is a place for peace. We should not isolate peace as something separate or distant.

My work has taken me to the farthest corners of the world. I have seen time and again the centrality of the culture of peace and women’s equality in our lives. This realization has now become more pertinent amid the ever-increasing militarism, militarization and weaponization that is destroying both our planet and our people.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury

In my introduction to the 2008 publication “Peace Education: A Pathway to the Culture of Peace”, I wrote that as Maria Montessori had articulated so appropriately, those who want a violent way of living, prepare young people for that; but those, who want peace have neglected their young children and adolescents and that way are unable to organize them for peace.

However, the last decades of violence and human insecurity had led to a growing realization in the world of education today that children should be educated in the ways of peaceful living. The task of educating children and young people to find non-aggressive means to relate to one another is of primary importance.

As a result, more and more peace concepts, values, and social skills are being integrated into school curricula in many countries.

Peace education needs to be accepted in all parts of the world, in all societies and countries as an essential element in creating the culture of peace. To meet effectively the challenges posed by the present complexity of our time, the young of today deserves a radically different education – “one that does not glorify war but educates for peace, non-violence and international cooperation.”

They need the skills and knowledge to create and nurture peace for their individual selves as well as for the world they belong to. Learning about the culture of peace having the potential of personal transformation should be incorporated in all educational institutions as part of their curricula and that should become an essential part of our educational processes as reading and writing.

All educational institutions need to offer opportunities that prepare the students not only to live fulfilling lives but also to be responsible and productive citizens of the world.

Often, people wonder whether peace education should be introduced when the child is very young. I believe rather strongly that all ages are appropriate for such education – only the method of teaching has to be suited to the age.

For younger children, such teaching should include audio-visual materials and interactive exchanges. Teaching the value of tolerance, understanding and respect for diversity among the school children could be introduced through exposing them to various countries of the world, their geography, history, and culture.

To begin with, an informal class format could help. Such a format could even be included in any of the existing arrangements that involve social studies or general knowledge classes.

In addition to expanding the capacity of the students to understand the issues, peace education should aim particularly at empowering the students, suited to their individual levels, to become agents of peace and nonviolence in their own lives as well as in their interaction with others in every aspect of their lives.

Targeting the individual is meaningful because there cannot be true peace unless the individual mind is at peace. Connecting the role of individuals to broader global objectives, Dr. Martin Luther King Junior affirmed that “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

Peace education is more effective and meaningful when it is adapted according to the social and cultural context and the country’s needs and aspirations. It should be enriched by its cultural and spiritual values together with the universal human values.

It should also be globally relevant. Indeed, such educating for peace should be more appropriately called “education for global citizenship”.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations in its sustainable development goal (SDG) number 4 and target 7 includes, among others, promotion of culture of peace and non-violence, women’s equality as well as global citizenship as part of the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development. It also calls on the international community to ensure that all learners acquire those by the year 2030.

Recognizing that education is a foundation for peace, tolerance, human rights and sustainable development, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had convened a Transforming Education Summit (TES) which concluded yesterday at the UN. Its three overarching principles are: Country-led, Inclusive, and Youth-inspired.

Let me conclude by emphasizing that the role of education should be to encourage the young people to be themselves, to build their own character, their own personality, which is embedded with understanding, tolerance, and respect for diversity and in solidarity with rest of humanity. That is the significance of the Culture of Peace. It is not something temporary or occasional like resolving a conflict in one area or between communities without transforming and empowering people to sustain peace.

Peace education needs to be transformative, forward-looking, adaptive, comprehensive, and, of course, empowering.

Let us resolve at this conference to campaign for the proclamation by the UN of a Global Peace Education Day to transform the role of education in embracing the culture of peace and global citizenship – as emphasized by the United Nations – for the good of humanity, for the sustainability of our planet and for making our world a better place to live.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is Founder of the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP), Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN (1996-2001) and Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations (2002-2007)

This article is based on a presentation made by Ambassador Chowdhury as the Distinguished Featured Speaker at the Second Conference on Global Peace Education Day on 20 September 2022.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

A family evacuated from the floods has not received the promised tents or mosquito nets. Credit: Altaf Hussain Jamali/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Karachi, Sep 25 2022 (IPS)

Last week, for at least six days, hundreds of flood-affected villagers from around the outskirts of Pangrio, a sleepy town in the Sindh province, blocked the main artery – the Thar Coal Road – connecting Badin to neighbouring district of Tharparkar – not allowing any traffic to pass.

They had had enough. With their homes submerged in over 10 feet of water, they had been sleeping under open skies for nearly a month, living in sub-human conditions. Surrounded by contaminated water, disease and death stalked the villagers. If days were spent in the scorching sun, there was little respite in the night as an army of mosquitoes attacked them.

They wanted to return to their villages or whatever was left of those villages. But for that, the water flooding their homes had to recede.

How did Pangrio get so much flood water?

Ghulam Ghaus looked at the dark, ominous water next to the tent and said he lost 60 acres of land on which he had grown cotton, tomatoes and millet. “A week before the water came in, I was happiest as the crops were doing extremely well. We had heard about the floods in other areas, but it had not touched our land, but then overnight, water rushed in and reached four feet, and now it’s just increasing every day.”

According to the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) it rained 177.5mm compared to the average 63.1mm, making July the wettest since 1961. “July 2022 rainfall was excessively above average over Balochistan (+450 per cent) and Sindh (+307pc). Both rank as the wettest ever over the past 62 years,” said the PMD’s monthly summary.

A third of the country has been affected, while over 1,500 people have been killed and a little under 13,000 injured since June 14, according to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

The provinces of Sindh and Balochistan have been the worst affected, with floods engulfing entire villages, inundating farmlands and wiping out crops. The loss of 1,017,423 livestock has been huge for this agrarian country.

But the flood water in Pangrio was not all rainwater. “This is contaminated water,” said Ghaus, pointing to the dark, stagnant water lapping the edge of the embankment where he was standing. “It is the wastewater from sugar mills of Mirpur Khas that inundated our villages and our land,” he continued.

“It’s actually water from breached Puran Dhoro, an inundation canal, that flooded these villages,” corrected Sindh’s irrigation minister, Jam Khan Shoro. The breaches continued to grow, and on August 28, many villages in four union councils of Badin, “comprising an estimated population of 50,000”, got inundated.

 

Boatmen bring woven rope beds to dryland from the submerged villages. Credit: Altaf Hussain Jamali/IPS

These villagers have been demanding the government drain the water and discharge it into the adjoining district of Tharparkar – but this is an impossible solution, according to the minister.

“We would have to displace and destroy the homes and lands of another 50,000 people,” said Shoro. “That is not justified,” he added.

“Back in the 1920s, before the water of the Indus got reined in by the barrages, Puran was a natural stormwater drain that took out excess water from the Indus during the monsoons when the river swelled and discharged into Shakoor Dhand (a saucer-shaped depression, a seasonal desert wetland, which gets swampy only during a good monsoon) in Tharparkar district with part of it in India,” explained Shoro.

After the barrages were made, the water from the Indus decreased. Then when industries and agriculture increased, Puran’s sweet water mixed with the effluent.

“India objected to Puran’s contaminated discharge into the Shakoor Dhand, and so in the early 80s, with the help of the World Bank, Pakistan began construction of the Left Bank Outfall Drain (that takes water from Nawabshah, Sanghar, Mirpur Khas and Umerkot) which is connected to Puran. It can drain 4,000 cusecs of effluent-mixed water into the Arabian Sea,” Shoro gave the background of the LBOD, a highly controversial drain.

“The LBOD cannot cater to the 13,000 cusecs of the deluge coming from the northern part of Sindh, and we were continuously on the alert that it should not develop breaches,” said Shoro. Now the water pressure has been reduced considerably.

Finally, on the night of September 22, almost a month later, the government plugged the breaches made in Puran, and the water is now going smoothly, going back into the LBOD. It took that long because the canal was in full flood, the current was very strong, and it could only be accessed using boat, explained the minister.

This will allow the water to recede from the submerged villages of Badin and go into the Arabian Sea, said the minister. “But it will take about a month, till the end of the month,” said Shoro.

Tariq Bashir, from flood-affected Mohammad Din village, does not believe this. His village has been surrounded by up to five feet of water since a month ago. “It doesn’t seem to me that the water will recede anytime soon. And even if it goes away and we are able to sow for the next season, the productivity will be very poor as the soil is steeped in acidic water.”

The village of Jerrar Bheel, one of the 15 or so villages, with as many as 70-100 households, on the outskirts of Pangrio, is completely submerged. It is the Sindh you had been watching on your television screen for months.

Inam Baksh Mallah has been rescuing villagers for the last three weeks in his small wooden boat, bringing them to safety on the embankment. “I have not reached most of the marooned people,” he said. The district administration assigned him the task of evacuating the villagers. “I start from 7 am and continue till midnight,” he said.

Along with rescuing people, he also brings whatever belongings people want to be retrieved from their submerged homes. Rope beds seemed to be the most coveted. “It is dangerous to sleep on the floor of the embankment with water on both sides,” said Jama Malook, mother of eight, who fears the snakes from stagnant water may slip in the night and bite her family. She was able to retrieve four beds from her home.

Ghulam Mustafa, a farmhand, waved at what has now become a lake and said: “This is about eight to 10 feet deep, and till three weeks ago, you could see standing crops of cotton and jantar (a kind of grass used for fodder); these were ready to be harvested.”

The submerged villages, just their rooftops visible, seemed to be gasping for the last breath before going underwater completely.

Malook, a woman, was able to evacuate from the village to the embankment walking in “chest-deep water” just in time. But lost 25 sheep to it. “I helped our elderly neighbour, Rehmat”, while her husband carried her paralyzed 90-year-old mother, Baghi Khabar, to dryland.

Lying inside an airless tent, Khabar has stopped eating for the past two days and fails to recognize her loved ones, said Malook. She and her sister-in-law take turns cleaning her every few hours as she is incontinent.

“It is not easy to take care of her here, in the open sky,” said Malook. “It takes us about 20 minutes to fetch water because we do not have big enough containers to store water in. So we make several rounds in a day, and it gets exhausting in this heat,” she informed, adding back home the tap was just outside their mud house.

If there is one thing Shoro is sure of after seeing the suffering of people like Malook and other villagers, it is “we should not interfere with nature”. He referred to the man-made LBOD that changed the natural water course to travel from Puran Dhoro to Shakoor Dhand.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Humanitarian Crisis Unfolds With Pakistan in the Eye of Fiercest Climate Change Storm
• Human Trafficking, Rape, Extortion Behind ‘Forced Conversions’, say Experts
• Time Honoured Food Traditions, Pleasing for Palate and Planet

Félix Morffi, an 84-year-old retiree, shows a self-made solar heater and solar panels installed on the roof of his house in the municipality of Regla in Havana. His hope is that his house will soon become an experimental site for the use of renewable energies and that students will learn about the subject in situ. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Luis Brizuela
HAVANA, Sep 23 2022 (IPS)

After making a model for a solar heater, installing solar panels and creating a device to dehydrate food with the help of the sun, Félix Morffi is turning his home into a space for the production and promotion of renewable energies in Cuba.

With two tanks, glass, aluminum sheets, as well as cinderblocks, sand and cement, the 84-year-old retiree created, in 2006, a solar heater that meets his household needs, which he proudly displays."We are willing to advise anyone who wants to install solar panels, heaters or dryers, everything related to renewable energies. We have knowledge and experience and have something to contribute." -- Félix Morffi

“You build it today and tomorrow you have hot water; anyone can do it, and if they have a bit of advice, all the better,” said the retired mid-level machine and tool repair technician.

A magnet magnetically treats the water by means of a system that purifies it and makes it fit for human consumption, without additional energy costs.

Also on the roof of the house, a cluster of 16 photovoltaic panels imported in 2019 provide five kilowatts of power (kWp) and support the work of his small automotive repair shop where he works on vehicles for state-owned companies and private individuals.

This is an independent enterprise carried out by Morffi on part of his land in Regla, one of the 15 municipalities that make up Havana.

In addition to covering his family’s household needs, he provides his surplus electricity to the national grid, the National Electric Power System (SEN).

As part of a contract with the Unión Eléctrica de Cuba under the Ministry of Energy and Mines, for the surplus energy “we receive an average of more than 2,000 pesos a month (about 83 dollars at the official rate), more or less the amount we pay for our consumption during the same period,” Morffi told IPS in an interview at his home.

But he said that the rate of 12.5 cents per kilowatt of energy delivered to the SEN perhaps should be increased if the government wants more people to produce solar energy.

Since 2014, Cuba has had a Policy for the Development of Renewable Energy Sources and their Efficient Use, and in 2019, Decree Law 345 established regulations to increase the share of renewables in electricity generation and steadily decrease the proportion represented by fossil fuels.

Other regulations have been added, such as the one that exempts foreign companies that carry out sustainable electricity generation projects from paying taxes on profits for eight years.

Other decisions seek to encourage self-sufficiency through decentralized generation with the sale of surplus energy to the SEN, as well as tariff exemptions to import photovoltaic systems, their parts and components for non-commercial purposes.

