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Climate Change, Ethnicity and Neglect Fuel Violence in Nigeria’s Kaduna State

Wed, 06/19/2024 - 08:45

At a camp for internally displaced people in Bokkos. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS

By Promise Eze
KADUNA, Nigeria, Jun 19 2024 (IPS)

Lami Kwasu, a farmer in the village of Kafanchan in Kaduna State, north-central Nigeria, was at home one evening in October 2020 when the sound of sporadic gunshots filled the air.

Gunmen, suspected to be Fulani nomadic herders, had surrounded the village, shooting from different angles.

Kwasu placed her three-year-old son on her back and attempted to run to a nearby bush for safety. But she was shot in the head and went unconscious.

“I woke up in a hospital in Kaduna metropolis two weeks later and was very happy to find out that my son was alive,” she recalled.

Residents who spoke with IPS reported that the attack, which lasted for about four hours, left over 30 houses burned, dozens injured, and over 20 people dead, including Kwasu’s mother, whom the herders butchered to death.

The attackers fled before security operatives arrived in the troubled area.

Kwasu’s ordeal is part of a troubling pattern. In recent years, tensions between farmers and cattle herders have escalated in Nigeria’s north-central states, often referred to as the Middle Belt. This region has witnessed a series of violent clashes. For instance, last year in Zangon Kataf district, Kaduna state, 33 people lost their lives in an attack by Fulani herders on a farming village.

Similarly, in Bokkos district, Plateau state, over 200 individuals were brutally murdered during a herder-led attack on Christmas Eve last year.

According to Human Rights Watch, approximately 60,000 people have been killed and over 300,000 have been displaced across the region due to the conflict. This includes Grace Mahan, who lost her first son during the attack in Bokkos and is now a refugee in one of the 14 refugee camps in the area.

“Everything was destroyed—our animals, our houses—they destroyed everything. I escaped with nothing but the clothes I am wearing,” she told IPS.

Cattle at a Fulani settlement in Bokkos. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS

Climate Change

Observers say the situation has been triggered by drought linked to climate change in the north. The region’s average yearly rainfall has significantly decreased to less than 600 mm, a stark contrast to the 3,500 mm received in the southern areas. As a result, herders are compelled to migrate southward in search of grazing land for their livestock.

Livestock in Nigeria are growing at a very fast rate, around 20 million—making it one of the world’s largest. The human population is growing too. With a population of more than 200 million, it is the highest in Africa.

The swelling populations of livestock and humans, especially in the north-central region, leaving farmers and pastoralists to compete for very few resources, has resulted in one of the bloodiest conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The conflict is now spreading to southern states in the country, with mass killings increasingly reported over the past years as herders accuse the local farmers of stealing their cattle, and the farmers blame the herders for trespassing their farmlands and destroying their crops.

Religious Fire Amid Ethnic Tensions

In recent years, the conflict has shifted from being a battle for resources to being interpreted as an ethno-religious crisis between the indigenous ethnic groups in the Middle Belt, who are predominantly Christian, and the Fulani, who are predominantly Muslim and are seen as settlers.

For many Christian groups in Nigeria and outside the country, the attacks have been termed an “Islamic war of expansion”. This view is coming on the backdrop of concerns suggesting that Nigeria is one of the most dangerous places to be a Christian following the rise of jihadist groups and politically motivated killings that have targeted Christians. According to a report, 90 per cent of the nearly 5,000 Christians killed for faith-based reasons last year were in Nigeria.

Even before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Nigeria in February, Christian advocacy and religious freedom groups in the US criticized President Joe Biden’s administration for not including Nigeria on its religious freedom watchlist.

Some Muslims in the North perceive attacks on Fulani communities by Christians as an assault on Islam, prompting calls for retaliation from some quarters.

These clashes, typically occurring in villages, can quickly spiral into violent confrontations between Christians and Muslims in northern towns, leading to devastating consequences.

Muslim groups in Nigeria have consistently denounced the killings perpetrated by both sides, asserting that the attacks are not driven by religious motives.

Underlying Factors

For Oludare Ogunlana, Professor of National Security at Collin College in Texas, the conflict has shifted from a contest for resources to a religious crisis because the government has, for decades, neglected to address underlying factors such as religious tensions, ethno-political crises, poverty, unemployment, and illiteracy that have plagued the region.

While Nigeria is a secular state, religion plays an important role in the country’s politics. Politicians often exploit religious sentiments to attract voters during elections. Socio-political issues swiftly escalate into religious crises, especially in the north-central region. For example, a protest by Christians in Kaduna against the government’s plans to adopt Sharia law in the state in 2000 escalated into a series of conflicts that resulted in the deaths of no fewer than 2000 people.

In the early 2000s, in Jos, Plateau State, following the appointments of government officials along religious lines, there were a series of violence incidents between Christians and Muslims that led to hundreds of deaths.

“Religious intolerance arises as a result of poverty, not just in terms of material possessions but also in terms of ideas. The majority of farmers and herders in the middle belt are relatively poor. Given the existing religious tensions in a region plagued by illiteracy and the government’s inability to address these issues, it is not unexpected that the farmer-herder crisis would now revolve around religion,” Ogunlana told IPS.

Government Negligence

Critics argue that the government is not affording the crisis the requisite attention, despite its efforts to mitigate the killings. In 2019, the presidency proposed grazing camps and cattle colonies nationwide. However, this plan faced opposition from middle belt leaders who viewed it as a strategy to assist herders in seizing land and promoting Islam.

The 2024 annual report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) placed blame on the Nigerian government for its negligence in addressing religious extremist violence.

For Ogunlana, community policing, frequent roundtable discussions with religious and traditional leaders, and creating opportunities to encourage herders to divest into other profitable ventures other than pastoring will help to douse the flames.

He added, “The government has to promote inclusive governance and implement policies that ensure equitable representation and participation of diverse religious communities in the decision-making process at all levels of governance. That can foster trust and a sense of belonging among different religious and ethnic groups.”

Nigeria, despite strict gun control, is a hub for illegal small arms, fueling security issues. The UN reports 70% of West Africa’s 500 million illegal weapons are in Nigeria, perpetuating cycles of violence between farmers and herders.

The Fulani herders’ leadership, Miyetti Allah, claims that herders’ attacks are retaliatory responses to farmers’ alleged cattle theft, while farmers maintain that they are defending their lands.

As the crisis worsens, the scar deepens. Abdulrahman Muhammed, a herder from Bokkos, shared with IPS that after the attack on Christmas Eve, Christian natives seeking revenge attacked numerous Fulani settlements the next day, burning many houses, including his own.

“I managed to escape, but some of my cattle were stolen. I wish there could be a dialogue between the natives and herders to find a way to end the killings,” he said.
IPS UN Bureau Report

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Categories: Africa

Transforming African Food Systems from the Ground Up

Tue, 06/18/2024 - 20:22

Nyando climate-smart villages are home to a mix of technologies tailored to boost farmers’ ability to adapt to climate change, manage risks and build resilience. These technologies will in turn improve livelihoods & incomes. Credit: S.Kilungu (CCAFS)

By Inga Jacobs-Mata, Maya Rajasekharan, Namukolo Covic and Moses Odeke
PRETORIA, South Africa, Jun 18 2024 (IPS)

All news is local, they say. The same is true of innovations—those many new technologies, policies, and practices that steadily stream from research to enhance our lives.

It is in specific regions, cultures, and locales across the Global South that innovations for agricultural development first get taken up and adapted to meet people’s needs. Or not. Only by understanding that all innovations are local can innovators meet the diverse needs of diverse peoples.

From the library and laboratory to the farm and kitchen

Acknowledging that dreaming up innovative solutions is the easy part, and that delivering innovations to real people facing real problems is the hard part, CGIAR – the world’s largest publicly funded agrifood research network – put “innovation scaling” at the heart of its Regional Integrated Initiatives (RIIs).

CGIAR’s six RIIs are operating in six regions: Latin America, West and Central Africa, East and Southern Africa, Central and West Asia and North Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Asian Mega Deltas. Commencing in 2022 and operating through 2024, these RIIs are working with over 750 local public and private partners and research centres to help transform these regions’ agrifood systems. Serving as CGIAR’s “living labs”, the RIIs support more local organizations to adapt, apply, validate, and scale solutions from many disciplines and to integrate these into local programs and platforms. By building local capacities, the RIIs are empowering “last-mile stakeholders” to apply, adapt, and use the innovations, to take ownership of them, and to lead the innovation process as it evolves over time.

The context is decisive

With a strong foundation laid in their first two years of operation, these RIIs offer big opportunities for upscaling engagement in more local food systems, crowding in investments, and uniting efforts in specific locales. With a wealth of local partners offering local experience, these initiatives provide granular insights that can help to transform conventional “hit-and-run” agrifood systems projects into enduring solutions to specific high-order problems. For example, through technical and business support from CGIAR’s Food Systems Accelerator, Zambian fruit processing company Forest Africa has developed a non-dairy milk from the fruit of the baobab tree that provides economic benefits to local communities while helping to avoid deforestation.

In particular, the six RIIs and their partners are maximizing impact by focusing on innovations at mature levels of readiness, employing digital agroclimatic advisory tools and services, strengthening local capacity in agrifood system development, and providing relevant policies and regulations with evidenced-based recommendations. For example, by partnering with the popular “Shamba Shape Up” farm makeover reality TV show in Kenya, CGIAR has helped bring proven innovations to more than eight million viewers every week.

In 2023 alone, these RIIs enhanced regional and local agrifood systems with 577 reports and papers, 341 products and events strengthening local agrifood system capacities, 198 new innovations, and 31 policy changes.

The Ukama Ustawi Initiative

With a new CGIAR portfolio (2025–2030) now under development, CGIAR’s RII on Diversification in East and Southern Africa, led by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and co-implemented with 154 other partners, is a model for how CGIAR and its many partners can play a larger role in scaling as well as developing agrifood innovations for the continent.

Given the byname Ukama Ustawi (a blending respectively of Southern Africa’s Shona word for “partnership” with East Africa’s Swahili word for “well-being”), this Initiative works in a dozen African countries with local food producers and agribusiness dealers, innovators, and influencers. Our partners are invaluable in helping us both to overcome obstacles to scaling research-based innovations and to avoid any unintended consequences of their adoption.

Innovating the “how”

Part of what makes Ukama Ustawi unique are the ever evolving and participatory ways in which it works.

A regular series of vibrant rural share fairs and virtual field trips allows for the exchange of knowledge, ideas, experiences and expertise—flowing not only from farmer to farmer but also, importantly, from farmer to village elders, to scientists, to government officials, and to donor agents. These deliberately “immersive” physical fairs and virtual field trips not only accelerate and widen farmer-farmer learning, but also bring the world of smallholder farming to decision-makers, who meet the farmers, hear their stories, and experience their challenges—directly and in real time.

Innovations are also being accelerated through award competitions promoting “scaling-ready” agricultural innovations in the region. Through the CGIAR Food System Accelerator, Ukama Ustawi supports innovation scaling through agribusinesses that receive substantial support to help them diversify their maize cropping into more nutritious agricultural products and systems. Each local agribusiness is matched with suitable mentors from CGIAR and elsewhere and provided with tailored technical as well as financial assistance. In 2023, this matchmaking resulted in initial financial commitments exceeding US$11 million for the 10 selected agribusinesses. Ukama Ustawi also initiated an annual competition for research groups to apply for Scaling Fund grants. Three winning research Initiatives were each awarded US$125,000 in 2024.

CGIAR’s RIIs are certainly where the rubber hits the road, and with the new CGIAR reorganization now under way, it is an opportune time to take this more local innovation scaling work to new levels of productive partnerships for billions of productive people.

Inga Jacobs-Mata, CGIAR “Ukama Ustawi” Initiative on Diversification in East and Southern Africa
Maya Rajasekharan, CGIAR African region managing director
Namukolo Covic, CGIAR regional director for East and Southern Africa
Moses Odeke, Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA)

IPS UN Bureau

Categories: Africa

Conflict Deprives Children of Education in Northern Syrian IDP Camps

Tue, 06/18/2024 - 12:26

Twelve-year-old Walid Al-Hussein, displaced from the city of Kafranbel to a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in northern Idlib on the border with Turkey, has given up his dream of becoming a lawyer. “The distance of schools from our home (in the camp) made me leave education and give up my dream and my […]

Categories: Africa

Sustainable Development of 39 Small Island Developing States – No Time to Wait

Tue, 06/18/2024 - 05:38

By Palitha Kohona
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jun 18 2024 (IPS)

Today Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and the environmental threats they confront require our urgent attention —and the global spotlight needs to be trained deliberately and maintained consistently on their concerns, in particular, climate change, marine biological diversity loss and sustainable development goals (SDGs).

