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This partnership looks beyond getting children back in school, focusing on learning, child development and well-being. Ethiopia will be one of the pilot countries for the partnership. Photo UNICEF Ethiopia.

By External Source
NEW YORK, Feb 27 2020 (IPS-Partners)

To improve learning outcomes for girls and boys caught in emergencies and protracted crises, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) is now partnering with the global philanthropic organization Porticus to develop, test and document fit-for-purpose solutions towards measuring the learning of children in crises-affected countries.

The pilot programme will be implemented in three countries between 2020 and 2022, as part of ECW’s Acceleration Facility. Bangladesh and Ethiopia are shortlisted, and a third country is in the process of being selected.

“There is a growing global movement to address the pressing needs of the 75 million children and youth caught in crises who do not have consistent access to a quality education. This partnership looks beyond getting children back in school, focusing on learning, child development and well-being. This includes the measurement of progress in academic learning, but equally gives attention to psycho-social, as well as social and emotional domains of learning and development. With this focus on measurement we can better understand whether and how children being exposed to multiple risks and adversities can develop the academic, social and emotional skills and competencies needed to achieve their full potential. The results of measurement can inform concrete program design, as well as policy,” said Gerhard Pulfer, Porticus representative for Education in Displacement.

Porticus’ goal in the field of Education in Emergencies is to “to promote a transition towards holistic, quality education for displaced learners and host communities.” According to Pulfer, Porticus seeks education systems for displaced children that take responsibility for learning outcomes, and that encompass both academic and social and emotional learning.

Holistic Approaches
Learning is different and vastly more complex for children and youth caught in crises and emergencies, including armed conflict, forced displacement and climate-change induced disasters. Stress, trauma, fear and anxiety make it hard for them to concentrate in school and learn. Of greater concern, too many girls and boys are simply left behind and excluded from the hope, opportunity and protection that a quality learning environment provides.

To address these challenges, ECW supports Multi-Year Resilience Programmes (MYRPs) that use a ‘whole-of-child’ approach to deliver quality education to children and youth affected by emergencies and protracted crises. These MYRPs focus on increasing access, teaching capacity, conducive school environments, more relevant curricula, tailored learning material, physical and emotional safety, as well as other aspects related to school feeding, and water and sanitation in schools.

Together with its partners – including host governments, United Nations agencies, public and private donors, civil society organizations and non-profits – ECW has launched MYRPs in 10 crisis-affected countries to date and plans to expand its support to a total 25 countries by 2021.

The new partnership between Porticus and ECW will measure the effect of these initiatives and provide a better understanding of what is working and is not working for children caught in emergencies and protracted crises to learn.

To do so, the partnership will take a holistic approach to measure learning outcomes, looking beyond academic achievements in literacy and numeracy to also include aspects of social-emotional learning. The social-emotional aspect is often overlooked in stable settings and requires specific attention for children affected by conflict. These skills include self-awareness, emotional regulation and respect for others, as well as interpersonal skills such as listening and conflict resolution. They also include skills such as critical and creative thinking, goal setting, study skills, teamwork and time management.

“Every child and young person have a right and need to enjoy an education that is holistic and addresses the full spectrum of developmental needs. The fact that they are caught in war zones, forced displacement or natural disasters does not remove their right to a quality education. On the contrary, a quality education is the only hope and viable solution left,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “As we supercharge ideas to create solutions as part of the UN’s Decade of Action, we must improve our evidence base and adjust approaches accordingly. This is part of our global promise to leave no one behind, and to ensure not just universal and equitable access to an education, but also universal and equitable access to a quality education.”

Partnerships for the Future
Porticus and ECW will work in close collaboration with in-country partners as well as global actors to ensure broad exposure, inclusive feedback and close collaboration as the partnership is implemented. Lessons learned through the partnership will be shared across a broad group of relevant stakeholders.

To kickstart the partnership, Porticus is granting EUR1 million (approximately US$1.1 million) to ECW. ECW will co-fund this valuable partnership with a US$500,000 investment.

As the partnership develops, both Porticus and ECW intend to broaden and grow the collaboration, to mainstream and accelerate best practices and help ensure children and youth caught in crises benefit from improved learning outcomes.

Bangladesh, where ECW supports a multi-year resilience programme for Rohingya refugees and host communities, is also targeted as part for the partnership. Photo UNICEF

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About Education Cannot Wait: ECW is the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies. It was launched by international humanitarian and development aid actors, along with public and private donors, to address the urgent education needs of 75 million children and youth in conflict and crisis settings. ECW’s investment modalities are designed to usher in a more collaborative approach among actors on the ground, ensuring relief and development organizations join forces to achieve education outcomes. Education Cannot Wait is hosted by UNICEF. The Fund is administered under UNICEF’s financial, human resources and administrative rules and regulations, while operations are run by the Fund’s own independent governance structure.

Please follow on Twitter: @EduCannotWait @YasmineSherif1 @KentPage
Additional information at: www.educationcannotwait.org

For press inquiries: Kent Page, kpage@unicef.org, +1-917-302-1735
For press inquiries: Anouk Desgroseilliers, adesgroseilliers@un-ecw.org, +1-917-640-6820
For any other inquiries: info@un-ecw.org

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Luvunzu Mutwale, his wife, and their seven children are from the Katanga region in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They fled to neighboring Zambia in 2015 to escape civil unrest at home, and they currently live in the Meheba refugee camp in Zambia’s Northwestern province.

By Emely Mwale
LUSAKA, Zambia, Feb 27 2020 (IPS)

The Mutwales farm a small plot of land in the camp, growing primarily cassava and maize for food. They are also one of the 105 refugee farming families participating in an initiative during the 2019/2020 growing season to help them cultivate nutritious, vitamin A-biofortified orange maize, which was developed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in partnership with HarvestPlus.

The initiative is part of a livelihoods project supported by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and implemented by CARITAS, a Catholic humanitarian organization.

HarvestPlus provides technical assistance, including demonstrations and training on growing biofortified maize, as well as nutrition education.

“My family and I are most grateful to UNHCR for providing us with inputs to grow a half hectare of orange maize,” said Mutwale. “I have heard of the many nutrition and health benefits and I’m very delighted that after harvest, my family will experience them when we start consuming the maize.” Mutwale also hopes to be able to sell some of the harvest to earn income and invest in inputs for a second growing season and pay his children’s school fees.

Vitamin-A deficiency can lead to impaired vision—even blindness—and a higher risk of diarrhea and other infections. Pregnant women with vitamin A deficiency may be at increased risk of mortality. Nationally in Zambia, more than half of children under five are vitamin-A deficient.

Zambia has been a refugee destination for more than 50 years, primarily from Angola, the DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi. The three major refugee settlements are Meheba in Northwestern Province, Mayukwayukwa in Western Province, and Kala in Luapula province.

Luvunz Mutwale and his wife pick up seed inputs.

Through the UNHCR, the refugees are provided basic food, shelter, and access to clean water and sanitation, as well as health services and education infrastructure.

The UNHCR livelihoods project is one of many social welfare interventions aimed at improving the well-being of refugees in the Zambian camps.

In addition to farmer training and nutrition education, Harvestplus Zambia also helps catalyze an orange maize business model for the farmers based on forging linkages with input suppliers and establishing formal contracts with maize purchasers (i.e., processors and offtakers).

The system helps build confidence on all sides, ensuring sufficient maize is grown as well as purchased. For example, Butemwe Milling, a local processor, has already placed an order for 10,000 bags of the refugee farmers’ orange maize at 50 kgs per bag, for a total order of 500 metric tons.

There was strong interest from refugee farmers to participate in the orange maize initiative—about 1,500 applied but resources were limited during the pilot. Selection criteria included the applicants’ level of economic vulnerability and the capacity of the household to grow the maize.

The 105 participating families received 10 kilograms of orange maize seed and various inputs required to cultivate a half hectare. The fertilizer and other inputs were procured through an open tender process, which attracted bids from several suppliers, including local agro-dealers. A true platform for business engagement in biofortification was created.

The objective is for the participants to eventually “graduate” to self-sustaining investment in orange maize cultivation after receiving start-up support during the 2019/20 season (which runs from about November 2019-May/June 2020). And if this pilot in Meheba camp provides successful, the program may expand to other refugee camps.

HarvestPlus and its partners are eager to get biofortified crops to refugees and other vulnerable populations who are at high risk of nutritional deficiencies and related health impacts.

Another refugee-focused project is under way in Uganda, where HarvestPlus is partnering with Self-Help Africa to support more than 1,000 households in eight refugee settlements and host communities in the northern Adjumani district.

HarvestPlus is a program of the CGIAR global research partnership for a food secure future and is based at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a CGIAR research center.

For more information about the work of HarvestPlus Zambia, contact Joseph Mulambu: j.mulambu@cgiar.org

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Excerpt:

Emely Mwale is Assistant Country Manager at HarvestPlus

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An eight-month-old boy is examined by a doctor in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By External Source
NAIROBI, Feb 27 2020 (IPS)

Grief over the loss of a child poses a threat to public health in Sub-Saharan Africa, as nearly two-thirds of mothers in some countries suffer the death of at least one child, a study has found.

According to the World Health Organization, 5.3 million children under five died in 2018 globally. The risk of a child dying before reaching five is about eight times higher in Africa than in Europe.

According to the study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, more than half of women aged 45 to 49 years in some Sub-Saharan African countries have experienced the death of a child under the age of five.

“In Benin, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, and Niger, having had at least one infant die was a more common experience than having had all of one’s children survive infancy,” the study explains.

5.3 million children under five died in 2018 globally. The risk of a child dying before reaching five is about eight times higher in Africa than in Europe

“In no country has the [total infant deaths] fallen below 100 per 1000 for mothers age 45 to 49, and only in Benin, Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe has it fallen below 200 per 1000.”

Researchers analysed the prevalence of infant and child deaths for every 1000 mothers using demographic and health surveys over a 30-year period, from 20 countries.

“In the shadows of very high child mortality rates that the global health community typically focuses on are all these grieving parents that never receive any attention,” says lead author Emily Smith-Greenaway, an assistant professor of sociology at the US-based University of Southern California.

“These results increase our recognition of bereavement as itself a public health threat — one that’s unfairly concentrated in low-income regions of the world.”