View of a solar dryer to dehydrate fruits, spices and tubers, made with recycled products by Cuban innovator Félix Morffi at his home in the municipality of Regla in Havana. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Great solar potential

According to studies, Cuba receives an average solar radiation of more than five kilowatts per square meter per day, considered to be a high level. There is enormous potential in this archipelago of more than 110,800 square kilometers which has an annual average of 330 sunny days.

By the end of 2021, some 500 million dollars were invested in expanding the share in the energy mix of solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric sources, according to data from the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

The solar energy program appears to be the most advanced and with the best opportunities for growth.

The solar parks operating in the country contribute 238 megawatts, more than 75 percent of the renewable energy produced locally.

In addition, more than 160,000 of the nation’s 3.9 million homes, mostly in remote mountainous areas, receive electricity from solar modules, statistics show.

But clean sources account for barely five percent of the island’s electricity generation, an outlook that the authorities want to radically transform, setting an ambitious goal of 37 percent by 2030.

It is a matter of national security to substantially modify the energy mix in Cuba, which is highly dependent on fossil fuel imports and hit by cyclical energy shortages.

The island is in the grip of an energy crisis with blackouts of up to 12 hours or more in some areas, due to the deterioration of the network of 20 thermoelectric generation blocks with an average operating life of 30 years and in need of frequent repairs.

Added to this is the rise in the international prices of diesel and fuel oil, as well as the shortage of parts to keep the engines and generators powered by these fuels operational in Cuba’s 168 municipalities.

Solar energy is also used by Félix Morffi for aquaculture at his home in a Havana municipality: a photovoltaic panel feeds a solar hydraulic pump that maintains the flow of water in the pond for breeding varieties of ornamental fish and tilapia for family consumption. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Putting on the brakes

Government authorities point to the U.S. embargo as a factor holding back the growth of renewable energies, blaming it for discouraging potential investors and hindering the purchase of modern components and technologies.

On the other hand, inflation, the partial dollarization of the economy and the acute shortage of basic necessities, including food, leave most families without many options for turning to the autonomous production of clean energy, even if they recognize its positive environmental impact.

One of the authorized state-owned companies markets and assembles 1.0 kWp solar panel systems for the equivalent of about 2,300 dollars in a country where the average monthly salary is estimated at 160 dollars, although it is possible to apply for a bank loan for their installation.

People who spoke to IPS also mentioned the difficulties in storing up solar energy for use at night, during blackouts or on cloudy or rainy days, considering the very high price of batteries.

Morffi said more training is needed among personnel involved in several processes, and he cited delays of more than a year between the signing of the contract with Unión Eléctrica and the beginning of payment for the energy surpluses contributed to the SEN, as well as “inconsistency with respect to the assembly” of the equipment.

Although there is a national policy on renewable energy sources, “there is still a lot of ignorance and very little desire to do things, and do them well. Awareness-raising is needed,” he argued.

A prototype of an energy meter that records electricity generation and consumption at Félix Morffi’s house, in the Havana municipality of Regla. In recent years, several regulations have sought to encourage Cuba’s self-sufficiency in renewable energies, the sale of surpluses, as well as tariff exemptions to import photovoltaic systems, their parts and components for non-commercial purposes. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Combining renewable energies

Morffi believes that despite the economic conditions, with a little ingenuity people can take advantage of the natural elements, because “the sun shines for everyone; the air is there and costs you nothing, but your wealth is in your brain.”

He shows a dryer that uses the heat of the sun to dehydrate fruits, spices and tubers, which he assembled mostly with recycled products such as pieces of wood, nylon, acrylic and aluminum sheets.

Other equipment will require a significant investment, such as the three small wind turbines of 0.5 kWp each that he plans to import and a new batch of 4.0 kWp photovoltaic solar panels, for which he will have to apply for a bank loan.

At the back of his house, a small solar panel keeps the water flowing from a well for his barnyard fowl and an artificial pond holding a variety of ornamental fish as well as tilapia for the family to eat.

The construction of a small biodigester, about four cubic meters in size, is also at an advanced stage on his land, aimed at using methane gas from the decomposition of animal manure, for cooking.

According to Morffi, who manages these activities with the support of several family members, his home is on its way to becoming an experimental site for the use of renewable energies.

A specialized classroom may be built there, so that students can learn about the subject in situ.

So far in the design phase and in discussions with potential supporters, this local development project could even install “solar heaters in places in the community such as the doctor’s office, a day center and a cafeteria for the elderly,” said Morffi.

He said the idea should receive support from international donors, the government of the municipality of Regla, and Cubasolar, a non-governmental association dedicated to the promotion of renewable sources and respect for the environment, of which Morffi has been a member since 2004.

“We are willing to advise anyone who wants to install solar panels, heaters or dryers, everything related to renewable energies. We have knowledge and experience and have something to contribute,” he said.

Related Articles

• Biogas Production Awaits Greater Incentives in Cuba
• Cuba Steps Up Pace on Renewable Energy Expansion

Lalita Roy now has access to clean water and also provides a service to her community by working as a pani apa (water sister), looking after the community's rainwater harvesting plants. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
KHULNA, Bangladesh, Sep 23 2022 (IPS)

Like many other women in Bangladesh’s salinity-prone coastal region, Lalita Roy had to travel a long distance every day to collect drinking water as there was no fresh water source nearby her locality.

“In the past, there was a scarcity of drinking water. I had to travel one to two kilometers distance each day to bring water,” Roy, a resident of Bajua Union under Dakope Upazila in Khulna, told IPS.

She had to collect water standing in a queue; one water pitcher was not enough to meet her daily household demand.

“We require two pitchers of drinking water per day. I had to spend two hours each day collecting water. So, there were various problems. I had health complications, and I was unable to do household work for lack of time,” she said.

After getting a rainwater harvesting plant from the Gender-response Climate Adaptation (GCA) Project, which is being implemented by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Roy is now collecting drinking water using the rainwater harvesting plant, which makes her life easier.

“I am getting the facilities, and now I can give two more hours to my family… that’s why I benefited,” she added.

Shymoli Boiragi, another beneficiary of Shaheber Abad village under Dakope Upazila, said women in her locality suffered a lot in collecting drinking water in the past because they had to walk one to three kilometers every day to collect water.

“We lost both time and household work. After getting rainwater harvesting plants, we benefited. Now we need not go a long distance to collect water so that we can do more household work,” Boiragi said.

Shymoli revealed that coastal people suffered from various health problems caused by consuming saline water and spent money on collecting the water too.

“But now we are conserving rainwater during the ongoing monsoon and will drink it for the rest of the year,” she added.

THE ROLE OF PANI APAS

With support from the project, rainwater harvesting plants were installed at about 13,300 households under 39 union parishads in Khunla and Satkhira. One pani apa (water sister) has been deployed in every union from the beneficiaries.

Roy, now deployed as a pani apa, said the GCA project conducted a survey on the households needing water plants and selected her as a pani apa for two wards.

“As a pani apa, I have been given various tools. I go to every household two times per month. I clean up their water tanks (rainwater plants) and repair those, if necessary,” he added.

Roy said she provides services for 80 households having rainwater harvesting plants, and if they have any problem with their water tanks, she goes to their houses to repair plants.

“I go to 67 households, which have water plants, one to two times per month to provide maintenance services. If they call me over the cellphone, I also go to their houses,” said Ullashini Roy, another pani apa from Shaheber Abad village.

She said a household gives her Taka 20 per month for her maintenance services while she gets Taka 1,340 (US$ 15) from 67 households, which helps her with family expenses.

Ahoke Kumar Adhikary, regional project manager of the Gender-Response Climate Adaptation Project, said it supported installing rainwater harvesting plants at 13,300 households. Each plant will store 2,000 liters of rainwater in each tank for the dry season.

The water plants need maintenance, which is why the project has employed pani apas for each union parishad (ward or council). They work at a community level on maintenance.

“They provide some services, and we call them pani apas. The work of pani apas is to go to every household and provide the services,” Adhikary said.

He said the pani apas get Taka 20 from every household per month for providing their services, and if they need to replace taps or filters of the water plants, they replace those.

The pani apas charge for the replacements of equipment of the water plants, he added.

NO WATER TO DRINK

The coastal belt of Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change as it is hit hard by cyclones, floods, and storm surges every year, destroying its freshwater sources. The freshwater aquifer is also being affected by salinity due to rising sea levels.

Ullashini Roy said freshwater was unavailable in the coastal region, and people drinking water was scarce.

“The water you are looking at is saline. The underground water is also salty. The people of the region cannot use saline water for drinking and household purposes,” Adhikary said.

Ahmmed Zulfiqar Rahaman, hydrologist and climate change expert at Dhaka-based think-tank Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), said if the sea level rises by 50 centimeters by 2050, the surface salinity will reach Gopalganj and Jhalokati districts – 50 km inside the mainland from the coastal belt, accelerating drinking water crisis there.

PUBLIC HEALTH AT RISK

According to a 2019 study, people consuming saline water suffer from various physical problems, including acidity, stomach problems, skin diseases, psychological problems, and hypertension.

It is even being blamed for early marriages because salinity gradually changes girls’ skin color from light to gray.

“There is no sweet water around us. After drinking saline water, we suffered from various waterborne diseases like diarrhea and cholera,” Ullashini said.

Hypertension and high blood pressure are common among coastal people. The study also showed people feel psychological stress caused by having to constantly collect fresh water.

Shymoli said when the stored drinking water runs out in any family; the family members get worried because it’s not easy to collect in the coastal region.

SOLUTIONS TO SALINITY

Rahaman said river water flows rapidly decline in Bangladesh during the dry season, but a solution needs to be found for the coastal area.

The hydrologist suggested a possible solution is building more freshwater reservoirs in the coastal region through proper management of ponds at a community level.

Rahaman said low-cost rainwater harvesting technology should be transferred to the community level so that coastal people can reserve rainwater during the monsoon and use this during the dry season.

He added that the government should provide subsidies for desalinization plants since desalinizing salt water is costly.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Bangladesh Plans to Launch Toll-free SMS Flood Warning
• Bangladesh Flood Victims Cry for Relief
• Bangladesh’s Indigenous Forest Dwellers Fear Losing Ancestral Land as Officials Grapple with Land Grabs

Ten of the world’s worst climate hotspots have suffered a 123 percent rise in acute hunger over just the past six years, according to a new report from Oxfam. Credit: FAO

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Sep 23 2022 (IPS)

Have you eaten today – or are sure you will? The answer depends on where you were born and where you live now. If you are Spanish or live here, you likely did or will, provided that you are not one of this European country’s 900.000 inhabitants who face some sort of hunger, malnutrition or undernourishment.

If instead, you are among the 550 million plus Africans who suffer moderate hunger (40 percent of the continent’s total population of 1.300 plus) or severe hunger (some 300 million or 24 percent of all Africans), your answer would be that you will likely –or surely– go to bed hungry… also today.

A similar dark fate is also prevailing in other ‘developing’ regions, usually defined as mid- and low-income countries. In Asia, with nearly 10 percent or about 500 million of its combined population of almost 5 billion, representing 60 percent of the whole world’s inhabitants.

Severe food insecurity has increased, providing further evidence of a deteriorating situation mainly for those already facing serious hardships. In 2021, an estimated 29.3 percent of the global population – 2.3 billion people – were moderately or severely food insecure, and 11.7 percent (923.7 million people) faced severe food insecurity

In the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, the percentage of humans falling into moderate to severe hunger and food insecurity amounts to 9 percent of the region’s total population of 550 million inhabitants.

Just for the sake of comparison, such numbers barely reach 2.5 percent of the Northern American population (600 million) and Europe (750 million).

In short: it is estimated that between 702 and 828 million people in the world (corresponding to 8.9 percent and 10.5 percent of the total population, respectively) faced hunger in 2021.

 

Too many explanations, same consequences

These are figures, numbers. The reality is that one billion human beings are right at this moment living in the darkness of food scarcity, if ever any food at all.

For them, no matter if the mainstream media now pretends that their fate is caused by just one war or the usual exercise of speculation and greed that hikes food prices.

Many of the millions of hungry people are probably not aware that the world has been producing enough food to cover all the needs of Planet Earth’s population.

Nor that over a third of the total food production is wasted, dumped into rubbish bins, and lost in inadequate storage facilities.

No matter if the international scientific community every single day warns that climate change, severe droughts, catastrophic floods and other factors add to the sharp shortage of funds to save lives while fuelling armed conflicts and dedicating unprecedented spending on weapons of mass destruction (more than 2 trillion US dollars in 2021) See: New World Records: More Weapons than Ever. And a Hunger Crisis Like No Other

 

What is food insecurity?

Food security is defined as the adequate access to food in both quality and quantity.

Moderate food insecurity: People experiencing moderate food insecurity face uncertainties about their ability to obtain food, and have been forced to compromise on the quality and/or quantity of the food they consume.

Severe food insecurity: People experiencing severe food insecurity have typically run out of food and at worst, gone a day (or days) without eating.

 

Wrong direction

“The world is moving in the wrong direction,” confirms the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which –among other international bodies– has just released the above-cited figures in its 2022 report: The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World.

New estimates for 2021 suggest that the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity has remained relatively unchanged compared with 2020, reports FAO, adding that “severe food insecurity has increased, providing further evidence of a deteriorating situation mainly for those already facing serious hardships.”