A world in which other pressing matters compete for attention, this challenge could easily be neglected.

There is a significant community of small island states in the world. The United Nations recognizes 39 of them. The aggregate population of all the SIDS is 65 million, slightly less than 1% of the world’s population but nevertheless a population that requires our attention.

https://www.un.org/ohrlls/content/list-sids

They share similar sustainable development challenges, including small populations, limited local resources, including land, remoteness, susceptibility to frequent natural disasters, easy vulnerability to external shocks, excessive dependence on external trade and almost all are highly threatened by climate change.

SIDS were recognized as a special case both for their environment and development challenges at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development  in Rio de Janeiro. 

High import and export costs will continue to be a factor in their economies, while their dependence on external markets due to the narrow resource bases make them particularly vulnerable. Since they control sea areas (in particularly the Exclusive Economic Zones),on average 28 times the size of their land mass, much of their natural resources come from the seas and oceans that surround them.

Therefore, the seas and oceans are critical from their perspective. Vulnerability to exogenous economic shocks and fragile land and marine ecosystems make SIDS particularly susceptible to biodiversity loss and climate change.

The Blue Economy, defined by World Bank as the “sustainable use of ocean resources to benefit economies, livelihoods and ocean ecosystem health” becomes particularly relevant to SIDS.

Over 40 percent of SIDS are affected by, or are on the edge of, unsustainable levels of debt, severely constraining their ability to invest in resilience, climate action and sustainable development. This is why they have been recognised as a special group that requires concentrated assistance.

The four main geographical regions in which SIDS are concentrated are the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean. 

4th International Conference on SIDS, 27 – 30 May, 2004

In his opening address as the President of the 4th International Conference on SIDS, Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, forcefully underlined the importance of its theme — “Charting the Course Toward Resilient Prosperity”.

Stressing that such States are “on the front lines of a battlefield of a confluence of crises — none of which they have caused or created” — he said that the small size of such States, limited financial resources and constrained human capital, place them at a marked disadvantage on the global stage. Further, their journey towards development has been repeatedly disrupted by monumental crises, among them the financial meltdown of 2008 and the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.

Reflecting the sentiments of many, he called for urgent, multilateral solutions, and he observed that those present are gathered “not only to reiterate challenges, but also to demand and enact solutions”. The Global North, in particular, must honour its commitments — including providing $1 billion in climate financing to assist with adaptation and mitigation.

Gaston Browne identified a clear gap in the oft expressed pious sentiments of the international community and actual action taken to implement these.

SIDS Dependency on the Seas and Oceans

Traditionally most small island states, surrounded by the seas and oceans, have been dependent on the oceans far more than bigger states for most of their needs. The seas provide a significant part of their food, including, fish, crustaceans, sea weed, etc, energy needs are imported across the seas, introduced and imported food, tourism which plays a considerable economic role, daily essentials and exports.

Sea food is a critical source of protein for SIDs. Today lobsters, prawns, scallops, mussels, etc are also a major income source for fishermen and a critical foreign exchange earner.

The income and protein source provided by the seas and oceans is threatened in some areas by overfishing, pollution, predatory and unregulated fishing by distant water fishers and, critically, by the impacts of climate change. The warming of the oceans is already having a devastating impact on coral reefs, so important as spawning grounds for myriads of fish and other economically important species.

Warming seas are likely to cause some fish species to migrate away from their traditional habitats and others to become extinct. Tuna migration habits in the Pacific Ocean, for example, are changing due to the heating of the ocean. This could have an enormous impact on Pacific small island states whose food supplies and economies depend on the tuna catch, and could cause an estimated $140 million loss in average government revenue per year.

Given the importance of the marine environment to small island states, it is vital that the exploitation of the resource takes place sustainably. Once a vital resource of this nature is lost, it is unlikely that it will recover in a short time, if ever. International agreements and arrangements in place at present with need to implemented with vigour and other arrangements may have to be put in place.

International Action and Options for SIDS

With their small economies, SIDS are at the mercy of the elements and with limited fall back options. A single hurricane could wipe out the economies of some small island states. Despite their minimal historical greenhouse gas emissions, SIDS face some of the most severe impacts of climate change, with serious loss and damage in the form of destroyed infrastructure, economic and cultural loss, loss of lives and livelihoods, loss of biodiversity and forced displacement.

It is now widely acknowledged that the depletion of the resource of the seas and oceans will result in numerable and unpredictable consequences including, massive unemployment, increased poverty, malnutrition, overall negative economic impacts, economic migration which will have repercussions for neighboring countries and possible community unrest.

Some international initiatives offer adaptation options to the SIDS.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Regional Seas Programme in 1974. (The Programme now administers this regional mechanism for the conservation of the marine and coastal environment to address the accelerating marine pollution). 18 regions participate in the Programme, of which 14 Regional Seas programmes are underpinned by legally binding conventions. The participating regions include, South Asian Seas, South-East Pacific, Western Africa and the Wider Caribbean where many of the SIDS are located.

In January 2015, the General Assembly began the negotiation process on the post-2015 development agenda, essentially the post Millennium Development Goals agenda. The process culminated in the adoption, at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 17 SDGs and 169 targets at its core.

Following the adoption of Agenda 2030, the Regional Seas Programme seeks to assist Member States in achieving the ocean-related SDGs by coordinating national actions at the regional level. SIDS stand to benefit considerably from these programmes. Thus the Regional Seas programmes set the Regional Seas Strategic Directions (2017-2020) and decided to:

Under the Paris Accords of 2015, developed country Parties to the Accords agreed to provide financial resources to assist highly vulnerable country Parties with regard to both mitigation and adaptation consistent with their existing obligations under the Convention.

The UNEP Adaptation Finance GAP Report estimates that adaptation finance needs in developing countries will reach $140 billion – $300 billion per year by 2030, and $280 billion to $500 billion per year by 2050. SIDS, if they are proactive in the search for funding, are expected to be a major beneficiary under this commitment.

It is recalled that under the Paris Accords, developed countries reaffirmed the commitment to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020, and agreed to continue mobilising finance at this level until 2025. This commitment included finance for the Green Climate Fund, which is a part of the UNFCCC, and also for a variety of other public and private programmes. This amount has not been reached at all.

The Paris Accords also recognize loss and damage. Loss and damage can stem from extreme weather events, or from slow-onset events such as the loss of land to sea level rise for low-lying islands and the warming of the seas. Tuna migration habits in the Pacific Ocean, for example, are changing due to the heating of the ocean.

The push to address loss and damage as a distinct issue in the Paris Agreement came from the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries, whose economies and livelihoods are most vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change.

At Cop 27 in 2022 countries agreed to establish a Loss and Damage Fund, which would provide financial assistance to climate-vulnerable countries. The fund was officially operationalized at Cop 28 in November 2023. The major beneficiaries can be the SIDS.

In 2021, Tuvalu in the Pacific and Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean established a Commission for Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law. The intention is to take claims for loss and damage to international judicial tribunals.

Vanuatu is also leading a campaign to ask the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on climate change. This initiative had its beginnings in2014 under the sponsorship of Mauritius.

Now we have an additional development which should make us think deeper.

June 2023, the United Nations adopted a new treaty under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (‘BBNJ’). Today, this is also known as the High Seas Biodiversity Treaty.

During the negotiations on this treaty, while the developed North focused more on Marine Protected Areas, and these are important, the South was equally interested in the equitable sharing of the benefits of exploiting the mega genetic pool of the oceans.

Properly managed, implemented in the right spirit, the sharing of benefits under this treaty could bring considerable material rewards to SIDS. They will benefit considerably if the sharing of benefits of the exploitation of BBNJ works well. It has been said that a single bucket of sea water could contain more genetic material than hectares of dry land.

Already major pharmaceutical companies are producing drugs developed from genetic material recovered from the high seas.

Dr Palitha Kohona is former Sri Lanka Ambassador to China and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN and one-time Co-Chair of the UN ad hoc committee on BBNJ.

IPS UN Bureau

Categories: Africa

Restoring Trust: Confronting Corruption and Championing Integrity

Mon, 06/17/2024 - 05:10

The UN says that corruption is criminal, immoral and the ultimate betrayal of public trust. Credit: UN News/Daniel Dickinson

The 21st IACC -Anti-corruption Conference will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania 18-21 June

By Francine Pickup
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 17 2024 (IPS)

58 percent of respondents to a worldwide survey believed that their political system has been captured by an elite that is corrupt, obsolete, and unreformable. Corruption thrives in environments characterized by weak governance, where transparency, accountability, and public decision-making are compromised by conflicts of interest and political interference.

Efforts to combat corruption and restore trust in governance must translate the core tenets of good governance—information dissemination, transparency, integrity, accountability, and participation—into tangible action across sectors.

The 21st International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, under the theme “Confronting Global Threats: Standing up for Integrity” from June 18 to 21.

It gathers diverse participants, ranging from heads of state to civil society representatives, youth activists, business leaders and investigative journalists from across the globe.

The IACC stands as the foremost multi-stakeholder biennial global platform on anti-corruption, attracting approximately 1,500 participants worldwide. Since 2003, UNDP, in partnership with GIZ/BMZ and the U.S. State Department, has played a pivotal role in shaping the discourse and global anti-corruption agenda through the IACC series.

The conversations we will have in Vilnius in the coming days are critical for four reasons:

First, the meeting convenes amidst a backdrop of complex and multifaceted crises: climate change, conflict, geopolitical tensions, polarization, democratic erosion, economic volatility and unregulated frontier technologies—each posing a threat to hard-earned developmental gains.

The latest Human Development Report 2023-2024 underscores a widening gap in human development, fraught with the peril of irreversible setbacks. Corruption remains a significant impediment to equitable development progress, exacerbating existing inequalities and further reducing people’s trust in governance.

In this tumultuous era, the 21st IACC must galvanize sustained collective actions, partnerships and actionable strategies to combat corruption. Its outcomes should feed into the 2024 United Nations Summit of the Future and the 2025 Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development because these platforms present vital opportunities to rejuvenate multilateralism and foster a spirit of international cooperation and partnerships to tackle our shared challenges.

The IACC can also accelerate momentum for collective action and foster effective partnerships by addressing the focus of the three Rio Conventions—Biodiversity, Climate Change, and Desertification—all converging this year.

Forestry crimes, including unregulated charcoal burning and large-scale corporate malpractice in timber, paper, and pulp sectors leading to extensive deforestation, critically impact global greenhouse gas emissions, water reserves, desertification, and rainfall patterns.

At the same time, many nations also urgently require climate finance in order to invest in climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Effective climate action relies on robust institutions, necessitating a coordinated approach to combat corruption and safeguard environmental initiatives from compromise.

Second, the IACC’s theme, “Confronting Global Threats: Standing Up for Integrity,” broadens the scope of the governance and anti-corruption agenda to address a range of issues including conflict resolution, climate action, global security, and human security, ensuring also integrity in development financing and the roll-out of frontier technologies.

The outcome of the IACC will be instrumental in continuing global efforts to bring governance and anti-corruption to the centre of the global development agenda, drawing on experiences such as the Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture (DiCRA) initiative in India. Digitalisation and open data can challenge corruption by reducing discretion, increasing transparency, and enabling accountability by limiting human interactions.

This multi-stakeholder collaboration for data sharing – involving governments, research organizations, citizens and data scientists across the world –promotes open innovation and transparency to strengthen climate resilience in agriculture.

Third, the interlinkages between sustainable development financing and the strength of governance systems, both at the national and global levels, will be front and centre in the discussions. As the global financial framework grapples with the fallout of multiple crises, $4 trillion is needed to address the financing deficit to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The quality of governance in any nation shapes the effectiveness of its financing mechanisms and policies, while the availability of robust financing also influences the stability and quality of governance systems.