A recent study of child deaths in Iceland over 200 years notes that mothers who lose a child have elevated risks of psychiatric symptoms and psychiatric hospitalisations, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers. The study found that “child loss is likely to constitute a major threat to the survival of mothers in societies with high infant mortality rates”.

The study, in eLife Sciences Publications, found there was a “large increase in the rate of premature maternal mortality after child loss”, but only a limited increase in paternal deaths, suggesting differences in attachment, and emotional responses to trauma, as possible factors.

This is known by some as the ‘maternal bereavement effect’.

A seemingly universal maternal reaction to the loss of a child is a feeling of guilt. The World Health Organization reports that cultural and societal attitudes to baby or child deaths vary globally, but in Sub-Saharan Africa it is a common belief that a baby may be stillborn because of witchcraft or evil spirits.

Female genital mutilation and child marriage cause immense damage to girls’ sexual and reproductive health, and the health of their babies, the WHO says. The way women are treated during pregnancy is linked to sexual and reproductive rights, which are lacking in many parts of the world.

Smith-Greenaway tells SciDev.Net that although parental bereavement research has been receiving increasing attention in North America and Western Europe, it is overlooked in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Phelgona A. Otieno, a paediatrician and epidemiologist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute’s Centre for Clinical Research, praises the researchers for conducting a study that “takes an interesting turn and calls for countries to recognise the impact of child mortality on women and bereavement as a public health threat”.

Otieno attributes increased child death to healthcare-related factors.

“Poor access to quality, affordable health care is one of the biggest factors especially in low-income countries. Poor nutrition is also a factor since children who suffer from malnutrition are more vulnerable to disease,” she says.

The burden of loss is especially heavy for mothers not only because of the pregnancy and childbirth experience, but because they are also the primary care givers to their children, she adds.

Smith-Greenaway says it is important to create programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa that support bereaved mothers as they navigate life after loss.

By Stephanie Achieng’

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.

 

References

Emily Smith-Greenaway and Jenny Trinitapol  Maternal cumulative prevalence measures of child mortality show heavy burden in sub-Saharan Africa (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10 February, 2020)

 

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

 

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Thousands of children from different schools and colleges bring out a procession at Manik Mia Avenue expressing solidarity with the global climate strike. PHOTO: STAR/PRABIR DAS

By Saleemul Huq
Feb 26 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The Bangladesh parliament, led by the parliamentary standing committee on environment, recently declared a planetary emergency in Bangladesh. This is ground breaking in that most other parliaments around the world have declared a climate change emergency, but none have also added a biodiversity emergency as the Bangladesh parliament has. So ours is a twin track emergency, not just a single track.

While this is indeed a pioneering resolution, it will mean very little unless implemented.

The climate emergency side of the twin track declaration has already received significant priority within national planning and even budgeting by virtue of the clearly visible adverse impacts of climate change that Bangladesh has already started to face over the last few years.

The good news is that the government is about to publish the revised Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP), which will take us to 2030, while the original BCCSAP from 2009 has reached its end. The most important element in the revised BCCSAP is that instead of having separate and parallel funds and projects for tackling climate change, we now need to rapidly shift into mainstreaming or integrating climate change actions into all national, sectoral and local level plans, as well as into every ministry’s and agency’s workplan going forward.

The upcoming preparation of the 8th Five Year Plan is a great opportunity for the Bangladesh government to again show how to integrate climate change into all chapters of the plan, and not just a stand-alone chapter for environment and climate change.

At the same time, the ministry of finance should be lauded for preparing a climate change budget every year for the last few years, and should be encouraged to include even more ministries in the next year’s budget. It also needs to enhance the monitoring and evaluation of these expenditures to assess their actual effectiveness on the ground.

Also, non-government organisations (NGOs), private sector, education sector and media need to gear up their own actions to tackle climate change so that it is a whole-of-society effort and not just a whole-of-government effort.

Here, it is important to also point out the synergies with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), of which, SDG 13 is explicitly about tackling climate change—hence these efforts at finding synergies across sectors will give us significant dividends in enhancing the quality of our economic development going forward.

When it comes to protecting our biodiversity, which includes both individual species of plants and animals, as well as entire habitats and ecosystems, we are unfortunately in a very bad position as we have failed to protect our natural environment because of the kind of growth we have pursued. We now stand at a very significant crossroad, where a business-as-usual attitude will lead to us losing whatever natural resources we have left in a very short period of time. Hence, protecting the environment while also growing has to be the new agenda going forward. This paradigm shift goes under several terms such as green development or Nature Based Solutions (NBS), but the label is less important than the necessity to acknowledge that every day we are destroying our natural environment bit by bit, and that this must not just stop but be reversed as soon as possible.

This is where the parliamentary standing committee on environment has a very important role to play, as it is the constitutionally mandated body to oversee that national development is protecting and not destroying our natural environment. It’s declaration of the planetary emergency has demonstrated that it is indeed very concerned about these issues. But now it needs to exert its constitutionally mandated power over the executive to ensure that it means what it says.

I would also like to add that there is an extremely energetic resource that they can harness if they wish, namely the youth of our country, starting with all the university students and then high school and even primary school students. The paradigm shift that is needed is to make this agenda everybody’s agenda and not just leave it to government authorities only.

At the same time, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) has an extremely important role to play within the government, where its role is to try to protect the natural environment against forces, often other powerful ministries within the government, who want to get permission to build over natural habitats. I must say that over the last few decades, the different heads of the ministry have recognised their duty and done their best to try and protect the environment, but have often failed against the desires of powerful interests, both within as well as outside the government.

Hence, we have to realise that protecting our natural environment requires us to fight the forces who want to destroy it in every way possible, from within the government by the MOEFCC, and outside it by conscious citizens, who will oppose any visible destruction of the natural habitat that they see happening anywhere in the country.

The most effective means of protecting our natural environment is for every citizen to see it as her or his duty to do so. I believe we can do it.

Saleemul Huq is Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University, Bangladesh.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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By Jewel Fraser
PORT OF SPAIN, Feb 26 2020 (IPS)

The Environmental Defence Fund and its partners in conservation are this month celebrating a major milestone in Belize’s efforts to safeguard its fisheries.

On Feb. 14, the Belizean Parliament passed into law the Fisheries Resources Act that establishes legal safeguards for marine protected areas and that country’s managed access programme for fishers. The Central American country of Belize was a pioneer in 2016 in bringing its entire territorial waters under a system of licensed fishing rights that gave fishers designated spots.

Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist at the EDF, tells Voices from the Global South that this new law is a win-win for all, since the marine protected areas and the managed access programme reinforce each other, ensuring the livelihood of Belizean fishers. In this Voices from the Global South Podcast, IPS Caribbean correspondent Jewel Fraser speaks to Rader about the problems the law will solve and the ways Belize and neighbouring countries will benefit.

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Credit: Patrick Burnett/IPS

By Ifeanyi Nsofor
ABUJA, Feb 25 2020 (IPS)

Recently, Nigerian feminist author Ukamaka Olisakwe spoke about her post-partum depression after giving birth in the city of Aba, southeast Nigeria. This follows her 2019 Longreads essay, in which she narrated painful details of her experience. 

In 2007, Olisakwe was 24 years old when she had her first encounter with post-partum depression. She had just given birth to her first child of three – a daughter.

Olisakwe’s experience convinced her that, No one really cares about how the women feel, if they are still haunted by the memories of childbirth, how they are coping with the immense bodily changes, if they are emotionally ready to have sex, if they even want to go through pregnancy ever again. They are expected to perform their roles as virtuous wives and good mothers, or they’ll fall short of societal expectations, of which the consequences are grave.

Post-partum depression is a mental health disorder. It is much more than baby blues. Globally, 13% of women who give birth experience post-partum depression. In some U.S. states, prevalence can be as high as 20%. In South Africa, up to 40% of women suffer from post-partum depression.

Post-partum depression is a neglected part of mental health. It is hardly spoken about. In most cultures, women who suffer post-partum depression are stigmatized and made to feel unworthy

According to the U.S. Centres for Disease Control, symptoms of post-partum depression include; crying more often than usual, feelings of anger, withdrawing from loved ones, feeling numb or disconnected from your baby, worrying that you will hurt the baby and feeling guilty about not being a good mom or doubting your ability to care for the baby.

It could also present with other symptoms of depression such as, thoughts of suicide or suicide attempts, difficulty falling asleep or sleeping too much and overeating or loss of appetite.

On the extreme end,  a few women have harmed themselves and their loved ones. In 2014, for instance, a woman named Carol suffering from post-partum psychosis stabbed and killed her three children aged 2 years, 1 year and 3 months. In 2016, another woman named Elizabeth committed suicide, after months of battling post-partum depression.

Without a doubt, post-partum depression is a neglected part of mental health. It is hardly spoken about. In most cultures, women who suffer post-partum depression are stigmatized and made to feel unworthy.

They are made to keep caring for their children, husbands and families despite suffering a serious disability, which dangerously impacts their quality of life. Women who suffer post-partum depression suffer in silence. When they cry out for help, society and health systems don’t listen.

It’s’ time to listen. We must help prevent post-partum depression and provide care to sufferers. These are ways to achieve both.

Post-partum depression diagnoses and treatment must be included in Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) projects. Right now, it is hard to find a project with treatment of post-partum depression as a core component.

Between 2008 to 2010, for instance, I was part of a MNCH project in Nigeria, which focused on managing excessive bleeding after birth in communities and health facilities. Post-partum depression was not a part of that project. With hindsight, I can imagine the number of women who gave birth, looked “okay” but could have been battling post-partum depression. This makes me feel bad. A decade later, these kinds of services are still lacking.

Donors that fund MNCH programs should work with governments and ensure that such services are available to pregnant women and mothers. It is no longer a question of whether post-depression would happen, we know up to 40% of women who give birth will suffer this mental health disorder.

Community education to improve awareness on post-partum depression must be redesigned to show how serious it is. Governments, donors, private sector and community based organisations should work with communities, religious and traditional leaders to dismantle patriarchal cultures that perpetuate this mental disorder. As Olisakwe mentioned in her recent interview, “I think not discussing postpartum depression is the legacy of patriarchy, not the illness itself”.

There should be open non-judgmental discussions about post-partum depression and sufferers should not be shamed but supported to heal. Referral systems for mental health treatment should be established to cater for the women who would require such specialized care.

