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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 30 2023 (IPS)

The United Nations Secretary-General’s Dialogue on Financing for Development on 20 September may well be the world’s last chance to save the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and curb global warming in time.

The UN and international finance
Many features of the international financial system – including multilateral arrangements developed over many decades – have been overtaken by new developments, sometimes resulting in multidimensional crises.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The month-long 1944 Bretton Woods gathering was convened as a UN conference to create conditions conducive to post-war recovery and post-colonial development. But the systemic concerns of John Maynard Keynes and others from developing countries were largely ignored.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was set up for post-war growth and stability following the pre-war ‘gold standard’ crisis. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development – later, World Bank – would help with financing.

The Bretton Woods agreement set the gold price in US dollars, effectively making the greenback the world’s reserve currency. Thus, the US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) has long financed Treasury bonds with newly minted dollars.

The French economy minister saw this giving the US an ‘exorbitant privilege’. As Europeans increasingly demanded gold for dollars abroad, President Richard Nixon unilaterally abandoned US Bretton Woods obligations in August 1971.

It thus repudiated its promise to deliver gold for the greenback upon demand by other central banks. Although the dollar has not been the world’s official reserve currency since, widespread acceptance has effectively extended the exorbitant privilege indefinitely.

UN potential?
The inadequate institutions and processes in place over the last half century have exacerbated risks. Meanwhile, financial crises inadvertently highlight previously obscure gaps, weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Proposals to reform economic governance should start with better efforts to address these problems. This should involve progressive reform of the UN system, including the IMF and World Bank.

The UN is well suited to lead because of its record with difficult reforms due to its more inclusive and responsive governance. Securing legitimacy requires all parties to feel they have stakes in the broader reform agenda.

Despite poor regulation, many believe new financial markets and instruments have ushered in a new golden era. Threats posed by international macro-financial imbalances are seen as far less dangerous than those due to budgetary deficits. Worse, false purported solutions to such dangers have exacerbated complacency.

Financing development
Major financing for development (FfD) innovations have long been initiated by the UN. Special drawing rights (SDRs), ‘0.7 per cent of national income’ for official development assistance (ODA) and debt relief were all conceived in the UN around half a century ago.

The financialization of recent decades has undermined the mobilization and deployment of adequate financial resources to accelerate sustainable development and address global warming.

During the 1990s, the UN warned against new threats to economic stability. Some were due to volatile private capital flows and speculation, encouraged by deregulated financial markets, enabled by the IMF despite its Articles of Agreement.

By contrast, the UN has insisted on ensuring policy space for more effective development strategies by Member States. It has also urged macroeconomic policies to support long-term growth, technological progress and economic diversification.

The UN Secretariat has also promoted orderly sovereign debt relief. But Member States have long complained IFIs were shirking their mandates to provide financial stability and adequate long-term development finance.

UN pro-active on finance again?
The first UN FfD conference was held in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1992. It sought to ensure adequate development finance on reasonable terms after the 1980s’ debt crises, exacerbated by conditionalities imposed with emergency IFI credit.

Structural adjustment programmes ensured ‘lost decades’ for Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The current situation may be even more dire. Government debt today is greater than ever, but also more diverse, and on much more commercial terms. This situation is even less conducive to debt restructuring, let alone relief.

For decades, the UN’s FfD Office has tried, largely in vain, to mobilize domestic and international resources for development and climate finance. But progress has been modest and grossly inadequate at best.

The SDGs were cursed at birth in September 2015 by rich nations blocking developing country efforts to improve international tax cooperation at the last FfD summit at Addis Ababa just months before.

The rich countries’ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has since imposed its will on international corporate taxation. The OECD process largely consigned developing countries to observer status, offering paltry shares to reward compliance.

The UN has also highlighted links between financialization and food as well as energy crises, stressing justice and sustainability concerns. It has urged greater sensitivity to avoid, or at least alleviate ‘downside risks’ for the vulnerable.

Get real to progress
International tax cooperation has been blocked for decades by the rich nations’ OECD. The UN system, including the IMF, urgently needs a strong mandate to seek common solutions to increase tax revenue for all.

While private finance is needed for the SDGs, it is also part of the problem when not well regulated. Meanwhile, most developing countries still lack access to liquidity during financial crises except on onerous IMF terms.

Also, with the reversals of trade liberalization in recent decades, especially with new Cold War sanctions, UN resolutions need to be realistic in order to be broadly accepted and feasible.

The last decade has seen huge setbacks to progress on the SDGs, climate action and needed financing. Developing countries have received only a third of the IMF’s 2021 $650 billion SDR allocation.

Over the decades, ODA flows have declined as a share of commitments, with the loan-grant ratio falling, favouring financial globalization, particularly since the first Cold War ended.

This has constrained developing countries’ ability to respond to crises and meet long-term development financing and fast-growing climate adaptation requirements. Curbing illicit financial flows can also improve financing for needed ‘public goods’.

As most rich nations show little sign of meeting their ODA and climate finance obligations, annual issue of SDRs, within limits set by the US Congress, can quickly boost international liquidity ‘painlessly’.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Nick Nuttall
BONN, Germany, Aug 29 2023 (IPS-Partners)

Environmental issues have been my life’s career. But music has also been important.

Arts can shift societal perspectives on tough topics.

Nick Nuttall

Just Because Some Bad Wind Blows is my new album’s title song. It starts with a dystopian future, flips to a more upbeat guitar solo and imagines a future where we solved (most) of climate change, “because (humanity) we choose to”.
NoSecrets wonders why intelligent people can’t see the sustainability writing on the wall and suggests they are blinded by consumerism and vanity—with consequences!

Hometown is about Rochdale, North England. Like many northern towns, it boomed under the industrial revolution. But now is lifeless. Let’s down-size it back to a village, keep some fine buildings and transform the land back to nature.

Just Because Some Bad Wind Blows, released on Reptiphon Records May 5, 2023 is available at https://nicknuttallmusic.bandcamp.com/album/just-because-some-bad-wind-blows-3

 

Nick Nuttall was the Director of Communications for two United Nations agencies – the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bonn, Germany. Nuttall was the official spokesperson for the Paris Climate Agreement and today is a presenter on We Don’t Have Time

Credit: Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 29 2023 (IPS)

On 20 August, Guatemala witnessed a rare event: despite numerous attempts to stop it, the will of the majority prevailed. Democracy was at a dramatic crossroads, but voters got their say, and said it clearly: the country needs dramatic change and needs it now.

Bernardo Arévalo, leader of the progressive Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement), born out of 2015 anti-corruption protests, is now Guatemala’s president-elect. All-night street celebrations erupted as early results were announced. It was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence: politics bringing joy rather than disappointment to Guatemalans.

But renewed attempts to prevent change can be expected. What Guatemalans expect from Arévalo is a morally competent government that will bring about genuine democracy – a government looking out for the public rather than self-serving elites. The unprecedented seriousness of Arévalo’s promise is reflected in the fear his rise has fuelled among the beneficiaries of the current authoritarian kleptocracy.

A blatant manipulation of judicial institutions after the first round of voting on 25 June failed to prevent Arévalo competing in the runoff – but now the attempt is to stop his inauguration. Following the runoff, the Public Prosecutor made yet another attempt to have Semilla suspended.

The stakes are so high that an attempt to stop change by force can’t ruled out. An assassination plot involving state and non-state forces came to light days before the runoff.

For security reasons, Arévalo couldn’t address the crowds celebrating on election night. On 24 August, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures to Arévalo and vice-president-elect Karin Herrera, giving the state 15 days to report back on the adoption of additional measures – both already have state-issued security – to protect their physical integrity.

Guatemalans are counting the days to the inauguration of their new government, scheduled for 14 January 2024. But their hope is mingled with uncertainty and fear.

An election surprise and its aftermath

The collective mood on 20 August couldn’t have been more different from that on 25 June, when first place in the first round went to invalid votes.

The run-up to the June vote had been marked by further deterioration of civic space and the restriction of the choice on offer through the disqualification of several contenders, including the candidate first in the polls, conservative business leader Carlos Pineda Soa. But Arévalo wasn’t on the radar of opinion polls and no one saw him coming. In a very fragmented vote, his 12 per cent put him in the runoff. The frontrunner, with 16 per cent, was a political insider, former first lady Sandra Torres of the National Unity of Hope (UNE).

The establishment rightfully feared Arévalo because he didn’t seem the kind they could easily bring into the fold. A progressive academic and a member of Congress since 2020, he promised to bring back the numerous justice officials in exile and resume the fight against corruption ended by his predecessors.

The fact that he could become Guatemala’s next president made the 25 June election results an instant object of contention. Nine parties, including UNE, submitted complaints about supposed ‘irregularities’ that had gone undetected by all international observers. Their supporters converged outside the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE).

In what was denounced as an attempted ‘electoral coup’, the Constitutional Court ordered a recount and instructed the TSE to suspend certification of results. The TSE eventually endorsed the results two weeks later, on 12 July.

But in the meantime, the Attorney General, an official under US corruption sanctions, spearheaded an onslaught of judicial harassment against Arévalo. She launched an investigation of Semilla for alleged registration irregularities and had its offices raided. She twice ordered raids on TSE offices too. And just as the TSE announced Torres and Arévalo as the runoff competitors, she ordered Semilla’s suspension. The Constitutional Court however blocked this order.

Citizens defend democracy

The European Union and the Organization of American States, both of which had observation missions, took a strong stance. Domestic condemnation of the attempt to twist the results was also voiced by groups ranging from leading business associations to Indigenous authorities. But the starring role was played by citizens who spent weeks on the alert to ensure that Arévalo wasn’t kicked out of the runoff.

Large-scale peaceful demonstrations were repeatedly held in Guatemala City and departmental capitals, overwhelmingly led by young people. They were vocally nonpartisan, making clear that they were marching not for Arévalo or Semilla, but for the future of democracy.

On election day, this translated into a clear victory for the change candidate: Arévalo took 58 per cent of the vote, compared to Torres’s 37.2 per cent. The election saw strong participation by young, educated, urban voters, many voting for the first time.

An uncertain future

Once he takes office Arévalo will face a tough time fulfilling his promises, not least because the June election produced a highly fragmented Congress in which Semilla will have only 23 of 160 seats.

But the urgent question now is what lengths deeply entrenched elites will go to to try and stop Arévalo taking office. Torres hasn’t conceded defeat. Instead, she’s cried foul and accused the five TSE magistrates of ‘breach of duties and abuse of authority’.

Meanwhile the Attorney General and her right-hand man, a prosecutor who has made a career of protecting the powerful and persecuting the press, continue the ‘investigation’ through which they seek to shut Semilla down. People have responded by continuing to demonstrate outside the Attorney General’s office demanding her resignation.

Guatemala is living a unique moment, an opportunity that many didn’t think they’d ever see. But it’s also an uncertain time. Guatemala must walk carefully into the future, one step at a time, resisting the onslaught, judicial or otherwise, to get the president-elect to Inauguration Day.

People have made it clear they’re ready to take to the streets in numbers to defend what they’ve achieved. And they’ll need to both support and hold to account the new government for the mission it’s been entrusted with: that of restoring the substance of democracy.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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Women share nutritious diverse local crop varieties at 2022 Djimini seed fair in Senegal. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa is helping rewrite African laws and policies to favor conversion to hybrid and GMO maize seeds. Credit: AFSA or Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)

By Timothy A. Wise
CAMBRIDGE, MA., Aug 29 2023 (IPS)

As the adage goes, when you find yourself stuck in a hole, stop digging. As African leaders and their philanthropic and bilateral sponsors prepare for another glitzy African Green Revolution Forum, convening September 5-8 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, they are instead handing out new shovels to dig the continent deeper into a hunger crisis caused in part by their failing obsession with corporate-led industrialized agriculture.