A breakdown in either of these jeopardizes the social contract, exacerbating crises, with international bodies and governments overly focused on short term and reactionary responses. Urgent reforms are needed in national and global governance systems to prevent corruption and illicit financial flows, to accelerate progress towards the SDGs

Fourth, in these challenging times, countries need to be able to evaluate the impact of their anti-corruption initiatives and reforms and, most importantly, learn from what works, and what doesn’t.

The conference offers a platform to introduce innovative approaches to measuring corruption, drawing on UNDP’s work with partners in this area. Robust measurement methodologies are fundamental, since without standardized tools and methodologies, collecting data and evidence to inform policy decisions on anti-corruption reforms is difficult.

In UNDP, we strive to ensure that every dollar spent goes to development activities while strengthening UNDP’s status as a trusted partner in delivering development results. The UNDP Transparency Portal is UNDP’s commitment to ensuring transparency, accountability, and continuous self-reflection and learning with the support of independent assessments, audits, and oversight mechanisms. The site provides the public with access to data on over 10,000 UNDP projects.

Addressing corruption demands effective and innovative partnerships, increased resource allocation, and sustained commitment to anti-corruption endeavours, including in complex political environments where UNDP works, such as in Ukraine.

Only then can countries effectively tackle the interconnected challenges they face and restore trust in governance. The discussions at the 21st IACC will play a pivotal role in shaping the global anti-corruption agenda for the next biennium.

Francine Pickup is Deputy Director, Bureau for Policy and Programme Support, UNDP

IPS UN Bureau

Categories: Africa

UN’s Development Goals: Rich Nations Lead While World’s Poor Lag Far Behind

Mon, 06/17/2024 - 04:55

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 17 2024 (IPS)

When the 193-member UN General Assembly adopted a landmark resolution, back in September 2015, the goals were highly ambitious: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, eliminate inequalities, protect human rights, promote gender empowerment and ensure economic, social and environmental development—and much more.

The deadline for achieving these targets was set for 2030.

But nine years after the resolution—and six years ahead of 2030—the SDGs are mostly far behind, particularly among the world’s developing nations.

And the targeted goals are like a mirage in a parched desert: the more you get closer, the further it moves away from you.

According to the UN, the implementation of the SDGs has been mostly undermined by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the devastating impact of the ongoing climate crises, rising debt burdens, the growing military conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and the rash of civil wars in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, triggering unprecedented humanitarian crises and resulting in a setback to economic progress worldwide.

As a result, there is a demand that the unattainable 2030 deadline be extended by world political leaders meeting in New York on September 22–23 for a much-ballyhooed Summit of the Future.

Meanwhile a new report on SDGs released June 17, is considered especially timely amidst deep climate crises, declining multilateralism, and ahead of the “Summit of the Future,” as it provides a new Index of countries’ support for UN-based multilateralism, identifies priorities to upgrade the United Nations (endorsed by 100+ leading scientists and practitioners worldwide), and illustrates new pathways demonstrating how to achieve sustainable food and land systems by mid-century.

According to the 9th edition of the Sustainable Development Report (SDR) released by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), none of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are on track to be achieved by 2030, and only an estimated 16% of the SDG targets are progressing.

The report was prepared by the SDSN’s SDG Transformation Center and coordinated by Guillaume Lafortune in cooperation with Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs. Since 2016, the global edition of the SDR has provided the most up-to-date data to track and rank the performance of all UN member states on the SDGs.

Globally, the five SDG targets on which the highest proportion of countries show a reversal of progress since 2015 include: obesity rate (under SDG 2), press freedom (under SDG 16), the red list index (under SDG 15), sustainable nitrogen management (under SDG 2), and – due in a large part to the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors that may vary across countries, life expectancy at birth (under SDG 3).

Goals and targets related to basic access to infrastructure and services, including SDG9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), show slightly more positive trends, although progress remains too slow and uneven across countries.

Additional key insights include:

Barbados ranks the highest in its commitment to UN-based multilateralism on a new Index; the United States ranks last.
SDG targets related to food and land systems are particularly off-track. Globally, 600 million people will still suffer from hunger by 2030, while obesity is on the rise.

Danielle Nierenberg, President and Founder, Food Tank, told IPS: “I think this report finds that there is a lack of political will to achieve the SDGs—most nations are not investing enough in food and agriculture or farmers.”

She said policymakers have their heads in the sand and need to realize the urgency of investing in solutions that help farmers, eaters, and food businesses.

“We need more investment in food system transformation that actually meets the needs of food producers and achieves a planet-friendly diet—foods that are nutrient dense, resilient to climate change, delicious, and accessible and affordable,” said Nierenberg.

Frederic Mousseau, Oakland Institute’s Policy Director, told IPS: “This new report is yet another alert that we urgently need to take decisive action on food and agriculture.”

“The world already produces over twice as much food as we need to feed the population. However, over half of the food harvested goes into agrofuels and animal feed, with massive detrimental impacts on the environment, biodiversity, and our health.”

Agrochemical corporations and governments, he said, continue to tell us that “we need to increase food production to feed the world, using more land and fossil-fuel based industrial agriculture.”

“The truth is that we actually need to produce less food. We must drastically curb the amount of commodities used for animal feed and agrofuels and phase out the use of polluting chemicals for agricultural production,” he declared.

According to the SDSN report, the pace of SDG progress varies significantly across country groups. Nordic countries continue to lead on SDG achievement, with BRICS demonstrating strong progress and poor and vulnerable nations lagging far behind.

Similar to past years, European countries, notably Nordic countries, top the 2024 SDG Index. Finland ranks number 1 on the SDG Index, followed by Sweden (#2), and Denmark (#3), plus Germany (#4) and France (#5).

Yet, even these countries face significant challenges in achieving several SDGs.

Average SDG progress in BRICS (Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China, and South Africa) and BRICS+ (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) since 2015 has been faster than the world average.

In addition, East and South Asia has emerged as the region that has made the most SDG progress since 2015. By contrast, the gap between the world average SDG Index and the performance of the poorest and most vulnerable countries, including Small Island Developing States (SIDS), has widened since 2015.

In addition to the SDG Index, this year’s edition includes a new Index of countries’ support for UN-based multilateralism covering all 193 UN Member States and new FABLE pathways demonstrating how to achieve sustainable food and land systems by mid-century.

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, President of the SDSN and a lead author of the report, says: “Midway between the founding of the UN in 1945 and the year 2100, we cannot rely on business as usual. The world faces great global challenges, including dire ecological crises, widening inequalities, disruptive and potentially hazardous technologies, and deadly conflicts, we are at a crossroads.”

“Ahead of the UN’s Summit of the Future, the international community must take stock of the vital accomplishments and the limitations of the United Nations system and work toward upgrading multilateralism for the decades ahead.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Categories: Africa

Land Grabs Squeeze Rural Poor Worldwide

Mon, 06/17/2024 - 04:29

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 17 2024 (IPS)

Since 2008, farmland acquisitions have doubled prices worldwide, squeezing family farmers and other poor rural communities. Such land grabs are worsening inequality, poverty, and food insecurity.

Squeezing land and farmers
A new IPES-Food report highlights land grabs (including for ostensibly ‘green’ purposes), the financial means used, and some significant implications.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Powerful governments, financiers, speculators, and agribusinesses are opportunistically gaining control of more cultivable land. The report notes the 2007-08 food price spike and financial crash catalysed more land acquisitions.

Quantitative easing and financialization after the 2008 global financial crisis enabled even more land grabs. Investors, agri-food companies, and even sovereign wealth funds have obtained farmland worldwide.

Agribusinesses and other investors want land to make more profits, urging governments to enable takeovers. Cultivable land is being used for cash crops, natural resource extraction, mining, real property and infrastructure development, and ‘green’ projects, including biofuels.

The land squeeze has developed in novel ways, with most large-scale deals diverting farmland from food production. Instead, environmentally damaging ‘industrial agriculture’ has spread, worsening rural poverty and outmigration.

The new land rush has displaced small-scale farmers, indigenous peoples, pastoralists, and rural communities or otherwise eroded their access to land. It has worsened rural poverty, food insecurity, and land inequality. Marginalising local land users has made family farming less viable.

‘Green grabs’ involve governments and corporations taking land for dubious large-scale tree planting, biodiversity offsets, carbon sequestration, conservation, biofuels, and ‘green hydrogen’ projects. Water and other resource demands also threaten food production.

The land rush has slowed recently, but underlying pressures and trends continue. The pandemic, Ukraine and Gaza wars, and government and market responses have revived alarmist ‘food shortage’ narratives, justifying more grabs.

Investing in dispossession
Agricultural investments rose tenfold during 2005-18. By 2023, 960 investment funds specialising in food and farming assets had properties worth over $150 billion.

Nearly 45% of all farmland investments in 2018, worth $15 billion, were by pension funds and insurance companies. During 2005-17, pension, insurance and endowment funds invested $45 billion in farmland.

Unsurprisingly, land prices have risen continuously for two decades in North America and three in Canada. During 2008-22, land prices nearly doubled worldwide, even tripling in Central and Eastern Europe!

Pension funds and other private investments doubled UK farmland prices during 2010-15. More recently, investments in US farmland have doubled since the pandemic!

The largest one per cent of farms worldwide now have 70% of farmland. In Latin America, 55% of farms only have 3% of farmland!

More than half the farmland thus obtained is for water-demanding crop production. While a fifth of large-scale land deals claim to be ‘green’, 87% are in areas of high biodiversity!

Mining accounted for 14% of large-scale land deals over the past decade.
Growing demand for rare earths and other critical minerals is driving mining on former farmland, worsening environmental degradation and conflicts.

Instead of protecting national, social or community interests, regulations seem to protect the culprits. The terms of such deals often make things worse. Thus, foreign corporations successfully sued the Colombian government for trying to stop their large-scale mining project.

Green land grabs
Some governments and big businesses advocate compliance with environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards. They invoke sustainability, including climate goals, to justify elitist conservation and carbon offset schemes.

Over half of government carbon removal pledges involve the land of small-scale farmers and indigenous peoples. ‘Green grabs’ – for carbon offsets, biodiversity, conservation and biofuel projects – account for a fifth of large-scale land deals.

Government pledges to absorb carbon dioxide into the land surface commit almost 1.2 billion hectares, equivalent to the world’s cropland area! Despite modest climate benefits, problematic carbon offset markets are expected to quadruple over the next seven years, driving even more land grabs.

Carbon offset and biodiversity markets drive such transactions, drawing major polluters into land markets. Oil giant Shell alone has committed over $450 million for offset projects.

African land grabbed
The land squeeze is worldwide, affecting various places differently. Land grabs have significantly affected Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, while land inequality grows in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Asia.

Susan Chomba and Million Belay found almost a thousand large-scale land deals in Africa since 2000. Mozambique had 110 such deals, followed by Ethiopia, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Some 25 million hectares involve Blue Carbon, run by a Dubai royal. The company has bought rights to forests and farmland to sell carbon offsets. The land is from five Anglophone African governments, involving a fifth of Zimbabwe, a tenth of Liberia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia.

Large-scale land deals put indigenous and pastoralist communities at greater risk. In Ethiopia, Ghana, and elsewhere, land sales have forced farmers to work on smaller fragmented plots, become wage labourers, or migrate, undermining their ability to feed themselves, their communities and others.

African smallholders, pastoralists, and indigenous communities have long protected their land and biodiversity. However, most now lack the rights and means to do so more effectively, let alone feed Africa and improve climate action. Thus, the climate crisis is being used against rural African communities.

IPS UN Bureau

Categories: Africa

Stand Up and Speak Out to End Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan

Fri, 06/14/2024 - 20:19

Statement by The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of ECW’s High-Level Steering Group, Marking the 1,000 Day Ban on Girls’ Secondary Education in Afghanistan

By External Source
Jun 14 2024 (IPS-Partners)

For 1,000 days girls in Afghanistan have been banned from secondary school education. We must now stand up and speak out together for the girls and women of Afghanistan with a clarion call to the de facto authorities and world leaders to end the ban on girls’ secondary education in Afghanistan.

The cost of inaction is unimaginable. As we speak, 8 out of 10 school-aged girls and young women are out of school in Afghanistan, and 1.5 million girls are impacted by the ban on secondary education.