Communities must understand that not all women have same birth experiences. Therefore, every woman deserves individualized support during pregnancy, birth and afterwards.

Male involvement in pregnancy, childbirth and after birth should be institutionalized. Involving men leads to better outcomes for women. In Nigeria, Tolu Adeleke, popularly known as “Tolu the Midwife” champions male involvement.

Through her interventions, she organizes couples antenatal classes and dads’ antenatal classes. Topics covered during these classes include, what to expect when you are expecting, partner’s role in pregnancy, partner’s role at birth, breastfeeding and partner roles, postnatal recovery and adjusting to life with a newborn.

Parental leave should be non-negotiable. After 9 months of pregnancy, women and their partners need time off work to recover while caring for their newborns. All countries should emulate Finland’s parental leave laws which give each parent 7 months of leave after a child’s birth. This is a good way to involve men in caring for new mothers and newborn.

There is no time to waste, too many women are suffering in silence and crying out for help. It took Ukamaka 17 years of suffering in silence before she was able to write and speak about her experience.

Post-partum depression is a mental health disorder. It should be accorded the recognition it deserves. Period.

 

The post Let’s Prevent Post-partum Depression and Provide Care to Those in Need appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor is a medical doctor, the CEO of EpiAFRIC, Director of Policy and Advocacy for Nigeria Health Watch

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Tanzanian investigative journalist, Erick Kabendera has finally been released from jail after seven months in prison. Courtesy: Amnesty International

By Isaiah Esipisu
KAMPALA, Feb 25 2020 (IPS)

After six months in prison, Tanzanian investigative journalist Erick Kabendera has finally been released at a cost of $118,000.

Kabendera was arrested in July 2019 after police claimed that his citizenship was in question.

“We are holding him (Erick Kabendera) for questioning because authorities are doubting his citizenship. We are communicating with the immigration department for further measures,” Regional police commissioner Lazaro Mambosasa told journalists soon after the arrest.

However, when he appeared in court a week later he was charged with leading an organised criminal gang, money laundering and failure to pay taxes.

According to the charge sheet, the journalist “knowingly furnished assistance in the conduct of affairs of a criminal racket, with intent either to reap profit or other benefit”.

In a twist of events, the charge against his citizenship was dropped, and he was later cleared of charges for leading a criminal gang. This left him with the charges of economic crimes which included money laundering and tax evasion.

After postponing his case a number of times, the Director of Public Prosecution on Monday Feb. 24 accepted Kabendera’s plea bargain application, which paved the way for the Kisutu Magistrate’s Court to begin hearing his case.

He pleaded guilty to the charge of money laundering and was fined TZS100 million ($43,000), which he paid, thereby securing his freedom.

However, according to reports, the court slapped him with another fine of 250,000 shillings ($108) for evading tax, and a further 173 million shillings ($75,000) in compensation for the tax evasion, bringing the total fine to about $118,000.

“We welcome his release, but we are deeply concerned about the hefty fines levied against him,” Muthoki Mumo, the sub-Saharan Africa representative to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told IPS in an interview.

Amid speculations that Kabendera pleaded guilty to the crimes due to frustrations of being held indefinitely, Mumo said that she would leave that for the accused to say. “I am hesitant to speak on his behalf because I do not know the circumstances under which he pleaded guilty,” she told IPS.

Amnesty International also welcomed the news of Kabendera’s release, also criticising the fines levied against him.

“It is outrageous that he had to pay such a hefty fine to gain his freedom after having been unjustly jailed for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

“Kabendera’s mother died while he was in custody shortly after she was filmed pleading with President John Magufuli to let her son free. He has already suffered so much simply for doing his job and should have been released unconditionally. There is absolutely no justice in what transpired in the Dar es Salaam court today,” Amnesty International Director for East and Southern Africa Deprose Muchena said in a statement.

Kabendera also reportedly suffered illness while in jail.

His detention became a concern for many individuals and organisations, including the United States Embassy and the British High Commission in Tanzania.

In a joint statement, they said, “The U.S. Embassy and the British High Commission are deeply concerned about the steady erosion of due process in Tanzania, as evidenced by the ever more frequent resort to lengthy pre-trial detentions and shifting charges by its justice system.”

“We are particularly concerned about a recent case — the irregular handling of the arrest, detention, and indictment of investigative journalist Erick Kabendera, including the fact that he was denied access to a lawyer in the early stages of his detention, contrary to the Criminal Procedures Act.”

Attempts to reach Kabendera’s family by IPS went unanswered today. But Kabendera reportedly said after the release, “Finally I’ve got my freedom, it’s quite unexpected that I would be out this soon. I’m really grateful to everybody who played their role.”

According to Reporters Without Borders, since Magufuli became president of Tanzania in 2015 the country has suffered an unprecedented decline in press freedom, as the president refuses to tolerate criticism of himself or his policies.

Kabendera has been one of his critics. Prior to his arrest, Kabendera, who also wrote for international news agencies such as the Guardian, the Independent and the local East African, had published an article in The Economist Intelligence Unit about the nation’s president entitled: ‘John Magufuli is bulldozing Tanzania’s freedom’. 

It will be remembered that during Magufuli’s second year in office, the Media Services Act was passed. The law allows for harsh penalties for content deemed defamatory, seditious or illegal.

According to a recent report by Amnesty International, the Media Services Act, 2016, enhances censorship, violates the right to information and limits scrutiny of government policies and programmes.

“From 2016, the Tanzania government has used the Media Service Act to close, fine and suspend at least six media outlets for publishing reports on allegations of corruption and human rights violations and the state of Tanzania’s economy,” reads part of the report.

In 2018, the government approved another law to regulate content posted online. According to the new rule, Tanzanians operating online radio stations and video (TV) websites, including bloggers are required to apply for a licence, pay a licence fee upon registration as well as annual fees, totalling about $900 a year.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International is urging Tanzania’s regional and international partners and human rights mechanisms to put pressure on the authorities to ensure that the human rights situation in the country does not deteriorate further, including by strongly and publicly condemning the growing human rights violations and abuses and raising individual cases with government officials.

Last year Amnesty International reported that Tanzania had “withdrawn the right of individuals and NGOs to directly file cases against it at the Arusha-based African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights” in a move said to block the ability for individuals and NGOs to seek redress for human rights violations.  

The arrest of Kabendera, according to analysts, could be a strategy by the government to instil fear in journalists who are critiques of the government and its policies.

Related Articles

• Tanzania Switches Track, Charges Kabendera with Economic Crimes
• Tanzania Detains Freelancer Kabendera over ‘Citizenship’
• Investigative Journalist Erick Kabendera Arrested
• When Being ‘Offensive’ or ‘Morally Improper’ Online Carries an Indeterminate Jail Sentence in East Africa

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 25 2020 (IPS)

Meeting the President of the Republic of Korea in September 2019, President Donald J Trump bragged that the “US economy is the envy of the world”. Trump reiterated such claims in his State of the Union address in early February, hailing his own policies with typical humility.

Anis Chowdhury

Trump touted US economic success at the Davos World Economic Forum in January as “nothing short of spectacular”, asserting “I’m proud to declare the United States is in the midst of an economic boom, the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

Facts hardly matter
To the contrary, US economic growth slowed after Trump started the ‘trade war’ with China, dropping from 3.5% in the second quarter of 2018 to 2.1% in the last quarter of 2019, much less than the 5.5% per annum peak in the second quarter of 2014 during the Obama presidency.

Meanwhile, annual growth declined from 2.9% in 2018 to 2.3% in 2019. Growth in Trump’s first three years was well below the Clinton era (1993-2000) average around 4%, the highest for any presidency in the last half century, although growth was even higher at times in earlier years.

Obama inherited a recession following the global financial crisis from September 2008, with the deepest post-war contraction when real GDP fell by about -4% p.a. in the second quarter of 2009. The US economy then turned around by the end of that year.

While US growth peaked under Obama at almost 4% p.a. in the first quarter of 2015, Trump’s peak in the last three years was around 3% p.a. in mid-2018.

Making America great again?
The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank all expect the US economy to continue slowing to 1.7-1.8% annually in 2020-2021. US manufacturing growth slowed to its lowest level in almost a decade in August 2019 as the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) signalled contraction for the first time since September 2009.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Meanwhile, with its agricultural sector experiencing higher levels of farm debt, the number of US farm bankruptcies grew by a fifth in 2019, from 498 in 2018 to 595, despite the government’s US$28 billion bailout for farmers, double the 2009 bailout of its Big Three automobile producers.

The US Congressional Research Service doubts that the supply-side incentive effects of Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, mainly benefiting the wealthiest 10% of Americans, will be as significant as he claims.

Much of the funds released by the tax cut have been used for a record-breaking spree of stock buybacks, worth more than US$1 trillion in the first quarter of 2019, augmented by easy money policies.

In December 2019, the IMF noted that “Global growth recorded its weakest pace since the global financial crisis a decade ago” despite monetary policy easing all round.

Meanwhile, slower global growth has been increasingly blamed everywhere on the US-China trade war. Hence, while Trump’s attempts to ‘make America great again’ have largely failed to lift US growth, they have been harming the rest of the world.

Election economics
President Trump kicked off his 2020 re-election campaign at an Orlando, Florida rally in June 2019 with his characteristic modesty, claiming that the US economy under his watch was “perhaps the greatest economy we’ve had in the history of our country”.

To enhance his appeal, Trump has successfully pressured the US Federal Reserve to keep monetary policy and credit conditions ‘easy’. However, the funds have not gone into productive investments, but instead to portfolio investments, mergers, acquisitions and share buybacks, transferring more wealth and income to the rich.

Trump has also been repeatedly promising more tax cuts, ostensibly for the “middle-class”. His economic advisor, Larry Kudlow told Fox News that Trump wants to give the middle class a 10% tax cut in September, weeks before the polls.

Meanwhile, Trump has claimed victory and struck a less aggressive tone on international trade conflicts, declaring the end of hostilities with China in January after concluding the US Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), with some minor, largely cosmetic changes to the preceding North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

But he has also turned on Europe, threatening at Davos to levy huge tariffs on European car imports. This was followed by another threat from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to punish European countries that have the audacity to tax American digital firms.