Instead of cutting food insecurity in half, as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) promised at its founding in 2006, the continent has spiraled in the opposite direction. The number of chronically “undernourished” people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries has increased nearly 50%, not decreased, according to recent hunger data from the United Nations.

AGRA’s corporate cheerleaders will try to blame the continent’s deepening cavern of hunger on disruptions from the COVID pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, but chronic hunger had already risen 31% by 2018 in AGRA countries, as I documented in my 2020 Tufts University study. The hole was already getting deeper.

Summit host Tanzania is a case in point. As the government readies another Green Revolution festival of self-congratulation, refusing to allow Tanzanian farm groups to offer a more critical perspective and more effective solutions, UN figures show a 34% increase in number of undernourished Tanzanians since 2006. An estimated 59% of Tanzanians suffer moderate or severe levels of food insecurity, according to survey data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

African farmers: “Put down the Green Revolution shovels”

Once again, African farmer organizations are calling on African leaders and the donors who support them to put down the Green Revolution shovels, climb out of the hole, survey the damage their failing agricultural development model has wrought, and change course to more farmer-centered and sustainable ecological agriculture.

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa concluded its recent continental meeting on seed rights denouncing “AGRA and other corporate actors’ continued pressure to influence African government seed policies and biosafety regulations to increase corporate capture and control of seed on the continent.” They have scheduled a virtual press conference August 30, demanding “No Decisions About Us Without Us!”

In calling for a strategic reset, they are not ignoring the complex causes of hunger on the continent – climate change, conflict and corruption exacerbated by pandemic disruptions and rising costs of fertilizers and food imports from Russia and Ukraine. They are recognizing that the Green Revolution’s corporate-driven, technology-based strategy for rural uplift has proven unfit to help small-scale farmers cope with such challenges.

In 2006, AGRA offered a coherent strategy and admirably ambitious goals. Its aggressive promotion of commercial seeds and synthetic fertilizers would catalyze a virtuous cycle of agricultural development. Rising yields would feed the hungry and stimulate further investments in productivity-enhancing farm technologies. AGRA’s self-proclaimed “theory of change” would double food-crop productivity and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households by 2020 while cutting hunger in half.

Seventeen years – and more than one billion dollars – later, the evidence shows that AGRA’s theory of change was flawed at every turn. Those seeds and fertilizers did not produce a productivity revolution. Yields rose only 18% over 14 years, barely faster than before the new Green Revolution push. Maize yields grew only 29% despite billions of dollars in government subsidies to allow farmers to buy – and corporations to sell – the inputs. Meanwhile, more nutritious and climate-resilient traditional crops such as millet and sorghum saw yields stagnate or decline as farmers planted more subsidized maize.

With limited yield improvements, farmers didn’t see more food or higher incomes from sales of their promised new surplus production. They saw a losing proposition, with the costs of seeds and fertilizers outpacing the expected returns from crop sales. When the subsidies were cut as government budgets were squeezed, farmers stopped buying the seeds and fertilizers and went back to their old seeds, if they had managed to save any. Many found themselves in debt after input purchases failed to pay off their investment.

Most found farmland that was now less fertile than before, the nutrients drained by monocultures of maize. The fertilizers fed the maize, not the soil, which continued to lose fertility, starved for the organic matter provided by more ecological methods such as intercropping and manure applications.

So no one should be surprised to find hunger on the rise. Farmers were not growing much more food. What food they were growing – mostly starchy staples like maize and rice – were less nutritious than the mix of crops they used to grow. And they had little new cash income to purchase more food, never mind a diverse and nutritious diet. Many had less cash as they tried to pay off debts from their failed investments in commercial seeds and fertilizers.

Cosmetic changes, less transparency

International donors have failed to heed African farmers’ calls to change course. Instead, AGRA rolls out new corporate branding, a facelift not the full makeover Africa needs.

At last year’s Green Revolution Forum, attendees were treated to a slick set of videos announcing that the forum was removing the term “green revolution” from its name. Indeed, this year’s gathering calls itself the African Food Systems Summit. And AGRA itself dropped “green revolution” from its name, declaring with no real explanation that it would now just go by its acronym, AGRA.

AGRA literally stands for nothing at this point. Calling its new five-year strategy “AGRA 3.0,” leaders refuse to acknowledge the failures of their Green Revolution model. They keep promoting new versions of the same failed approaches. AGRA continues to foster pro-business policy changes within African governments, like the one it has helped push in Zambia this year. It promotes “agro-poles” – 250,000 acre “farm blocks,” often located on land grabbed from local communities so corporate investors can establish industrial-scale farms.

Like many tech upgrades, AGRA 3.0 gives African farmers less of what they really need, not more.

This year, AGRA’s cosmetic changes include a newly redesigned web site, replete with AGRA’s new logo but missing even the rudimentary progress reports it used to make available to the public. Scrubbed from the site – or conveniently buried in it – is last year’s damning donor-commissioned evaluation, which highlighted AGRA’s many failures to deliver on its promises.

African farmers have a different vision. They want donors and governments to stop supporting the failing Green Revolution initiative and instead shift their support to lower cost, farmer-centered, ecological agriculture. Farmers are producing their own organic fertilizers and pesticides from local materials, with excellent results. The simple and low-cost innovation of “green manure-cover-cropping” has scientists working with some 15 million small-scale maize farmers in Africa to plant local varieties of trees and nitrogen-fixing food crops in their maize fields, tripling maize yields at no cost to the farmer.

The solutions are at hand. It is past time for Green Revolution promoters to put down the shovels and stop digging Africa deeper into hunger.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Community Protest against Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), a wildlife conservation NGO. Credit: Pastoralist Media Initiative

By Arjun Amin
OAKLAND, California, Aug 29 2023 (IPS)

African leaders, public officials, and private-sector executives will converge in Nairobi, September 4-6, at the Africa Climate Summit (ACS) – coinciding with the UN Africa Climate Week (ACW). In recent years, Africa has been the poster child for climate solutions, with carbon credit and offset projects gaining popularity among the public and private sectors alike.

These schemes allow companies, primarily from the Global North, to “offset” their carbon emissions by funding forestry and land management efforts across Africa. Despite the hype around these solutions to climate crisis, serious concerns remain about their efficacy and negative consequences.

And yet, carbon credit and offset schemes will be at the center stage of the Summit, pedaling false climate solutions. With a lot on the line in the coming week, it is imperative to examine closely what some of these carbon credit and offset “solutions” entail – both for the consumers and the communities involved.

For several years, the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), a wildlife conservation NGO, has managed a multitude of “community” conservancies in Kenya and operated the Northern Kenya Grasslands Carbon Project (NKGCP), which they describe as “the world’s largest soil carbon removal project.”

Built on the premise that grazing practices of the Indigenous communities in Northern Kenya are unsustainable and that NRT’s model of “planned grazing” will allow for substantially more carbon to be sequestered, it offers on option for companies including British Airways, Meta, Netflix, and Salesforce to “offset” their emissions.

NRT also claims to promote community livelihood, aid endangered wildlife, and usher in a new wave of environmental sustainability, making it worth looking at whether their actions live up to what they state.

For one, it is extremely difficult to prove whether the NKGCP actually removes as much carbon as claimed. The Project’s credits are verified through DC-based company Verra – specializing in setting standards and verifications for carbon projects – that have been called out numerous times for exaggerated claims.

An investigation by The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial, revealed that only a handful of Verra’s rainforest projects showed evidence of deforestation reductions, 94% of the credits had no benefit to the climate, and that the threats to the forests claimed in its projects were overstated by about 400%. Outside of discredited Verra, it is near impossible to prove if NRT is making a difference.

According to Survival International, an Indigenous rights group, NRT’s “grazing strategy” is disruptive to the natural grazing patterns of the pastoralists as well as the relationships, traditions, and structures that hold the communities together.

NRT has allegedly displaced the local communities in the region, taken control of their agricultural and herd management practices, and imposed their own standards of what “sustainability” should achieve with little care for traditional methods that have stewarded this land for thousands of years.

Additionally, breakdown of the traditional grazing systems is endangering food security of the locals – who lack information about the project, let alone having provided their Free, Prior, and Informed Consent.

There are several reports of human rights abuses involving NRT against the Indigenous communities in Northern Kenya. The gravest allegations concern the rangers who patrol NRT’s conservancies – accused of intimidation and violence against the very communities NRT claims to support.

And, it is worth learning where the money NRT takes in is actually going. Theoretically, large sums of cash are promised to the communities, but the truth is far from what NRT claims. Up to 30% of project revenues are distributed directly to Native Energy, an American consultancy firm responsible for marketing the credits to corporate partners.

The remainder of project revenues are managed by NRT – of which 40% is retained for a variety of costs including land management and “conflict resolution.” When looking at the language NRT uses in its financial reports, it is not “communities” who are entitled to the NKGCP’s profits, but rather “community conservancies” with pastoralists not in control of how the funds are used. 30% of total project revenues are split up between these conservancies – with each conservancy receiving just over 2% of the funds.

But, anywhere between 20-40% of this already small slice is required to be spent on tasks like “grazing management” and other tasks which NRT directly oversees. With all the entanglements of NRT’s carbon scheme one thing is clear: communities in Northern Kenya are not benefitting and are instead losing control and access over the natural resources.

Schemes purportedly managed by the public sector appear to carry their own array of problems. A prime example is the Uganda Carbon Bureau, which manages a series of credit and offset schemes with private-sector partners, through the intermediary, Environmental Conservation Trust of Uganda (ECOTRUST).

For several years now, they have partnered with Plan Vivo through its Trees for Global Benefits (TGB) program to sequester carbon by “encouraging sustainable land use.”

As part of the program, farmers plant swaths of new trees in return for direct payment and a litany of purported benefits including inducing “No Poverty” in the regions where TGB operates. Despite these bold claims, Plan Vivo’s 2021 report revealed that nearly a quarter of farmers did not meet their “performance targets.”

Those who fail to meet the targets are cut off from any financial compensation with little notice. Much like with NRT, there is no way to prove if the program actually sequesters more carbon, and Plan Vivo offers little more than assurances of “increased biodiversity” in their official material.

TGB’s effects on communities in Uganda have reportedly been profoundly negative. A report by the Global Forest Coalition revealed that Plan Vivo and ECOTRUST have been notoriously difficult in working with the farmers, often neglecting to inform them about payment schedules and amounts, shifting target requirements, and cutting off compensation at their will.

Many participants were not adequately informed about the 25-year-spanning contracts they signed – only offered in English – with scarce opportunities to provide feedback.

Though Plan Vivo claims to alleviate food insecurity through its scheme, it is accused of doing just the opposite. The trees planted through TGB are on the land that farmers previously used for growing crops for their families and sell for a somewhat-steady income.

After the trees are planted, the land is no longer usable for agriculture, and TGB’s contracts stipulate that they have the final say over land use. Cash payments through the program are reportedly rarely enough to compensate for income lost, and many families have been left worse off than before.

Despite clear warning signs, the government of Uganda, has continued to promote Plan Vivo, even though carbon sales come nowhere near meeting the operational costs, as disclosed in its Annual Report. In order to recoup losses, TGB relies on funding from a slew of donors including the United Nations Development Programme, the United States Forestry Service, and the Dutch Government. The scheme is inherently unsustainable – it is only a matter of time before the farmers are abandoned with growing uncertainty over their futures.