Every day, more and more out-of-school girls are being forced into marriage for lack of any other future prospects. In fact, the ban on Afghan girls’ education after grade six is correlated with a 25% increase in the rate of child marriage, according to a new UN Women report. The ban is also associated with an increase of the risk of maternal mortality by at least 50%. Mental health distress and depression is also soaring, and so are suicide attempts.

In all, 4.2 million children are out of school. The ban on female teachers, severe restrictions to aid groups, a return to religious teaching and other factors aren’t just hurting the girls of Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch found a significant decline in the quality of boys’ education across 8 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

For 1,000 days Afghan girls have lived under a veil of oppression and gender apartheid. For 1,000 days, they have seen their human rights ripped from their hands. Imagine the long-term impact this will have on the people of Afghanistan. Imagine the long-term impacts this will have on our global community.

As we look to end hunger and poverty in Afghanistan and beyond, the impact of investments in education is readily apparent. For each extra year of schooling there is a 10% increase in hourly earnings. It can lift-up entire economies. For each year of additional schooling, a nation can expect up to 18% return in GDP.

This is also our investment in peace, not just in Afghanistan, but for nations everywhere. Each year of education reduces the risk of conflict by 20%, according to the World Bank. And it’s our investment in girls and women everywhere. Increases in schooling for women can cut children mortality under five by as much as half, and for every $1 we spend on girls’ education we generate $2.80 in return.

For 1,000 days, we have seen the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child cast aside in blatant violation of international law and our shared humanity. We refuse to give up on the girls and boys of Afghanistan.

The UN system, international non-profits and other key strategic partners are working quickly to retool education investments to focus on community-based education and localized action to deliver on the humanitarian imperative. Without this support, an entire generation of Afghan girls face increased risks of child marriage, sexual violence and other grave violations of their human rights.

In 2023, Education Cannot Wait investments in Afghanistan reached nearly 200,000 children – girls and boys – through community-based education programmes. We must scale up this support with increased funding and increased political pressure to deliver the inherent human right of a quality education to every girl and every boy in Afghanistan.

As the world mourns this inhumane and immoral 1,000-day ban on girls’ education, global leaders, advocates, influencers and courageous Afghan girls have stepped up to share their call for an end to gender apartheid in Afghanistan through Education Cannot Wait’s ground-breaking #AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign.

As one girl put it: “I am overwhelmed by a profound sense of sorrow and injustice, knowing that we, as women, are denied the fundamental right to education.” The world must unite behind the girls of Afghanistan. Share #AfghanGirlsVoices today.

Categories: Africa

Fake Climate Solutions Spread Across Latin America

Fri, 06/14/2024 - 16:19

A map of fake solutions shows projects with climate-friendly intentions or appearances but with counterproductive social and environmental impacts. Indigenous communities are one of the most affected population sectors. Credit: Platform for Climate Justice

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jun 14 2024 (IPS)

Government and private initiatives and programmes to address the climate crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean are in fact a vast array of fake solutions, according to a new regional map made by environmental organisations in several of its countries.

The map “offers an overview to understand the dynamics and the deceptive language of fake solutions, which allow big polluters to obtain allocations to continue their activities and contribute to global warming,” Ivonne Yánez, president of Ecuador’s Acción Ecológica, told IPS.

Made by the Latin American and Caribbean Platform for Climate Justice, a network of environmental groups, the map shows the fake solutions of dozens of projects for green energy and the production of its inputs, and for storing carbon in forests, other ecosystems and agricultural systems.

There are also geoengineering projects to prevent climate change, and climate change adaptation based on ecosystems, infrastructure and engineering projects.

"The map offers an overview to understand the dynamics and the deceptive language of fake solutions, which allow big polluters to obtain allocations to continue their activities and contribute to global warming": Ivonne Yánez

“More than a format, it is a tool for visibility, a pedagogical tool that joins very diverse players, such as scholars, researchers, NGOs and activists gathered in the Platform,” said Liliana Buitrago, a researcher at the Observatory of Political Ecology of Venezuela, which released the map in May, to IPS.

The network “states that transition initiatives coming from the territorial fabric and communities, outside the frameworks imposed by the green economy, corporate greenwashing and corporate capture” of carbon emissions, “are urgent,” Buitrago said.

Presenting the map, Yánez explained that “what green capitalism seeks is not only to appropriate nature’s ability to cleanse itself, to recreate life, to photosynthesise”.

“Through fake solutions, it also takes advantage of and appropriates what indigenous peoples have done for thousands of years, which is protecting and taking care of forests, or peasants that care for the soil. And for what? To carry on an escalation of fossil fuel extraction,” said the activist.

In March 2021, environmentalists from Greenpeace threw green paint on the fuselage of an Air France plane at Paris airport to protest the company’s purchase of carbon credits. Major firms purchased the offsets without backtracking on the expansion of carbon-intensive operations. Credit: Fenis Meyer / Greenpeace

Carbon, an unscathed villain

An analysis of the 83 cases that make up the first map – 100 more will appear in future editions – shows that 70 per cent of fake solutions to the climate crisis are privately funded, and that indigenous communities and small farmers are the most affected.

The most common among fake solution categories are projects to store carbon in forests, other ecosystems and agricultural systems, in 50 per cent of cases.

REDD+ projects (Reducing Emissions – mainly carbon dioxide, CO2 – from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries) account for 33 per cent of the cases.

The REDD+ framework allows countries to issue and market carbon offset certifications “that are put in the financial system at the disposal of companies that want to use them as licenses to continue polluting and generating emissions”, criticizes Yánez.

Wind energy projects, and new forestry plantations justified by carbon sequestration, comprise 10 and 11 per cent of the projects on the map.

The Platform considers the recent launch of blue carbon credits (debt issues that finance ecosystem conservation projects) in oil-producing Trinidad and Tobago, for work in the southwest of Tobago and in the Caroni swamp in Trinidad, as a form of greenwashing.

In Brazil, among several cases, Portel-Pará is shown at the head of four carbon storage projects in 7,000 square kilometres of forests and other ecosystems, through land negotiations and agreements on deforestation boundaries with communities in the northern Amazonian state of Pará.

The Latin American platform Alianza Biodiversidad criticises that these projects create carbon credits that are bought by large firms that continue to pollute, such as Repsol (oil), Air France, Delta Airlines and Boeing (aviation), Amazon and Aldi (commerce) or Samsung and Toshiba (technology).

View of a solar farm in Namasigue, southern Honduras. In several countries in the region, large solar and wind energy installations force the displacement of communities, due to alterations in land tenure and use, with impacts on water and crops. Credit: Scatec / Cepad

Displaced people, a cliché

Looking at the map from North to South, the fake solutions start in Mexico, with the example of lithium mining in 13 salt flats in the states of Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí (north-central Mexico) by the Canadian firm Advance Gold Corp.

This project has caused displacement of peasant populations, pollution, and changes in land ownership and use.

Projects for solar photovoltaic power plants in Quetzaltepeque (eastern Guatemala) and Namasigüe (southern Honduras), run by private consortiums with capitals from the Norwegian firm Scatec, have in common the displacement of peasant and fishing populations, loss of habitats and biodiversity.

In Colombia, the San José ranch received funding from the Green Climate Fund and Dutch banks for a project in the eastern department of Vichada to expand its cattle herd from 9,000 head on 8,000 hectares to 750,000 animals on 180,000 hectares.

The company is singled out in the Fund for sequestering more carbon than it emits, but the Platform questions the cattle expansion’s contribution to climate and highlights risks to a neighbouring reservation of the Sikuani people.

Helicopter view of the last, diminished glacier in the Venezuelan Andes, whose end is being delayed with plastic sheeting. Some climate action initiatives are not only misguided in their goals and approaches, but can also become pollution hotspots. Credit: Minec

Energy with colour

In Costa Rica, a hydroelectric “green energy” facility was proposed in 2013 in the southwestern canton of Pérez Zeledón. It lacked the necessary documentation, had falsified land-use permits by the mayor’s office, and would cause foreseeable pollution and loss of habitats and biodiversity.

The state environmental technical secretariat granted it expedited permits but, in the face of public criticism and rejection, the government cancelled the project.

In Jamaica, a “green energy” project has been underway since 2016, 90 kilometres west of Kingston. A wind farm of 11 wind turbines, with funding from the United States and Canada, is supposed to cover three percent of the island’s electricity demand and reduce emissions by 66,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.

The map points out that, at the same time, Jamaica is handing out concessions for bauxite mining and aluminium reduction, a key material for energy transition but whose production causes desertification, disease, and deepens extractivism.

The Dominican Republic hosts the largest photovoltaic power plant in the Antilles, the Girasol solar park, in the southern municipality of Yaguate, west of Santo Domingo. It has 268,200 panels installed, with an investment of 100 million dollars by the Cayman Islands-based firm Haina Investment.

The map shows the changes in territorial dynamics, the relationship of locals with the environment, and the impact caused in the lands from which minerals are extracted to produce the installed technology.

Monocultures and deaf ears

In 2006, oil-producing Venezuela presented a project for ethanol production with sugar mills, using sugar cane grown on 300,000 hectares in the southwestern plains. This never came to fruition but showed an inclination to favour monoculture for fuels instead of diversified food production.

The map also shows the country recently initiated a project to slow down the extinction of its last glacier, more than 4,000 metres above sea level on Humboldt Peak, in the southwestern Andes, by covering it with polystyrene mesh.

The project ignored recommendations from the University of the Andes concerning risks in its implementation, plastic pollution of air, water and soil, and because it will not prevent the glacier from melting due to global warming.

The Luxembourg-based Arbaro Fund, active in seven countries in the South, bought 1,080 hectares of land in three Ecuadorean provinces and is planning another 500 hectares for monoculture tree plantations, whose management aims, in theory, to protect the environment and capture CO2.

The same fund acquired 9,000 hectares in the central department of San Pedro in Paraguay, and two thirds will be planted with eucalyptus trees. The Platform warns that the project legalises land grabbing, with devastating effects on the environment and on indigenous and small farming communities.

Some 100 civil society organisations alerted the Green Climate Fund in 2020 about the harm small farmers may suffer from land regime change and pollution, plus the loss of habitats, biodiversity and agro-diversity. However, Arbaro Fund received 25 million dollars to support its plantations.

A view of Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where a nationwide public consultation determined a major oil field was to be left in the ground undeveloped. Environmental groups see these measures and initiatives as part of a successful climate drive. Credit: Snap

New searches

A stark contrast to the “fake solutions” on the map are initiatives such as Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s decision to set a deadline on his country’s dependence on fossil fuels, or the rejection of certain oil and mining operations decided in a referendum by the people of Ecuador.

“The people’s decision to leave oil in the ground is a clear contribution to the fight against climate change, as is the decision to ban mining in the Andean Chocó, which is rich in biodiversity,” Yánez stressed.

In the referendum held on 20 August 2023, 59 per cent of Ecuadorians voted to prevent oil exploitation in the Yasuní national park in the Amazon. In Quito, 68 per cent of the vote vetoed gold and copper prospecting in the Andean Chocó area, west of the capital.

Buitrago believes that, “far from being solutions to the problem, fake solutions are ways of perpetuating the extractivist and exploitative model of accumulation that has caused the climate crisis”.

That is why the map, by showing contrasts and criticisms of fake solutions, “also seeks to state that other organisations can make the real ones visible”, said Yánez.

Categories: Africa

Sawantwadi’s Traditional Handmade Toys Struggle for Survival

Fri, 06/14/2024 - 10:07

Sawantwadi in Maharashtra, on the western coast of India, bordering Goa, has always been known for its wooden toys. A picturesque town amid hills and lush greenery, Sawantwadi retains an old-world charm to this day. The regal Sawantwadi Palace holds pride of place, with colleges, schools, and temples cloistered around the periphery of the lake, […]

Categories: Africa

Bangladesh Can Boost Growth & Climate Resilience by Investing in Women

Fri, 06/14/2024 - 07:54

Credit: Ibnul Asaf Jawed Susam/iStock via Getty Images. IMF

By Jayendu De and Genet Zinabou
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 14 2024 (IPS)

Bangladesh has made major gains for its population, the world’s eighth largest with more than 170 million people. Per capita incomes, one of the best measures of broad economic well-being, have risen seven-fold in the past three decades while poverty has been reduced to a fraction of former levels.