The art of the ordeal
Trump Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s blatant schadenfreude over the coronavirus outbreak that it could boost US jobs is telling. The coronavirus pandemic has shut down Chinese businesses and ports as efforts to contain the pandemic wreck China’s manufacturing supply chains.

Under the US-China Phase-One trade deal, China will increase imports of US farm goods by US$32 billion over two years, enhancing his appeal to the US rural farm vote.

So, if anything goes wrong, Trump can always blame China or the pandemic for any shortfalls, while heroically claiming to be protecting the US from a new Chinese threat. Meanwhile, Trump seems likely to ratchet up his rhetoric against Europe’s farmers.

To mitigate the economic impacts of the trade conflicts and the coronavirus outbreak, other countries, including China, are further easing monetary policy. The US Fed can thus more easily remain dovish, at least until November, ensuring more buoyant equity markets, and helping Trump’s re-election prospects.

The Donald has much reason to grin again.

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Credit: United Nations

By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2020 (IPS)

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has long needed to overhaul his approach to human rights. Hopefully his call to action announced in Geneva yesterday is the start of something new.

Guterres’ low-key approach to human rights may have been calculated to avoid conflicts with big powers like the United States, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia. But human rights groups and former senior UN officials have criticized it for being ineffectual.

The secretary-general’s new initiative contains some excellent ideas. The link he makes between human rights and the impacts of climate change is crucial, and those who fight to protect the environment are increasingly at risk.

Forest defenders in Brazil and elsewhere are threatened, attacked, and killed by those who seek to benefit from the forests’ destruction. And Guterres is right to highlight the risks posed by new technologies, whether it involves government surveillance, artificial intelligence, or fully autonomous weapons, so-called “killer robots.”

The test for any initiative is the implementation. No one is suggesting the secretary-general do everything alone. But he needs to lead by example.

Louis Charbonneau

That means publicly calling out rights abusers and advocating for victims. Human rights violations aren’t like natural disasters.

They are frequently planned and executed by government officials or their agents – whether it’s the mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in China, Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims, indiscriminate Russian-Syrian bombing of civilians in Idlib, or the forced separation of children from their parents at the US border.

It also means using the authority of the secretary-general’s office to launch investigations and fact-finding missions when appropriate. That includes launching an inquiry into China’s massive rights violations in Xinjiang, and pressing for an international accountability mechanism on Sri Lanka.

The secretary-general should order a follow-up inquiry into the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to help determine whether Saudi Arabia’s top leadership ordered his slaying. He should also publicly release the findings of his inquiry into attacks on hospitals and other protected facilities in Syria, likely carried out by the Russian-Syrian alliance.

None of this is to say Guterres should abandon “private diplomacy” with governments. But he should re-emphasize public diplomacy on human rights at the UN. Human rights advocacy shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and her office.

The secretary-general should be the UN’s leading voice on human rights, not only working in the background.

Secretary-General Guterres has issued a call to action on human rights. Now it’s up to him to act.

The post UN Chief Should Lead by Example on Human Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Louis Charbonneau is United Nations Director, Human Rights Watch

The post UN Chief Should Lead by Example on Human Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Bigstock.

By External Source
Feb 25 2020 (IPS)

A silent revolution is happening in investing. It is a paradigm shift that will have a profound impact on corporations, countries and pressing issues like climate change. Yet most people are not even aware of it.

In a traditional investment fund, the decisions about where to invest the capital of the investors are taken by fund managers. They decide whether to buy shares in firms like Saudi Aramco or Exxon. They decide whether to invest in environmentally harmful businesses like coal.

Yet there has been a steady shift away from these actively managed funds towards passive or index funds. Instead of depending on a fund manager, passive funds simply track indices – for example, an S&P 500 tracker fund would buy shares in every company in the S&P 500 in order to mirror its overall performance. One of the great attractions of such funds is that their fees are dramatically lower than the alternative.

In 2019 there was a watershed in the history of finance. In the United States, the total value of actively managed funds was surpassed by passive funds. Globally, passive funds crossed US$10 trillion (£7.7 trillion), a five-fold increase from US$2 trillion in 2007.

 

 

This seemingly unstoppable ascent has two main consequences. First, corporate ownership has become concentrated in the hands of the “big three” passive asset managers: BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. They are already the largest owners of corporate America.

The second consequence relates to the companies that provide the indices that these passive funds follow. When investors buy index funds, they effectively delegate their investment decisions to these providers. Three dominant providers have become increasingly powerful: MSCI, FTSE Russell and S&P Dow Jones Indices.

 

Steering global capital flows

With trillions of dollars migrating to passive funds, the role of index providers has been transformed. We traced this change in a recent paper: in the past, index providers only supplied information to financial markets. In our new age of passive investing, they are becoming market authorities.

Deciding who appears in the indices is not just something technical or objective. It involves some discretion by the providers and benefits some actors over others. By determining which players are included on the list, setting the criteria becomes an inherently political activity.

Especially relevant are the dominant emerging markets stock indices, particularly the widely tracked MSCI Emerging Markets Index. This is a list of large and medium-sized companies in 26 countries, including China, India and Mexico.

MSCI sets the standards for countries to qualify for inclusion. Above all, they have to guarantee free access to domestic stock markets for foreign investors. If a country is included, massive amounts of capital will flow into their national stock market almost automatically. As a result, MSCI and the other big three providers’ rival indices are now effectively steering global investment flows.

For example, when Saudi Arabia was recently added to the list of qualifying countries for these indices, it was predicted to trigger inflows into the Saudi stock market of up to US$40 billion.

And when Saudi Aramco, the largest global oil producer, went public last year, it was fast-tracked by the same three index providers into their emerging markets indices. Millions of investors around the world now unknowingly hold shares in this controversial corporation – either through owning emerging markets index funds or having pensions that hold such funds on their behalf.

When China was added to the key emerging market indices in 2018, reportedly after heavy lobbying from Beijing, the capital steering effect was expected to be larger by an order of magnitude. It was estimated that the long-term inflows into Chinese stocks would be up to US$400 billion.

 

The future role of index providers

The three dominant index providers’ income mainly derives from the funds replicating their indices, since they have to pay royalties for the privilege. The providers are therefore currently enjoying a fee bonanza. For 2019, MSCI reported record revenues and said the assets tracking its indices were at all-time highs.

Our research suggests that these providers’ brands are so well established that competitors will struggle to take away that business. This suggests that MSCI, FTSE Russell and S&P Dow Jones will increase their role as a new kind of de facto global regulators.

Arguably the most important aspect of their private authority for the future of our planet pertains to how corporations tackle climate change. BlackRock recently made headlines with plans to divest from firms that make more than 25% of their revenues from coal. Yet this only applies to BlackRock’s actively managed funds: most of its funds track indices from the major index providers, so they will keep investing in coal until the providers remove such companies from their indices.

Similarly, BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street all recently announced they will increase their range of so-called ESG funds, which profess to exclude the worst performing firms according to environmental, social and governance criteria. Again, these criteria are increasingly defined by the index providers, using proprietary methodologies. As The Economist has noted, the providers often decide which companies to include based on whether they go about their business sustainably rather than what business they are actually in.

For instance, Saudi Aramco produces few emissions extracting oil from the ground. It’s a comparatively “sustainable” oil company, but it’s still an oil company. Most ESG indices include industry leaders in each sector and exclude worst performers – irrespective of the industry. Consequently, many ESG funds still heavily invest in the likes of airlines, oil and mining companies.

They are also sometimes quite arbitrary about who qualifies as a good performer. For instance, the American bank Wells Fargo is ranked in the top third by one index provider, while another ranks it in the bottom 5%.

In short, this tightly interlinked group of three giant passive fund managers and three major index providers will largely determine how corporations tackle climate change. The world is paying little attention to the judgements they make, and yet these judgements look highly questionable. If the world is truly to get to grips with the global climate crisis, this constellation needs to be far more closely scrutinised by regulators, researchers and the general public.

Jan Fichtner, Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science, University of Amsterdam; Eelke Heemskerk, Associate Professor Political Science, University of Amsterdam, and Johannes Petry, ESRC Doctoral Research Fellow in International Political Economy, University of Warwick

 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Delegates gather at FAO headquarters to advance negotiations of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Credit: Maged Srour/IPS

By Maged Srour
ROME, Feb 24 2020 (IPS)

“The world out there is watching and waiting for results,” Elizabeth Maruma Mrema warns while talking to IPS regarding the preservation of biodiversity of our planet.

The acting Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, is referring to a worrying report[1] released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which paints a grim picture of the planet.

“Many key components of biodiversity for food and agriculture at genetic, species and ecosystem levels are in decline and evidence suggests that the proportion of livestock breeds at risk of extinction is increasing,” the report says.

The FAO also warns that “nearly a third of fish stocks are overfished, and a third of freshwater fish species assessed are considered threatened”.

These are just some of the critical issues being debated during the open-ended working group on the post-2020 biodiversity framework. This round of negotiations is taking place at FAO headquarters from 24 to 29 February. In the run-up to October’s historic UN Biodiversity Conference, government officials, experts and activists from around the world gathered today at FAO headquarters, Rome, to forge ahead with negotiations. This round of talks was supposed to take place in Kunming, China, on the same dates. Due to the ongoing situation following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), it was moved to Rome, Italy.

Background

The fourteenth meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) had its meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2018. It was here that the working group on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework was appointed. The working group’s mandate was to prepare the text of a framework that would guide the work of the Convention after the year 2020. At the working group’s first meeting held in Nairobi in August 2019, the Open-ended Working Group (WG2020) requested the Co-Chairs and the Executive Secretary to prepare a zero-draft text of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. This framework is under consideration at its second meeting, which is currently taking place in Rome. The aim of the second meeting of the Working Group is to significantly advance the negotiation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, discussing the different aspects of the whole ambitious project.

‘Healthy Diets’ was among the proposed initiatives during the first day of the six-day event at FAO headquarters. The initiative emphasised the importance of ‘geographical indications’ for biodiversity, with examples and experiences from Africa and Eastern Europe. Credit: Maged Srour/IPS

Negotiations in Rome: Promoting a bi-directional approach

In the coming days, the working groups will be divided on a regional basis. They will discuss a wide variety of concerns including biodiversity, food, agriculture and fishing systems, to the importance of promoting an approach that leaves no one outside of this circuit. Civil society, the private sector, indigenous people, local communities, women and youth are all represented to create a functional framework for the whole society and at all levels. Many organisations, like Bioversity International, supported by a host of international agencies, have submitted research reports on biodiversity and food systems. It has also made representations on alternative models for access and benefit-sharing rules, practices and impacts in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

The voice of indigenous people

Key to the discussions is the role of indigenous people in biodiversity and Aslak Holmberg, the representative of the indigenous people, is convinced that policymakers can learn from these groups.