“In 2021, an estimated 29.3 percent of the global population – 2.3 billion people – were moderately or severely food insecure, and 11.7 percent (923.7 million people) faced severe food insecurity.”

In other words: extreme hunger has more than doubled in 10 of the world’s worst climate hotspots over the past six years.

“Ten of the world’s worst climate hotspots – those with the highest number of UN appeals driven by extreme weather events – have suffered a 123 percent rise in acute hunger over just the past six years,” according to an Oxfam report on 16 September 2022.

 

Hunger discriminates

There is also a growing gender gap in food insecurity. In 2021, 31.9 percent of women in the world were moderately or severely food insecure compared to 27.6 percent of men – a gap of more than 4 percentage points, compared with 3 percentage points in 2020, according to the report.

The latest estimate for low birthweight revealed that 14.6 percent of newborns (20.5 million) were born with a low birth weight in 2015, a modest decrease from 17.5 percent (22.9 million) in 2000.

Optimal breastfeeding practices, including exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, are critical for child survival and the promotion of health and cognitive development.

But it is not so. In fact, the world’s leading health and children specialised organisations have once again sounded the alarm bell about what they classify as “shocking, insidious, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing tricks used by the baby formula milk business with the sole aim of increasing, even more, their already high profits.

In fact, FAO reports that globally, the prevalence has risen from 37.1 percent (49.9 million) in 2012 to 43.8 percent (59.4 million) in 2020. Still, more than half of all infants under six months of age globally did not receive the protective benefits of exclusive breastfeeding, according to the report, which adds the following:

Stunting, the condition of being too short for one’s age, undermines the physical and cognitive development of children, increases their risk of dying from common infections and predisposes them to overweight and non-communicable diseases later in life.

Child wasting is a life-threatening condition caused by insufficient nutrient intake, poor nutrient absorption, and/or frequent or prolonged illness. Affected children are dangerously thin with weakened immunity and a higher risk of mortality. The prevalence of wasting among children under five years of age was 6.7 percent (45.4 million) in 2020.

Children who are overweight or obese face both immediate and potentially long-term health impacts, including a higher risk of non-communicable diseases later in life.

Globally, the prevalence of overweight among children under five years of age increased slightly from 5.4 percent (33.3 million) in 2000 to 5.7 percent (38.9 million) in 2020. Rising trends are seen in around half of the countries worldwide.

Anaemia: The prevalence of anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 years was estimated to be 29.9 percent in 2019.

The absolute number of women with anaemia has risen steadily from 493 million in 2000 to 570.8 million in 2019, which has implications for female morbidity and mortality and can lead to adverse pregnancy and newborn outcomes.

Globally, adult obesity nearly doubled in absolute value from 8.7 percent (343.1 million) in 2000 to 13.1 percent (675.7 million) in 2016.

Children in rural settings and poorer households are more vulnerable to stunting and wasting. Children and adults, particularly women, in urban areas and wealthier households are at higher risk of overweight and obesity, respectively.

Infants residing in rural areas, in poorer households, with mothers who received no formal education and female infants are more likely to be breastfed. Women with no formal education are more vulnerable to anaemia and their children to stunting and wasting.

Moushumi Akter at work inside Fakir Fashion Ltd., Bangladesh. Credit: WaterAid/Fabeha Monir

By Ruth Loftus and Michael Alexander
LONDON / EDINBURG, Sep 23 2022 (IPS)

As the devastating images of flooding in Pakistan went round the world and the country declared a state of emergency, some 4,000 miles away in Stockholm, delegates had just arrived for World Water Week – an annual focal point for global water issues.

For lots of the international attendees, many of whom were from the corporate world, the headlines were a deadly reminder not only of the power and value of water, but also of the failings of the global system to manage it properly.

There can be no debate that Pakistan’s latest flooding catastrophe has been exacerbated by the climate crisis. With COP27 on the horizon in November, and the UN Water Conference taking place in March next year, business leaders, governments, and key stakeholders must propel water issues to the top of the agenda and address them beyond the boardroom and throughout supply chains.

It’s fair to say that the important role businesses have to play in securing sustainable access to water has often been overlooked. Having a safe, reliable, and resilient water supply is essential for most production processes and the health and wellbeing of employees – plus, it also makes sound financial sense.

At World Water Week, WaterAid launched its latest research ’Boosting Business: why investing in water, sanitation and hygiene pays off’ to demonstrate to companies the business benefits and potential financial returns of investing in these facilities.

This pioneering, first-of-its-kind research was funded by Diageo, Gap Inc., HSBC, Twinings and ekaterra (previously part of Unilever). Research took place over four years, in four different countries, across four different sectors – including tea production, the clothing and leather industry and smallholder farming.

The WaterAid perspective:

The quantitative aspect of our pilot is vital as it’s all about how and why investing in taps, toilets and hygiene behaviour change is good for business. We were able to not only carry out thought-provoking project work with tangible benefits for the workforce and wider communities, but we were also able to quantify how that then impacted upon productivity; how many jeans were sewn together, how much tea was picked, how much absenteeism fell, how much the companies paid on medical bills decreased and so on. We then extrapolated this data into standout figures – the return on investment (ROI).

In a nutshell installing clean water and decent sanitation facilities helps employees stay healthy. This means less absenteeism, lower medical costs, improved morale, and productivity. For every $1 invested in clean water, our research showed the apparel and leather sectors combined gained a $1.32 return on investment and the tea sector projects a $2.05 return.

To highlight the stand-out examples – one of the ready-made garment (RMG) factories in Bangladesh showed a ROI of $9 on every $1 invested in WASH, whilst in one of the Twinings’ tea estate plantations in India, there was a $5 to $1 ROI during the pilot programme.

With continued investment over a ten-year period, the returns are even greater – indeed one of the RMG factories is projected to have $30 to $1 ROI – and if companies support their employees’ communities as well, significantly more people will benefit.

It’s important to also consider that some businesses will be put off by the initial capital expenditure, and the fact that the returns are not always immediate. However, low-cost solutions can often provide big results in the long-term.

Integrated within this is hygiene, which became a topic for board-level consideration during the pandemic and the sudden attention the world gave to enhanced handwashing has provided lasting impact as the first and most cost-effective defence against infection.

The key now is to think about how to maintain that beneficial shift in behaviour. Each workplace is different, but it’s time for companies to put the wellbeing of their workforce at the heart of their business strategies and make water, sanitation and hygiene a priority.

The business perspective:

At Diageo, we strongly believe that, as access to clean water and sanitation are fundamental human rights, all efforts should be made to achieve this global goal. Access to water is central to gaining an education, sustaining health and increasing employability, and it addresses gender inequalities in communities, since women carry most of the burden of water collection.

We fully appreciate the enormous positive impact of investment in WASH and chose to be a key business partner in this ground-breaking study so we could finally prove the case for investment through solid research and data, and share the message with other businesses.

We will take the findings and incorporate them across our business strategies. The strong, quantitative evidence is what we need to support the investment in WASH facilities which play a key part of our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) action plan: Spirit of Progress 2030, and we now have the data and evidence to accelerate this work even further.

Future-proofing supply chains

Investing in water and sanitation facilities must be considered a core business priority and part of a water stewardship strategy, rather than an act of philanthropy or corporate social responsibility. No longer to be seen as a charity gesture, or a way of green-washing the business, but as a wise and smart way to future-proof: for communities and for businesses to thrive.

Businesses must now think beyond the immediate factory fence and look to their supply chains and to their employees’ welfare within.

As more extreme weather events happen globally, and ever-growing populations mean increasing demand for water, more companies need to follow suit and have a greater presence on the global stage to address the crisis. Businesses have a vested interest in securing sustainable access to water, and now, a clear financial incentive to ensure lasting change.

If businesses, governments, and civil society rally together, important ESG criteria can be addressed, and sustainable development goals (SDGs) to achieve 100% access to safe and sustainable water, toilets and hygiene facilities by 2030, can be fulfilled.

*Ruth Loftus is Senior Private Sector Advisor at WaterAid and Michael Alexander is Global Head of Water, Environment and Agriculture Sustainability at Diageo.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

Rodrigo Reyes, 18, was forced to drop out of school in 2020, because his family could not afford to pay for the internet or electronic devices that would allow him to attend class online, just when he was about to finish high school and was thinking of studying mechanics, his dream. Since then he has been working as a vendor at his mother's stall in a market on the outskirts of the Peruvian capital. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Sep 22 2022 (IPS)

“When the pandemic hit, I stopped studying, just when it was my last year of school…My parents couldn’t afford to pay for internet at home,” said Rodrigo Reyes, 18, one of the nearly 250,000 children who dropped out of school in 2020.

This figure includes primary and secondary school students who had enrolled for the school year but did not complete it."I have always believed that study is what pulls people out of ignorance, what sets us free, and that is what we wanted for our children when we came to Lima with my husband. That is why it hurts me very much that we have not been able to afford to support Rodrigo’s plans."-- Elsa García

In March 2020, as a preventive measure against the spread of COVID-19, remote education was adopted in the country, which meant that access to the internet and electronic devices was essential. Online classes continued until 2022, when students returned to the classroom.

But during this period, inequalities in access to and quality of education have deepened, affecting students who live in poverty or who form part of rural and indigenous populations.

Peru is a multicultural and multiethnic country with just over 33 million inhabitants, where in 2021 poverty affected 25.9 percent of the population, 4.2 percentage points less than in 2020, but still 5.7 points above 2019, the year before the outbreak of the pandemic. Monetary poverty officially affected 39.7 percent of the rural population and 22 percent of the urban population, reflecting a huge social gap.

“We are talking about the primary and secondary students who are always the ones who do not manage to thrive in their learning, those who, quote unquote, fail the Student Census Evaluation tests, who live in provinces that occupy the last places in the rankings at the national level,” said Rossana Mendoza, a university professor of Intercultural Bilingual Education.

“They are the same young people who face a number of deficiencies and services, they are indigenous people speaking a language other than Spanish for whom the Aprendo en Casa (learning at home) program launched by the government was not an adequate response,” she added in an interview with IPS at her home in the Lima district of Jesús María.

But students in poor suburbs were also affected. Mendoza said they had to alternate their school work with helping their parents by working to support the family, thus spending very little time on their studies.

Rossana Mendoza, a university professor in the Intercultural Bilingual Education program, says at her home in Lima that “the priority is to recover this population excluded from the education system,” referring to children and adolescents who are marginalized from the classroom, a proportion that has grown since the start of the COVID pandemic. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

This was the case for Reyes, who had no choice but to drop out of school and put aside his dream of becoming a heavy machinery technician.

“I was going to finish school at 16, I was going to graduate with my friends and then I planned to prepare myself to apply to the institute and become a mechanic… but it didn’t happen,” he told IPS at his mother’s stand where they sell food and other products at the Santa Marta market in his neighborhood, where he has been working full-time since the pandemic began.

Reyes lives in the outlying area of the district of Ate, one of the 43 that make up Lima, located on the east side of the capital. Like a large part of the population of the district of almost 600,000 inhabitants, his family came from the interior of the country in search of better opportunities.

“I have always believed that study is what pulls people out of ignorance, what sets us free, and that is what we wanted for our children when we came to Lima with my husband. That is why it hurts me very much that we have not been able to afford to support Rodrigo’s plans,” the young man’s mother, Elsa García, told IPS sadly.

The pandemic dealt a major blow to the family’s precarious budget, and Rodrigo and his two younger siblings dropped out of school in 2020. The following year, only the younger siblings were able to return to their studies.

“With my help at the shop we managed to save some money and my dad was able to buy a cell phone for my siblings to use and now they share internet. I have to continue supporting them so that they can finish school and become professionals, maybe later I can do it too,” Rodrigo said.

Barriers to education existed before the pandemic in this South American country. This is well known to Delia Paredes, who left school before completing her primary education because she became pregnant. Today she is 17 years old and has not been able to resume her studies.

She lives with her parents and younger sisters in the rural area outside of the town of Neshulla, which has a population of 7,500 and is located in the central-eastern part of Ucayali, a department in Peru’s Amazon jungle region. Her father, Úber Paredes, is a farmer with no land of his own and works as a laborer on neighboring farms, earning a monthly income of less than 100 dollars.

“I haven’t been able to afford to buy my daughter the shoes and clothes and school supplies she needed to continue studying, and after having her baby she became a homemaker helping my wife… I have no money, there is a lot of poverty around here,” he told IPS by telephone from Neshulla.

His younger daughters Alexandra and Deliz are in school and returned to the classroom this year. Alexandra feels sorry for her older sister. “She always repeats that she wanted to be a nurse. I have told her that when I become a teacher and am working, I will help her,” she said.

Early pregnancy, such as Delia’s, considered forced by rights organizations because it is usually the result of rape, reached 2.9 percent among girls and adolescents between 12 and 17 years of age in 2021. Like poverty, it is concentrated in rural areas, where it stood at 4.8 percent, compared to 2.3 percent in urban areas.