False climate solutions like Trees for Global Benefits and the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project are not up to the task, but will be showcased at the Africa Climate Summit as the way forward. The claims they make are significantly overstated and end up causing far more harm to the communities who are being duped into signing shifty contracts, dispossessed of their land and authority, and made vulnerable to continued, persistent abuse. Corporations are choosing to offload their “climate guilt” onto the Global South, while shoring up revenues by slapping “net zero” on their products.

Carbon credit and offset projects obviate real, substantive measures needed to tackle climate change; they are a diversion of time and money away from solutions that matter. It is essential that African leaders challenge these false solutions and demand tangible, impactful, and accountable climate action – more than just greenwashing the corporate guilt of the global North at the expense of Indigenous communities across the continent.

Arjun Amin, a Junior at The College Preparatory School in Oakland, CA, did a summer internship at the Oakland Institute (www.oaklandinstitute.org), examining carbon credits schemes as a solution to climate crisis.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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‘Nature Insights – Speed Dating with the Future’ aims to explain human connectedness and impact with nature. CREDIT: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Aug 29 2023 (IPS)

If you’ve ever heard that 1 million species are at risk of extinction and wondered what that means for you, your family, and your future – there’s a podcast you won’t want to miss.

Nature Insight: Speed Dating with the Future, produced by IPBES (the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), tells the very human stories behind the science and policy of the global nature crisis, and its new third season starts today! 

Human activity is pushing other species off planet Earth at a rate never before seen in human history. One million species of plants and animals, out of an estimated total of eight million species, are at risk of extinction, many within decades.

“We are now in what some scientists consider the Anthropocene – a geological era based on the impact of humans on Planet Earth. We have touched the Earth in ways that will seemingly last forever. With that comes our impact on every other species with which we share the Earth, millions upon millions of species, many of which we do not even know yet. While we might not see it all the time, we are deeply connected and rely heavily on these species for our own well-being. These are the many values of nature, and we have a great responsibility to preserve them,” says Brit Garner, Science Communicator and one of the two co-hosts of the podcast.

IPBES, often described as “the IPCC for biodiversity”, is an independent intergovernmental body. Its mandate is to compile the best available evidence on nature to inform decision-makers, and it brings together experts from around the world to create reports that are often thousands of pages long. But IPBES knows that not everyone will read a 1,000-page report, so the IPBES secretariat has found other ways of bringing biodiversity science to all kinds of decision-makers around the world.

Rob Spaull, the Head of Communications at IPBES, is the other co-host of the podcast. He tells IPS the podcast provides a platform and an opportunity for people from every corner of the world to peer into the “box of science and policy on nature”, to engage with complex issues that impact their daily lives, and to assess how their own choices and decisions impact nature and in return, how these choices affect nature’s capacity to meet their needs. Nature Insight seeks to engage with a wide variety of decision-makers in finance, business, health, and energy and to make clear our own interlinkages with nature and biodiversity.

Explaining the podcast’s title, Spaull says, “Every time you listen to Nature Insight, you are speed-dating with nature and with what the future may bring. Speed dating is about having a short time to communicate things that could change your life, and in this podcast, we try to do so by introducing listeners to people with unique insight into humanity’s relationship with nature.”

The podcast was started at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is now entering its third season, which will be available today, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday over the next five weeks on all the platforms where people usually engage with podcasts. Listeners should expect to meet incredible individuals whose experience can help people in every part of the global community to see solutions for the future of humans and nature but from different perspectives.

“From the great heights of the Himalayas to the farthest reaches of Antarctica, we have lined up a lot of exciting new topics and an array of experts to take us on these journeys together. In the first episode of our new season, we feature a mushroom scientist from Nepal who climbed Mount Everest and has been climbing the Himalayas in search of new species of fungi and mushrooms and for new discoveries for science, such as never-before-described species, to help fill existing knowledge gaps. We will also hear from an incredible and groundbreaking expedition that went to the South Pole, a place not known for its biodiversity and usually considered to have very little biodiversity,” explains Spaull about Season 3.

“We will also speak to two very prominent environmental journalists, one from the global North and another from the South, on changes, challenges, and opportunities to reporting on nature and biodiversity over the years. There will be an episode on youth and youth engagement and another on stakeholders and the IPBES stakeholder network. Importantly, there will be an episode on invasive alien species following the launch of the new IPBES report, to be released on September 4, 2023. It’s a season of great excitement, extensive travels, and unmissable insights.”

Nature Insight Season 3 builds on the success already achieved in the past two years, when the podcast explored topics such as zoonotic diseases and pandemics, indigenous and local conservation, achieving transformative change, protecting coral reefs and coastal ecosystems in the context of climate change, the links between business and biodiversity, and the diverse ways in which communities attach different values to nature.

“With time and policy having passed and the pandemic having transitioned, so much has changed in three years since we started the podcast. In the third season, we are really widening the idea of what, where and who nature is and getting stories from those expansions. We get to hear from geographical locations and stakeholders we have not heard from before. We have considered the values of nature in ways we have not done in the past,” Garner expounds.

Spaull points out the relevance of the podcast to implementing the new Global Biodiversity Framework, the outcome of the landmark 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference, in which nations adopted four goals and 23 targets for 2030 as a concrete plan to halt and reverse nature loss. Over six widely varied episodes of the podcast, listeners will hear from experts on the frontlines of biodiversity research and action about cutting-edge science and vibrant personal insights about some of the most critical issues facing people and the planet.

“Making the podcast has been a very exciting experience, with me in the United States, Rob in Germany, the producer in the UK and guests from all over the world. The diversity of people, places and topics has created some profound experiences for me. During the lockdown, I was in my attic at 3 a.m. speaking to an indigenous leader from Western Australia on water rights, and I realised, though isolated, we are still very much connected, and it is this connection to people and nature that enables us to do and achieve great, meaningful things,” Garner recounts.

Spaull says that the podcast has only scratched the surface. In subsequent episodes and seasons, there is still new ground to capture nature in its many unique elements. Season one started during the COVID-19 lockdown, season two as the world was coming out of lockdown, and season three is happening when governments are engaging with new targets for nature. As the world moves on, it is unlikely that Nature Insights will run out of topics to discuss anytime soon.

You can subscribe to Nature Insight on all major podcast platforms or by clicking here.

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WHO Goodwill Ambassador Sasakawa with some of the representatives from persons affected by leprosy organizations that participated in the Bergen International Conference on Hansen’s Disease (June 21–22, 2023).

By Yohei Sasakawa
TOKYO, Japan, Aug 28 2023 (IPS-Partners)

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the leprosy bacillus by Dr. Gerhard Armauer Hansen in Bergen, Norway. To prompt reflection on the past and build momentum for a zero leprosy future, the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative and the University of Bergen co-hosted an international conference on June 21–22. The conference was attended by 200 people from 27 countries and opened with video messages from Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, and Mr. Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In my remarks, I emphasized that progress in the area of human rights has lagged far behind medical progress. In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution as well as principles and guidelines on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members. In other words, the international community officially recognizes that leprosy is a human rights issue.

However, persons affected by leprosy and their family members still face severe discrimination in fundamental areas of social life, including education, employment, and marriage. Many of them are burdened with self-stigma, wondering whether they have human rights. Despite the importance of receiving early diagnosis, some try to keep their disease hidden out of fear of the discrimination that they and their family members might face.

For me, hope comes from seeing persons affected by leprosy take the lead. At the conference, representatives from organizations of persons affected by leprosy shared the remarkable results that they are achieving in their countries. I will continue to make every effort to realize a truly inclusive society where all persons affected by leprosy and their family members feel like they belong.

Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination

A young girl in school uniform and covered in veil walks alone in the empty corridor of Tajrobawai girls primary and secondary school seen on September 16, 2021 in Herat, Afghanistan. The Taliban has forbidden girls at high school level to attend schools throughout Afghanistan. Credit: Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images

By Josef Benedict and David Kode
KUALA LUMPUR / JOHANNESBURG, Aug 28 2023 (IPS)

His name is Matiullah Wesa, a girls education campaigner who now symbolises the “war” waged by the Taliban against the education and empowerment of women and girls. Exactly two years since the Taliban took over, Afghanistan is on a downward trajectory and unfortunately, global attention that was drawn by families chasing planes to flee a few days after the Taliban assumed control of the government has waned over the last two years.

Any improvements made in advancing human rights, especially the rights of women and access to education have been quickly reversed and replaced with severe restrictions that have almost completely wiped away the rights of women in almost all sectors and spheres of life. In a brazen move that provided a clear indication to the international community that the Taliban had an anti-human rights agenda, human rights defenders and members of their families have been harassed, detained and attacked in their homes while Afghanistan’s independent human rights commission was dissolved and its premises confiscated. In the absence of any internal human rights mechanism, the Taliban are only accountable to themselves and act with utmost impunity.

Matiullah was arrested in March 2023 for his dedication to provide education to girls particularly in rural areas. Through his organisation – PenPath which he founded in 2009, he campaigned for the right to education for girls, working with tribal leaders to provide mobile libraries to ensure girls have access to education. Penpath has successfully reopened 100 schools (including those closed for more than a decade due to war and the Taliban’s restrictions on education) in 16 provinces.

Matiullah Wesa, Afghan educational activist, reads to students in Afghanistan. Photo courtesy of Matiullah Wesa/PenPath

In an interview with CIVICUS, a year before he was arbitrarily arrested, Matiullah pointed out that they had provided education facilities for about 110000 children, about 60% were girls and distributed 1.5 million stationary and collected 34000 books through its book donation campaigns. His continued detention means, at best this much needed support provided to communities has been scaled back substantively and at worse has almost completely stopped. Yet, Matiullah is just one among hundreds who have worked tirelessly to improve the lives of Afghans over the years and are unable to do so either because they are in detention, have fled the country to avoid reprisals or have been forced to self censor.

The de facto Taliban regime has over the last two years institutionalised restrictions against women, dismissed women in public service, prevented girls from attending school and university and in December 2022, banned women from working with NGOs and aid agencies. It followed this decision exactly four months later by banning women from working for the UN in Afghanistan – as they had been exempted from the previous ban.

Through the Directorate for Intelligence, the regime monitors and targets women activists on social media and those identified as protest leaders. Others who participate in protests are identified through pictures posted on social media and through interrogations and arrested. On 11 February 2023, women’s rights activist and founder of the social movement – the Takhar Women’s Protest Movement – Parisa Mobarez, was arrested together with her brother in Takhar province and physically assaulted before they were released.

Matiullah Wesa, Afghan educational activist, reads to students in Afghanistan. Photo courtesy of Matiullah Wesa/PenPath

A day after, activist Nargis Sadat was arrested for protesting against the restrictions on women’s right to work and education and released after two months. In response to an announcement by the Taliban regime that it would close beauty salons, women protesters converged at the Shar-e Naw district in Kabul on 19 July, displaying protest signs with calls for ‘bread,’ ‘work’ and ‘justice.’ The women protesters were rounded up as security forces fired shots into the air and physically assaulted some of the women using electric stun guns.

The above restrictions are happening in a context of an ever increasing humanitarian crises exacerbated by growing social and economic challenges. Human rights groups report that the number of people living in poverty has increased to 97%, an increase of about 47% over the last three years and that more than half of the population – about 28 million people urgently need humanitarian assistance. The restrictions placed on women in government ministries and the ban on women from working for NGOs have a devastating impact on the families of these women and communities including women and children who have benefited from services provided. In addition, most women have literally been confined to their homes as they are banned from gyms, swimming pools and public parks.