Such progress has been driven in part by greater labor force participation by women, most notably in the garment industry, and has been accompanied by other meaningful improvements in women’s empowerment.

Our recent analysis, however, shows there are still large gaps between women and men. Notably, women’s labor force participation is only half the rate of men.

Prior IMF research shows that closing this gap could increase the country’s economic output by nearly 40 percent. Women also remain less likely than men to obtain tertiary education, and they face greater barriers in accessing financial services. Remedying both factors could raise the entire economy’s productivity.

At the same time, efforts to close gender gaps face headwinds from Bangladesh’s extreme vulnerability to climate change and natural disasters. Like other economic shocks, climate shocks generally affect the already poor and vulnerable the most. This means that Bangladeshi women, who on average have fewer resources than men, are likely to be disproportionately impacted.

Our analysis further highlights several factors that render women in Bangladesh uniquely exposed to the effects of climate change and natural disasters:

Bangladesh already recognized the need to integrate gender perspectives in its 2009 Climate Change Strategy. Following this, the government adopted the first Climate Change and Gender Action Plan 2013, which it updated in March 2024.

Renewed efforts will be needed to ensure successful implementation of the plan and achieve simultaneous progress on climate action and gender equality.

To this end, policymakers should capitalize as much as possible on the synergies between women’s empowerment, economic growth, and increased resilience to climate change.

Policies that support women’s labor force participation deserve particular attention, including those that expand their access to skills development and higher education, ease unpaid care burdens by expanding affordable childcare, reduce informality, and address gender norms that discourage women from seeking formal jobs and higher pay.

Boosting health and education spending would help empower women while raising labor productivity and making the whole population more resilient to climate change.

Persistent gaps between women and men in access to finance should be tackled by instilling confidence in formal finance, strengthening women’s property rights and carrying out financial literacy campaigns targeted at women.

Bangladesh was an early adopter of gender responsive budgeting and has more recently introduced climate budget tagging, a tool for tracking climate-related spending in the national budget.

However, insufficient integration of gender and climate considerations during the initial strategic phase of budget formulation means that the system in Bangladesh currently functions primarily as an ex-post accounting exercise.

Improvements in this area combined with more systematic impact assessment of government programs would enable more efficient channeling of public resources toward achieving the country’s gender equity and climate goals.

Lastly, women should not be thought of as mere beneficiaries of climate action. Rather, just as women played an integral role in the development of the garment industry and Bangladesh’s growth success in recent decades, they should be empowered to play an active role in the country’s green transition.

The IMF’s engagement with Bangladesh, including the country becoming the first in Asia to access our new Resilience and Sustainability Trust, aims to support policy efforts in many of these directions.

Jayendu De is the IMF Resident Representative in Bangladesh. Genet Zinabou is an economist in the Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF.

Source: International Monetary Fund (IMF)

IPS UN Bureau

Categories: Africa

Haiti: Transitional Administration Faces Stern Test

Fri, 06/14/2024 - 07:09

Credit: Bruna Prado/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jun 14 2024 (IPS)

There’s been recent change in violence-torn Haiti – but whether much-needed progress results remains to be seen.

Acting prime minister Garry Conille was sworn in on 3 June. A former UN official who briefly served as prime minister over a decade ago, Conille was the compromise choice of the Transitional Presidential Council. The Council formed in April to temporarily assume the functions of the presidency following the resignation of de facto leader Ariel Henry.

Upsurge in violence

Haiti has seen intense and widespread gang violence since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021. Henry was finally forced out as the conflict escalated still further. In February, two major gang networks joined forces. The gangs attacked Haiti’s main airport, forcing it to close for almost three months and stopping Henry returning from abroad.

Gangs took control of police stations and Hait’s two biggest jails, releasing over 4,000 prisoners. The violence targeted an area of the capital, Port-au-Prince, previously considered safe, where the presidential palace, government headquarters and embassies are located. Haitian citizens paid a heaver price: the UN estimates that around 2,500 people were killed or injured in gang violence in the first quarter of this year, a staggering 53 per cent increase on the previous quarter.

Henry won’t be missed by civil society. He was widely seen as lacking any legitimacy. Moïse announced his appointment shortly before his assassination, but it was never formalised, and he then won a power struggle thanks in part to the support of foreign states. His tenure was a blatant failure. It was when the gangs seemed on the verge of taking full control of Port-au-Prince that Henry finally lost US support.

Now the USA, other states and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have thrown their weight behind the Council and a Kenya-led international police force, which has recently begun to deploy.

Contested developments

Gang leaders can be expected to maintain their resistance to these developments. The most prominent, ex-police officer Jimmy Chérizier, demands a role in any talks. But this looks like posturing. Chérizier likes to portray himself as a revolutionary, on the side of poor people against elites. But the gangs are predatory. They kill innocent people, and it’s the poorest who suffer the most. The things the gangs make their money from – including kidnapping for ransom, extortion and smuggling – benefit from weak law enforcement and a lack of central authority. Gang leaders are best served by maximum chaos for as long as possible, and when that ends will seek an accommodation with favourable politicians, as they’ve enjoyed before.

Political squabbling suits the gangs, which makes it a concern that it took extensive and protracted negotiations to establish the Council. The opaque process was evidently characterised by self-interested manoeuvring as politicians jockeyed for position and status.

The resulting body has nine members: seven with voting rights and two observers. Six of the seven come from political groupings, with the seventh a private sector representative. One observer represents religious groups and the other civil society: Régine Abraham, a crop scientist by profession, from the Rally for a National Agreement.

The Council’s formation was shortly followed by the arrival of an advance force of Kenyan police, with more to follow. It’s been a long time coming. The current plan for an international police force was adopted by a UN Security Council resolution in October 2023. The government of Kenya took the lead, offering a thousand officers, with smaller numbers to come from elsewhere. But Kenya’s opposition won a court order temporarily preventing the move. Henry was in Kenya to sign a mutual security agreement to circumvent the ruling when he was left stranded by the airport closure.

Many Haitians are rightly wary of the prospect of foreign powers getting involved. The country has a dismal history of self-serving international interference, particularly by the US government, while UN forces have been no saviours. A peacekeeping mission from 2004 to 2017 committed sexual abuse and introduced cholera. This will be the 11th UN-organised mission since 1993, and all have been accused of human rights violations.

Civil society points to the Kenyan police’s long track record of committing violence and rights abuses, and is concerned it won’t understand local dynamics. There’s also the question of whether resources spent on the mission wouldn’t be better used to properly equip and support Haiti’s forces, which have consistently been far less well equipped than the gangs. Previous international initiatives have manifestly failed to help strengthen the capacity of Haitian institutions to protect rights and uphold the rule of law.

Time to listen

Haitian civil society is right to criticise the current process as falling short of expectations. It’s an impossible task to expect one person to represent the diversity of Haiti’s civil society, no matter how hard they try. And that person doesn’t even have a vote: the power to make decisions by majority vote is in the hands of political parties many feel helped create the current mess.

The Council is also a male-dominated institution: Abraham is its only female member. With gangs routinely using sexual violence as a weapon, the Council hardly seems in good shape to start building a Haiti free of violence against women and girls.

And given the role of international powers in bringing it about, the Council – just like the Kenya-led mission – is open to the accusation of being just another foreign intervention, giving rise to suspicions about the motives of those behind it.

The latest steps could be the start of something better, but only if they’re built on and move in the right direction. Civil society is pushing for more from the government: for much more women’s leadership and civil society engagement. For the Kenya-led mission, civil society is urging strong human rights safeguards, including a means for complaints to be heard if the mission, like all its predecessors, commits human rights abuses. This shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

Categories: Africa

Education Cannot Wait’s #AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign Highlights Real-Life Testimonies of Hope, Courage and Resilience by Afghan Girls Denied Their Right to Education

Thu, 06/13/2024 - 20:02

The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif and ECW Global Champion Somaya Faruqi mark 1,000th day of ban on girls' education in Afghanistan

By External Source
NEW YORK, Jun 13 2024 (IPS-Partners)

Today, people across the globe mark a tragic milestone for human rights, children’s rights and girls’ rights: 1,000 days since girls were banned from attending secondary school in Afghanistan. To commemorate and reflect on this unacceptable milestone, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), as global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises within the United Nations, is launching the second phase of its compelling #AfghanGirlsVoices campaign.

The campaign features inspiring artwork, poetry, cartoons and more from some of the world’s leading artists, along with powerful, moving quotes from Afghan girls denied their right to education, but who hang on to the hope that their right will be restored.

The first phase of the #AfghanGirlsVoices campaign was launched by the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, ECW Executive Director, Yasmine Sherif, and ECW Global Champion Somaya Faruqi, the former captain of the Afghan Girls’ Robotics Team, in August 2023. Since the launch, the campaign has been viewed and supported by millions worldwide.

This second phase is already rallying additional global leaders and prominent supporters, including bestselling authors, Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner) and Christina Lamb (I Am Malala); ECW Global Champion and Al-Jazeera TV Principal Presenter, Folly Bah Thibault; UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett; Global Citizen Co-Founder Mick Sheldrick; 2023 Global Citizen Prize winner and founder of LEARN Afghanistan, Pashtana Durrani; and many more, including several leading Afghan women activists.

“The world must unite behind Afghan girls. The denial of the right to a quality education is an abomination and a violation of the UN Charter, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and fundamental human rights. Through the global #AfghanGirlsVoices campaign, people everywhere can stand up for human rights and stand up for gender-justice by sharing these stories of courage, hope and resilience,” said The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of the ECW High-Level Steering Group.

“As a global community, we must reignite our global efforts to ensure that every adolescent girl can exercise her right to an education. Gender discrimination is unacceptable and will only hurt the already war-torn Afghanistan and her long-suffering people. Girls’ right to an education is a fundamental right as outlined in international human rights law. For the people of Afghanistan – men, women, girls and boys – adolescent girls’ education is essential to rebuild Afghanistan and ensure that every Afghan enjoys the universal right to an education,” said ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif.

“Girls in Afghanistan are strong and resilient, and they refuse to give up their hopes and dreams. One thousand days without access to education is a severe injustice for Afghan girls, whose determination should be met with opportunities, not obstacles. Every day that passes, more and more girls find themselves forced into marriage due to lack of prospects for the future. This must stop,” said ECW Global Champion Somaya Faruqi. “The world must hear the voices of Afghan girls who are only asking for one thing: their most basic right to education to be fulfilled. With access to education, Afghan girls can contribute to building our country and be positive changemakers for our communities. All Afghan girls deserve an equal opportunity to learn and thrive, and it is our undeniable duty to fight for their right to education and their future.”

Approximately 80% of school-aged Afghan girls and young women are out of school, and nearly 30% of girls in Afghanistan have never entered primary education, according to UNESCO.

With the bans on girls’ secondary and tertiary education, decades’ worth of education and development gains have been wiped out. Between 2001 and 2018, enrollment increased tenfold across all education levels, from 1 million in 2001 to 10 million in 2018. By August 2021, 4 out of 10 students in primary school were girls. Along with these jumps came social and economic growth, and other improvements that benefited vast swaths of Afghan society.

The change in leadership sent seismic waves across all aspects of the Afghan economy and society. Today, 23.7 million people – over half the population – require urgent humanitarian support, 6.3 million people are displaced, and basic human rights are under fire. Girls and boys are at grave risk of gender-based violence, child labour, early marriage and other human rights abuses. Despite the urgent needs of the $3 billion total humanitarian response funding ask, only $221 million has been received to date, according to UNOCHA.

Since ECW launched its investments in Afghanistan in 2017, the Fund has invested US$88.8 million, reaching more than 230,000 children with quality, holistic education support. ECW’s multi-year investments focus on community-based learning that reaches girls and boys through a variety of activities such as the provision of teaching and learning materials, teacher training, and mental health and psychosocial support.

Categories: Africa

1,000 Days—Afghan Girls’ Voices Campaign Enters Second Phase

Thu, 06/13/2024 - 16:10

ECW Global Champion Somaya Faruqi. Credit: ECW

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jun 13 2024 (IPS)

The global community is marking a tragic milestone for human rights, children’s rights, and girls’ rights, as it has been 1,000 days since girls were banned from attending secondary school in Afghanistan. The ban has wiped out decades’ worth of education and development gains, as approximately 80 percent of school-aged Afghan girls and young women are out of school.