Sitting in front of their home in Neshulla, in the Peruvian Amazon region of Ucayali, are farmer Úber Paredes and two of his daughters. Delia, on the right, was forced to drop out of school after she became pregnant and her father could not afford to buy her supplies. Now 17, she has not forgotten her desire to become a nurse. Her sister Alexandra, on the left, has promised to support her in the future. CREDIT: Gladys Galarreta/ IPS

Widening gaps

In 2020, 8.2 million children and adolescents were enrolled in school nationwide, prior to the declaration of the pandemic. The total number of children and adolescents enrolled in May 2022 was close to 6.8 million. Educational authorities expected the gap to narrow over the next few months, but have not reported information on this.

In 2020 almost a quarter of a million schoolchildren were forced to drop out of school at the national level, and in 2021 the number was almost 125,000. However, by 2022, the gap has widened, with nearly 670,000 not enrolled in the current school year, which began in March.

This gap has emerged despite the fact that the Ministry of Education launched a National Emergency Plan for the Peruvian Educational System from the second half of 2021 to the first half of 2022, aimed at creating the conditions needed to bring back children who dropped out of school.

Professor Mendoza said the priority is to bring back to school the segment of the population excluded from the right to education. “A strategy is needed that provides support not only in terms of studying, but with regard to the difficulties dropped-out students face in surviving with their families who due to the pandemic have lost their mother, father or grandparents,” she said.

“You have to see them in that context and not just because they are underachieving in learning. To see that they have a life with terrible disadvantages to get ahead and that they are being excluded from the education system,” she said.

She added that it is necessary to clearly identify the target population. “The Peruvian school management system, which is quite developed, should allow us to know who these children and adolescents are, what their names are, where they live, what has happened to their families and how the school system can provide them with opportunities within their current living conditions.”

Mendoza explained that not only are they outside the system, but their living conditions have changed and they cannot be expected to return to the school system as if nothing had happened after they fell into even deeper poverty or were orphaned.

A community health volunteer informs community members about various methods of family planning. Photo Credit: UNFPA Kenya

By Stephanie Musho and Ritah Anindo Obonyo
NAIROBI, Sep 22 2022 (IPS)

Fatuma is a 24 year old girl from Korogocho, an informal settlement in Nairobi. She died in December 2021, from complications arising from an unsafe abortion. Her friend and a few of her neighbors found her bleeding profusely and unable to move. They rushed her to the hospital. Unfortunately, she died before she could see the doctor.

Unfortunately, Fatuma’s story is common for girls and women in Kenya. In fact, at least 7 of them die every day from complications arising from unsafe abortion. Worse still, is that with current trends – where 700 girls between the ages of 10 and 19 are getting pregnant daily; the harrowing statistics on abortions are likely to be worse. If Fatuma knew where she could access safe abortion services, she would not have died.

The Constitution operates a robust Bill of Rights that are legally binding - and not mere suggestions. In addition to expanding the right to safe abortion in Article 26(4), it explicitly provides for the right to the highest attainable standard of reproductive health in Article 43

Despite the Constitution of Kenya providing for three instances where safe abortion is permitted, the right to choose if and when to become pregnant as well as terminate pregnancies continues to be one of the most contested debates across the world. In Kenya, there has been considerable progress in promoting reproductive justice with the judicial arm of the government advancing the law. An example is the Malindi case (Petition E009 of 2020) that re-affirmed that abortion is a fundamental right as provided for in the Constitution.

Additionally, the court outlawed arbitrary arrests of trained healthcare providers and people seeking safe abortion within Constitutional limits. Nonetheless, these gains are under attack in what Kenyans are calling the new cold war. That is, the fight between pro-gender and reproductive justice proponents, against anti-choice subscribers.

In the past few years, there have been a series of events affecting both the social, political and legal environment for access to life-saving safe abortion services. Firstly, was the arbitrary withdrawal of the National Standards and Guidelines for Reducing Maternal Mortality and Morbidity in 2013. A year after they were reinstated by the High Court, the Ministry of Health suspended all training of medical abortion providers.

In July this year, the Ministry of Health launched the National Reproductive Health Policy(2022-2032), an unjust policy that did not follow due process in its enactment including the need for representative public participation as provided by Article 118 of the Constitution. The policy also leaves out a section of the population in access to reproductive health as it enforces parental consent and does not consider deaths and complications from unsafe abortion as a public health issue despite the statistics.

Additionally, consider the sustained attack on women’s health rights by opposition groups led by far-right extremist organization CitizenGO. They work to negate human rights under the guise of Christianity. They pay hungry and unsuspecting Kenyan youth to trend hashtags that intentionally amplify lies and half-truths about sexual and reproductive health and rights issues, especially abortion, LGBTI+ rights and sexuality education.

They continue to influence public opinion; and regressive laws and policies the world over, including in Kenya. Ironically, the organization which is headquartered in Madrid, is heavily funded by institutions in and individuals from the global north, yet maintain that sexual and reproductive health and rights is a foreign agenda to Africa – and must be rejected.

CitizenGO has in the past run smear campaigns against reproductive justice. These have included Hon. Susan Kihika (former Senator – and now Governor of Nakuru County) for sponsoring the Reproductive Health Bill 2019 in the Senate. This Bill would have provided a much needed legal framework on a wide range of reproductive issues such as assisted reproduction – which continue to operate in a vacuum.

Further, they have bullied Hon. Esther Passaris on social media for hosting a Christmas party for sex workers. Recently, they trolled Hon. Mukulia the sponsor of the East East Africa Community Sexual Reproductive Health Bill and called for his dismissal from the East Africa Legislative Assembly.

Critics could advance religious arguments to counter safe abortion and the rights of gender minorities. However, it is worth noting that these beliefs are subjective. Moreover, Kenya is a secular state that operates the doctrine of church-state separation. This principle creates distance between the two; recognizing that morality and religion are subjective.

Besides, the Constitution operates a robust Bill of Rights that are legally binding – and not mere suggestions. In addition to expanding the right to safe abortion in Article 26(4), it explicitly provides for the right to the highest attainable standard of reproductive health in Article 43. Additionally, it protects the right to privacy and human dignity. CitizenGO and such like organizations must therefore operate within the ambit of the laws of the Republic.

While the outcomes of these fights are denial of information and services for marginalized groups; this fight is not just about access to services and information. It is about unequal power relations. There are people who are giving big monies towards initiatives that work to curtail human rights and freedoms; permeating government, media and other key sectors against progress.

It is therefore dire that as supporters of sexual and reproductive health and rights, we invest time and resources studying the ever-changing strategies and tactics opponents use to undermine these rights and re-strategize for the war at hand. We must prioritize movement building and reproductive rights resilience. Until then, girls and women in Kenya – and beyond, will continue to die preventable deaths.

 

Stepanie is a human rights lawyer and a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Ritah is the Youth Project Coordinator at Reproductive Health Network, Kenya.

XR Red Rebels at a climate protest in Rome. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS.

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Sep 22 2022 (IPS)

Blocking metros and highways in rush-hour traffic to stop commuters getting to work. Vandalizing petrol pumps to put them out of use.
Halting sporting events such as the French Open and the British Grand Prix. Disrupting bemused art lovers by gluing oneself to priceless masterpieces.

The methods used by the radical climate groups that have sprouted up in many countries in recent years, such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil (JSO) and Insulate Britain, seem better suited to alienating people than bringing them on board efforts to stop the looming environmental catastrophe. And alienate people they have.

We don't want to make people feel guilty for driving a car or not doing much to have a lighter carbon footprint. But we do want them to remember that they're citizens and members of a community

So they have rights, as we live in a democracy, but they also have duties

The reaction to a series of road-block protests in Rome in June by Italy’s Ultima Generazione (UG – Last Generation) group is a good example. Videos released by the group have you on the edge of your seat in fear for the protestors. In one, a car drives so close to a young woman sitting in the road that she appears to go under the vehicle.

In another, motorists violently drag protestors from the highway, with a young male protestor getting pulled away by his pony tail.
The online abuse is high voltage too, with group members getting called everything, from spoilt brats to terrorists.

Many commentators cannot understand why the protests hit ordinary people going about the business, rather than the rich and powerful. Other actions, such protestors gluing themselves to Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera at the Uffizi’s gallery or throwing paint over the Ecological Transition Ministry, have generated bafflement too.

The actions have not just come under fire from people unaware of the scale of the environmental crisis.

Even Adrian Ramsay, the co-leader of the Green Party in England and Wales, told The i newspaper that “we don’t always agree with their tactics” when asked about Insulate Britain blocking motorways.

But, with the effects of the climate emergency increasingly manifest, these groups are not worried about being unpopular, as long as their message is heard.

“The main aim of our protests is to break the wall of indifference and polarize people,” Beatrice Costantino, a qualified vet who quit her career to dedicate herself full-time to fighting the climate emergency with UG, told IPS.

“We cannot have a constant, deep discussion on climate and ecological emergency without touching people’s emotions. We don’t want to make people feel guilty for driving a car or not doing much to have a lighter carbon footprint. “But we do want them to remember that they’re citizens and members of a community.

“So they have rights, as we live in a democracy, but they also have duties. We cannot offload our social responsibilities anymore and we must accept that our inaction is the biggest part of the problem. We cannot ask the government to change if we don’t put enough pressure on it and we are not willing to lose our privileges, our goods and our liberty for the (common) good and the truth”.

The group that led that way in adopting non-violent civil disobedience to demand climate action was Extinction Rebellion in the UK in 2018. UG and JSO are among several younger, even more radical groups that are part of the international A22 network.
Stop Old Growth in Canada, Derniere Renovation in France and Declare Emergency in the United States are other members.

They are inspired by examples of the successful use of civil resistance in the past, such as with the Suffragettes and the civil rights movement in the United States.

They believe that small groups of determined people can garner the active support of a relatively small proportion of the population, perhaps as low as 1% or 2%, to reach a sort of social tipping point that generates rapid change.

“We’re confident that this is the number of people that we really need for a non-violent revolution, as it has happened like this most of the time in the past,” Costantino said.

“When people are constantly bombed by news about climate crisis and people struggling against it, they start looking for more information, discussing it with friends and family, reflecting within themselves”.

She says the actions of the A22 network have produced results already.

“In Canada in 2021 more than 1,000 people protested against the destruction of virgin forests, going into the forests, blocking trucks, climbing up trees and tying themselves to them.

“But they received little media attention and lots of Canadians were not aware of the problem or didn’t care. “Now the Save Old Growth campaign is disrupting the public with fewer than 70 people. “They have been on the national news, they have been taken to prison and they have shocked the nation. “According to polls, now more than 80% of Canadians are worried about the problem and want the government to stop the destruction of their forests”.

Another characteristic of these protestors is their fearlessness when it comes to putting their safety and freedom on the line.
Indeed, many have faced prison for the cause, including 51 JSO supporters jailed on September 15 after taking action at the Kingsbury Oil Terminal in Britain.

Whether the majority like these tactics or not, with more protests planned in the coming weeks and months, we are certain to hear more about these groups. “What’s the price of inaction?” said Costantino.

“If we don’t cut emissions immediately, more than three billion people will be forced to leave their homes by 2070. “We must open our eyes and understand that our parents, our children, our loved ones are going to die in huge numbers if we don’t act now”.

Excerpt:

Radical climate groups undeterred by risks and unpopularity as long as message gets across

The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Egypt from 6 to 18 November 2022, seeks renewed solidarity between countries to deliver on the landmark Paris Agreement, for people and the plan. Credit: United Nations

By Sohanur Rahman
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Sep 22 2022 (IPS)

Each year, low-emitting countries like Bangladesh are the greatest sufferers and, paradoxically, pay the biggest price in losses and damages resulting from climate change.

The most vulnerable communities are the ones who are facing the reality which the COP27 climate summit in Sharm-El-Shaikh is attempting to avert. According to the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Bangladesh is anticipated to experience an average loss worth US$2.2 bn per year, which is comparable to 1.5 per cent of its GDP, owing to floods.

While the Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) estimates that in the last 40 years alone, climate change has cost Bangladesh US$12 bn. This is triggering a 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent annual decline in GDP, which is predicted to reach 2 per cent by 2050.

From melting glaciers to a ‘monster’ monsoon, record-breaking floods have left a third of Pakistan currently under water and the climate catastrophe is altering the monsoon pattern in South Asia, increasing the likelihood of fatal deluges.

The entire region accounts for just a minuscule quantity of carbon emissions, with Pakistan and Bangladesh generating less than 1 per cent, but it is a ‘climate crisis hotspot,’ as recently noted by UN Secretary-General António Guterres as well as in the in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

Therefore, it only seems fair, that the rich polluting nations should pay climate reparations to vulnerable countries for their historical injustices.

Last year, I spent two weeks in Glasgow for the COP26, hoping to bring positive news to the most affected communities. But sadly, it was a disappointment for all marginalised individuals as their voices were ignored during the summit. Although, at least, the youth were recognised for the first time at the COP.

And yet, we young people were left feeling helpless and betrayed after COP26. The empty pledges, known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, will not protect our people from the global climate crisis.

However, prioritising adaptation, COP26 established a comprehensive two-year Glasgow–Sharm el-Sheikh work programme on the global goal of adaptation. It contains an unprecedented ambition for developed countries to increase adaptation support to underdeveloped countries by 2025.