Afghan women are fighting back

Despite the reprisals from the Taliban and threats of violence and arrests, Afghan women continue to mobilise to keep the face they face on the agenda of the international community. The resilience of these brave Afghan women and their sustained protests continue to shed light on the state of human rights in Afghanistan, especially at a time when the international community seems to have moved on to other crises. As women protesters, journalists and human rights defenders and families face increased attacks, protests have been moved indoors and online. Some of the protesters continue to cover their faces to avoid reprisals while others remain unveiled to encourage others.

Photo courtesy of PenPath

What can be done?

The current situation is especially tricky for many international actors and though the Taliban craves for international recognition to boast its legitimacy, members of the international community including the European Union, United Kingdom and India who engage with the Taliban as well as humanitarian organisations and civil society groups should respect the wishes of Afghans and not provide any form of formal recognition to the de facto regime. They should also support Afghan women rights activists in exile.

Millions of Afghans will continue to need humanitarian assistance for the foreseeable future and ongoing and future dialogues to negotiate for space and access through humanitarian corridors should be premised on respect for human rights and lifting of current restrictions on women and girls.

At the level of the United Nations, the UN Security Council Resolution on Afghanistan which accused the Taliban of violating human rights and the appointment of a Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan are important steps in the right direction but nearly not enough. The Security Council should continue to prioritise Afghanistan and push for accountability mechanisms inside of Afghanistan which would serve as some kind of a deterrent and a check on impunity. Lastly, there is a need for an intra-Afghan dialogue that is inclusive and should be led by a neutral party.

Josef Benedict is a researcher covering the Asia Pacific region for the CIVICUS Monitor. Malaysia. David Kode is the advocacy and campaigns lead for CIVICUS. South Africa

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Credit: Urmatt Limited

By Sharon Behn and Ignacio Blanco
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 28 2023 (IPS)

When Lisa Huyen first set up her company, Vinasamex, which specializes in certified organic cinnamon and star anise grown in the mountainous and poorer provinces of Viet Nam, she faced daunting challenges including market access and securing financial support from banks.

“Developing an inclusive business model around an agricultural product can be challenging,” Lisa says of the difficulties faced by many similar enterprises in the region. “But you can do it if you have enough love, patience and a clear mission.”.

Her perseverance, work and investments in human capital have since paid off not just financially, but also resulted in positive social impact for thousands.

“Ten years ago, our farmers had an average yearly income of $250 per hectare. Now they earn an average of $5,000 per hectare per year. The increased income means they can pay for their children to go to school and have more opportunities in life,” Lisa says.

Vinasamex also provides their farmers and factory workers from minority ethnic and lower-income communities – 95 per cent of whom are women – with training on international certification standards, ICT and gender equality.

In recent years, the concept of inclusive business — enterprises that go beyond the usual “profit-first” market approach to provide affordable goods, services and livelihoods to low-income people — has been gaining traction in Asia and the Pacific.

Inclusive businesses aim to make often forgotten communities an integral part of their operations. They collaborate with them as suppliers, distributors, retailers or even customers, creating a meaningful value chain that benefits everyone involved. By catering to the needs of low-income consumers and finding innovative ways to do so, these companies manage to both serve the community and generate profits.

As part of its support for inclusive growth, ESCAP has partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to promote inclusive business models in agriculture in India, Thailand and Viet Nam. This collaboration seeks to address the needs of thousands of farmers by improving access to technologies, services and platforms in the region.

Credit: Safe Harvest

Safe Harvest was started in 2009 by a group of eight farmer collectives and non-governmental organizations, with the objective of selling pesticide-free agricultural products to the urban consumer. Initially, the company struggled to attract investments and break into wholesale and retail markets, but today its products are present in modern retail format stores, e-commerce platforms, specialty organic stores and its product basket is available in 17 cities in India.

“Our impact is three-fold: We are working with more than 100,000 smallholder farmers across 12 states through more than 30 farmer organizations. We pay our farmers as much as five per cent above the price being offered in the closest organized wholesale market. We plan ahead of the cropping season with our partners to enable them to meet our demands in terms of volumes and quality, and this planning helps the farmers with their sowing schedules,” says Rangu Rao, CEO of Safe Harvest.

Aside from its core innovation of creating a new “pesticide-free food” product category in India, Safe Harvest has also helped its mostly smallholder farmers to form collectives known as farmer-producer organizations (FPOs). “This is a relatively new concept in India, which combines the best of cooperatives and private limited companies. By working collectively, these farmers can more efficiently pool their input purchases and market their produce,” adds Rangu.

Credit: Urmatt Limited

Based in Thailand, Urmatt Limited is among the world’s largest producers of organic jasmine rice, working as a fully organic inclusive business since 1999. “The reason was simple: I saw a need on the ground here in Thailand, where the majority of the population are farmers who are constantly indebted and needed help,” explains Urmatt CEO Arvind Narula.

“Following fair trade principles, we aim to create opportunities for economically disadvantaged and socially marginalized farmers. We do this by buying top-quality rice products from our farmers who would not normally be able to access markets in economically developed countries. We also make sure to extend our support to women farmers so that they can take on more equal roles and have a chance to earn an independent income,” says Arvind.

Urmatt has a strong R&D department and is now looking at ways to achieve zero waste as well as use automation and AI in farming. The company has developed food packaging made from rice straw that is 100 per cent home compostable, creating a usable product out of rice by-products, which gives the farmers additional revenue streams.

There is clear potential for inclusive businesses to deliver solutions at scale. ESCAP is working closely with governments and the private sector on policies that generate greater awareness of inclusive business models, recognize and reward them with targeted incentives, and facilitate services and investments that enable companies to develop inclusive business models.

By merging profit-driven strategies with a genuine concern for social and environmental impacts, inclusive businesses can pave the way for a region that thrives on sustainability, inclusivity and shared prosperity.

More on ESCAP’s work in promoting inclusive business: https://www.unescap.org/projects/promoting-IB-in-AP

Sharon Behn is Consultant, Trade, Investment and Innovation Division (TIID); and Ignacio Blanco is Programme Management Officer, TIID. Other contributors include Marta Pérez Cusó, Economic Affairs Officer, TIID and Kavita Sukanandan, Public Information Officer, Communications and Knowledge Management Section (CKMS).

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In the Bosque de Niebla, located in the department of Antioquia in northwestern Colombia, biodiversity bonds have emerged to push for protection of the ecosystem from threats such as deforestation and rising temperatures. But these instruments are still very green in Latin America. CREDIT: Courtesy of Terraso

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

Located in northwestern Colombia, the Bosque de Niebla is home to 154 species of plants, 120 bird species, 21 species of mammals, 16 water springs and five hectares of wetlands.

Forming part of the Cuchilla Jardín-Támesis Integrated Management District in the department of Antioquia, the ecosystem provides water and climate regulation to the entire northwestern region of the country."Not all ecosystem services are the same, it has to be a very judicious system. And there have to be local regulations, from green taxonomies (classification of activities) to regulations. Therein lies the dilemma of where the sector has to go." -- Lía González

For this reason, an innovative financing scheme, biodiversity bonds, seeks to strengthen the protection of this area for 30 years, in the face of threats such as deforestation, drought and rising temperatures due to the climate crisis.

Private Colombian investor Terraso and Spanish carbon offset seller ClimateTrade, a climate solutions company that utilizes blockchain technology to facilitate large-scale decarbonization efforts through innovation, created voluntary biodiversity bonds for the Bosque de Niebla in May 2022.

The aim is to care for 340 hectares registered as a habitat bank by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia, one of the 10 most biologically diverse countries in the world.

Habitat banks are areas where conservation initiatives are aggregated and ecosystem preservation, enhancement or restoration actions are implemented to generate quantifiable biodiversity gains.

Each biodiversity credit represents 10 square meters of threatened, conserved or restored land. Technical, financial and legal guarantees will sustain the project for at least 30 years. Each bond, worth 30 dollars, corresponds to 30 years of conservation and/or restoration.

But the scheme raises concerns about the commercialization of wildlife and the pursuit of profit over ecological benefits.

Patricia Balvanera, an academic at the Institute for Research on Ecosystems and Sustainability of the public National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the financial market approach does not address the full spectrum of environmental, cultural and social issues, which can cloud the vision of the integral importance of nature.

“Other non-integrated values have to do with social, ethical principles that have developed around nature. We have bought ourselves an image as a factory of resources at the service of people and we have discarded the role of nature and society through a relationship of care and reciprocity,” she told IPS from the northern Mexican city of San Luis Potosí.

The expert is co-author of the study “Diverse values of nature for sustainability”, published on Aug. 9, which addresses a more holistic view of care.

Unlike offsets for environmental damage due to infrastructure projects, biodiversity credits are an economic instrument that can be used to finance actions that result in measurable positive outcomes through the issuance and sale of biodiversity units.

The buyers of biodiversity bonds gain in reputational aspects, by promoting the restoration and protection of ecosystems, and obtain funds by reselling the bonds, as it is a voluntary market.

These are different from carbon credits, where companies and individuals can buy the reduced emissions credits in what is known as the voluntary carbon market, to offset their polluting emissions: each one represents the elimination of one metric ton of carbon from the atmosphere.

For the carbon dioxide equivalent trapped and stored in ecosystems such as forests, project owners can issue certificates for sale in national and international markets to national and international corporations and individuals who want to reduce their polluting emissions.

Mangroves, such as these in the municipality of Paraíso in the southeastern Mexican state of Tabasco, are candidates for biodiversity bonds because of the services they provide and the need to protect them, like other ecosystems. But these credits still need international standards, verification and monitoring guidelines, as well as tangible results. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

On hold

In Honduras, a project similar to the Colombian one is advancing in Cusuco National Park, in the northwestern department of Cortés.

In the 22,200-hectare forest, decreed in 1987, the international alliance of environmental organizations rePlanet seeks the conservation of 1,883 hectares in 25 years in the face of threats such as deforestation and the risk to 24 species.

The project could issue bonds this year.

Lía González, director for Latin America of the Belgian social impact investment firm Incofin, said the instrument involves several challenges, such as monetization, assigning value to the blocks of land, the creation of standards for measurement, verification, monitoring and issuance, as well as the involvement of the communities.

“Not all ecosystem services are the same, it has to be a very judicious system. And there have to be local regulations, from green taxonomies (classification of activities) to regulations. Therein lies the dilemma of where the sector has to go,” she told IPS from Bogotá.

The executive stressed that the scheme should avoid the carbon credits model and learn from its mistakes, such as inaccurate calculation of carbon sequestration and violations of community rights.

In 2022, Incofin’s portfolio covered 111 clients in 14 Latin American countries for a total of 400 million dollars in segments such as sustainable agriculture and microfinance. In Colombia, it supported eight clients and totaled 44.3 million dollars.

The company focuses on medium-term investments, so that beneficiaries have an additional source of income within the area being protected or restored.

So far, so-called green bonds have fallen short in financing for the conservation of natural wealth and sustainable land use, according to a 2020 report by the Luxembourg Green Exchange and the Global Landscapes Forum, entitled: “How can Green Bonds catalyse investments in biodiversity and sustainable land-use projects?”

Colombia and Honduras are the countries that have moved forward with these instruments, because they have regulations and several financial instruments related to biodiversity, although bonds are still a rarity.

In this regard, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which groups the world’s 38 most developed economies, noted in its 2021 report “Tracking Economic Instruments and Finance for Biodiversity” that, despite the progress made, the substantial potential depends on increasing the use and ambition of biodiversity-relevant economic instruments.