“There is a key message we want to share with other groups here during these negotiations,” he told IPS. “Indigenous peoples and local communities’ management of natural resources is (in fact) conserving biodiversity. (This is) because these management practices are built on a balanced relationship with the respective environment.

“Biological and cultural diversity are linked, and by this, I mean that (for indigenous communities) culture plays a fundamental role in the process of preserving biodiversity: it is in our culture to use our areas in a sustainable way. That is the message we want to share with others”.

The voice of the business sector

Representatives of the private sector too, in particular of the business world, wish to be part of the framework that will result from the negotiations and officially approved in October, in China.
Eva Zabey, Executive Director of the Business for Nature Coalition, told IPS she was grateful to the CBD secretariat for giving business and opportunity to engage and contribute to the zero draft of the post-2020 framework.

This coalition is a unique global group of influential business and conservation organisations participating in the negotiations.

“Forward-thinking businesses are starting to change the way they operate, based on their understanding of the value of nature – but this is still the exception, not the norm,” she told IPS.
“Therefore,” said Zabey, “Political leadership is needed now to transform our economic and financial systems in a way that places nature at the heart of global decision-making. It needs to create a level playing field and a stable operating environment for business.”

Zabey is looking forward to an ambitious post-2020 framework which will facilitate businesses’ involvement and create and positive “policy-business feedback loop,” she said.

Perspectives

Audrey Azoulay, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General, perfectly summarised urgency at the negotiation.

Commenting on the global assessment report, she said: “The present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity.”

“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently”.

Zabey echoes Azouley. She said entrepreneurs are increasingly aware that the profit-sustainability ‘conflict’ is no longer feasible or conceivable.

“Companies planning on being successful in the future are starting to realise that financial performance is irrelevant on a dead planet.’

[1] http://www.fao.org/3/CA3129EN/ca3129en.pdf

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Excerpt:

India’s Jampui Hills – a picturesque hill station in the north eastern province — has been know for decades as the Orange Bowl. But a changing climate has led farmers on a search for sustainable agriculture.

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"Ugandan farmer Carol Agoa stands in her Forest Garden where she has grown 2,000+ trees and dozens of different species of fruits, vegetables, and other crops."

By Charity Nalwoga
KAMPALA, Uganda, Feb 24 2020 (IPS)

In Aboke, Uganda, a modest restaurant serves locals breakfast, lunch and dinner. Carol Agoa isn’t just the owner and cook, she also supplies all of the food for her restaurant.

Down the road from town, Carol’s farm is bursting with life. She brings fresh mangoes, okra, tomatoes, bananas, avocados and more, preparing authentic and fresh meals for her friends and neighbors.

The 47-year-old hasn’t always had her restaurant or even the flourishing garden to supply produce. Her life just five years ago was quite different.

Carol has farmed her one acre of land in Achero B village (in north-central Uganda) for more than 10 years. But, for her and many farmers in the region, prolonged drought and expensive seed and fertilizer costs made farming an unreliable profession.

Carol planted and harvested cassava and millet each year with low yields and little return. As one of the primary caregivers for her 12 children and grandchildren, failed crops meant empty stomachs and no payday.

But in 2016 she joined “Trees for the Future’s” (TREES) Forest Garden program and quickly learned how to change her circumstances for the better.

The Forest Garden Program is a simple, replicable and scalable approach with proven success. By planting specific types of fast-growing trees, fruit trees, hardwoods and food crops in a systematic manner over a four year period, TREES is teaching families and communities how to increase production and land productivity.

Carol says that listening and following instructions from TREES technicians has made management and maintenance of her garden very easy, allowing her to harvest constantly from it to maintain her earnings and run her restaurant.

Where Carol once grew only millet and cassava, she now grows pawpaws, millet, pumpkin, mangoes, green peas, okra, yams, green pepper, tomatoes, African eggplants, bananas, soya beans and avocado. She also has timber trees like graveli, melia and albizia.

She soon became a Lead Farmer in the program, helping other farmers learn how to implement the Forest Garden Approach.

“Carol has been one of our most successful and disciplined farmers right from the start of this project. She is a source of hope and perseverance in her community,” says Trees for the Future Uganda Country Coordinator Ivan Tumuhimbise.

“This community is still feeling the effects and trauma of the Aboke girls’ abduction in 1996. A woman like Carol shows that there is opportunity for women to do great things here.”

Ugandan farmer Carol Agoa in her Forest Garden.

Carol says she is forever grateful to TREES for choosing to work in the area to help them build their community and restore what they lost during the insurgency.

Since seeing her Forest Garden come to life, Carol has seen a vast improvement in her family’s health and nutrition. “My husband and I have a healthier home with healthier children because we have successfully added a lot of fruits and vegetables in our diet.”

Carol has also been able to invest her earnings and expand her farm by adding livestock like goats, hens and cows for general rearing at home that she sells at a later stage to a local butcher. Carol has also built a second larger home from her savings from the garden and restaurant which has also given her children work.

Achero B, like most villages in Aboke, faces water challenges. The water sources are far from homes, which means Carol needed a way to bring water home for consumption. WIth her improved income, she was able to buy a water tank and access groundwater to be used around the home during scarcity.

With all her successes and business ventures, Carol says her favorite place to be is still in the Forest Garden. “The training and instruction I received from TREES technicians has made managing and maintaining my garden very easy,” she says. “I am forever grateful.

###
Learn more about Trees for the Future’s work with smallholder farmers, and visit their Forest Garden Training Center to learn how to implement regenerative agriculture practices.

The post Ugandan Farmer Ends Food Insecurity for Family & Community appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Charity Nalwoga is Liaison for Communications and Development at Trees for the Future

The post Ugandan Farmer Ends Food Insecurity for Family & Community appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Climate change, ecological degradation, migrating populations, conflict, pervasive inequalities, and predatory commercial practices threaten the health and future of children in every country, a new report states. Credit:Tess Bacalla/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 21 2020 (IPS)

There is no country that is on the right path to ensure the safety, health and proper environment for their children, an explosive report has claimed. 

The report “A future for the world’s children?” was released in a joint venture by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and The Lancet on Wednesday. 

“Climate change, ecological degradation, migrating populations, conflict, pervasive inequalities, and predatory commercial practices threaten the health and future of children in every country,” the report stated.

It reiterated the need to take into account the “ecological sustainability and equity” in order to make sure that all children, including the most vulnerable, are safe and their futures on the right track.

The report examined and made recommendations in four key areas: early investment in children’s health and education; omission of greenhouse gases as a means to protect children’s future; to address the issue of “commercial harm” done to children; and the key role governments ought to play in ensuring care and protection for all children. 

One of the key observations was made in the section of climate change, where authors claimed an onus of the responsibility falls on a certain section of society.

“The poorest countries have a long way to go towards supporting their children’s ability to live healthy lives,” the report read, “but wealthier countries threaten the future of all children through carbon pollution, on course to cause runaway climate change and environmental disaster.” 

Anthony Costello, Professor of Global Health and Sustainable Development at University College London, pointed out a host of ways in which wealthier countries can do so. He shared with IPS a list of measures wealthier countries can take:

• Stop subsidies to oil, gas and diesel fossil fuels on which governments spend more than $5 trillion per year. Renewables are now cheaper and more economic than fossil fuels.
• Ask big finance to divest from fossil fuel companies. This is gaining momentum.
• Make the transition rapidly to electrified cars and public transport.
• Change our food system: promote a healthier diet based on less red meat and dairy. Tackle the one third wastage of all food with more local production and less transport.
• Plant 500 billion trees. This is doable over ten years. Grazing animals don’t need to be in open fields. Silvopasture is where you graze them in fields with trees. 
• Move to conservation agriculture.
• Cut taxes on income and replace taxes on carbon. This way people can exercise their preference to a low carbon life.

Another key observation made in the report was about the widely negative impact of “commercialisation” on the well-being of children. The authors of the report recommended that the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) adopt a new protocol that would protect children from commercial harm.

“The commercial sector’s profit motive poses many threats to child health and wellbeing, not least the environmental damage unleashed by unregulated industry,” read the report. “More immediately, children around the world are enormously exposed to advertising from business, whose marketing techniques exploit their developmental vulnerability and whose products can harm their health and wellbeing.”

The report acknowledged the role commercial entities play in job creation and generating economic growth, but reiterated that children need to be protected from these companies’ promotion of “addictive or unhealthy commodities,” including fast-food,  alcohol, and tobacco, gambling, and social media as they have a significant effect on the well-being of children. 

 

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Credit: UN Global Compact

By Peter Paul van de Wijs
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, Feb 21 2020 (IPS)

This year marks just ten years ahead of the deadline for completing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

These universally supported targets were always ambitious in their scope – yet what is clearer now than ever before is that quicker progress is crucial in the decade to come.

If the world stays on the same pace as the past five years, the goals will not be met with worrying and serious consequences.

When launched in 2015, the SDGs ushered in a new era of global development objectives to address the world’s most pressing problems.

At GRI, we have been closely involved in the SDGs from the very early stages – because we know that increasing the participation of business is a principle driver in achieving the progress needed to reach these goals.

Over the past five years, GRI has collaborated extensively with the UN Global Compact (UNGC) and others to recognize and assess the crucial role of transparency and corporate reporting as a driver for measuring and encouraging progress towards the SDGs.

Peter Paul van de Wijs

This year will see a number of new projects to further support this work. That includes the new addition of Examples of Corporate SDG Reporting Practices to the resources from GRI, which is focused around 14 sets of examples on how businesses have measured and disclosed SDGs impacts.

These examples are now freely available to assist companies and other stakeholders, including aligning the SDGs with business strategy.

The highlighted examples recognize that, in different markets and global locations, there are lessons to be learned and shared.

Companies included represent a broad array of countries: Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Philippines. Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, UK and USA.