Lack of accessibility and accountability

The adaptation community contributed significantly, but primarily online and outside the negotiation rooms. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates the inaccessibility of climate discussions for individuals in the Global South along with systemic barriers. The disadvantaged and most affected must be allowed to participate in the COP process.

Especially because solutions will not come just from the conference rooms packed with experts, large businesses, and government leaders, but they must also come from the ground.

The world’s poorest have the most resilience and indigenous knowledge for dealing with crises. It is a way of learning by doing. We don’t know what will function, but we must try to adapt. Only those from vulnerable communities can teach the rest of the world about climate resilience.

This worldwide catastrophe is the outcome of a faulty economic paradigm fuelled by capitalism, European colonialism, and the increasing domination of powerful men. Despite recognising the harmful consequences and viable remedies, the global community is not acting quickly enough to address the climate crisis.

We are experiencing the same global catastrophe, but we aren’t in the same boat. It’s like we’re on the Titanic and the Global North is on lifeboats. Millions of people are drowning in the freezing water because the wealthy refuse to share, even though they are fully aware of the consequence. They can’t keep doing business as usual while greenwashing with empty climate summits.

An untapped resource: the youth

The unprecedented mobilisation like the global climate strike of young people around the world demonstrates the massive power they have to hold the world’s climate decision-makers accountable.

Youth groups have previously shown that they are capable of acting and promoting climatic issues from frontlines to headlines. As youth representatives from Bangladesh, we spoke on stage during the COP26 to emphasise the need to make the COP accessible for young people and the need for transformative actions for a resilient future.

The engagement of children and youth in climate actions is quite restricted in our nation. Young people on the front lines of disaster response and adaptation provide humanitarian assistance and lead adaptation initiatives as first responders. Bangladesh just finished its second term as president of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF).

While Ghana designated a youth ambassador before taking over the presidency, Bangladesh missed the opportunity to involve young people in the CVF. Still, at least it has committed to guaranteeing youth participation at the COP25 by signing the Children and Youth Declaration on Climate Action.

Bangladesh has already labelled the long-term Delta Plan (BDP 2100) – a holistic plan to integrate the activities of delta-related sectors across the country – a gift and safeguard for future generations. But regrettably, it is ignoring the youth in the implementation process.

Bangladesh has emphasised young people’s participation in the National Youth Policy and the National Adaptation Plan. However, successful measures to involve children and youth from the local, national, and global levels have yet to be witnessed. The government has not allowed young people to participate in the country’s delegation and negotiation processes.

Youth participation in climate action is an undeniable element of inclusiveness. The young people must be included in the decision-making processes and even execution of climate policies, plans and projects partnering with young people at all levels.

The youth is already doing its part, by convening frequent discussions and lobbying, closely working with key ministries and parliamentary platforms like Climate Parliament Bangladesh to engage young people in the driving seats on climate action. The government and other development partners must reciprocate.

The need for more inclusion

The upcoming COP27 must be more inclusive. A good start is the annual pre-COP which will include a Youth COP as well as an ‘#AccountabilityCOP’. But in the run-up to the conference, there must be more young people represented in national delegations and in meaningful engagement in sub-national, national, and regional talks.

It must expand access to badges and financing for youth, particularly those from the Global South, and allow observers to actively engage in negotiating sessions.

At the moment, we are worried that COP27 will be worse than COP26. There have already been requests that the venue is moved from Egypt due to concerns about human rights violations as a consequence of the country’s restriction on civic space and the lack of rights to free expression, association, and peaceful assembly, as well as the persecution of the gender diverse groups.

Human Rights Watch already labelled Egypt’s presidency of the COP27 a ‘glaringly poor choice.’

On the road to COP27, we young people will present our agenda and continue to advocate for effective outcomes. If global leaders play less on hypocrisy and invest more, COP27 can be a breakthrough in climate justice for vulnerable peoples. In addressing this catastrophe, we advocate for climate justice for all people everywhere which is a new frontier of human rights.

Sohanur Rahman is the Executive Coordinator of YouthNet for Climate Justice.

Source: International Politics and Society is published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sep 22 2022 (IPS)

After general elections on the 12th September, Sweden is on the threshold of a new era. The Sweden Democrats (SD) won almost 21 percent of the votes and thus became the largest in a bloc of right-wing parties that now have a collective majority in the parliament. A nation that for a long time prided itself of being a beacon of tolerance and openness will now experience a historical transformation. The Sweden Democrats was once founded by Nazi sympathisers and for decades shunned by mainstream politicians. However, SD has now tipped the political scale in a country previously known for its stable and predictable politics, and some of the party’s former foes are now willing to co-rule with them.

SD thrives on fears of organized crime, narrow-mindedly associated with migrant environment. The party has benefited from many Swedes’ worries about immigration and a failed integration policy, which has secluded immigrants, often concentrating them to sparsely populated areas, or desolate suburbs, leaving many of them jobless and aid dependent. Most immigrants have not been obliged to learn Swedish and adapt themselves to Swedish society. SD is pointing out that Sweden’s foreign-born population has doubled in twenty years and has now reached twenty percent.

Recent high-profile cases of shootings and explosions in public places are connected with showdowns between criminal gangs fighting for a drug and weapons market often controlled by ethnic clans. A development feared by many Swedes and on social networks SD has resolutely inflated such fears. The party’s winning strategy has been its intention to introduce “strict law and order”, combining it with a ban on the entry of new asylum seekers, tougher criminal penalties, mandatory deportation of migrant criminals, penalise begging, and increase police presence in disadvantaged suburbs. Absent from these policies is an intensified effort to reach out to, integrate and educate immigrants, while assisting them in entering the labour market.

Leading SD for 17 years, Jimmy Åkesson is a vociferous demagogue, not afraid of using generalisations and cliches to engage a sympathetic public. He has been extremely active campaigning, travelling around the cities of the country. In his speeches, Åkesson has a knack for painting a grim picture of a country ravaged by crime, presenting his party as the only means to “make Sweden great again.”

Åkesson’s political foes and opponents eventually felt forced to climb up on his bandwagon of fear mongering, becoming engulfed by issues connected with law enforcement, while other important themes like rising energy prices, Sweden’s upcoming membership in NATO, disappointing results of educational reforms, long waiting times for adequate health care – all this was drowned out by a relentless focus on immigration and crime.

It seems like Swedish political parties have been blinded by their efforts to cling to power and influence, forgetting ideologies and their traditional agendas, becoming infected by the worryingly short-sighted ideology of an extremist party, which wants to return to a fictitious utopia consisting of a bygone ideal state of time-honoured norms and values. During debates preceding the elections almost nothing was said about a future threatened by climate change, a disappearing biodiversity, insufficiently controlled nuclear power, the automation of working life, growing mental maladies, and a vast array of other social problems.

Founded in 1988, SD struggled to win enough votes to elect any MPs at all. However, ever since entering the Parliament in 2010, the party has increased its share of successive elections. It’s growth has been staggering – in the 2006 election SD received three percent of the votes, in 2010 – 5,7 percent, in 2014 – 13 percent, in 2018 – 17.5 percent, and finally in 2022 – 21 percent.

SD’s success story has caused a fierce debate over how much the party has changed ideologically, while transforming itself from a political pariah to an influential power-broker. Jimmie Åkesson, who took over the leadership of SD in 2005, did ten years ago unveil a “zero-tolerance policy against racism and extremism”, excluding his party’s worst extremists. In 2015, he even suspended the party’s entire youth wing over its links to the far-right.

Why did SD exclude these “fanatics”, at the same time as it replaced its burning flame logo with a more innocent-looking flower and got rid of its slogan Keep Sweden Swedish? A viable explanation is that SD wanted to go “mainstream” by cleaning up a conspicuous past originating in the almost universally scorned White Power Movement with roots securely fastened down deep in the fertile ground of musty Nazism.

If SD members are reminded about this awkward truth, they might say that their party now is far from being Nazi-affected, as stated by a member of SD’s reformed youth moment:

All that was before I was born. People accuse us of bad stuff, but I don’t think the fact that there were shady people in the party 30 years ago has affected the appreciation of voters attracted by our current politics.

Probably not, even if SD’s legal spokesperson still seems to cling to the old slogan of Keep Sweden Swedish. He recently tweeted a picture of a Stockholm underground train branded with the party’s colours and stating “Welcome to the repatriation express. Here’s a one-way ticket. Next Stop Kabul.”

However, some people are well aware of the fact that when SD was established in the town of Malmö, one of its founding members was an old Nazi who once had volunteered in the Waffen-SS while another was “the last Swede who dared to show himself in a Nazi uniform.” Up until 1995, SD’s vice chairman was a lady who summarized the Party’s policy as

We can with a good conscience continue the fight against the poison of humanity: Marxists, Liberals and above all the Sionist occupying power. As the vermin they actually are, they will all be crushed like lice

It was this shady party that attracted four students in the university town of Lund. Jimmie Åkesson eventually became the leader of SD, while two members of the group now serve as Party Secretary and International Secretary, respectively. The fourth member, the only one who obtained a degree, is currently member of the Regional Board of Skåne, Sweden’s wealthiest region, after serving as Party Secretary and Vice Speaker of the Swedish Parliament.

As students these men enjoyed being “politically incorrect” and founded a group they called The National Democratic Students’ Union. They eventually joined the SD, stating they intended to “take over” this minuscule extremist party. They are now asserting they didn’t support SD’s extreme ideology. Nevertheless, why did they then chose to “take over” a Nazi party?

In his bland and impersonal political autobiography, Satis Polito, Latin for Sufficiently Polished, Jimmie Åkesson poses as heir to the “old” Social Democratic idea of a just and secure People’s Home. The cover is as falsely arranged folksy as the rest of SD’s messages. Vintage Social Democratic election posters and the cat are photo-shopped. The title of the book indicates SD’s intention of becoming housebroken by washing away its Nazi past. Or as an Italian newspaper expressed it: “Modern Fascism does not stomp around in leather boots, until it dares to show its true face it paws around in felt slippers.”

SD fits fairly well into a standard description of populist parties currently haunting the entire world:

• Exalting “common people”, depicted as a homogenous group opposed to a multifaceted society. A view connected with xenophobia and mistrust of “power elites”.
• Scepticism towards representative democracy. Right-wing populists are happy to participate in elections. If they win, they tend to change the rules of the game to benefit themselves. Like Hungary’s Victor Orbán who stated “we only have to win once.” If they lose, populists often question the election results, suggesting that elections were rigged, like Donald Trump.
• An aggressive political style is expressed through a vulgar use of language, sharp condemnations and ridicule of opponents, while depicting themselves as victims of a biased media and the “establishment”.
• A frequent use of poorly substantiated claims and/or conspiracy theories aiming at undermining stories promoted by “established media” and members of the “elite”.
• Instead of open racism and xenophobia populist parties claim to adhere to and support a “national culture”. Whatever that might be? Jimmie Åkesson wrote in his book that he wants a speedy dismantling of the multicultural policy, in the cultural area, as well as other areas of society /…/ A strengthening of the cultural heritage and a restoration of the common national identity. We simply do not want the divided, segregated – soulless – society that the social-liberal establishment has created for us. We fight it. That’s why they hate us. That’s why they fight us. As a Sweden Democrat, I believe that something cannot be considered part of Swedish culture if it lacks a deep anchorage among current or previous generations of Swedes, or if it is something that is unique to Sweden, or a part of Sweden.

Such sentimental and basically incomprehensible gibberish makes many worried what will happen now when SD is going to be part of the Swedish Government. To what purpose? SD believes neither in climate change, nor in the equal value of human beings. What kind of future are they and their fellow parties around the world intending to create?

The final words of Satis Polito fail to mollify any worries. Jimmie Åkesson claims that the Social-Liberal Establishment so far has thwarted SD, but

Just let them be.
It is only natural that a falling autumn leaf is startled by an increasing wind.

I wonder from what direction this gathering storm is coming. Probably, from the dark world once created by Nazis and Fascists.

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

The Pacific Community’s Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees gene bank conserves more than 2,000 varieties of trees and crops in the Pacific Islands. Credit: Pacific Community

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Sep 22 2022 (IPS)

Safeguarding plentiful, nutritious supplies of food for the present generation of Pacific Islanders and those who come in the future is a frontline goal in the wake of the pandemic and the continual threat of climate extremes to island farming. But the region, where 50 to 70 percent of people depend on agriculture and fisheries for sustenance and income, is now one step ahead in that objective. The region’s agricultural gene bank, established by the development organisation, Pacific Community (SPC), is now acclaimed as world-class and a leader in building future food supplies.

The Pacific Community’s Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees manages the major research centre for plant genetic biodiversity and repository of seeds, tissue culture, and DNA. The gene bank, which currently conserves more than 2,000 varieties of trees and crops in the Pacific Islands, was the winner of the Innovative Island Research Award at this year’s global Island Innovation Awards in April. The new award program was launched last year by former President Bill Clinton and is supported by his New York-based Clinton Global Initiative.

“We won the award because of our strong research programs and our use of tissue culture to conserve plant genetic material. Through research, we are developing tissue culture as a means to sustainably conserve genetic material in the long term. Through tissue culture, we can also improve mass propagation and multiply genetic resources to meet a high level of demand. Tissue culture is also better for the safe distribution and exchange of plant materials across national borders,” Logotonu Waqainabele, Program Leader for the Pacific Community’s Genetic Resources in Fiji, told IPS.