“As a global community, we must reignite our global efforts to ensure that every adolescent girl can exercise her right to an education. Gender discrimination is unacceptable and will only hurt the already war-torn Afghanistan and her long-suffering people. Girls’ right to an education is a fundamental right as outlined in international human rights law,” said Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Executive Director Yasmine Sherif.

“For the people of Afghanistan—men, women, girls and boys—adolescent girls’ education is essential to rebuild Afghanistan and ensure that every Afghan enjoys the universal right to an education.”

Yasmine Sherif, ECW Executive Director. Credit: ECW

Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner. Credit: ECW

It has been a thousand days since Afghan girls were allowed to attend secondary school. Mehnaz Akber Aziz, CEO of Children’s Global Network Pakistan, says, “This is very concerning for us Pakistanis, as neighbors and stakeholders. How can a nation progress with 50 percent of its population deprived of education? Afghanistan’s prosperity depends on equitable opportunities for all its population, both boys and girls.”

To commemorate and reflect on this unacceptable milestone, ECW, the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises within the United Nations, has launched the second phase of its compelling #AfghanGirlsVoices campaign.

The campaign features inspiring artwork, poetry, cartoons and more from some of the world’s leading artists, along with powerful, moving quotes from Afghan girls denied their right to education but who hang on to the hope that their right will be restored.

Faruqi stressed that the world “must hear the voices of Afghan girls who are only asking for one thing: their most basic right to education to be fulfilled. With access to education, Afghan girls can contribute to building our country and be positive changemakers for our communities. All Afghan girls deserve an equal opportunity to learn and thrive, and it is our undeniable duty to fight for their right to education and their future.”

The gender apartheid in Afghanistan, which denies girls and women their right to education, appalled Antara Ganguli, director of the UN Girls’ Education Initiative. “We stand in solidarity with the Afghan women and girls who are fighting for their fundamental human rights. The international community must do more to end this injustice and ensure all children in Afghanistan can access inclusive, safe and gender-equal education.”

In August 2023, Gordon Brown, the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Sherif, and Faruqi, the former captain of the Afghan Girls’ Robotics Team, launched the first phase of the #AfghanGirlsVoices campaign. Millions of people around the world have viewed and supported the campaign since its launch.

“The world must unite behind Afghan girls. The denial of the right to a quality education is an abomination and a violation of the UN Charter, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and fundamental human rights. Through the global #AfghanGirlsVoices campaign, people everywhere can stand up for human rights and stand up for gender justice by sharing these stories of courage, hope and resilience,” said Brown, who is also Chair of the ECW High-Level Steering Group.

ECW Global Champion and author of I Am Malala, Christina Lamb. Credit: ECW

Ahmed Hussen, Minister of International Development, Canada. Credit: ECW

This second phase is already rallying additional global leaders and prominent supporters, including bestselling authors such as Khaled Hosseini, who wrote The Kite Runner; ECW Global Champion Christina Lamb of the I Am Malala and co-founder of Malala Fund; Ziauddin Yousafzai, ECW Global Champion and Al-Jazeera TV principal presenter; Folly Bah Thibault, Global Citizen Co-Founder; Mick Sheldrick, 2023 Global Citizen Prize winner and founder of LEARN Afghanistan; Pashtana Durrani, UN Girls’ Education Initiative Director; Antara Ganguli; and many more; including several leading Afghan women activists.

Afghan lawyer and women’s rights activist, Benafsha Efaf Amiri, says education is a fundamental right for all girls and women. The denial of education for Afghan girls violates their human rights and will only harm the progress and future of the nation for generations to come.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said, “Together, we must all advocate for the right to education for every girl in Afghanistan. Education is not only a human right that cannot wait for them, but it is also a powerful catalyst for a better, more equitable and prosperous world.”

Ahmed Hussein, Minister of International Development in Canada, emphasized that, “Canada stands with all Afghan girls’ right to education. Denying access to education impacts the ability of women and girls to exercise their fundamental human rights and reach their full potential. The consequences of this ban will resonate for generations and must be reversed.”

The situation is already dire. Nearly 30 percent of girls in Afghanistan have never entered primary education and the light of hope to arise from protracted crises and sudden disasters through education is fading further away for Afghan girls and young women.

ECW is urging the global community to respond with speed to preserve gains that are eroding every day the ban stands. Significant gains are at stake. For instance, enrollment increased tenfold across all education levels, from 1 million in 2001 to 10 million in 2018. By August 2021, 4 out of 10 students in Afghanistan’s primary school were girls.

Along with these jumps came social and economic growth and other improvements that benefited vast swaths of Afghan society. The change in leadership sent seismic waves across all aspects of the Afghan economy and society. Today, 23.7 million people—over half the population—require urgent humanitarian support, 6.3 million people are displaced, and basic human rights are under fire.

Girls and boys are at grave risk of gender-based violence, child labour, early marriage and other human rights abuses. Despite the urgent needs of the USD 3 billion total humanitarian response funding request, only USD 221 million has been received to date, according to UNOCHA.

Since ECW launched its investments in Afghanistan in 2017, the fund has invested USD 88.8 million, reaching more than 230,000 children with quality, holistic education support. ECW’s multi-year investments focus on community-based learning that reaches girls and boys through a variety of activities such as the provision of teaching and learning materials, teacher training, and mental health and psychosocial support.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Categories: Africa

UN, World Leaders Ramp Up Plans for Gaza Ceasefire and Recovery

Thu, 06/13/2024 - 12:52

UN Secretary-General António Guterres in Jordan. Credit: Mohammad Ali Eid Ali/UN Photo

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 2024 (IPS)

This week has seen noteworthy steps from the international community to put an end to the ongoing hostilities in the Gaza Strip since the latest war between Hamas and Israel began in October last year.

This week began with the international community converging at a global conference, “Call for Action: Urgent Humanitarian Response for Gaza.” King Abdullah II of Jordan, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres organized the conference, which took place in Amman, Jordan, on June 10.

Heads of states and governments and heads of international humanitarian and relief organizations were invited to participate in this conference to determine the course of action needed to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza and recovery efforts for the end of the conflict. Three core issues were the focus of discussion through working groups: increasing humanitarian assistance to Gaza, cementing the conditions for a ceasefire, and supporting early recovery efforts.

The conference demonstrated the international community’s solidarity with the civilians of Palestine who have suffered from the military campaign, along with the humanitarian workers who have risked their lives. The humanitarian situation in Gaza, unfortunately, only continues to deteriorate, especially as basic needs such as food, shelter and sanitation have been repeatedly compromised and experts have warned of disease and famine outbreaks. The healthcare system has been overwhelmed with the intake of patients requiring urgent care, with the shortage of fuel and medical supplies, and with many hospitals losing functionality as a result.

“The horror must stop. It is high time for a ceasefire along with the unconditional release of hostages. I welcome the peace initiative recently outlined by President Biden and urge all parties to seize this opportunity and come to an agreement. And I call on all parties to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law,” Guterres said in his statement on Tuesday.

According to Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths, over 2.5 billion USD will be needed to provide aid to Gaza from April to December 2024. Speaking at the conference, Griffiths also added that preliminary recovery planning was underway with the United Nations Country Team, along with partners such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). He shared that the working group emphasized UNRWA’s importance in the recovery period, particularly in addressing education, health, and psychosocial support.

“Acting on the outcomes of this conference,” Griffiths said, “It is our solemn task, I suggest, to harness some of that humanity, meet our responsibilities, and finally bring an end to the travesty that has brought such misery to the people of Gaza. I ask for your support in all the follow-up actions that have been identified.”

The international community’s attention to the humanitarian situation in Gaza has led to repeated calls for action to take concrete measures. Earlier this week, the Security Council adopted the United States-drafted resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. The resolution also breaks down the approach into three phases, emphasizing the need for a permanent end to the hostilities, which would be achieved through the exchange of hostages in Gaza and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the region. The resolution was adopted nearly unanimously, with only one abstention in the vote (Russia).

Riyad Al Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the UN, noted that the resolution was a step in the right direction and was welcomed by the Palestinian leadership, also calling out Israel to take the steps to implement the resolution. “We want to see the end of this onslaught against our people,” said Mansour. “We will continue pursuing justice and accountability through international legal mechanisms, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

Israel’s representative, Reut Shapir Ben Nafalty, said that the state’s objectives have always been to ensure the return of all the hostages and to stop Hamas, as well as “ensure that Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel in the future.”

“We will continue until all of the hostages are returned and until Hamas’ military and governing capabilities are dismantled,” she said.

As pressure mounts for both sides of the conflict to accept the terms of the ceasefire, the humanitarian situation only continues to put immense strain on aid workers and on impacted civilians. Since October 7, 192 UNRWA staff have been killed. As fighting escalates, organizations such as the World Food Programme announced that they will pause their operations in the floating dock established to provide aid to Gaza until a UN security review can be conducted.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Categories: Africa

African Activists Call on the West to Finance Climate Action

Thu, 06/13/2024 - 11:59

Activists at Bonn accuse developed countries of frustrating the process on climate finance. Pictured here are Danni Taaffe, Head of Communications at Climate Action Network (CAN), Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa and Sven Harmeling, Head of Climate at CAN. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
BONN, Jun 13 2024 (IPS)

As the technical session of the global climate negotiations enters the final stretch in Bonn, Germany, climate activists from Africa have expressed fears that negotiators from the developed world are dragging their feet in a way to avoid paying their fair share to tackle the climate crisis.

“I think we will be unfair to the snail if we say that the Bonn talks have all along moved at a snail pace,” quipped Mohammed Adow, the Director, Power Shift Africa.

“Ideally, there will be no climate action anywhere without climate finance. Yet what we have seen is that developed countries are frustrating the process, blocking the UAE annual dialogues, which were agreed upon last year in Dubai, to focus on the delivery of finance so as to give confidence to developing countries to implement climate actions,” said Adow.

According to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the United Arab Emirates (UAE) dialogue was created to focus on climate finance in relation to implementing the first Global Stoke Take (GST-1) outcomes, with the rationale of serving as a follow up mechanism dedicated to climate finance, ensuring response to and/or monitoring of, as may be appropriate and necessary, all climate finance items under the GST

The two-week Bonn technical session of Subsidiary Bodies (SB60) was expected to develop an infrastructure for the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), a climate change funding mechanism to raise the floor of climate finance for developing countries above the current $100 billion annual target.

In 2009, during the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of the UNFCCC in Copenhagen, developed countries agreed that by 2020, they would collectively mobilize $100 billion per year to support priorities for developing countries in terms of adaptation to climate crisis, loss and damage, just energy transition and climate change mitigation.

When parties endorsed the Paris Agreement at COP 21 in 2015, they found it wise to set up the NCQG, which has to be implemented at the forthcoming COP 29, whose agenda has to be set at the SB60 in Bonn, providing scientific and technological advice, thereby shaping negotiations in Azerbaijan.

However, activists feel that the agenda being set in Bonn is likely to undermine key outcomes of previous negotiations, especially on climate finance.

“We came to Bonn with renewed hope that the NCQG discussions will be honest and frank with all parties committed to seeing that the finance mechanism will be based on the priorities and needs of developing countries and support country-driven strategies, with a focus on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs),” said Memory Zonde-Kachambwa, the Executive Director, FEMNET.

“Seeing the devastation climate change is causing in our countries in terms of floods, storms, and droughts, among other calamities, it was our hope that the rich countries would be eager and willing to indicate the Quantum as per Article 9.5 of the Paris Agreement so as to allow developing countries to plan their climate action,” she said.

So far, negotiators from the North have been pushing for collective “mobilization of financial resources,” which African activists believe is merely the privatization of climate finance within NCQG, thus surrendering poor countries to climate-debt speculators and further impoverishing countries clutching onto debt.

Also in the spotlight was the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), where the activists feel that the means of implementation is being vehemently fought by the parties from developed countries.

“Adaptation must be funded from public resources and must not be seen as a business opportunity open to private sector players,” said Dr. Augustine Njamnshi, an environmental policy and governance law expert and the Executive Secretary of the African Coalition for Sustainable Energy and Access. “Without clear indications on the means of implementation, GGA is an empty shell and it is not fit-for-purpose.”

According to Ambassador Ali Mohammed, the incoming Chair for the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), the SB60 is an opportunity to rebuild trust in the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.