Likewise, they are drawn from many different sectors, including chemicals, construction, consumer goods, cosmetics, food & drink, energy, real estate, and telecommunications.

The examples cover key themes that are globally relevant for businesses, such as:

• How to disclose SDGs impacts in the value chain;
• Engaging stakeholders in prioritizing SDGs; and
• Understanding interconnections between the SDGS and corporate objectives and KPIs.

These practical examples complement the existing guidance developed by the GRI-UNGC Business Reporting on the SDGs Action Platform. This resource covers three areas:

1. Analysis of the SDGs goals and targets
2. A guide for integrating the SDGs into corporate reporting
3. How to address investor needs in SDGs business reporting

Meanwhile, we are at the midway point in an engagement project in partnership with Enel, which has involved gathering perspectives from business and policy representatives to set a vision for how reporting and partnerships can advance corporate input for the SDGs.

A series of interactive, online forums in the second half of 2019 provided input on the changes needed. The next stage will see this work inform regional dialogue events later this year, to translate the lessons learned into action.

Looking ahead, we’re excited to be launching the SDGs Corporate Tracker project in Colombia, developed with the Technical Secretariat of the ODS Commission in Colombia, the UN Development Programme and Business Call to Action.

This bold and collaborative approach see equal involvement from the private sector, civil society, academia and governments around the principle that collective action is the only way to achieve sustainability and advance the SDGs.

The corporate tracker platform helps measure business contributions to the SDGs and was built based on the experience of the first pilot project in Colombia in 2018.

This project mined and aggregated private sector data on selected SDGs, which informed the Voluntary National Review presented by Colombia to the UN to show their progress. We are exploring opportunities for similar projects in the African and South Asia regions.

Stay tuned for more on this work and other initiatives in the coming months, as part of GRI’s continued wide-ranging action and commitments as a global catalyst for increasing corporate input and ambition to support the SDGs.

The post SDGs Corporate Tracker to Monitor Progress of UN’s Development Agenda appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Peter Paul van de Wijs is Chief External Affairs Officer, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

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Women log 3,300 hours of work on farm labour during a crop season, compared to the 1,860 hours logged by men. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS.

By Arpit Jain and Reshma Anand
Feb 21 2020 (IPS)

Across cities and villages in India, an impending water crisis is at our doorsteps. India will face a water shortfall of almost 50 percent by 2030, if our water use continues its current pattern. Last year, Chennai and Bangalore showed us what water scarcity looks like; the statistics are no longer just numbers on paper, they have become our reality.

Even as we’ve started to acknowledge the water crisis in urban India, we’re still disconnected from how our rural communities are affected by it. Water is their life and their livelihood. Agriculture accounts for over 80 percent of India’s freshwater use, and more than half of India’s rural population depends on farming as a vocation.

Sixty percent of India’s districts face a problem of either over-exploited groundwater or poor water quality. This is because 63 percent of water for irrigation depends on groundwater (and not on dams or canals).

 

Women bear the burden of the water crisis

As we, at Hindustan Unilever Foundation, started our work to promote water security and wellbeing for rural communities across the country, it became evident very quickly that women bear the brunt of this escalating crisis.

Women fetch water for their families: Women in villages can end up spending up to four hours a day fetching water for their drinking needs. These are hours that could be spent going to Evidence from India indicates that women are not just integral to addressing the country's water challenges, they are probably the only ones who can do it—at scale


school, or at work. This opportunity cost prevents them from embracing opportunities that could lead to their socio-economic progress.

Women form a significant portion of agricultural labour: Women represent 37 percent of the agricultural workforce in India. According to the Census of India, nearly 100 million women work in the agricultural sector out of the total workforce of 263 million cultivators and agricultural labourers. High levels of male out-migration in recent years have left women to take on the role of cultivators and farm labourers. Forty-five million women joined farming as cultivators or labourers between 1981-2011.

Women work longer in agricultural fields: An Oxfam study assessed that women log 3,300 hours of work on farm labour during a crop season, compared to the 1,860 hours logged by men. A growing water crisis will impact their ability to irrigate their fields or find work on fields that require irrigation. This could have far reaching consequences on an already stressed rural agrarian economy.

 

India’s women farmers are the key to the country’s long-term water security

Women produce 60-80 percent of the food and 90 percent of the dairy products in our country. They have a high stake in solving the water crisis, and they’ve proven to be effective champions of solutions for their families and communities. Evidence from India indicates that women are not just integral to address water challenges, they are probably the only ones who can do it—at scale.

Women are effective evangelisers: A UNICEF study carried out in India in 2013 reported that when trained and taught about the importance of water management, women teach their children and families the importance of the same. This makes them a critical lever to inculcate water awareness among future generations.

Women mobilise government funds: Outcomes of development programmes in West Bengal indicate that women can constructively influence public officials to provide government funds for employment. They have used this money to build water supply structures such as ponds and reservoirs that provide the water required by their communities. Nationally, women generate 47 percent of MGNREGA person days, and have mobilised over 53,000 crore from 2006 to 2012 to build structures that address their community’s water needs.

Women effectively manage and maintain water infrastructure:  UNICEF’s work with local government institutions run by women demonstrated their effectiveness as mechanics. Pump maintenance and repair, which earlier took over a month to fix, was done by women mechanics in under 24 hours. In Jharkhand’s Lava panchayat, the absence of operable hand pumps made village members resort to drinking water from unhygienic sources. The women formed a group with representation from every panchayat to maintain 450 pumps. They ran their village spare stores and met the collective domestic water needs of 130 villages.

Women are constructive collaborators: Research conducted in the year 2000 on water supply projects in Gujarat across 900 villages found that including women in technical and decision-making capacities improved the impact of projects. Women spent more time than men in cleaning and maintaining the canals, supervising irrigation, collecting water taxes, and building water percolating structures.

Women are enthusiastic adopters of new technologies and sustainable farming methods: A 2017 report on the role of women farmers in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals studied 39 sources and concluded that the presence of women is crucial to changing agricultural practices in rural India. With the right knowledge and technical training, women-led collectives have driven changes in cropping practices. Women also showed greater willingness to switch to organic inputs and grow climate-resistant crops, like traditional varieties of millets, that can reduce their water consumption.

At Hindustan Unilever Foundation, our experience from project partnerships with nonprofits across the country has shown that women-led community institutions and women farmers have achieved significant results in water savings, while promoting sustainable agriculture within their communities.

We need women to lead India’s jan aandolan (people’s movement) on water—not because they are women, but because they can lead our generation’s movement for a more secure and water conflict-free society. As the Government of India seeks inputs for its National Water Policy, we do hope that women are at the front and center of India’s new water governance and regulatory framework.

 

Know more

• Listen to this episode of the ‘The seen and the unseen’ podcast which discusses India’s water crisis with water evangelist Vishwanath S.
• Learn more about water and related issues at India Water Portal.
• Explore IDR’s gender, agriculture, and WASH sections for more insights and perspectives on these issues.

Do more

• Use the India Water Tool to understand water risks and plan interventions for water management across the country.
• Reach out to the authors at hindustanunilever.foundation@unilever.com, to learn more about what they do, and to be part of the initiative to address India’s water challenges.

 

Arpit Jain is a programme lead at Hindustan Unilever Foundation. He supports programmes which aim to build scalable solutions to address India’s water challenges. He graduated from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, and has studied Development Management at the Indian School of Development Management. He is also Young India Fellow, and has explored the worlds of strategy consulting, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy.

Reshma Anand is a business school graduate with over 20 years of leadership experience in mission-driven nonprofits, social ventures, and philanthropic organisations. She currently heads Hindustan Unilever Foundation, a nonprofit focused on water conservation and governance. Previously, Reshma founded two social ventures including a specialist advisory firm on sustainable social responsibility and an accelerator for agri and artisanal micro-entrepreneurs. Reshma is an Economics graduate from the University of Delhi, an MBA from IIM-Bangalore, an Aspen Fellow, and a TED India Fellow.

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

The post Women Bear the Burden of India’s Water Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 21 2020 (IPS)

The United Nations, which has long preached the irrefutable concept of income equality to the outside world, is now accused of condoning wage discrimination in its own backyard.

The message from the UN Staff Coordinating Council in Geneva was brutally frank—“protesting the UN’s hypocrisy” for launching “International Equal Pay Day*” while failing to reverse an illegal pay cut that has left 3,000 staff being paid 5 per cent less than colleagues on the same grades.

Ian Richards, President of the 60,000-strong Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations (CCISUA), told IPS the UN’s International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), using questionable statistics, recommended cutting pay by 5 percent for all staff in Geneva.

But the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization (ILOAT), another Geneva-based UN agency, ruled the pay cut illegal and staff in specialized agencies had their pay restored.

However, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York decided not to go along with the ILOAT judgement in restoring pay, and has asked the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT) to rule on this, he said.

“The problem is that the UNDT is so short of judges that two years on from the pay cut they are unable to provide a timeline for any decision,” declared Richards.

Ian Richards

Currently, the UN is also critical of unequal pay between men and women worldwide – both in public and private sectors — singling out the widely-prevalent practice as wage discrimination against women.

Asked if there are there any charges of unequal pay between men and women staffers in the UN system, Richards said male and female staff, working on staff contracts, get the same pay.

However, in some UN departments, he pointed out, consultants and contractors hired by the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) make up two-thirds of personnel.

“For these colleagues we suspect there is a massive gender gap as they must individually negotiate their pay. We have asked UN management to conduct a gender pay audit, but so far, they haven’t done anything’,” said Richards

Further, many of these “Uber-style contracts” don’t provide for social security, health insurance nor maternity leave.

“Given how many staff start out as consultants, it is no surprise that women might be at a disadvantage. And the more the UN moves towards flexibiliizaiton, the worse this will get. If the UN really cares about the gender pay gap, they should stop the Uberization of their personnel,” he noted.

In a statement released February 20, the Staff Coordinating Council said that UN Staff in Geneva occupied the staff canteen holding banners with the slogans:

• “Equal Pay for UN Staff”
• “Two years and still waiting/Deux ans et toujours en attente”
• “Equal Pay Now/Salaire Egal Maintenant.”

A 5.2 % pay cut was imposed in February 2018 on all UN Staff and employees at specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization.

This pay cut, said the Union, was declared illegal in July 2019 by the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization (ILOAT) which only has jurisdiction over the specialised agencies.