The awards aim to reward and raise the profile of individuals and organisations who are leading positive change in people’s lives in island nations and communities around the world. They are also part of the Clinton Foundation’s mission to mobilise innovative and effective solutions to some of the most urgent challenges facing the world. This year, the twenty judges included Anote Tong, former President of the Republic of Kiribati, and James Michel, former President of the Republic of the Seychelles, along with Peter Thompson, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, and Maria Concepcion, Program Manager for Oxfam America.

Pacific Community’s Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees gene bank won the Innovative Island Research Award at this year’s global Island Innovation Awards in April. The award program was launched last year by former President Bill Clinton and is supported by his New York-based Clinton Global Initiative. Credit: Pacific Community

Karen Mapusua, Director of the Pacific Community’s Land Resources Division in Fiji, believes the accolade will also bring greater certainty to the future of its work. “I think one of the important benefits will be funding and the sustainability of operations for the gene bank. To move to an increasingly sustainable funding model, we need more investment. And increased awareness of what we can provide, so that people know what we hold in the Pacific, the material, and its availability, for the world to see as well,” she told IPS.

“The broadening of our partnership base and attracting of other partners who are willing to support our programs, research and distribution will help us to achieve full food security, added Waqainebele.

The gene bank’s services are global: it supplies tissue culture, seeds, and planting materials to countries in all regions. These include all 22 Pacific Island states, but also African nations, including Ghana, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, the Caribbean and, in the Asian region, the Philippines, India and Indonesia, among others.

This year, the Pacific Community opened two new facilities to support its international distribution. A molecular laboratory, which provides pathogen testing of genetic material to international standards, and a quarantine greenhouse, which will be a reception centre for new plant imports.

Pacific Community’s Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees gene bank supplies tissue culture, seeds, and planting materials to countries in all regions, including 22 Pacific Island states, several African nations, the Caribbean, and, in the Asian region, the Philippines, India, and Indonesia, among others. Credit: Pacific Community

“A key role of the gene bank is to provide material that is safe and clean. Our molecular laboratory screens gene material, so that it is safe to send to other countries without diseases,” Mapusua explained.

The importance of SPC’s work in genetic resources cannot be overestimated. There is no food without seeds. And, looking to the future, ‘crop improvement and the delivery of high-quality seeds and planting materials of selected varieties to growers is necessary for ensuring improved crop production and meeting growing environmental challenges,’ reports the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The Cook Islands is one of the gene bank’s beneficiaries. It’s vital to the “long-term conservation of important genetic resources of the Cook Islands. There are more than 50 clones of taro, bananas or plantain and sweet potatoes from the Cook Islands at the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees for long-term conservation and future breeding work to improve crop genetic resources in the Pacific and other parts of the world,” William Wigmore, Director of Crops Research at the Cook Islands’ Ministry of Agriculture, told IPS.

“We also receive [from the gene bank] new varieties with higher yielding potential and better adaptability, pest, and climate tolerance. These are important food crops for food security,” he added.

Technicians at the Pacific Community’s Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees gene bank bag and test samples. The centre is gaining world recognition for food innovation. Credit: Pacific Community

Now, as the Pacific Islands strive to overcome the economic and social impacts of the pandemic, the reliable provision of seeds for food growing is even more critical. Unemployment and inflation have risen, incomes plummeted, and food supply networks widely disrupted. A World Bank survey in Papua New Guinea in 2020 found that about 25 percent of people who were employed before the onset of the virus had lost their jobs, and 28 percent of households had reduced their food consumption. In the Solomon Islands, the survey revealed that 60 percent of households with children under 5 years had cut back on their intake of essential foods.

In response, many Pacific Island governments have placed a high priority on encouraging the growing of food staples by families. For instance, in Tuvalu, workshops were organised by the government to train youths in agriculture, such as taro planting, and Fiji’s Ministry of Agriculture launched a program to provide seedlings direct to households.

“It is critical to provide the planting materials for recovery. It’s very important for maintaining food security in the region,” Mapusua told IPS. “It was very difficult during the pandemic as we had to fly these planting materials to different countries, but we were still able to sustain the collection and deliver these materials to countries.”

But, even before COVID-19 emerged, island nations were confronting numerous threats to agricultural productivity, such as high exposure to extreme climate, natural disasters, pests and diseases and a trend toward greater consumption of imported processed foods. According to the latest findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Pacific Island nations are among the ‘most vulnerable and exposed to climate change impacts,’ which include more frequent and extreme tropical cyclones, heatwaves and droughts, increasing water and food insecurity and the loss of marine and terrestrial biodiversity.

To address all these challenges, the Pacific Community has a long-term vision and action plan which starts with investing in plant research and crop development for the century ahead. “Our role is conservation for the future, but also the development of new varieties. For the future, climate change, food security and nutrition are the biggest issues. So, we have a big focus on conserving our plant diversity to help us develop new varieties which have a high climate resilience,” Waqainabele emphasised.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• Atoll Nation of Tuvalu Adopts ‘Cubes’ to Step Up Nutritious Food Production
• Pacific Community-Led Health Missions Arrive with Critical Support to Tonga and Kiribati Grappling with COVID-19 Surges
• Pacific Islanders: Failure to Commit to 1.5 Degrees at COP27 will Imperil the World’s Oceans

We are failing to take antimicrobial resistance seriously, perhaps because it is not glamorous and relatable. Credit: Bigstock.

By External Source
Sep 21 2022 (IPS)

Staphylococcus aureus is the source of a skin infection that can turn deadly if drug resistant. Estimates regarding the most common resistant variation, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), exceed 100,000 deaths globally in 2019.

But up until recently, we did not have a solid grasp on how much of a problem MRSA—or any other antimicrobial resistant pathogen—was in Africa. It turns out, after testing 187,000 samples from 14 countries for antibiotic resistance, our colleagues found that 40% of all Staph infections were MRSA.

Africa, like every other continent, has an AMR problem. But Africa stands out because we have not invested in the capacity and resources needed to determine the scope of the problem, or how to fix it. Take MRSA. We still don’t know what’s causing the bacteria to become resistant, nor do we know the full extent of the problem.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly stated that AMR is a global health priority—and is in fact one of the leading public health threats of the 21st century. A recent study estimated that in 2019, nearly 1.3 million people died because of antimicrobial resistant bacterial infections, with Africa bearing the greatest burden of deaths

We are failing to take AMR seriously, perhaps because it is not glamorous and relatable. The technology that we currently use to identify resistant pathogens is not fancy or futuristic looking. Combatting AMR does not involve miracle drugs, expensive treatments, or fancy diagnostic tests. Instead, we have bacteria and other pathogens that are commonplace and have learned how to shrug off the good old medicines that used to work.

The global health and pharmaceutical industries do not seem to consider solving this problem to be very profitable. Compare that to the urgency of solving COVID-19, which has been embraced—and interventions such as diagnostics subsidized—by governments eager to end the pandemic. The COVID-19 response has been characterized by innovations popping up literally every other week.

Why can’t we mobilize resources and passion for AMR? Are resistant pathogens too boring? Is it too difficult to solve through innovations? Does this make prospects for quick wins and fast return on investment too elusive for AMR, especially when compared to COVID-19 or other infectious disease outbreaks?

The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly stated that AMR is a global health priority—and is in fact one of the leading public health threats of the 21st century. A recent study estimated that in 2019, nearly 1.3 million people died because of antimicrobial resistant bacterial infections, with Africa bearing the greatest burden of deaths. A high prevalence of AMR has also been identified in foodborne pathogens isolated from animals and animal products in Africa.

Collectively, these numbers suggest that the burden of AMR might be on the level of—or greater than—that of HIV/AIDS or COVID-19. The growing threat of AMR is likely to take a heavy toll on Africa’s health systems and poses a major threat to progress made in attaining public health goals set by individual nations, the African Union and the United Nations. And the paucity of accurate AMR information limits our ability to understand how well commonly used antimicrobials actually work. This also means we cannot determine the drivers of AMR infections and design effective interventions in response.

We have just wrapped up a project that gathered data on many of the scariest pathogens in 14 countries, revealing stark insights on the under-detected and under-reported depth of the AMR crisis across Africa. Less than two percent of the medical laboratories in the 14 countries examined can conduct bacteriology testing, even with conventional methods that were developed more than 30 years ago.

While providing national stakeholders with critical information to advance their policies on AMR, we have also trained and provided basic electronic tools to more than 300 health professionals to continue this important surveillance. While a strengthened workforce is critical, many health facilities on the continent are coping with interrupted access to electricity, poor connectivity, and serious, ongoing workforce shortages.

Our work has painted the dire reality of the AMR surveillance situation, informing concrete recommendations for improvement that align with the new continental public health ambition of the African Union and Africa Center for Disease Control (CDC). The challenge is to find the funding to expand this initiative to cover the entire African continent.

AMR containment requires a long-term focus—especially in Africa, where health systems are chronically underfunded, while also being disproportionately challenged by infectious threats. More funding needs to be dedicated to the problem and this cannot only come from international aid.

We urge African governments to honour past commitments and allocate more domestic funding to their health systems in general, and to solving the crisis of AMR in particular. We also call upon bilateral funders and global stakeholders to focus their priorities on improving the health of African peoples. This might require more attention to locally relevant evidence to inform investments and less attention to profit-driven market interventions, as well as prioritizing the scale-up of technologies and strategies proven to work, whether or not they are innovations.

Containing AMR means we have to fix African health systems. The work starts now.

The authors of this opinion piece are Dr Pascale Ondoa and Dr Yewande Alimi – Dr Pascale Ondoa is the director of science and new initiatives of the African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) and Dr Yewande Alimi is the Africa Center for Disease Control (CDC) antimicrobial resistance programme coordinator.

Two refugees identified as Muhindo and his wife Harriet are among the new waves of people leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo following inter-communal clashes in South-West DRC. UN agencies have called for substantive action on refugees, especially regarding food security. Credit: UNHCR

By Juliet Morrison
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 21 2022 (IPS)

Representatives from UN agencies and several countries called for more substantive action to support refugees and internally displaced people amid the ongoing global food crisis.

Co-hosted by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations, a panel discussion held on September 14, 2022, also explored innovative solutions to combat the food shortage and increase the capacity of refugees. It came ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the global food crisis and protection.

Food insecurity has become an enormous problem. In 2019, WFP estimated that 145 million people were facing acute food insecurity. Now the organization predicates 345 million people are facing insecurity. The combination of climate change shocks, COVID-19, and conflict has pushed several countries, such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Yemen, to a very real risk of famine.

Yoseph Kassaye, Deputy Permanent Representative of Ethiopia, and Raouf Mazou, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Operations at the UN Headquarters in New York City. Credit: Juliet Morrison/IPS

Action on food insecurity today is “more important than ever”, Valerie Guarnieri, WFP Assistant Executive Director, said during the panel section.

Among those particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of food insecurity are refugees and internally displaced people.

Raouf Mazou, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Operations and moderator of the event, explained that the increased vulnerability of refugees is primarily to the nature of displacement and the loss of community safety networks that accompany it.

“When fleeing many refugees sell or are forced to leave behind their assets their journey to safety is often full of dangers. Family and community support systems breakdown. They usually lose their income and often find themselves with no option but to employ harmful strategies as coping mechanisms.”

Coping mechanisms refer to tactics a family or community employs to compensate for a loss in income. In response to COVID-19 lockdowns, UNHCR reported instances of transactional sex, early marriage, child recruitment, and trafficking in person across its operations.

For Mazou, these challenges point to a need to center protection in efforts to address food security by governments and NGOs.

Special attention must also be paid to the specific plights of women and girls, he argued. In searching for food, displaced women and girls are at an increased risk of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and child and forced marriages.

In Somalian regions affected by drought, gender-based violence has gone up 200 percent since 2021, Mazaou noted. He pointed to several factors that may lead to violence when a community is facing food insecurity.

“Food insecurity increases the risk of violence, neglect and exploitation and abuse of children. Girls may drop out of school at a higher percentage rate than boys when families are unable to afford school fees for all their children. Household sent children in search of food work on pasture for livestock exposing them to increased risks.”

The food crisis is also affecting the ability of host countries to provide for refugees.

Ethiopia, the third largest refugee-hosting country in Africa, is on the brink of famine. The country is reckoning with the historic drought hitting the Horn of Africa region, which is severely threatening its food networks.

Yoseph Kassaye, Deputy Permanent Representative of Ethiopia to the UN, underscored the crisis and its strain on the nation’s ability to protect refugees.

The drought has wiped away important nutrition sources that refugees rely on, such as cattle and water wells. Kassaye explained that the lack of natural resources means refugees can only rely on humanitarian assistance.

Yet, this is also at risk. As a result of funding constraints, in June, the WFP had to reduce its rations for refugees in Ethiopia by 50 percent.

“It is indeed troubling to learn that the level of support by international humanitarian agencies is reported to have decreased due to the funding shortages. In our view, urgent measures are needed if we’re to respond to the people in need of assistance in a timely and effective manner,” Kassaye said.