In its Sixth National Biodiversity Report 2020, Honduras recognized the need to improve the monetary and non-monetary valuation of environmental services.

Financing schemes are essential to the development of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2019, which seeks to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, to eradicate poverty, combat climate change and prevent the mass extinction of species.

Moving towards a take-off?

In order for it to be successful, the mechanism requires integrity of the projects and the inclusion of all stakeholders, according to the World Economic Forum, dedicated to multinational business lobbying.

The Colombian Bosque de Niebla initiative has already placed 62,063 credits and has 61,773 available.

The investor Terraso has seven other habitat banks in various areas of Colombia that could generate more bonds.

Balvanera warned of perverse incentives that could undermine protection.

“If we think about financial schemes, the link should not only be transactional. There must be involvement of different stakeholders who collectively identify the mechanism that promotes conservation, respects the vision of care and maintains the livelihoods of the inhabitants of these areas,” she said.

The academic argued that “this generates a circular system that connects forest protection, water care, food production and sustainable consumption.”

For her part, González was open to analyzing these investments.

“Water could be a viable focus for climate resilience and its impact on the region’s climate. We are interested in learning about monetization and that additional sources of income can benefit protection processes, so that it is complementary to what we do,” she said.

Last December, the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which includes cumulative biodiversity funding of at least 200 billion dollars by 2030 from public and private sources.

One of its goals is to encourage innovative schemes such as payment for environmental services, green bonds, offsets, biodiversity credits and benefit-sharing mechanisms that include environmental and social safeguards.

To meet these objectives, the 196 States Parties to the CBD created the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, which is managed by the Global Environment Facility and whose governing council was approved in June in Brazil.

In addition, the agreement includes the complete or partial restoration of at least 30 percent of degraded terrestrial and marine ecosystems by 2030, as well as the reduction of the loss of areas of high biological importance to almost zero.

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Pharmacists, like Christine Atieno​ from Mediway Healthcare and doctors say women and men in Kenya are more open to contraceptive use now. CREDIT: Wilson Odhiambo/IPS

By Wilson Odhiambo
NAIROBI, Aug 28 2023 (IPS)

According to a family planning brief, more than 370 million women in middle and low-income countries were finally embracing modern contraception to help curb unintended pregnancies.

This statistic suggests that one in every three women from middle and low-income countries use contraceptives today.

Africa, which had the lowest number of family planning users in 2012, had registered a 66 percent increase, from 40 million to 66 million girls and women by 2022. Eastern and Southern Africa recorded the highest increase in family planning users at 70 percent.

Kenya was ranked among the sub-Saharan nations that had effectively managed to tame the population growth rate by educating and empowering women and young girls through family planning initiatives.

According to Kenya’s Ministry of Health, by September last year, at least 54 percent of women in the country had access to contraceptives, and the use of modern methods of family planning had increased from 18 percent in 1989 to 57 percent in 2022. This went a long way in helping it meet its FP2030 commitment plan.

The Kenya Demographic and Health Survey last year reported that there was a decrease in the fertility rate in women from 3.9 children per woman in 2014 to 3.4 children per woman in 2022. This decrease resulted in a slowed population growth rate from 3.4 percent in 2014 to 2.2 percent in 2022.

The report stated that amongst married couples, 47 percent of women wanted to have more children, while the case was 57 percent for men. Another 30 percent of women and 37 percent of men wanted to wait a while longer before having children. This showed that more women preferred to wait and decide when and how many children they wanted to have through family planning.

From the report, more women in rural areas were also opting to limit the number of children they were having as opposed to the past, where the decision was not easy for them to make due to factors like lack of education, traditions, and limited access to health facilities.

Among the educated group, 84 percent of married women with primary school education and 94 percent of married women with secondary school education did not want more children. This showed how big a role the level of education played in the use of contraceptives.

A look at the counties showed that urbanised areas, where more people had access to education, had a low fertility rate in comparison to the marginalized counties with limited access to proper education.

For instance, the counties with the lowest fertility rates included Nairobi, Nyamira, Machakos, Kirinyaga, Mombasa and Kiambu, which recorded 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.8, 2.9 and 2.9 children per woman. The opposite was true for the marginalised counties like Mandera, West Pokot, Wajir and Marsabit, which recorded high fertility rates of 7.7, 6.9, 6.8, and 6.3 children per woman.

Some of the common family planning methods being used today include sterilization, condoms use, implants, injectable drugs, and pills. The use of these modern contraceptives, however, varies by region.

Christine Atieno, a pharmacist technician at a local clinic, agrees that there has been a significant rise in the number of contraceptive users amongst married people over the years.

‘’Married women, mostly aged between 25 years and above, form the majority of our patients at Medway Healthcare,’’ Atieno told IPS.

‘’We receive at least five patients, on a daily basis, who come to seek professional assistance on what sort of contraceptives to use. Many of them prefer taking the oral pills, which we restock two to three times a week,’’ she said. We offer all forms of modern family planning services at our facility apart from sterilisation.

Research work published in the National Library of Medicine agrees that community pharmacies and clinics have also played a big role in ensuring the delivery and easy access to family planning services in both rural and urban areas.

According to the findings, the public health system accounts for 60 percent of patients, while the private sector, made up of pharmacies and clinics, takes up 34 percent.

These private facilities have been authorised to conduct family planning services such as providing oral contraceptives, male and female condoms, injectable intramuscular and subcutaneous depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA), and emergency contraceptives.

“Being a developing country, Kenya stills lags behind in terms of adequate facilities in its public health system, which makes pharmacies and clinics very important in providing medical assistance, especially to young people between the ages of 10 and 24 years,’’ says Wilson Opudo, a public health specialist.

‘’While it is true that there is an increase in usage of contraceptives amongst women, there is still the matter of teenage girls between the ages of 14 and 18 years who are increasingly becoming sexually active but cannot afford or are unwilling to visit public health facilities for various reasons,’’ Opudo explained to IPS.

According to Opudo, these teenage girls usually avoid going to public health facilities, most of whom will expect them to be accompanied by their parents or guardians because of their young age. Due to this, they prefer community pharmacies and clinics where they can get help on their own.

‘’Being young, these girls are usually embarrassed by their parents finding out that they are sexually active, and most will therefore avoid visiting hospitals,’’ Opudo said. For this reason, it is important to also have professional counsellors in these community clinics and pharmacies.

During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kenya recorded one of the highest cases of teenage pregnancies, which experts linked to the fact that many children were left unattended at home with little to occupy their free time. Easy access to uncontrolled and uncensored social media has also been a contributing factor to the increased sexual activity among teenagers.

“Teenage girls mostly visit our facility during the weekends, and they usually come looking for emergency contraceptive (plan B) pills, unlike the case for the older married women,’’ said Atieno. ‘’My colleagues and I are also qualified counsellors, and we always insist on offering advice to these teenagers before letting them make any big decisions on their own.’’

The DHS data also showed that, while still low, more men were also taking part in the family planning process as the number of married men getting sterilised had doubled in comparison to the previous years.

Initially, women mostly did family planning, most of whom preferred hiding it from their spouses to avoid conflict or backlash from society, as having many children was considered a blessing in many African households.

Today, however, many men understand the importance of family planning, especially on women’s health and are even accompanying their spouses for the services.

The DHS data indicated an increase in the number of men getting a vasectomy from 248 in 2021 to 557 in 2022.

Dr Alex Owino, Medical Superintendent, Katulani Sub-County Hospital, Kitui, advises that while family planning has become accessible to many, it is also necessary to understand the importance of having a medical specialist to help you decide on the best type of contraceptives.

‘’I have seen cases of women reacting negatively to injections and implants, which makes it necessary for one to be able to know what works for them. Some have complained of side effects such as headaches and uneven menstrual flow, which makes it hard for them to go about their daily business,’’ Owino told IPS.

‘’Pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and those using ARVs, for example, have different needs in terms of the kind of contraceptives that is best for them,’’ he added.

From the data gathered in the FP2030 report, the following were some of the key findings:

1. Injectables were the most favoured method of contraception in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by oral pills and implants, respectively.
2. Pills and male condoms were predominantly used in Europe and Northern America.
3. Female sterilisation and male condoms remain the most used family planning methods worldwide.
4. Most family planning users across the globe also prefer short-term methods as opposed to long-term.

In summary, the increased use of contraceptives had helped avert 141 million unintended pregnancies, 150 000 maternal deaths and 30 million unsafe abortions worldwide.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka on April 13, 2022. Credit: Wikipedia

By Asoka Bandarage
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 25 2023 (IPS)

Sri Lanka has been faced with an unprecedented political and economic crisis since the beginning of 2022.

The dominant narrative attributes the crisis to the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine conflict, China’s ‘debt trap diplomacy’ and – most importantly – the corruption and mismanagement of the ruling Rajapaksa family.

Western mainstream media celebrated the so-called aragalaya (struggle, in Sinhala) protest movement that led to the ouster of the Rajapaksas and upholds the IMF bail-out as the only solution to the dire economic situation.

The aragalaya protests emerged from genuine economic grievances, but failed to develop an analysis beyond the ‘Gota, Go Home’ demand for Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign. Influenced by local and external interests with their own agendas, the protestors exhibited little-to-no awareness or critique of the global political economy and the financial system at the root of the country’s crisis.

In 2022, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reported that 60 percent of low-income countries and 30 percent of emerging market economies are ‘in or near debt distress.’ While the details differ from country to country, the historical patterns of subordination that have given rise to global crises are the same.

The Sri Lankan crisis is an illustrative example of convergent global debt, food, fuel and energy crises facing much of the world. It is corporate media bias and narrative control that deflects from this analysis.

The island’s severe debt and economic crisis must be seen in a broader global context as the culmination of several centuries of colonial and neo-colonial developments, and the disastrous and inevitably self-destructive capitalist paradigm of endless growth and profit. Debt is not “a straightforward number but a social relation embedded in unequal power relations, discourses and moralities…and…institutionalized power.”.

Colonialism and Neocolonialism

The development of export agriculture and the import of food and other essentials under British colonialism turned Sri Lanka into a dependent ‘peripheral’ unit of the global capitalist economy.

Adopting ideologies of modernization and development and theories of comparative advantage, the capitalist imperative integrated self-sustaining indigenous, peasant, and regional economies into the growing global economy, through the appropriation of land, natural resources, and labor for export production.

Monocultural agriculture, mining, and other export-based production disturbed traditional patterns of crop rotation and small-scale subsistence production that were more harmonious with the regional ecosystems and cycles of nature.

Plantation development contributed to deforestation, loss of biodiversity and animal habitats. While a small local elite prospered through their collaboration with colonialism, most people became poor, indebted, and dependent on the vagaries of the global market for their sustenance.

Although colonized countries including Sri Lanka gained political independence following World War II, unequal exchange continued under neo-colonialism. Terms of trade disadvantaged the ‘Third World’ with their labor, resources and exports grossly undervalued and imports overvalued.

The dynamic is better understood as poorer countries being over-exploited rather than under-developed. Rising populations combined with corruption and inefficiency of local governments gave rise to endemic foreign exchange shortages and economic crises in Sri Lanka and many other countries.

The debt relief and aid given by the IMF, the World Bank and bilateral institutions from the Global North have been mere band-aids to keep the ex-colonial countries tethered to the global financial and economic structures. Post-independent Sri Lanka went to the IMF 16 times before the current 2023 bail-out which seeks to further perpetuate the county’s cycle of debt dependence.

The transfer of financial and resource wealth from poor countries in the global South to the rich countries in the North is not a new phenomenon. It has been an enduring feature throughout centuries of both classical and neo-colonialism. Between 1980 and 2017, developing countries paid out over $4.2 trillion solely in interest payments, dwarfing the financial aid they received from the developed countries during that period.