Crucially, staff directly employed by the UN were not covered by the ruling. This means they are now paid 5.2% less than agency colleagues on the same grades – a total loss of more than $20 million over the last two years.

Prisca Chaoui, Executive Secretary of the UNOG Staff Coordinating Council, said: “What makes this situation even harder for UN staff is the gaping chasm between the words and actions of the UN on the issue of Equal Pay”.

In December, the General Assembly adopted resolution 74/142 to establish International Equal Pay Day, calling on the world to support equal pay for work of equal value.

“The UN stands accused of hypocrisy for failing to ensure equal pay for its own staff,” Chaoui said.

In the statement, Richards said: “The astonishing admission from the UNDT that, right now, they don’t have the judges to hear our case means there is no end in sight to the UN’s equal pay scandal. Staff will take action and keep escalating action until we get justice on equal pay.”

The campaign for equal pay is being led by the United Nations Office at Geneva Staff Coordinating Council, supported by other local staff associations such as UNICEF, UNEP, UNDP and UNHCR.

Tatiana Valovaya, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, attended the protest and heard the staff calls for equal pay justice.

*The General Assembly on 18 December 2019 passed resolution 74/142 establishing International Equal Pay Day – link: https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/74/142

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The post UN Accused of “Hypocrisy” Launching Equal Pay Day While Condoning Wage Discrimination appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Akash Chhetri
KATHMANDU, Feb 21 2020 (IPS)

A major discrepancy between Nepal government and foreign records of the number of Nepali children adopted in North America and Europe has exposed a trafficking ring that involves various child welfare agencies in Kathmandu.

The Ministry of Women, Children and Senior Citizens has records of only 64 children from Nepal sent for adoption to ten western countries from 2010 to 2019. However, a list submitted to the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) by the US Department of State and the nine other countries reveals that 242 Nepali children were taken for adoption in those nine years.

The ten countries are the United States, Denmark, France, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Sweden. There are 178 more Nepali children adopted internationally than the government has records for. Why the discrepancy?

“The data we have is authentic,” maintains Ministry spokesperson Gyanendra Paudel. “We have no idea how the details in other countries showed more numbers.”

But for Manju Khatiwada at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), this is a clear case of child trafficking. She says: “The traffickers produce fake documents and influence both the government officials and parents to smuggle the children abroad.”

Official adoptions by foreign nationals have virtually stopped after reports of corruption and payoffs were publicised in the media ten years ago. But there is a high demand for adoption, especially in western countries, and a plentiful supply of poor Nepali parents who cannot support their children, and this differential drives trafficking. Some parents are also tricked by traffickers into giving up their children.

Manju and Bhimsen Khadka from Sindhupalchok used to sell roasted corn by the roadside in Kathmandu. One day ten years ago, a neighbour named Sarita Shrestha and her husband took pity on their three boys, and offered to place two of them, Rajkumar and Balkrishna, aged 8 and 6, at a children’s shelter.

The parents agreed because it would relieve the burden of feeding and educating them. But once the children were taken from them, the shelter’s management repeatedly refused to allow Manju and Bhimsen to visit them, and even started issuing threats.

“I begged them to at least let me see my sons just once, but they said they would finish me off,” Manju Khadka recalls tearfully. The parents lodged a complaint at the NHRC, which started an investigation, and found that Rajkumar and Balkrishna had already been adopted in Italy.

Says NHRC’s Khatiwada: “It is clear that the parents were tricked into thinking their sons would be educated, but they were instead stolen and sold by the shelter, which prepared original-looking fake documents at the Nepal Children’s Organisation in Naxal.”

The NHRC notified the government, saying Bal Mandir had sent the children to Italy for adoption, and recommending that Nepal’s adoption laws and policies be amended to plug the loopholes. It also said a public awareness campaign was necessary to warn parents about child trafficking.

After malpractices were uncovered in the 2000s, the Nepal government tightened laws on adoption. According to the ‘Terms and Conditions and Process Required for Approving Adoption of a Nepali Child by an Alien – 2008,’ prospective foreign parents cannot choose the child they want to adopt.

Foreign couples wishing to adopt a Nepali child must apply through a registered international agency or their embassies in Nepal, filling out forms offering details about the age, gender and other particulars that they seek in a child. A joint secretary-led ‘Family Matching Committee’ is then assigned to find the child from shelters. Clause 14 of the Terms and Conditions stipulates that these adoptions will take place on a first-come-first-serve basis.

However, the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) documents make clear that many adoptions have skipped the whole process. The documents show that Denmark received 20 Nepali children through adoption from Nepal in the last nine years.

But government records in Kathmandu show only two children had paperwork to leave for that country. The mismatch is even starker for France, for which government records here show only one adopted Nepali child, but the HCCH records 21 Nepali children adopted by French families.

Numerically, the United States shows the biggest discrepancy. The State Department report reveals that 102 children were adopted from Nepal in the last nine years, but the government’s records here show only 11.

According to the Bureau of Consular Affairs of the US Department of State, an American citizen wishing to adopt a child should be at least 25 years old, and in the case of couples both husband and wife should agree to adopt the child.

Prospective parents should not have any criminal background and should meet the criteria of the country from which they seek to adopt. The fact that 91 Nepali children adopted by Americans have no records in Nepal prove that they were transported outside of legal channels. HCCH records show that Norway, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden and Italy had similar inconsistency with Nepal government records.

Only figures for Germany show the opposite: government records here show four children were adopted by German parents between 2010 and 2019, and HCCH data shows only two children were adopted in Germany.

Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 of the Civil Code 2017 have the provisions in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. And there are a slew of policies and strict regulations governing inter-country adoption.

For example, the Standards for Operation and Management of Residential Child Care Homes 2013 says it is the state’s responsibility to look after children who have lost both parents, or the children of invalid parents, provided their kin cannot take care of them. The priority is for in-country adoption, and international adoption is only a last resort.

All these legal provisions make inter-country child adoption so strict that it is inconceivable that such adoptions take place without the knowledge of several government agencies. The discrepancy of HCCH and Nepali records thus reveals that children are being trafficked abroad in the guise of adoption.

An NHRC report on Trafficking in Persons 2019 points to a nexus between orphanages, child-care centres and foreigners wishing to adopt children. The report says there are 14,864 children in 533 children’s homes all over the country. Nearly 80% of children in such centres are not orphans, and have either one or both parents.

The only government shelter for orphans is Bal Mandir and it is run by the Nepal Children’s Organisation (NCO), which provides care, nutrition and education to orphans all over the country. The NCO has been implicated in facilitating documents for illegal inter-country adoption.

In August 2019, British national Dona Smith was arrested at Kathmandu airport with a newborn baby she claimed was her daughter. Smith was carrying a birth certificate from Lalitpur Metropolitan City and the baby’s passport, issued by the British Embassy, carried her name as Anna Bella Laxmi Shrestha Smith. Smith told suspicious immigration officials that the baby’s father was Nepali.

An investigation later found out that the baby’s real mother was a rape victim who gave birth to her at Paropakar Maternity Hospital. Smith admitted to paying Bal Krishna Dangol, director of the NCO, Rs450,000 for the baby and another Rs2 million to procure the necessary documents to take her out of the country. Deputy Superintendent of Police Hobindra Bogati says Dangol was found to be involved in a larger child-trafficking network. Both Dangol and Smith are now in jail.

Police figures show more than 1,000 children were trafficked in the past five years. DSP Silwal says the children are usually bought from willing poor parents but that some parents are tricked into sending them to shelters. The traffickers then sell them to adoption brokers who make contact with foreigners eager to adopt children.

“The children who are trafficked are often from the poor and underprivileged families or are street children,” Silwal says, “Traffickers prefer them because it is easier to tempt their parents.”

NHRC Commisioner Mohna Ansari says it difficult to curb such crimes unless there is public awareness. “In our poverty-ridden society with rampant illiteracy and scarcity, parents think sending children to shelters will at least give them a good education. They are easily tempted by strangers who promise to take care of them.”

Centre for Investigative Journalism-Nepal

 

“I want to see my sons again”

 

Ten years ago, two of Manju Khadka’s three sons, Ram Kumar, 8, and Bal Krishna, 6 (pictured, right) were taken to a children’s shelter by a neighbour who promised they would be educated and fed there. For three years, Khadka was repeatedly prevented from seeing them. Finally, she found out they had been adopted by a couple in Italy.

“I gave birth to them. I did not send them as babies, they were grown up and going to school,” says a tearful Khadka (pictured, above). “They threatened to finish me off.”

When she went to the police, they were rude and accused her of selling her children to the shelter. So Manju and her husband went to the National Human Rights Commission, but were unable to receive the help they needed to get their boys back. Ram Kumar and Bal Krishna are now 19 and 17 and living in Italy.

 

How Naresh became Chanorang Kim

Naresh Gharti, the youngest of his family, was born in east Rukum and was growing up in Pokhara. In 2018, South Korean tourist Nara Kim got to know the Gharti family and they agreed to let her adopt Naresh.

Faced with strict rules about inter-country adoption, Nara Kim decided to take a short cut. According to the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB), Kim produced a document, certified by Pokhara Metropolitan City, showing that Naresh was her son. She got a fake birth certificate for Naresh from a hospital in Pokhara.

The South Korean Embassy in Kathmandu provided Naresh with a Korean passport  (M 72504568) based on those documents. The passport changed Naresh’s name to Chanorang Kim. The last stop was to get a visa for Naresh at the Department of Immigration where officials got suspicious. Both Kim and Naresh were arrested at Kathmandu airport while trying to fly out in May 2019. Kim is in jail awaiting trial.

 

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

The post Nepal’s Baby Export appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: IPBES

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 2020 (IPS)

The UN’s highly-touted socio-economic agenda, which lays out an ambitious global plan for “people, planet and prosperity”, has been dominated by “goals, targets and deadlines.”

But regrettably, most developing nations are struggling to reach these goals—due largely to a shortfall in much-needed funding or lack of political will on the part of most governments.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)– which was launched in 2015 and includes the proposed eradication of extreme poverty and hunger– are expected to be achieved by the targeted date of 2030.

But judging by the limited progress made so far, even the United Nations is skeptical about winning the race against global poverty and hunger– on deadline—besides achieving gender equality, quality education and climate action worldwide.