Citing related statistics, Guarnieri emphasized the importance of more humanitarian aid. But, she also underscored initiatives that increased the capacity of refugee populations and host countries.

“We have to do everything as WFP and UNHCR, as an international community to meet these urgent food needs and these desperate protection needs, but we’re never going to be able to catch up with the situation unless we are also investing in building the resilience in supporting the livelihoods and strengthening the self-reliance of populations who have forcibly displaced population who are seeking refuge in other countries.”

She also stressed the power of collaboration across sectors. One example of this was the WFP-UNHCR’s Joint Hub, a collaboration between agencies and governments to support refugees through innovative solutions and policies.

Established in 2020, the hub has worked on several projects. One with the Government of Mauritania resulted in Malian refugees being included in its national social protection plan—making refugees eligible for cash transfer funds for vulnerable households.

Dorte Verner, the lead agricultural economist in the Agricultural and Food Global Practice with the World Bank, brought up another innovative solution to boost food production: insect farming.

According to Verner, insect farming has enormous potential for tackling food insecurity in vulnerable communities as it requires no arable land and very little water and will not lead to any biodiversity loss. These characteristics mean it can even be practiced in refugee camps, Verner stated.

“Insert farming can provide displaced people with the skills that they need to produce where they are, and they can take these skills to human capital with them to where they go afterward. [It] can contribute to alleviating the world’s food and nutrition insecurity for forcibly displaced people and the host community.”

Closing the meeting, participants coalesced around the need to leverage the commitments being made to meaningfully tackle food insecurity.

Several participants also noted the opportunity to continue the conversation at the Security Council meeting to be held later that afternoon, where more concrete action on food insecurity could be examined.

A representative from Ireland stated that overall action from the Security Council was needed to meaningfully tackle the issue at its core.

“If we don’t look at what’s driving these prices in the first place, what’s driving this insecurity in the first place? Then, you know, we’re going to be chasing our tails all the time because the problems are getting worse.”

He called for the Security Council to address the matter further.

“[The humanitarian] part of the UN system is playing its part, but the UN Security Council needs to play its part as well. That means responding early when we see the signs of crises coming, but it also means responding, particularly to protect civilians, and crises and meeting to make sure that things are put at the center of our response.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• UN South-South Event Highlights Power of Cooperation for Peace and Development
• UN Labour Report Highlights Employment Challenges for Youth
• Refugees Face Often Neglected Mental Health Challenges – Report

By Stefan Löfven
STOCKHOLM, Sep 21 2022 (IPS)

As world leaders gather in New York for the opening of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly this week, the security horizon is undoubtedly dark.

From the geopolitical shockwaves of the war in Ukraine, to military spending, nutrition and food security, to our stewardship of the planet, far too many key indicators are heading in a dangerous direction.

We can, and must, turn them around. In the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his 2021 report Our Common Agenda, ‘the choices we make, or fail to make, today could result in further breakdown, or a breakthrough to a greener, better, safer future’.

Making the right choices requires political will and leadership, based on the best available knowledge. That last aspect is SIPRI’s stock in trade.

A ‘watershed moment’

The theme for the 77th General Assembly session is ‘A watershed moment: transformative solutions to interlocking challenges’.

Evidence of these interlocking challenges is everywhere: the floods in Pakistan, war and insecurity afflicting every region of the world, the erosion of arms control and stagnation in disarmament, rising hunger, the economic and political turmoil that has followed the Covid-19 pandemic, and the list goes on.

These interlocking challenges share some common features. Their consequences, and often their drivers, do not respect borders or alliances. They are characterized by uncertainty and volatility. They tend to cut across traditional policy domains.

This has a clear implication: the only realistic path towards a ‘greener, better, safer future’ on this planet lies through cooperation. Countries, societies and sectors must work together to meet global challenges, put aside tensions and political polarization, and restore their faith in institutions and the rules-based international order.

Earlier this year, Secretary-General Guterres invited me to become co-Chair of his High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, alongside Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former president of Liberia.

The Advisory Board’s task is to come up with concrete suggestions for how to improve cooperation at the multilateral level, how we can ensure it is fit to meet the challenges of an unpredictable future and the urgently needed transition to more sustainable, peaceful societies. To accomplish this mission, we will rely heavily on science and expertise.

Addressing the crisis of the biosphere

SIPRI’s Environment of Peace report explores the most dangerous sets of interlocking challenges we face: the complex and unpredictable ways that climate change and other environmental crises are intertwining with more human-centred aspects of security.

Besides providing policy insights, the Environment of Peace report documents the indirect pathways linking climate change impacts and insecurity, and the interactions between climate, conflict and food security, thus continuing SIPRI’s contributions to working out how UN peace operations must adapt to climate change.

The biosphere crisis can only be successfully addressed through cooperation. Countries need to share green technologies and innovative solutions.

They need to agree on fair ways to share vital natural resources and settle disputes peacefully. There must be give and take; action in one society to mitigate impacts on another.

Countries also need to agree on fair ways to distribute the burdens, costs and benefits of a green transition. From South Asia to sub-Saharan Africa to Indigenous communities around the world, those most vulnerable to the impacts of the crisis of the biosphere are often those least responsible for causing it—something illustrated starkly most recently by the devastating floods in Pakistan.

There is a clear moral case for wealthier, industrialized countries to meet their climate finance commitments and to compensate the most affected countries for loss and damage. But there is also a strong security case for doing so. Localized insecurity can quickly spread.

From national security to common security

A logical response to such threats to their shared interests would be for countries to put differences aside and pull together. Instead, they have, by and large, followed a path of division and militarization.

Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year, that was clear. SIPRI data shows large increases in global military expenditure in the last two years, as well as in arms imports to Europe, East Asia and Oceania.
All of the nuclear-armed states are modernizing or expanding their arsenals.

At the same time, we are also seeing rapid and radical developments in weapon systems, technologies and even ways of executing a conflict.
A new, expensive and risky arms race is well under way. There is an urgent need to breathe new life into nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and arms control.

Disappointingly, the recent 10th Review Conference of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) ended without agreement on the way forward. However, there were signs of hope.

The conference produced much to build on in the next five-year review cycle. Notably, all of the five NPT-recognized nuclear weapon states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) agree on the necessity of measures to reduce strategic risks.

These will be important steps. However, what is needed most of all is a shift away from the pursuit of security through military capability to investing in peace and common security. Once again, cooperation will be key.

How evidence underpins cooperation

Successful cooperation needs to be underpinned by reliable, non-partisan information and analysis. As Secretary-General Guterres declares in Our Common Agenda: ‘Now is the time to end the “infodemic” plaguing our world by defending a common, empirically backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge.’

The Secretary-General correctly characterizes ‘facts, science and knowledge’ as a public good that it is in everyone’s interest to protect. They provide valuable common ground for discussion—even when trust between the parties is lacking.

They inform effective solutions. They make it possible to verify that others are following rules and living up to commitments. They give early warning of emerging challenges and imminent dangers.

The Environment of Peace report highlights the fact that risks and uncertainty lie not just in the external challenges we face, but also in the actions taken to address them in the transition towards sustainability.

This transition needs to happen at unprecedented scale and speed, using novel solutions in an environment of uncertainty. There will inevitably be setbacks, unintended, unanticipated consequences of well-intentioned policies.

There will also be resistance, parties who need convincing that the costs justify the benefits.
To keep the transition just and peaceful will demand communication, cooperation, trust and agility to deal with unexpected risks and change course quickly to avert them.

For this, we will need to produce and disseminate even more reliable and verified information. SIPRI will continue to be a resource in this regard.

Opportunities for change

The UN General Assembly has a highly ambitious agenda for transformative change. The landmark Summit of the Future, scheduled for September 2024, has been billed as ‘the moment to agree on concrete solutions to challenges that have emerged or grown since 2015’.

The COP27—the 27th Conference of the Parties to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change—coming in November, and the much-postponed 15th Conference of the Parties of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity in December are other important opportunities to reduce future security risks at the multilateral level.

However important intergovernmental forums like this are, the task of tackling our interconnected challenges is continuous and society-wide. Solutions need to come at the multilateral, national and subnational levels.

And they need to engage a broad range of stakeholders, from youth to Indigenous Peoples to the private sector. Reliable information and expertise must be available to guide all of this.

I am both proud and daunted to be picking up the mantle of Chair of the SIPRI Governing Board as we confront these difficult challenges ahead.

SIPRI’s core mission as a source of freely available, reliable evidence, fair-minded analysis and balanced assessment of options, as a convenor of dialogues, and as a provider of support to the formulation and implementation of international agreements and instruments remains as important as ever.

Stefan Löfven (Sweden) is Chair of the Governing Board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

IPS UN Bureau

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');  

One of the voting centers of the popular consultation held on Sunday, Sept. 18 in Asunción Mita, a town of 50,000 people in eastern Guatemala. The majority of the people who voted said no to the Cerro Blanco mine, due to its environmental impacts. CREDIt: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
ASUNCIÓN MITA, Guatemala , Sep 21 2022 (IPS)

The majority of the Guatemalan population continues to oppose mining and other extractive projects, in the midst of a scenario of socio-environmental conflict that pits communities defending their natural resources against the interests of multinational corporations.

The most recent rejection of mining projects in this Central American country took place on Sunday Sept. 18 in the town of Asunción Mita, 350 kilometers southeast of the capital of Guatemala, in the department of Jutiapa.

The “No” vote wins

Here, through a citizen consultation, 88 percent of the more than 8,503 people who voted said “no” to the operations of the Cerro Blanco gold mine, owned by Elevar Resources, a subsidiary of Canada’s Bluestone Resources.

“In my view we can’t allow this to go ahead, we are getting older, but we don’t want the children and young people to suffer from the environmental impact of the mine,” said Petronila Hernández, 55, after voting at a school on the outskirts of Asunción Mita.

Hernández added to IPS that “we don’t agree with the mine, it affects our water sources, we carry the water from the water source, and the mine contaminates it.”

Hernández was accompanied by her daughter, Marilexis Ramos, 21.

“Hopefully our ‘No’ vote will win,” said Ramos during the voting. At the end of the afternoon the counting of votes began, and by Monday Sept. 19 the results began to be clear.

Mother and daughter live in the Cerro Liso hamlet, on the outskirts of Asunción Mita, very close to the mine.

Marilexis Ramos (r), 21, voted on the continuity of the Cerro Blanco mining project, located near Asunción Mita, 350 kilometers southeast of the Guatemalan capital, in the department of Jutiapa. A full 88 percent of the more than 8,503 people who voted said “no” to the gold and silver mine. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The Cerro Blanco underground mine was licensed to operate in 2007 for a period of 25 years, but since then it has not been able to extract gold and silver, due to unforeseen issues.

The project encountered thermal water veins in the subsoil that released heat that made it impossible to work for long enough inside the two tunnels built in the mine, activist Juan Carlos Estrada, of the Water and Sanitation Network of Guatemala, told IPS.

“The mine has been stranded for almost 15 years without extracting a single ounce of ore,” Estrada said.

However, the community struggle continues because, despite the setback it suffered in Sunday’s vote, the company still intends to operate the mine and to do so it aims to modify the original plan and turn it into an open pit mine.

People vs. transnational corporations

Guatemala, a nation of 17.4 million inhabitants, has experienced socio-environmental conflicts in recent decades as a result of the communities’ defense of their territories against the advance of mining and hydroelectric projects and other extractivist activities.

Many of the conflicts have taken place in the territories of indigenous peoples, who make up 60 percent of the total population. Members of affected communities have put up resistance and have faced crackdowns by police and soldiers.

This has earned them persecution and criminalization by the authorities.

Dalia González, of the Salvadoran movement Green Rebellion, on the banks of the Ostúa River in eastern Guatemala, talks about the impact that pollution from the Cerro Blanco mine will have on the river, which in turn will end up polluting the Lempa River in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In February, IPS reported on the struggle of indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ communities in the municipality of El Estor, on the outskirts of Lake Izabal, in the department of the same name in eastern Guatemala.

The only active mine in Guatemala operates there, as similar projects have been blocked by the communities through citizen consultations or by court rulings, after the communities requested injunctions complaining about the lack of such votes, which are required.

The nickel mine in El Estor has been operated since 2011 by the transnational Solway Investment Group, headquartered in Switzerland, after purchasing it from Canada’s HudBay Minerals.

“Almost 100 consultations have been held, in 100 municipalities around the country, and in all of them mining and hydroelectric projects, mainly, have been rejected,” said José Cruz, of the environmental collective Madreselva.

The high number of consultations expresses the level of struggle of the population and the companies’ interest in the country’s natural resources.

“The only mining project currently operating is El Estor,” Cruz told IPS. And it is still active thanks to a “mock” consultation, manipulated by the company, which apparently endorsed the mine.

The Oxec I and Oxec II hydroelectric projects have also been a source of socio-environmental conflict.

The first plant began operations in 2015 and the second has been under construction since two years later. Both are owned by the Energy Resources Capital Corporation, registered in Panama.

In 2015, local Q’eqchi indigenous communities launched a struggle against the two hydroelectric power plants on the Cahabón River, located in the municipality of Santa María de Cahabón, in the department of Alta Verapaz in northern Guatemala.