“That trust can only be rebuilt if we come out of Bonn with a quantum that adequately covers the needs of the continent,” he said, noting that the figure Africa is asking for, which is to be part of the agenda for COP29, is USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2030.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Categories: Africa

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Thu, 06/13/2024 - 09:09

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jun 13 2024 (IPS-Partners)

Few will disagree with the nearly universal concern that we – the human family – are once more faced with an era of darkness. An era whose burdens are mainly carried on the tiny shoulders of crises-affected children and adolescents, their teachers and families, all left furthest behind.

Two years ago, Save the Children issued a report estimating that 468 million children were living in, or fleeing from, conflict zones. The past two years have only increased this figure with new conflicts, climate disasters and forced displacement. The light of hope enshrined in international law, including human rights law and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is slowly dying. The light of hope to arise from protracted crises and sudden disasters through an education is fading further away for millions upon millions of young people.

In the Middle East, schoolyards are turned into graveyards for Palestinian children and their teachers, others deeply traumatized, maimed or orphaned. In Sudan, 18 million children are out of school, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, 9 out of 10 children cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10. In Afghanistan, a generation of adolescent girls are prohibited from attending school beyond the 6th grade.

In Latin America, children and their families flee instability in Venezuela, disrupting their education. In Haiti, children cannot attend school and live in constant fear of brutal attacks by armed gangs. As we highlight in this month’s high-level interview with Bruno Maes, UNICEF Representative in Haiti: “The instability in Haiti continues to undermine education. Frequent disruptions in educational services have posed significant challenges in accessing schools.”

In Myanmar, the Rohingya continue to be persecuted, while the refugees across the border cannot attend the public education system. And in Europe, war rages on in Ukraine, pushing Ukrainian children into harms’ way rather than into the safety of schools.

The distance between ‘the haves and the have-nots’ continues to grow larger. According to the World Economic Forum: “The inequality gap is widening, with more than two-thirds (69%) of global wealth held by developed nations, while less than a third can be found in the developing world.”

And while millions of young people in the Global North celebrate graduations this month at high schools, colleges and universities, a quarter of a billion children and adolescents across crisis-impacted countries in the Global South are not even able to access early childhood development and the basic 12 years of education.

The darkness is creeping into every corner of our society. Still, rather than raging against the dying light, as the writer and poet Thomas Dylan once urged us to do, we sink deeper into a dark abyss by spending resources on destructive wars – rather than on the enlightenment and hope of education.

We seem bent on extinguishing the light of justice, peace and security for all – with an emphasis on all. For, as Martin Luther King Jr. said: “It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.”

We must “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Indeed, we must rekindle the light whose rays illuminate and transform. If not, what is the alternative?

Yasmine Sherif is Executive Director Education Cannot Wait (ECW)

Categories: Africa

UN Probe Finds Israel Guilty of ‘Extermination,’ Torture, and Other War Crimes in Gaza

Thu, 06/13/2024 - 08:12

An Israeli airstrike which hit an UNRWA-run school in Nuseirat, Central Gaza. June 2024. Credit: UNRWA

By Jake Johnson
NEW YORK, Jun 13 2024 (IPS)

A United Nations commission tasked with conducting an in-depth investigation of Israeli military actions in the occupied Palestinian territories has concluded that Israel’s government is responsible for multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including “extermination,” torture, forcible transfer, and the use of starvation as a weapon of warfare.

The U.N. inquiry began on October 7, the day of a deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. The U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes during their attack on Israel, including the deliberate killing and torture of civilians.

Israel’s massive military response—launched hours after the Hamas-led attack—has caused “immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure,” outcomes that “were the inevitable result of a strategy undertaken with intent to cause maximum damage, disregarding the principles of distinction, proportionality and adequate,” the U.N. commission said Wednesday.

“The intentional use of heavy weapons with large destructive capacity in densely populated areas constitutes an intentional and direct attack on the civilian population,” the commission added. Many of the weapons Israel has used in Gaza were supplied by the United States.

The new report also points to public statements by top Israeli officials as evidence that Israel’s goal in Gaza was to inflict “widespread destruction” and kill a “large number of civilians.” The U.N. panel specifically cited Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s October announcement of a “total siege” on the Gaza Strip that would prevent the entry of water, fuel, food, and other necessities.

The International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor has applied for arrest warrants for Gallant and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over war crimes committed in Gaza.

Navi Pillay, the chair of the U.N. commission, said in a statement Wednesday that “Israel must immediately stop its military operations and attacks in Gaza, including the assault on Rafah, which has cost the lives of hundreds of civilians and again displaced hundreds of thousands of people to unsafe locations without basic services and humanitarian assistance.

“Hamas and Palestinian armed groups must immediately cease rocket attacks and release all hostages,” Pillay added. “The taking of hostages constitutes a war crime.”

The commission’s findings come less than a week after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres informed the Israeli government that it was added to an annual “list of shame” that condemns nations for killing and wounding children in wars.

Children have suffered horrific physical and psychological impacts from Israel’s eight-month assault on Gaza, which has killed around 15,000 children. Earlier this year, the U.N. Children’s Fund estimated that around 1,000 kids in Gaza had lost one or both of their legs as a result of Israeli attacks.

Dozens of children were among the more than 270 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces over the weekend during a raid on Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. The military operation resulted in the freeing of four Israeli hostages, but the U.N. Human Rights Office said Tuesday that “the manner in which the raid was conducted in such a densely populated area seriously calls into question whether the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution—as set out under the laws of war—were respected by the Israeli forces.”

Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said Tuesday that Israeli forces have killed more than 800 people in Gaza and wounded more than 2,400 since the beginning of June.

“How can the killing of more than 800 people in a single week, including small children, plus the maiming of hundreds more, be considered a military operation adhering to international humanitarian law?” asked Brice de le Vingne, the head of MSF’s emergency unit. “We can no longer accept the statement that Israel is taking ‘all precautions’—this is just propaganda.”

“Since October (and certainly before), the dehumanization of Palestinians has been a hallmark of this war,” de le Vingne added. “Catch-all phrases like ‘war is ugly’ act as blinders to the fact that children too young to walk are being dismembered, eviscerated, and killed.”

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Source: Common Dreams

IPS UN Bureau

Categories: Africa

A River’s Contrasts and Inequalities in the Arid Lands of Brazil

Wed, 06/12/2024 - 15:50

Osnir da Silva Rubez prepares the furrows that will take water from the São Francisco river to irrigate his crops in the Brazilian Semi-arid ecoregion. He refuses to join the local drip or micro-sprinkler irrigation system, which is more efficient in water use, fertilisation and soil protection. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
JUAZEIRO, Brazil , Jun 12 2024 (IPS)

Osmir da Silva Rubez refuses to join the drip system, and is the only one among the 51 families living in the Mandacaru Public Irrigation Project in Juazeiro, a municipality in the state of Bahia, in the Northeast region of Brazil, to maintain the furrows that carry water to their crops.

The São Francisco River, which rises in the state of Minas Gerais, near the centre of Brazil, and flows northeast, has boosted irrigated agriculture in its 2,863 kilometres, much of it in semi-arid territory, with rainfall averaging between 200 and 800 millimetres per year.

It is a privileged basin, located in a region that suffers from water scarcity, especially in the increasingly recurrent droughts, when small rivers and streams dry up.

Water availability, immense due to the river’s large flow, was increased by the construction of two hydroelectric dams North and South of Juazeiro, a city of 238,000 people, which has developed a fruit-growing industry, mainly for export.

Mangoes and grapes are the main local crops, grown on large private farms and in the irrigation projects of the state-owned São Francisco and Parnaíba Valley Development Company (Codevasf). Export activity highlights the contrasts and inequalities of the so-called Semi-arid ecoregion.

Drip irrigation hoses on an Agrodan farm on an island in the São Francisco River, in Brazil’s arid Northeast. The company claims to be the country’s largest mango producer and exporter. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Flood irrigation

“The ditches that were initially used for irrigation are wasteful in their use of water. Drip irrigation is mostly used nowadays, since it uses only the necessary water, is monitored by computers and measures of soil humidity,” explained Humberto Miranda, chair of the Bahia Federation of Agriculture.

“Before, only 30 per cent of the water was used, today more than 90 per cent is used, which means that little is lost,” he said during an IPS tour of various localities in Juazeiro to visit farms and organisations involved in the irrigation project.

In Mandacaru, the system that enabled the switch to drip irrigation, with ponds and pumping, was implemented in 2011, explained Manoel Vicente dos Santos, one of the first settlers in the project launched in 1973. “Irrigation by furrows was unstable, bringing more water to one plant than to others, a waste,” he recalled.

But Rubez resists the change. In addition to the investment required in pumps and hoses, the drip system uses a lot of electricity, about 1,000 reais (200 dollars) a month. “And I have no heirs to leave the system to,” the 60-year-old single man joked with IPS.

Suemi Koshiyama, a Japanese immigrant who became a large producer of grapes and mangoes in the São Francisco river valley, in arid lands in the municipality of Juazeiro, in northeastern Brazil, shows the hose that irrigates his vineyard, drip-fed from above and not on the ground. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

The drip system is a step forward in these irrigation projects. Apart from saving water, it improves soil management, reducing erosion and controlling chemical fertilisation by directing it to the roots through the water, says José Moacir dos Santos, general coordinator of the non-governmental Regional Institute for Appropriate Small Farming (Irpaa).

But irrigation projects, whether Codevasf or private, do not favour local development, concentrate income, nor offer seasonal jobs during harvests, and they promote inequality, Dos Santos criticised.

Prosperity for the few

The wealth amassed by export fruit farming stays in the hands of a few, but creates a perception of prosperity that attracts many poor people to Juazeiro and neighbouring Petrolina, a city of 387,000 people separated by the São Francisco river and linked by a bridge.

Migration to these two fruit-growing capitals of the Brazilian Northeast “swells their populations, especially their poor and infrastructure-poor peripheries, while emptying nearby cities,” said the activist, son of Manoel Vicente, one of the project’s settlers.

In his opinion, an “injustice” has been done, because the river supplies the fruit-growing industry that exports its water contained in the fruit to Europe, the United States and Japan. But it does not do the same for the entire riverside population, which also has to resort to other, more distant springs.

Water pumping station from the São Francisco river to irrigate fruit farming at a project near Juazeiro, a production and export hub for fruit, especially mangoes and grapes, in Brazil’s arid northeast. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

In addition, most of the farmers have no irrigation. Communities encouraged by the government many years ago and traditional farmers in the basin have no access to water from the river, nor to the financing or other public project perks.

The dominant monoculture of fruit trees forces food imports. Juazeiro and Petrolina, with a combined population of 625,000, produce less food for local consumption than Campo Alegre de Lourdes, a municipality 350 kilometres away with only 31,000 inhabitants, compared Dos Santos, an agricultural technician.

The flow of goods, with fruits leaving and other products arriving from various parts of Brazil, has transformed the Juazeiro Producer Market into Brazil’s second largest agricultural trade hub, surpassed only by São Paulo, a metropolis of 12 million inhabitants – 22 million if its large metropolitan area is added.

“The fruit-growing hub is an artificial system that concentrates the best soils and water of São Francisco on islands and generates the illusion of growth in Greater Juazeiro and Petrolina, where only 5 per cent of the land is suitable for irrigation, with water for only 2 per cent,” said Roberto Malvezzi, an activist with the Catholic Pastoral Land Commission.

Maciela de Oliveira Silva in the shop where she sells products from the Mossoroca and Region Family Farming Cooperative, such as sweets, jellies and liqueurs made from native fruits from the so-called “grassland fund”, a collective area where farmers extract fruit, produce honey and raise goats and sheep. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Suitable alternatives

For Malvezzi, who has a degree in philosophy and theology, the Semi-arid region’s main economic and productive vocation is small livestock, such as goats and sheep, rather than agriculture.

A mistake that has cost it multiple crises and impoverishment, as well as the environmental destruction of the Semi-arid region, was the historical expansion of cattle in Northeastern Brazil, whose interior is mostly semi-arid.

The industrial and commercial chain for goats should be developed, including slaughterhouses and services such as technical assistance and health surveillance, said Malvezzi, who was born in the state of São Paulo, studied philosophy and theology there, but lives in the Northeast since 1979.