The 2016 Paris Climate Change agreement has “a global stock-take every 5 years to assess the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of the Agreement and to inform further individual actions by Parties.”

And the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets — aimed largely at protecting and preserving the world’s ecosystems–have a 2020 deadline, with just 10 months to go.

Credit: Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

The 20 global targets were formulated under the 2011-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and grouped under five goals, including addressing the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across governments and society, reducing direct pressures on biodiversity while promoting sustainable use; and improving the status of biodiversity by safeguarding ecosystems, species and genetic diversity.

In the run-up to an upcoming UN Biodiversity Conference in China, officials and experts will convene at FAO headquarters, Rome, February 24-29. for negotiations on the initial draft of a landmark post-2020 global biodiversity framework and targets, extending through 2030.

The new framework will be considered and adopted by the 196 Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at the 2020 UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP15), scheduled to take place October 15-28,
In Kunming, China.

Asked if the Aichi achievements are far below targets, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Acting Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), told IPS “as you point out, research is leading us to the conclusion that actions have not been sufficient to accelerate progress to achievement of the Aichi Targets to the extent required – and consequently, that none of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets are likely to be fully met, although some specific components or elements within the targets have been achieved”.

She said the full assessment of the status of the targets will be published in Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, which will be released on 18 May 2020.

“But we can say in general, that there has been a wealth of policies and actions developed in all parts of the world to address biodiversity loss, even if cumulatively they have not been sufficient to meet the goals agreed by the global community.”

“We will need to build on these as we move forward to achieve the 2050 Vision”, she noted.

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: There have been reports that very few people have ever heard of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets compared to SDGs and the Paris climate change agreement. Is this a fair characterization? How important is public outreach and how will this be different for the post-2020 Biodiversity Framework?

Mrema: Progress has been made in public awareness and understanding of biodiversity and its values; there is wide variation across countries and attention to biodiversity in the media remains at a much lower level than coverage of climate change.

Nevertheless, the heightened public alarm about the impacts of climate change is frequently expressed alongside dismay at the state of biodiversity, in particular the extinction crisis.

The media coverage of the IPBES Global Assessment in 2019 was incredible, and this has demonstrated that people are ready to engage on this agenda. But more can be done.

This is why the Parties have asked that any post 2020 global biodiversity framework include an innovative and active communications and outreach strategy, which will be developed as part of the negotiations.

IPS: What shortcomings, if any, have been already identified in feedback about the zero draft of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework? Are you expecting any significant changes to the draft before adoption?

Mrema: The Parties will only provide their feedback on the zero draft when the meeting of the working group begins in Rome on 24 February. I invite you and your readers to follow the proceedings of the meeting, which will be webcast.

IPS: As the 20 targets are expected to expire by the end of 2020, will the Parties to the CBD adopt a revised set of targets for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework? Any indications of what these revised targets would be?

Mrema: As you correctly point out, the period for the implementation of the Strategic Plan 2011-2020 is nearing its end. In 2018, the Conference of the Parties, at its fourteenth meeting in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt adopted a process for developing a post-2020 global biodiversity framework by establishing an Open-ended Working Group (WG2020) to support this process and appointing two Co-chairs, Francis Ogwal (Uganda) and Basile van Havre (Canada) to lead the process.

Subsequently, the WG2020, at its first meeting in August 2019 in Nairobi, requested the Co-chairs and the Executive Secretary, with the oversight of the Bureau, to prepare a zero draft text of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework for consideration by the second meeting of the Working Group, which will be held from 24 to 29 February 2020 in Rome.

The Co-chairs and the Acting Executive Secretary, made this “zero draft” of the global biodiversity framework available on 13 January.

The Zero draft was prepared based on extensive regional and thematic consultations, the advice from the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice and from the Working Group on Article 8 J and written submissions.

The Zero draft was also developed taking into account global trends and future scenarios, including the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services,

The framework is built around a theory of change which recognizes that urgent policy action globally, regionally and nationally is required to transform economic, social and financial models so that the trends that have exacerbated biodiversity loss will stabilize in the next 10 years (by 2030) and allow for the recovery of natural ecosystems in the following 20 years, with net improvements by 2050 to achieve the Convention’s vision of “living in harmony with nature by 2050”.

The zero draft contains suggested global goals for 2030 and 2050 and action-oriented targets for 2030. As I noted, there will be considered by the Parties at their meeting taking place next week in Rome.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post A Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework Aims at Reinforcing Efforts to Save World’s Ecosystem appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A large number of children are regularly transported across Zimbabwe’s borders by women who are not their mothers. Courtesy: Michelle Chifamba

By Michelle Chifamba
HARARE, Feb 20 2020 (IPS)

Elton Ndumiso*, a bus-conductor who works the route from Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, to neighbouring South Africa, sees it all the time: Zimbabwean women travelling with three or four children, who are clearly not their own kids, and taking them across the border.

It’s a crime that most bus drivers or conductors either turn a blind eye to, or become accomplices in by assisting the women. 

Ndumiso told IPS that in many cases some bus drivers and conductors go as far as “talking to” or even bribing border officials, to allow them to let the children and women enter neighbouring countries without regular migration documents.

The practice is not a new one.

“A number of children have been transported by female smugglers to cross the border. Some of the women will be in possession of signed affidavits that claim they are the legal guardians of the children. It is difficult to prove what the intensions of the smugglers would be once they have crossed the border to South Africa,” Ndumiso told IPS.

• The Parliament of Zimbabwe notes that child trafficking is one of the greatest challenges the country is facing as a result of the prevailing economic conditions.
• And according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) — an intergovernmental United Nations agency that provides services and oversights around migration — there are a number of cases of Zimbabwean parents living in neighbouring countries who pay smugglers to reunite them with their children in their new country.

Ndumiso may not know what risks await the children after they cross the border, but he’s seen cases of children being at risk during the journey as well. He remembered a recent case of a woman who was smuggling four children across the border into South Africa and had lost one of the kids when the bus stopped for a break.

“The young child was eight years old and disappeared in the small mining town of Mvuma in Midlands Province were the bus had stopped for recess. We searched for the child but could not find her. We had to leave the woman at the nearest police and a police report was made,” Ndumiso told IPS, explaining that the woman had claimed she was transporting the children to join their parents in South Africa.

IOM told IPS that despite there being a large number of instances of child smuggling and trafficking across Zimbabwe’s porous borders, these cases still remain unknown and unreported because of the nature of the crime. 

IOM-Zimbabwe head of programmes Ana Medeiros told IPS that this was largely due to the fact that in many cases victims were afraid to speak out and tell their stories.

• The 2018 Zimbabwe Parliament Committee on Human Rights’ report states that figures about this illicit crime are unavailable.
• In the report, parliament recorded that in Zimbabwe the crime of child trafficking is difficult to establish as large amounts of money is gathered in the illegal trade to create networks around the world.
• “These are calculative syndicates who create links within the government and … world to recruit unsuspecting victims who are lured by the need to improve their lives,” read the report.

Head of the Zimbabwe Gender Commission, an independent rights body in this southern African nation, Virginia Muwanigwa, told IPS that very few cases of child trafficking are addressed each year in Zimbabwe as they are difficult to trace.

“In most cases, the traffickers who pay the smugglers to transport the children along the borders are close family members who may have … affidavits and consent from parents or guardians of the children for transportation and may also pay a bribe to border officials,” she explained. 

According to IOM, smuggling is mostly prevalent on the borders of South Africa and Botswana because documents can be forged and people bribed to allow entry without proper documents.

Medeiros, however, was careful to point out that, “smugglers are not traffickers because in most cases they are paid for their service to facilitate the process of smuggling. However, in some cases they may be linked to the traffickers.” The easily porous borders means that the trafficking of children is also prevalent.

“Child trafficking cases are difficult to trace because minors are not responsible for their actions and there is a thin line between smuggling and trafficking. Trafficking is not always clear as many trafficked people may be recorded as migrants in the country of destination,” Medeiros told IPS.

And Medeiros told IPS that when it comes to cases of child trafficking, usually trusted people like church and family members recruited children with promised work or education outside the country where they either ended up in domestic servitude or as sex salves.

“As a result of the nature of the crime, the component of confidentiality when investigating the issues of child trafficking and lack of knowledge on the crime of human trafficking, many families and children fall victim to trafficking, particularly with people who are close to them who are paid by traffickers to recruit young children,” Medeiros told IPS.

IOM is currently supporting Zimbabwe with capacity building and training programmes to educate people on the crime of human trafficking.

“IOM has supported the government through the Ministry of Public Service Labour and Social Welfare and Civil Society Organisations in providing information through promotional materials such as flyers, banners, T-shirts, road-shows throughout the country’s provinces to educate people on trafficking,” Medeiros told IPS.

In addition, the U.N. agency also shelters victims of trafficking, also providing them counselling.

“At the shelters victims receive counselling and share their stories on how they ended up being smuggled or trafficked,” Medeiros added.

The United States Department of State Trafficking in Persons in Zimbabwe says it also provided more than $ 750,000 in assistance for anti-trafficking programmes covering victim services, awareness and referrals, aligning legislation and building mutual capacity.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ), which actively supports the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 8 of decent work and economic growth, has focused much of its work on eliminating modern slavery. It, however, acknowledges that globally the legal system has failed to put an end to trafficking and that new laws are needed to protect citizens from this.

“The legal system can be the driver for change — so let’s use the instruments already in place — the law firms that are willing to drive change. Initiate any new laws/programmes not as a marketing add-on but a business norm and a business imperative. We need rule of law and safety of citizens in place — civilised society cannot exist without the rule of law in place,” GSN states on its website.

Muwanigwa too wants to see stronger laws in place to protect Zimbabwe’s children.

“There is need for legislation reform as very few cases of child-smuggling or trafficking in persons are investigated. Resource constraints are also the major drawback when it comes to issues of human trafficking in Zimbabwe,” Muwanigwa told IPS.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

 

** Writing with Nalisha Adams in Bonn, Germany

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The post Zimbabwe’s Thin Line between Child Smuggling and Child Trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

While there are a large number of instances of child smuggling and trafficking across Zimbabwe’s porous borders, these cases still remain unknown and unreported because of the nature of the crime. 

The post Zimbabwe’s Thin Line between Child Smuggling and Child Trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.