After suffering persecution for his active participation in defense of his people’s territories, Q’eqchi leader Bernardo Caal was imprisoned in January 2018 and sentenced the following November to seven years in prison by a court “without any evidence,” as denounced at the time by Amnesty International, which considered him a prisoner of conscience.

However, he was released in March 2022 for good behavior and because there was essentially no evidence against him.

An anti-mining banner hangs on the façade of the church in Asunción Mita, in eastern Guatemala. The company operating the Cerro Blanco mine called the consultation process held in the town on Sept. 18 illegal. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Projects that pollute across borders

Although the victory of the “no” vote in Asunción Mita represents an achievement for local residents, the project still presents a pollution risk, not only for this town of 50,000 people, but also for neighboring El Salvador.

Asunción Mita is located near the border with El Salvador.

Environmental organizations in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have warned that heavy metal pollution from the mine would end up impacting the Ostúa River on the Guatemalan side.

The waters of that river, in turn, would reach Lake Guija, on the Salvadoran side. And a segment of that lake is reached by the Lempa River, which provides water to more than one million people in San Salvador and neighboring municipalities.

The Lempa River is 422 kilometers long and its basin covers three countries: It originates in Guatemala, crosses a small portion of Honduras and then zigzags through El Salvador until flowing into the Pacific Ocean.

El Salvador passed a law in March 2017 prohibiting mining, underground or open pit, but the proximity to the Cerro Blanco mine makes it vulnerable to pollution.

“We are concerned, our main source of water is under threat,” Salvadoran activist Dalia González, of the Green Rebellion movement, told IPS.

González added that the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador have an important role to play in protecting natural resources and the health of the local population.

“Because the effects of the mines cross borders,” said the young activist on the banks of the Ostúa River, where she had arrived along with Salvadoran environmentalists and journalists after witnessing the consultation process.

González called on Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to engage in a dialogue with his Guatemalan counterpart Alejandro Giammattei to find a solution to the problem of pollution that would also affect El Salvador.

“The situation is serious and requires urgent action,” said the Salvadoran activist.

After learning the results of the citizen consultation in Asunción Mita, the company behind the Cerro Blanco mine, Elevar Resources, called the process illegal, according to a press release made public on Monday Sept. 19.

The company’s managing director, Bob Gil, said, “this consultation process is clearly illegal and full of irregularities,” according to the statement.

In the company’s view, the process was flawed by what it called “anti-mining groups”.

“We are disappointed with the actions of these groups who use biased referendums to create doubt and uncertainty regarding responsible mining projects such as Cerro Blanco,” he added.

The consortium said the aim is to continue developing the project and to produce 2.6 million ounces of gold during the life of the mine.

Due to the problems it has had with the tunnels and the heat that prevents it from working and extracting the minerals, in November 2021 the company submitted a request to the authorities to transform the current underground mine into an open-pit mine.

The company “spoke of updating the Environmental Impact Study, but what was needed was a new study, because it was a completely different project,” said Madreselva’s Cruz.

Related Articles

• Struggle in Guatemala Offers Hope for Latin America’s Indigenous People
• Mining Grabs Up Land, Deals Blow to Agriculture in Central America

Mary Maker chairing a session on “Education in Crisis Situations – A Partnership for Transformative Actions for Learners” on the final day of the Transforming Education Summit. Credit: UN

By Naureen Hossain
United Nations, Sep 20 2022 (IPS)

Refugee youth advocate, Mary Maker, called on UN member states to honor their commitments to transform education from the foundation up to the top, starting with those living in the direst and fraught circumstances.

Maker, a South Sudanese refugee who fled her country and found hope while attending a school in Kukuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, chaired a session called “Education in Crisis Situations – A Partnership for Transformative Actions for Learners” on the final day of the Transforming Education Summit (TES).

The session focused on education and learning in crises and the forced displacement that often results from these situations.

“I am really excited about this session because this is my story. This is the story of so many other refugees,” Maker, who also supports the UNHCR, said. “And as we’ve conversed over the last few days, I hope that this Call to Action becomes actually something we can implement after this session.”

She spoke on the significance of the session, “given the increased displacement around the world, and the added need for collective effort to transform the provision and financing of quality education.”

Member states affirmed their commitment to transforming education on the third and final day of the Transforming Education Summit. The TES Leaders Day, September 19, was dedicated to the Heads of State and Government to present their National State of Commitment to the summit’s goals in Leader Roundtables. Concurrently, thematic sessions were hosted with the intent of cross-cutting priorities for transforming education and reaffirming commitments and plans for action from multiple stakeholders, including world governments, UN partners, and civil society organizations.

The session launched “Education in Crisis: A Call to Action,” a commitment to transform education systems so that they can prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from crises and so that all crisis-affected children have access to continuous, inclusive, and safe learning opportunities. The Call to Action asks countries, multilateral organizations, civil society groups, and education partners to work toward the agreement by improving education access and learning outcomes in equality and inclusivity; protecting and improving external financing; working together to build resilient education systems in the spirit of international cooperation; to scale and mainstream high-impact and evidence-based interventions into policy and programme efforts.

“This Commitment to Action is the result of extensive consultations with over 45 crisis-affected countries from five continents, more than 100 civil society organizations, as well as other stakeholders, including youth,” Estefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General UNESCO, said.

UN agencies, represented by its leaders, emphasized the urgency of education in crisis.

Filippo Grandi, High-Commissioner of UNHCR, spoke on the impact of compounding crises, such as climate change, famine, and armed conflict.

“Across all these underlying aspects of crises, forces of crises, you have forced displacement,” he said. “People flee or are obliged to flee their homes because there is fighting. They’re obliged to flee their homes because there is hunger, and they are now increasingly obliged to flee their homes because of climate change. More importantly, all these factors are interlinked.”

He added, “And all these faces of crisis are multipliers for vulnerability…These challenges, or crises as we should see them, challenge education.”

Due to ongoing crises, climate-induced disasters, and forced displacement, 222 million children and youth have experienced disruptions to their education, affecting their learning access or continuity.

Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait, is concerned that the world now has the highest number of displaced people since World War II. Credit: UN

“We have reached a historical – a sad historical – number of forcibly displaced peoples, the highest number of peoples since World War II,” said Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), during a panel discussion.

“Despite the enormity of this challenge, we have to reach every one of these, and we have to make sure they have foundational learning,” said Catherine Russell, Executive Director of UNICEF.

Appealing directly to Heads of State and Government, Russell asked them to prioritize education, especially its access during times of crisis. “We need your help to deliver domestic and humanitarian funds to education. We need you to help prevent or stop attacks on education. We need your commitment to build resilient education systems so that they can withstand the future shocks that we know for sure are coming. And we need your commitment to safeguard education for the most vulnerable children.”

Member states represented in the session, including Qatar, Ecuador, South Sudan, Pakistan, Norway, Switzerland, the European Commission, and the State of Palestine, affirmed their support of the Commitment to Action, and shared their states’ implementations toward improving access to education.

“We know that education systems must be resilient enough to prevent, prepare, repel, and recover from armed conflict. Our Call to Action will hopefully do that,” said Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, as she closed the spotlight session.

“The alignment between national priorities and international commitments is critical to making education systems more resilient and can ensure the protection of children and their rights, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

This spirit of international cooperation across multiple stakeholders will indeed be critical to transforming education on a fundamental level. In the global conversation, this will be revisited with the ECW High-Level Financing Conference, slated for 16 and 17 February 2023. The conference will take place in Geneva, with co-conveners South Sudan, Niger, Germany, and Norway.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');   Related Articles

• UN and Partners Called to Act Urgently with Education in Emergencies at Summit
• Mental Health as a Human Right Left Behind for Children in Fragile and Humanitarian Settings
• Breaking Menstruation Taboos and Leaving No Girl Behind

Between 2010 and 2020 the number of state-based armed conflicts roughly doubled (to 56), as did the number of conflict deaths, finds new report. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Sep 20 2022 (IPS)

Day after day, the world’s scientific community, based on solid investigations, elaborates dozens of studies identifying the causes of the existing emergencies facing humanity. They also prepare understandable summaries and conclusions and propose feasible solutions to the current crises and ways to prevent major future risks.

Such studies are promptly submitted to politicians, both directly and through hundreds of summits, conferences, forums and meetings.

Are they just unable to read and understand these texts?

In combination, the security and environmental crises are creating compound, cascading, emergent, systemic and existential risks. Without profound changes in approach by institutions of authority, risks will inevitably proliferate quickly

If so, they should probably be added to the shameful finding that up to 70% of children –or nearly 250 million– are illiterate, sentenced to ignorance as revealed by numerous findings, including those of the Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.

 

Unpredictable risks

Meanwhile, the world is “stumbling into a new era of unpredictable risks,” while the ongoing multiple and deepening crises have “pushed 9 out of 10 countries backwards in human development.”

Both facts unveil the failure of the world’s politicians to act for people rather than announcing decisions that end up benefiting big private businesses.

Two major reports have revealed such a stark failure. One of them was released on 8 September 2022 by UNDP–the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report: “Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a Transforming World.”

The other one “Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk” was published on 23 May this very year by the prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

 

Failure

“World leaders are failing to prepare for a new era of complex and often unpredictable risks to peace as profound environmental and security crises converge and intensify,” highlights SIPRI, the independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament.

Its report paints a vivid picture of the escalating security crisis. For example, it notes that between 2010 and 2020 the number of state-based armed conflicts roughly doubled (to 56), as did the number of conflict deaths.

“The number of refugees and other forcibly displaced people also doubled, to 82.4 million. In 2020 the number of operationally deployed nuclear warheads increased after years of reductions, and in 2021 military spending surpassed $2 trillion for the first time ever.”

Regarding the environmental crisis, SIPRI warns that around a quarter of all species are at risk of extinction, pollinating insects are in rapid decline and soil quality is falling, while exploitation of natural resources such as forests and fish continues at unsustainable levels.

“Climate change is making extreme weather events such as storms and heatwaves more common and more intense, reducing the yield of major food crops and increasing the risk of large-scale harvest failures.”

 

Uncertain times, unsettled lives

For its part, the Human Development Report warns that the world is lurching from crisis to crisis, trapped in a cycle of firefighting and unable to tackle the roots of the troubles that confront the world.

The report argues that “layers of uncertainty are stacking up and interacting to unsettle life in unprecedented ways.”

 

Devastating impacts

The last two years have had a devastating impact for billions of people around the world, when crises like COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine hit back-to-back, and interacted with sweeping social and economic shifts, dangerous planetary changes, and massive increases in polarisation, says UNDP.

“Without a sharp change of course, we may be heading towards even more deprivations and injustices.”

For the first time in the 32 years that UNDP has been calculating it, the Human Development Index, which measures a nation’s health, education, and standard of living, has declined globally for two years in a row.

 

Universal reversal of human development

“The reversal is nearly universal as over 90 percent of countries registered a decline in their Human Development Index score in either 2020 or 2021 and more than 40 percent declined in both years, signalling that the crisis is still deepening for many.”

While some countries are beginning to get back on their feet,it adds, “recovery is uneven and partial, further widening inequalities in human development.” Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have been hit particularly hard.

 

Scrambling

“The world is scrambling to respond to back-to-back crises. We have seen with the cost of living and energy crises that, while it is tempting to focus on quick fixes like subsidising fossil fuels, immediate relief tactics are delaying the long-term systemic changes we must make,” says Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator.

“We are collectively paralyzed in making these changes. In a world defined by uncertainty, we need a renewed sense of global solidarity to tackle our interconnected, common challenges.”

The report explores why the change needed isn’t happening and suggests there are many reasons, including how insecurity and polarisation are feeding off each other today to prevent the solidarity and collective action to tackle crisis at all levels.

 

Insecurity and political extremism

New calculations show, for instance, that those feeling most insecure are also more likely to hold extreme political views, it also reveals.

“Even before COVID-19 hit, we were seeing the twin paradoxes of progress with insecurity and polarisation. Today, with one-third of people worldwide feeling stressed and fewer than a third of people worldwide trusting others, we face major roadblocks to adopting policies that work for people and the planet,” says Achim Steiner.

To chart a new course, the report recommends implementing policies that focus on investment — from renewable energy to preparedness for pandemics, and insurance—including social protection— to prepare our societies for the ups and downs of an uncertain world.

 

Climate and armed conflicts

The environmental crisis is increasing risks to security and peace worldwide, notably in countries that are already fragile, explains SIPRI’s Environment of Peace – Security in a new era of risk.

Indicators of insecurity such as the number of conflicts, the number of hungry people and military expenditure are rising; so are indicators of environmental decline, climate change, biodiversity, pollution and other areas, warns SIPRI.

“In combination, the security and environmental crises are creating compound, cascading, emergent, systemic and existential risks. Without profound changes in approach by institutions of authority, risks will inevitably proliferate quickly.”

Evidence shows that politicians are capable of reading and understanding those texts elaborated by economic, financial and markets experts.

Meanwhile, and despite the above and other readable – and understandable texts, they seemingly continue to neglect an essential fact, i.e., ‘By Deliberately Ignoring Risk, the World Is Bankrolling Its Own Destruction’.