The Semi-arid is a region of family farming, and for nearly three decades has seen a transformation process seeking to adapt its development to local conditions, including the climate. “Living with the Semi-arid”, which means rejecting colonial influences and impositions of the past, is the goal.

Main canal supplying an irrigation project with water from the São Francisco river in the Semi-arid region. Secondary canals and local pumps in the fruit orchards complete the system that replaced irrigation by flood furrows, practically abolished because of the waste of water. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Small animal husbandry, instead of water-intensive cattle farming, and rainwater harvesting, both for human and animal consumption and for agricultural production, are some of the proven and effective ways.

In the state of Bahia, a traditional agrarian singularity has been institutionalised, the “grassland fund”, a large collective land, managed for the extraction of native products, such as fruits, and the raising of goats and sheep. Horticulture is expanding strongly throughout the Semi-arid region.

The Family Agricultural Cooperative of Massaroca and Region (Coofama), in the municipality of Juazeiro, is an example of a grassland fund, whose jellies, liqueurs and other native fruit products, such as umbu, and honey, are sold on the nearby highway and in cities.

‘Quiosco da Umbuzada’ is the name given to the roadside shop in the village of Massaroca, and ‘Central da Caatinga’, a shop in the city of Juazeiro, sell the products of Coofama and other family farming cooperatives.

“Goats survive better in prolonged droughts, they eat leaves even from tall trees,” Coofama farmer Maciela de Oliveira Silva, who runs the roadside shop, where she works from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on a minimum wage, equal to 280 dollars, told IPS.

Eggs are another viable and promising food production in the Semi-arid, according to the Association of Small Producers of Canoa and Oliveira, led by Gilmar Nogueira Lino, owner of some 1,000 hens, also in the south of Juazeiro.

The association’s 60 families produced 17,444 dozen eggs in 2023, said Lino. “The hens are faster than goats, start providing income in a few months and don’t require large spaces,” he told IPS.

On his half-hectare property, the farmer has chicken coops and a shop that sells food, drinks and cooking gas. He also donated the land for the association’s headquarters. He only had to overcome the prejudice that “raising chickens is a woman’s business.”

Categories: Africa

Indignity, Disease, Death—The Life of a Sewer Worker in Pakistan

Wed, 06/12/2024 - 08:32

A sewer worker who is popularly known as Mithoo emerges from the sewer. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Jun 12 2024 (IPS)

A dark head emerges, followed by the torso. The balding man heaves himself up, hands on the sides of the manhole, as he is helped by two men. Gasping for breath, the man, who seems to be in his late 40s, sits on the edge, wearing just a pair of dark pants, the same color as the putrid swirling water he comes out from.

This is an all-too-familiar sight in Karachi, with its over 20 million residents producing 475 million gallons per day (MGD) of wastewater going into decades-old crumbling sewerage-systems.

After over a hundred dives into the sewers in the last two years, Adil Masih, 22, says, “I have proved to my seniors, I can do the job well.” He hopes to be upgraded from a kachha (not formally employed) to a pucca (permanent) employee at Karachi’s government-owned Karachi Water and Sewerage Company (KWSC), formerly known as the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board and is commonly referred to as the water board, in the next six months.

Earning Rs 25,000 (USD 90) a month, which Adil gets as a lump sum of Rs75,000 (USD 269) every three months, the pay will rise to Rs 32,000 (USD 115), which is the minimum wages in Sindh province set by the government once he becomes pucca.

Sewer work is dirty but essential work in a busy city like Karachi. A worker popularly known as Mithoo rests after unblocking sewage. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

“The first time is always the most terrifying experience,” recalls Amjad Masih, 48, sporting a metallic earring in his left lobe. Among the 2,300 sewer cleaners under the employment of the KWSC, to do manual scavenging to unclog the drains, he claims to have taught Adil the dos and donts of diving into the slush. “You have to be smart to outdo death, which is our companion as we go down,” he says.

It is not the army of cockroaches and the stink that greets you when you open the manhole lid to get in, or the rats swimming in filthy water, but the blades and used syringes floating that are a cause for concern for many as they go down to bring up the rocks and the buckets of filthy silt.

But getting into the sewers is a last resort. “We first try to unclog the line using a long bamboo shaft to prod and loosen the waste, when that fails, we climb down into the gutters and clean them with our hands,” explains Amjad, employed with the water and sanitation company since 2014, and becoming permanent in 2017.

Toxic cauldron

Although the civic agency claims the workers are provided personal protective equipment to shield them from chemical, physical and microbial hazards, many, like Amjad, refuse to wear it.

“I need to feel the rocks and stones with my feet to be able to bring them up,” he says. “Nothing happens,” adds Adil. “We go to the doctor for treatment and are back at work.”

A former KWSC official, speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity, said there have been several deaths and injuries. “It is up to the supervisors to ensure they only send men down the manhole who comply with safety regulations.” He said the protective gear must include gas masks, ladders, and gloves as the “bare minimum,” as there are definite health risks as well as the risk of losing your life.

More than the physical hazards, it is the invisible danger stalking these men, in the form of gases like methane, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide—produced when wastewater contains chlorine bleaches, industrial solvents and gasoline—when mixed with concrete in drainpipes—that have taken the lives of these cleaners.

Earlier in March, two young sanitation workers, Arif Moon Masih, 25, and Shan Masih, 23, died after inhaling toxic fumes in Faisalabad, in the Punjab province. In January, two workers in Karachi met with a similar fate while cleaning sewerage lines.

According to Sweepers Are Superheroes, an advocacy campaign group, around 84 sewage workers have died in 19 districts of Pakistan over the past five years. In neighboring India, one sewer worker dies every five days, according to a 2018 report by the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis.

“I had almost died once,” recalls Amjad, of how he got “gassed” and passed out. “Luckily for me, I did the job and came up and then collapsed.”

But there have been quite a few of his colleagues, he says, who have died due to inhalation while still inside.

Adil said he has inhaled gases quite a few times too. “My eyes burn, and when I come out, I vomit and drink a bottle of cold fizzy drink and am set again,” he said. But the last time it happened, he had to be hospitalized as he had passed out.

With time, says Amjad, they have learned to take precautions.

“We open the manhole lid to let the gases escape before going in,” he says. A dead rat floating on the surface is a giveaway that there are gases, he adds.

The KWSC cleaners work as a team of four. One is sent down wearing a harness tied to a rope. If something is not right or he’s done the job, he tugs at the rope, and the three men waiting outside immediately pull him out. But the man is pulled out after three to four minutes have elapsed without waiting for the tug “in case he has become unconscious,” explains Amjad. He claims to be able to hold his breath for as long as five minutes because “I have to sometimes go as deep as 30 feet.” Adil is only able to do a maximum of seven feet and hold his breath for no more than two minutes, but the gases are found in shallower drains. Along with buckets of silt, the drains are often clogged with stones and boulders that need to be brought up, to allow the water to flow freely.

Amjad and Adil also take on private work, like the rest of the KWSC sanitation workers. The agency knows but looks the other way. “If they can get earn a little extra, it is ok,” says the officer.

“We are called to open up blocked drains by residents and restaurant management and for a couple hours of work, we are able to earn well,” says Adil.

Adil Masih and Amjad Masih work in the sewers of Karachi, a dangerous and low-paying occupation. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

Janitorial work reserved for Christians

Adil and Amjad are unrelated but carry the same surname—Masih—which points to their religion—both are Christians. According to WaterAid Pakistan, 80 percent of sanitation workers in Pakistan are Christians, despite them making up just 2 percent of the general population according to the 2023 census. The report Shame and Stigma in Sanitation, published by the Center for Law & Justice (CLJ) in 2021, connects sanitation work to the age-old caste system prevalent in the Indian sub-continent that attached birth to occupations.

“This ruthless practice has died down to a large extent in Pakistan, but sanitation is probably the only occupation where this traditional caste structure continues,” it points out.

The CLJ’s report carries a survey of the employees of the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), which provides drinking water and ensures the smooth working of the sewerage systems, and the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC), which is tasked with collecting and disposing of solid waste from households, industries and hospitals in Lahore city, in the Punjab province. WASA has 2,240 sanitation workers, out of which 1,609 are Christians. The LWMC has 9,000 workers and all of them are Christians. 87 percent of the employees in both organizations believed “janitorial work is only for Christians,” while 72 percent of Christian workers said their Muslim coworkers “believe that this work is not for them.”

The same is true for Karachi as well. Till about five years ago, the KWSC would advertise for the job of sewer cleaners, specifically asking for non-Muslims but stopped after receiving criticism from rights groups.

“We removed this condition and started hiring Muslims for the cleaning of sewers, but they refuse to go down the sewers,” said the KWSC official. In Punjab province, the discriminatory policy of employing only non-Muslims belonging to minorities for janitorial work was struck down in 2016.

With half of Karachi being dug and new drainage lines being laid, much of the work is being carried out by Pathans (Muslims belonging to an ethnic group) and, until last year, by Afghans too. “They are wading in the same filthy water,” says Amjad.

He got a much more lucrative job—working as a sweeper in an apartment building and earning more.

“Being a permanent employee with a government department means lifelong security; the job is for keeps,” he explains. “And on a day-to-day basis too, life is slightly easier. You are not harassed by the police, get sick leave and free healthcare, and there are retirement benefits too, and you cannot be kicked out on any one person’s whim.”

Way Forward

But Amjad and Adil’s work and how they are treated by their employers are in complete contrast to what the Pakistani government has signed under the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 8—of improving the working conditions of sanitation workers. It also seems unlikely that targets 8.5 “full employment and decent work with equal pay” and 8.8 “protect labour rights and promote safe working environments” will be met by 2030.

Farah Zia, the director of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, talking to IPS, pointed out that Pakistan had made little progress in meeting the criteria for decent work for sanitation workers, considered amongst the most “marginalized labour groups in Pakistan’s workforce.”

Not being “paid a living wage or to live in an environment free of social stigma,” Zia said they were not even provided ample safety equipment and training to protect themselves from occupational hazards. In addition, she pointed out that the 2006 National Sanitation Policy was outdated and fell “short of addressing these concerns.”

The same was observed in Sindh province, where Amjad and Adil live. “Although the Sindh government had adopted a provincial sanitation policy in 2017, it did not address the concerns related to the working and living conditions of these workers in the province,” Zia pointed out

In 2021, in line with SDG 8, WaterAid Pakistan (WAP) worked with the local government in the Punjab province’s Muzaffargarh district to ensure the safety of sanitation workers. Apart from provision of safety equipment and access to clean drinking water, the organization advocated that these “essential workers receive the respect and dignity they deserve,” said Muhammad Fazal, heading the Strategy and Policy Programme of the WAP.

Naeem Sadiq, a Karachi-based industrial engineer and a social activist who has long been fighting for the rights of these men has calculated the highest and lowest salaries in the public sector.

“The ratio of the salary of a janitor to the senior most bureaucrat in the UK is 1:8, while in Pakistan it is 1:80. The ratio of the salary of a janitor to the senior-most judge in the UK is 1:11, while in Pakistan it is 1:115. The ratio between the salary of a janitor and the heads of the highest-paid public sector organizations in the UK is 1:20, while in Pakistan it is 1:250,” he told IPS.

Sadiq wants a complete ban on manual scavenging. “I don’t know how we let our fellow men enter a sewer bubbling with human waste and poisonous gases,” he tells IPS, adding, “We need machines to do this dirty, dangerous work.”

The KWSC has 128 mobile tanker-like contraptions equipped with suctional jetting machines that remove the water from the sewers so that cleaners can go down a 30-foot manhole without having to dive into it to remove silt, timber and stones that cannot be sucked out and have to be brought up manually,’’ said the KWSC official.

That is not good enough for Sadiq. A year ago, he and a group of philanthropists came up with a prototype of a simple gutter-cleaning machine (using the motorbike’s skeleton), which he claims is the cheapest one in the world, costing Rs 1.5 million (USD 5,382).

“It can be sent deep into the sewer to bring up stones, rocks, sludge and silt, and a high-pressure jetting contraption to unclog the lines.”

It is now up to the government to use the design and start manufacturing the contraption called Bhalai (kindness, benefit). “We are absolutely willing to share the design,” said Sadiq.

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Categories: Africa

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