Currently, international financial institutions – notably the IMF and the World Bank – remain outside political and legal control without even ‘elementary accountability’. As critics from the Global South point out, “The overwhelming power of financial institutions makes a mockery of any serious effort for democratization and addressing the deteriorating socioeconomic living conditions of the people in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in the Global South.”

Financialization and Debt

Corporate and financial deregulation which accompanied the rise of neoliberalism starting in the 1970s has given rise to financialization, and the increasing importance of finance capital. As more and more aspects of social and planetary life are commoditized and subjected to digitalization and financial speculation, the real value of nature and human activity are further lost.

As a 2022 United Nations Report points out; food prices are soaring today not due to a problem with supply and demand but due to price speculation in highly financialized commodity markets.

A handful of the largest asset management companies, notably BlackRock (currently worth USD $ 10 trillion) control very large shares in companies operating in practically all the major sectors of the global economy: banking, technology, media, defense, energy, pharmaceuticals, food, agribusiness including seeds, and agrochemicals.

Financial liberalization advanced when interest rates dropped in the richer countries after the global 2008 financial crisis. Developing countries were encouraged to borrow from private international capital markets through International Sovereign Bonds (ISBs) which come with high interest rates and short maturation periods.

Although details are not available to the public, BlackRock is reportedly the biggest ISB creditor of Sri Lanka. Most of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt is ISBs, with over 80% of Sri Lanka’s debt owed to western creditors, and not – as projected in the mainstream narrative – to China.

IMF debt financing requires countries to meet its familiar structural adjustment conditions: privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), cutbacks of social safety nets and labor rights, increased export production, decreased import substitution and alignment of local economic policy with US and other Western interests.

These are the same aims as classical colonialism, they are just better hidden in the more complex modern system and language of global finance, diplomacy and aid.

A vast array of policies exacting these aims are well under way in Sri Lanka, including the sale of state-owned energy, telecommunications and transportation enterprises to foreign owners, with grave implications for Sri Lanka’s economic independence, sovereignty, national security and the wellbeing of her people and the environment.

The IMF approach does not address long-term needs for bioregionalism, sustainable development, local autonomy and welfare. A small vulnerable country such as Sri Lanka cannot change the trajectory of global capitalist development on its own.

Regional and global solidarity and social movements are necessary to challenge the deranged global financial and economic system that is at the root of the current crisis.

Global South Resistance

Since the 1970s, major collaborative projects have been initiated by developing countries and the UNCTAD to develop a multilateral legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring. Yet they are futile in the face of the powerful opposition of creditors and the protection given to them by wealthy countries and their multilateral institutions, and the UN has failed to uphold commitment and implement a debt restructuring mechanism.

Sri Lanka was a global leader in efforts to create a New International Economic Order, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace in the 1960s and 70s. In the early years of their political independence, countries throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America sought to forge their own paths of economic and political development, independent of both capitalism and communism and the Cold War.

These included African socialist projects such as Tanzania’s Ujamma, import substitution programs in Latin America and left-wing nationalism and decolonization efforts in Sri Lanka and many other countries.

Almost without exception, these nationalist efforts failed, not only due to internal corruption and mismanagement but also due to persistent external pressure and intervention. Massive efforts have been taken by the Global North to stop the Global South from moving out of the established world order.

A case in point is the nationalization of oil companies owned by western countries in Sri Lanka in 1961 and the backlash against the left-nationalist Sri Lankan government which dared to take such a bold move.

The western response included the 1962 Hickenlooper Amendment passed in the U.S. Senate stopping foreign aid to Sri Lanka and to “any country expropriating American property without compensation.” As a result, Sri Lanka lost its credit worthiness, the domestic economic situation worsened, and the left-nationalist government lost the 1965 elections (with some covert US election support).

Observing those developments, political economist Richard Stuart Olsen wrote: “…the coerciveness of economic sanctions against a dependent, vulnerable country resides in the fact that an economic downturn can be induced and intensified from the outside, with the resulting development of politically explosive ‘relative deprivation’…”

These observations resonate with Sri Lanka’s current repetition of the same vicious cycle: an externally dependent export-import economy; worsening terms of trade; foreign exchange shortage; policy mismanagement; external political pressure; debt crisis; shortages of food, fuel and other essentials; mass suffering; and political turmoil.

Geopolitical Rivalry

Sri Lanka’s present economic crisis – the worst since the country’s political independence from the British – must be seen in the context of the accelerating neocolonial geopolitical conflict between China and the USA in the Indian Ocean. Many other countries across the world are also caught in the neocolonial superpower competition to control their natural resources and strategic locations.

There is much speculation as to whether the debt default on April 12, 2022 and political destabilization in Sri Lanka were ‘staged’ or intentionally precipitated to further the US’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy, the Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Quadrilateral Alliance (USA, India, Australia and Japan) in its competition to confront China’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative and counter China’s presence in Sri Lanka.

It is widely recognized in Sri Lanka that ‘The policy of neutrality is the best defence Sri Lanka has to deter global powers from attempting to get control of Sri Lanka because of its strategic location.’ Although President Gotabaya Rajapaksa claimed to pursue a ‘neutral’ foreign policy, the Rajapaksas were seen as closer to China than the west. After Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa were forced to resign, Ranil Wickramasinghe – a politician who was resoundingly rejected in the previous elections by the electorate but is a close ally of the west – was appointed as President in an undemocratic transition of power.

To what extent were Sri Lanka and her people victims of an externally manipulated ‘shock doctrine’ and a regime change operation, sold to the world as internal disintegration caused by local corruption and incapability?

While it is not possible to provide definitive answers to these issues, it is necessary to consider the available credible evidence and the geopolitics of debt and economic crises in Sri Lanka and the world at large.

Paradigm Shift

As the locus of global power shifts from the west and a multipolar world arises, new multilateral partnerships are emerging for development financing, such as the New Development Bank (NDB) – formerly referred to as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Development Bank – as alternatives to the Bretton Woods and other western dominated institutions.

However, given controversial projects, such as China’s Port City and India’s Adani Company investments in Sri Lanka as well as their projects elsewhere, it is necessary to ask if the BRICS represent a genuine alternative to the prevailing political-economic model based on domination, profit and power?

Dominant political power in our era is about propaganda, control of narratives and exploiting ignorance and fear. In the face of worsening environmental and social collapse across the world, there is a practical need for a fundamental questioning of the values, assumptions and misrepresentations of the dominant neoliberal model and its manifestations in Sri Lanka and the world.

At the root of the crisis, we face is a disconnect between the exponential growth of the profit-driven economy and a lack of development in human consciousness, i.e., in morality, empathy, and wisdom.

Ultimately, dualism, domination and the unregulated market paradigm need to be questioned to find a balanced path of human development, based on interdependence, partnership and ecological consciousness. Such a path of development would uphold the ethical principles necessary for long-term survival: rational use of natural resources, appropriate use of technology, balanced consumption, equitable distribution of wealth, and livelihoods for all.

This article is derived from the author’s new book: Asoka Bandarage, CRISIS IN SRI LANKA AND THE WORLD: COLONIAL AND NEOLIBERAL ORIGINS: ECOLOGICAL AND COLLECTIVE ALTERNATIVES (Berlin: De Gruyter,2023) https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783111203454/html?lang=en]

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 25 2023 (IPS)

A coalition of civil society organizations, (CSOs), including climate activists, anti-poverty campaigners and celebrity chefs, are among those calling for an emergency meeting of world leaders on the global food crisis during the UN General Assembly (UNGA) sessions in New York next month.

With 735 million people going hungry, 122 million more than before the COVID-19 pandemic, the organizers of the ‘Elephant in the Room’ campaign say the food crisis is being overlooked by world leaders, with devastating consequences.

An open letter to world leaders, signed by supporters, including climate activist Vanessa Nakate, award-winning farming advocate Wangari Kuria, musician and philanthropist Octopizzo, SDG Advocate Richard Curtis, and US celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern, says the food crisis is being ignored – “a victim of siloed approaches as it’s so multidimensional”.

The letter calls for a massive joined-up response at the highest levels of government. “You know there is a global food crisis. You are ignoring it in your budgets. You do not address it enough with the media. It is not high on your agenda for the G20, UNGA or COP28. And so, it remains an elephant in the room.” (an obvious problem that people do not want to talk about.)

“As leaders, you have allowed this emergency to unfold. The solutions to end the food crisis exist. It is your responsibility to lead the world out of disasters, not compound them.”

Launched by Hungry for Action, the campaign is supported by over 40 organizations including Save the Children, the ONE Campaign and Global Citizen and is coordinated by the SDG2 Advocacy Hub.

https://sdg2advocacyhub.org/index.php/actions/elephant-room-0

The plea for a summit of world leaders on the global food crisis coincides with three unprecedented high-level political meetings in September: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit on September 18-19; a high-level dialogue on Financing for Development (FfD) on September 20; and a Summit of the Future on September 21.

Danielle Nierenberg, President and Founder, Food Tank told IPS the world is facing multiple emergencies–the climate crisis, the public health crisis, the biodiversity loss crisis, and the hunger crisis.

To address these challenges, she said, “we need urgent action–not by 2030–but today. I am thankful for the efforts of activists and advocates who are pushing for change.”

“But we need policymakers to treat these crises like the emergency they are and push for positive transformation of how we produce and consume food at UNGA. We can’t wait any longer.”

Joseph Chamie, a former director of the UN Population Division, and an independent consulting demographer, told IPS there is no question about an increasing and worrisome global food crisis.

“About one billion people, or nearly 12 percent of the world’s population, face severe levels of food insecurity with 735 million people going hungry,” he said.

There is plenty of food in the world. While the world’s population has doubled from 4 to 8 billion over the past fifty years, global food production has more than tripled, said Chamie, who served as the Deputy Secretary-General for the 1994 International Conference on population and development and has worked in various regions of the world.

There is a consensus on the causes of the global food crisis, he argued.

Among the major causes of the global food crisis, he singled out “armed conflict and violence; climate change with extreme weather events and emergencies; poverty and economic shocks with soaring prices for fertilizer”.

He pointed out that there is much that can be done to address the global food crisis.

“World leaders need to adopt policies, provide additional funds and take action to address the major factors creating the global food crisis. The major media outlets need to do more to inform the world community about the global food crisis”.

There are no reasons, he said, for delays in addressing the global food crisis. “It is necessary and appropriate to convene an emergency meeting of world leaders on the global food crisis at the UN General Assembly in New York next month.”

Countries, international agencies and responsible others need to act today to address the global food crisis, not in some distant future.

“Hungry people, especially children, can’t eat excuses, they need food today,” said Chamie, the author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials“.

Meanwhile, the Hungry for Action campaign says the global food crisis is caused by a combination of conflict, climate change, rising food prices and the punishing debt burdens faced by many poorer countries, 21 of which now face catastrophic levels of debt distress and food insecurity.

“Admitting the scope of the problem is the first step towards solving it,” said Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of the U.S.-based Christian anti-hunger organization Bread for the World.

“Several countries, including the U.S., have acknowledged there is a problem and taken steps to address it. That is a good start. But it is not enough to get us out of the crisis. The global food and malnutrition crisis is a climate crisis, a conflict crisis, and a rising costs crisis: it demands a powerful and unified global response.”

This year’s UN appeals for emergency assistance are only just over a quarter funded, much lower than for the last global food crisis in 2008, and yet there are twice as many additional people going hungry compared to 2008 levels.

“There is nothing inevitable about children dying because they don’t have enough to eat, just as there is nothing inevitable about families in rich countries queuing for food banks,” said climate activist, Vanessa Nakate.

“There is nothing inevitable about a food system that cannot withstand shocks from climate change or conflict. There is enough food in the world for everyone.”

“During the last major global food crisis, following the 2008 economic crash, we saw world leaders coming together at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, to make bold commitments,” said David McNair, Executive Director for Policy at the One Campaign

“This year, as we live through a so-called ‘polycrisis’, the food crisis seems to be getting lost, a victim of a siloed approach to tackling the world’s problems.”

According to the campaign, action to tackle the global food crisis should focus on three key elements: saving lives, building resilience of affected communities to withstand climate and food price shocks, and securing the future by reform of the global food system to make it more sustainable and equitable.

Solutions world leaders should progress at an emergency meeting include:

• Fully funding the UN’s $55bn humanitarian appeals and doubling climate adaptation funding for lower income countries, while also cancelling their debts and reforming the multilateral financial system to unlock vital funds.
• Investing in the smallholder farmers, health workers and communities on the frontlines of the food crisis, including through social protection programmes.
• Fixing the broken global food system by supporting more sustainable farming, diversifying crops, improving nutrition and access to a healthy diet, and reducing food waste.

These measures would break the cycle of crisis and could save the world billions at the same time, campaigners said.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Several people, mainly women, stand in line to check their tickets at Terminal 3 o the José Martí International Airport in Havana. According to the International Organization for Migration, women represent 48 percent of international migrants worldwide, and more and more are migrating on their own. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Luis Brizuela
HAVANA, Aug 25 2023 (IPS)

Emigrating from Cuba was an agonizing decision for Ana Iraida. She left behind family and friends; in her backpack she carried many hopes, but also the fear of facing dangers on the journey to the United States.

“My salary and that of my second job, as an editor, were insufficient. I wanted to prosper and help my parents. Nor did I want to have a child in a country where it is an ordeal to buy everything from disposable diapers to soap, not to mention food,” the 33-year-old philologist who, like the others interviewed for this story, asked to withhold her last name, told IPS.

After selling her apartment in Havana, she left for Nicaragua in December 2022."The journey. I could have been robbed of my money, raped or even murdered. Almost two years ago, when the airports reopened after the COVID pandemic, some young women who lived near my house left and their families never heard from them again." -- Ana Iraida

“Some friends lent me the rest of the money I needed. I reached Mexico by land. I paid 1,800 dollars to be taken to the (U.S.) border. I crossed and turned myself in to the border patrol in Yuma, Arizona, on New Year’s Day,” the young woman said from Houston, Texas, where she now lives.

Estimates put the number of Cubans who emigrated in 2022 at 300,000. Of these, some 250,000 attempted to reach the United States, the country that receives the largest inflow of Cubans and that is only 167 kilometers from Cuba across the Straits of Florida.

The increase in the exodus from this Caribbean island nation of 11 million people is happening against a backdrop of a worsening economic crisis, fueled by COVID, the stiffening of the U.S. embargo, partial dollarization, waning purchasing power of salaries and pensions, shortages of essential products and inflation.

Added to this are failures and delays in the implementation of a set of reforms to modernize the country, approved in 2011, and the unsuccessful implementation of monetary reforms since January 2021.

Local officials here argue that the U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act – known as the “wet foot, dry foot policy” – in force since 1966, encourages the exodus, since it made all Cubans eligible for permanent residency a year and a day after setting foot in U.S. territory.

In the past, the rule benefited all Cubans who set foot on U.S. soil. But since January 2017 it only applies to those who have entered the country legally.

However, the flow of Cubans into the U.S. slowed after President Joe Biden’s administration adopted on Jan. 5 a temporary humanitarian residency permit program known as parole, similar to the one implemented in October 2022 for Venezuelans and previously for people of other nationalities.

As of the end of July, more than 41,000 Cubans had obtained temporary parole, 39,000 of whom had already reached the country, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported on Aug. 18.

In addition, after a four-year freeze, on Jan. 4 the U.S. Embassy in Havana resumed processing immigrant visas, a decision that the Cuban government welcomed as a “necessary and correct step” aimed at guaranteeing regular, orderly and safe migration.

 

Women line up to buy food in Havana. The economic situation, aging population and emigration of young people and professionals are placing additional hurdles in the way of caregivers to obtain food, medicines and other supplies. Image: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

 

Risks and impacts

International organizations and human rights groups warn of the risks faced by immigrants en route, especially women, children and the elderly, who are more likely to become victims of abuse, mistreatment, discrimination, extortion, kidnapping and sexual violence by organized crime groups.

“The journey was stressful,” said Ana Iraida. “I could have been robbed of my money, raped or even murdered. Almost two years ago, when the airports reopened after the COVID pandemic, some young women who lived near my house left and their families never heard from them again.”

Other migrants never reach their destinations and remain trapped in transit countries in overcrowded conditions or as victims of violence.

I was also worried “that they would detain me and send me back to Cuba, and that in the end I would have no home to return to, and be in debt,” added Iraida.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), women account for 48 percent of international migrants worldwide and an increasing number are migrating independently, including as heads of households, in search of new opportunities, to join their families or to help relatives in their home countries.

Research indicates that this phenomenon, known as the feminization of migration, generates significant impacts on demographic, physical, economic, cultural and gender indicators in regions and countries.

 

An elderly woman walks in Havana with the help of her companion. The National Survey on Population Aging showed that about 68 percent of caregivers in Cuba are women, and most of them are over 50 years old. At the same time, more than 57 percent of people over 50 prefer to be cared for by women. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

 

Cuba’s January 2013 immigration reform eliminated the requirement for exit permits and letters of invitation for nationals residing on the island, extended from 11 to 24 months the time they could stay abroad without losing residency, and repealed legislation that allowed the confiscation of assets of those who left the country.

Subsequent regulations have also favored increased travel abroad for personal reasons and the possibility of living temporarily or permanently outside the country, opening the doors to a better relationship with the Cuban exile community.

Women make up a majority of those seeking temporary residence abroad, while men are a majority among those who decide to live abroad permanently, revealed the report of the National Migration Survey (Enmig 2016-2017), published by the National Bureau of Statistics and Information (Onei) in January 2019.

The survey found that 59 percent of the men and 45 percent of the women who decided to live temporarily or permanently in another country did so “to improve their economic conditions.”

In the case of women, “getting closer to or visiting family”, “supporting or caring for family members” and “helping their family here” (35 percent) are the most important motives, while they were the main motives for only 21 percent of the men.

Mothers accompany their primary school children during the start of a new school year in Havana. Researchers have called for more attention to be paid to the relationship between the feminization of migration and the burden of care. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

 

Focusing on care

Researchers have called for more attention to be paid to the relationship between the feminization of migration and the burden of care.

In the case of Cuba, they say, migration itself often becomes a complementary strategy to face the problems associated with caregiving.

The economic crisis, the aging demographic and the emigration of young people and professionals are placing additional obstacles on caregivers to provide food, buy medicines and manage supplies.

“I moved to Ecuador seven years ago,” Betsy, a 38-year-old teacher, told IPS from the city of Guayaquil. “My two children were born here. My work makes it possible for me to send money, medicines and other products to Cuba to take care of my 80-year-old father, who has senile dementia. Otherwise, it would be very difficult for my older sister to provide adequate care for him.”

In Cuba, 22.3 percent of the population is over 60 years of age, and by 2025 it is estimated that one in four of the island’s residents will be an older adult.

The National Gender Equality Survey, published in 2019, showed that Cuban women spend an average of 14 hours more than men on unpaid work per week, which includes caring for the elderly, chronically ill and dependent persons, as well as helping children and adolescents with their homework.

For its part, the 2017 National Survey of Population Aging (Enep), whose data came out in 2020, showed that about 68 percent of those who provide care are women and most are over 50 years old.

In the case of needing care, more than 57 percent of the population over the age of 50 prefers to receive it from women, according to the study.

“I chose to stay and live in Canada almost two years ago,” said Rocio from Halifax, the capital of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. “It has been an ordeal, but I have no regrets. It’s a way to help my 11-year-old son and my retired parents, who are taking care of him until we can be together again.”

The 40-year-old translator, who lived in the eastern Cuban city of Holguín, told IPS that “with my salary, my son and I were living on a tight budget. I could hardly help my parents, whose pensions barely covered the household bills, medicines and the few foodstuffs they could afford. I am far away, I suffer from the separation, but every month I can send them money so that they can live more comfortably and eat better.”

Increasingly young and female-dominated emigration is challenging national development plans on a sustainable basis.

“This situation calls for further research and public debate on the present and future impacts of demographic dynamics such as migration and aging as they relate to the social organization of caregiving on the island,” argues Cuban sociologist Elaine Acosta.

In the opinion of Acosta, executive director of “Cuido60, Observatory of aging, care and rights”, there is an urgent need “to accelerate and deepen structural reforms so that migration ceases to be a daily survival strategy and, at the same time, to obtain the necessary resources to implement appropriate and integrated social policies to face the current and future challenges of aging.”

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• Young People Caretaking in an Aging Cuba

Both the Wular Lake and Dal Lake (pictured here) are crucial for the Kashmir region's flood management and livelihood generation, however, both are reducing in size with implications for water security. CREDIT: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, INDIA, Aug 24 2023 (IPS)

Sadiq Dar, 68, is surprised how the heavy siltation of Wular Lake has turned many of its areas into land masses. “When we were growing up, we would only see water in this lake. Now, we see cattle grazing in it while a large portion is also being used by children for playing cricket,” he tells IPS.

Overlooked by magnificent mountains, Wular Lake is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia and the largest flood basin of Kashmir in Bandipora district, some 34 km north of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Administered Kashmir.

An international Ramsar site under the Ramsar convention, this beautiful lake has served the people of Kashmir for centuries earning praises from all, including its poets.

“How long will they remain hidden from the world … the unique gems that Wular Lake holds in its depth,” 20th century Urdu poet Sir Muhammed Iqbal once wrote about Wular Lake’s depth and water expanse.

Almost a century after Iqbal’s inquisitiveness, the depths of Wular have become heavily silted, its size reduced, and its pristine waters suffer from heavy pollution. This large Himalayan water body and Dal Lake in Srinagar play a key role in flood management, water security and livelihood generation in the region.

But a NASA report recently revealed that both these lakes — Dal Lake and Wular Lake — have witnessed a large reduction in size due to land conversions, urbanization, and deforestation in recent decades. This not only poses a threat of repeated flooding in Kashmir but will negatively influence livelihood generation and the availability of water for the communities.

“The conversion of forests to paved urban areas is a major driver of the change in water quality. Land conversion has delivered heavy sediment and nutrient loads into the lake, and untreated sewage from urban areas has also contributed,” says the NASA report.

“Some of the bright green areas on the eastern side of Wular Lake used to be open water. Nutrient-rich sediment and aquatic vegetation have filled in parts of the lake and contributed to its shrinking in recent decades,” the report further says and adds: “In a 2022 study, researchers in India—using data from the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) LISS-IV instrument—found that Wular Lake’s open water area had shrunk in size by about one-quarter between 2008 and 2019.”

In a detailed study of the lake, Wetlands International, a Netherlands-based not-for-profit that works to sustain and restore wetlands globally, had also revealed earlier that there was a 45 percent reduction in the lake area mainly because parts of the lake were converted for agriculture and willow tree plantations.

Wular Lake is crucial for saving Kashmir from floods. In recent years, the region has witnessed repeated flood-like situations following the devastating 2014 flooding. The recent IPPCC reports have predicted that there will be an increase in floods and other extreme weather events across South Asia in the coming years as the climate crisis deepens.

The Dal Lake, says the NASA report, has suffered a similar fate in response to land cover change. Researchers in Srinagar found that land conversion to urban development in the basin had worsened the lake’s water quality and contributed to its reduced size, the report says. They found that between 1980 and 2018, the lake shrunk in area by 25 percent, it added.

The marshy and water body area of Dal Lake, a major tourist attraction in Srinagar, has shrunk from 2,547 hectares in 1971 to 1,620 hectares in 2008, another study titled Impact of Urban Land Transformation on Water Bodies found earlier.

How to Stop the Lakes from Shrinking?  

Wular Lake and Dal Lake are crucial for the region’s flood management and livelihood generation. Besides acting as a flood absorption basin for Kashmir during high flows in the region’s major river, Jhelum, Wular, and Dal Lake provide livelihood support to over 100,000 families dependent on tourism and fishing, said Samiullah Bhat, senior Assistant Professor at Kashmir University’s Environment and Science department.

To stop further shrinkage of Wular and Dal Lakes, Bhat said that soil erosion in the catchment area of these water bodies, which is resulting in these lakes becoming silted up, must be stopped. “It is because of the massive soil erosion that parts of water bodies are turning into landmasses,” Bhat told IPS.

Regarding encroachments in these lakes, Bhat said that geofencing is one way to mark the boundaries of these lakes, followed by close monitoring. “It has been done recently in the case of Wular Lake, and the same can be done for Dal Lake as well,” Bhat said.

“It is a matter of proper governance, management and effective enforcement of laws for the protection of environmental assets,” he further said, adding that land ownership records and revenue records are also not that transparent, which also need to be addressed for protecting these lakes from further damage.

According to a study, Dal Lake represents a case of a threatened ecosystem in dire need of management, with land use changes, erosion, enhanced nutrient enrichment and rising human population in its catchment as the major threats to its existence.

“Regulation of a proper land use plan in the Dal Lake catchment is vital for preventing the further nutrient enrichment and sedimentation of the lake waters,” the study says.

Aijaz Rasool, an engineer who has worked on these water bodies previously, said that all the areas of Dal Lake and Wular Lake need to be prioritised for complete conservation work. “For years, I have observed that only those areas of the lakes get attention which are visited by tourists, the other sides get least or no attention and keep deteriorating and encroaching. For example, the north-western parts of Dal Lake and Wular,” Rasool said and added that once all the areas of these lakes receive equal conservational treatment, conserving them will get easier.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: World Bank

By Daniel D. Bradlow
PRETORIA, South Africa, Aug 24 2023 (IPS)

Many people may be tempted to view the World Bank’s recent announcement that it will freeze new loans to Uganda because of the country’s vicious anti-LGBTIQ+ law as a harbinger of the Bank taking a more progressive approach to human rights issues.

While the announcement is welcome, based on my many years studying the Bank and on my research for my forthcoming book, The Law of the International Financial Institutions, I think there are good reasons to be cautious about its significance.

The World Bank, which has been operating for over 75 years, has 189 member states as shareholders. It funds development projects and programmes in member states that have annual per capita incomes below about US$12,535. The member states elect a Board of Executive Directors that oversees the Bank’s operations and approves all its loans.

The Bank’s Articles of Agreement stipulate that it cannot base its decisions on political grounds. The articles state that the Bank “shall not interfere in the political affairs” of its member states. Nor should its decisions be influenced by the “political character” of these states.

Moreover, the Bank is instructed that it should only pay attention “to considerations of economy and efficiency”. And that it should not be affected by “political or other non-economic influences or considerations.”

The articles don’t define these key terms. They also don’t identify the criteria the Bank should consider when deciding if a particular issue should be excluded from consideration because it is “political” rather than “economic”.

This means that this decision is within the exclusive discretion of the Bank’s decision makers.

Division of labour

The Articles were drafted and agreed in 1944. At the time, the division of responsibilities between those who made the “political” decisions and those who made the “economic” ones seemed relatively clear.

It was assumed that each Bank member state, as an exercise of its sovereignty, would decide for itself how to deal with the social, environmental, and cultural impacts and consequences of the particular transaction for which it was seeking the Bank’s support.

The Bank, on the other hand, would take the state’s decisions on these issues as given. It would merely consider if the particular loan request was technically sound and economically and financially feasible.

This division of responsibility, of course, was unrealistic. The Bank’s Board of Executive Directors must approve each loan. They represent its member states. It is inevitable that officials elected or appointed by – and ultimately accountable to states – will pay close attention to the political implications of their decisions.

And that these considerations may trump the technical merits of the transaction. Thus, inevitably, political considerations, including human rights, have always been, at least implicitly, a factor in Bank operations.

The futility of the Bank’s attempt to exclude political, including human rights, considerations from its operations can be seen at two levels. Firstly, at the level of the Bank’s relations with its member states. Secondly, at the level of individual transactions.

A good example of the Bank’s failed efforts to exclude political factors at the country level was its decision in the 1960s to lend to Portugal and South Africa to fund the construction of the Cahora Basa dam in Mozambique.

The Bank decided to make this loan despite a UN General Assembly effort to impose sanctions on these countries because of their colonial and apartheid policies.

Many African states, supported by a majority of UN member countries, argued that the loan should have been denied. Their case was that the policies of the borrowers violated the human rights of their subjects. They were also a threat to regional peace and security.

The Bank’s General Counsel defended the decision on the basis of the political prohibition in the Bank’s articles and on the technical merits of the project. Despite its ostensible non-political position, the Bank did not make any further loans to South Africa until it became a democratic state.

At the individual transaction level, the Bank funds projects and programmes that have profound social and environmental impacts. Consequently, it is forced to pay attention to some of the political, including human rights, implications of these projects and programmes.

For example, if it finances a road or a renewable energy project, the project will require land. The current occupants of the land may need to be moved to make way for the project.

Alternatively, the project may have social and environmental effects that hurt people. It could, for example, affect the surrounding community’s ability to grow food, or place the community at higher risk of accidents or exposes more young girls and women to the risk of gender-based violence.

If the affected community belong to minority groups in the country, with their own language, culture, and geographic attachments, they may qualify as indigenous people under international law and the Bank’s policies. In this case, the project may require their free, prior informed consent.

However, there are disagreements among states and between the Bank and some of its member states about which communities qualify as indigenous and what is required to ensure that their rights are respected.

For example, some states and Bank stakeholders contend that it is enough to seek the consent of the community’s leadership. But others maintain that the consent can only be established if particular vulnerable groups within the communities, such as women, youth, LGBTIQ+, or disabled people, are given specific opportunities to express their consent.

Some states may argue that giving such attention to these vulnerable groups is inconsistent with local practices and customs and that the Bank, pursuant to its own Articles, should not be interfering with these internal “political” matters.

In all these cases, the Bank has to exercise judgement. This means, for example, that in the Uganda case, the Bank could decide that it should not extend any new credit to

However, it is also easy to see that in another context the Bank – or its Board of Executive Directors – may conclude that on balance it is better to continue lending to the particular country despite serious human rights issues. Or to a particular project because the perceived benefits outweigh the costs.

The challenge, of course, is ensuring that the Bank is making these decisions on a principled and predictable basis. And not according to its own whims and political preferences. And that it can be held accountable for the way in which it makes the decisions.

Daniel D. Bradlow is Professor/Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria

Source: Conversation Africa

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 24 2023 (IPS)

International governance arrangements are in trouble. Condemned as ‘dysfunctional’ by some, multilateral agreements have been discarded or ignored by the powerful except when useful to protect their interests or provide legitimacy.

Economic multilateralism under siege
Undoubtedly, many multilateral arrangements have become less appropriate. At their heart is the United Nations (UN) system, conceived in the last year of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency and World War Two.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The 1944 UN conference at Bretton Woods sought to build the foundations for the post-war economic order. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) would create conditions for lasting growth and stability, with the World Bank financing post-war reconstruction and post-colonial development.

The Bretton Woods agreement allowed the US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) to issue dollars, as if backed by gold. In 1971, President Richard Nixon repudiated the US’s Bretton Woods obligations. With US military and ‘soft’ power, widespread acceptance of the dollar since has effectively extended the Fed’s ‘exorbitant privilege’.

This unilateral repudiation of US commitments has been a precursor of the fate of some other multilateral arrangements. Most were US-designed, some in consultation with allies. Most key privileges of the global North – especially the US – continue, while duties and obligations are ignored if deemed inconvenient.

The International Trade Organization (ITO) was to be the third leg of the post-war multilateral economic order, later reaffirmed by the 1948 Havana Charter. Despite post-war world hegemony, the ITO was rejected by the protectionist US Congress.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) became the compromise substitute. Recognizing the diversity of national economic capacities and capabilities, GATT did not impose a ‘one-size-fits-all’ requirement on all participants.

But lessons from such successful flexible precedents were ignored in creating the World Trade Organization (WTO) from 1995. The WTO has imposed onerous new obligations such as the all-or-nothing ‘single commitment’ requirement and the Agreement on Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

Overcoming marginalization
In September 2021, the UN Secretary-General (SG) issued Our Common Agenda, with new international governance proposals. Besides its new status quo bias, the proposals fall short of what is needed in terms of both scope and ambition.

Problematically, it legitimizes and seeks to consolidate already diffuse institutional responsibilities, further weakening UN inter-governmental leadership. This would legitimize international governance infiltration by multi-stakeholder partnerships run by private business interests.

The last six decades have seen often glacially slow changes to improve UN-led gradual – mainly due to the recalcitrance of the privileged and powerful. These have changed Member State and civil society participation, with mixed effects.

Fairer institutions and arrangements – agreed to after inclusive inter-governmental negotiations – have been replaced by multi-stakeholder processes. These are typically not accountable to Member States, let alone their publics.

Such biases and other problems of ostensibly multilateral processes and practices have eroded public trust and confidence in multilateralism, especially the UN system.

Multi-stakeholder processes – involving transnational corporate interests – may expedite decision-making, even implementation. But the most authoritative study so far found little evidence of net improvements, especially for the already marginalized.

New multi-stakeholder governance – without meaningful prior approval by relevant inter-governmental bodies – undoubtedly strengthens executive authority and autonomy. But such initiatives have also undermined legitimacy and public trust, with few net gains.

All too often, new multi-stakeholder arrangements with private parties have been made without Member State approval, even if retrospectively due to exigencies.
Unsurprisingly, many in developing countries have become alienated from and suspicious of those acting in the name of multilateral institutions and processes.

Hence, many in the global South have been disinclined to cooperate with the SG’s efforts to resuscitate, reinvent and repurpose undoubtedly defunct inter-governmental institutions and processes.

Way forward?
But the SG report has also made some important proposals deserving careful consideration. It is correct in recognizing the long overdue need to reform existing governance arrangements to adapt the multilateral system to current and future needs and requirements.

This reform opportunity is now at risk due to the lack of Member State support, participation and legitimacy. Inclusive consultative processes – involving state and non-state actors – must strive for broadly acceptable pragmatic solutions. These should be adopted and implemented via inter-governmental processes.

Undoubtedly, multilateralism and the UN system have experienced growing marginalization after the first Cold War ended. The UN has been slowly, but surely superseded by NATO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), led by the G7 group of the biggest rich economies.

The UN’s second SG, Dag Hammarskjold – who had worked for the OECD’s predecessor – warned the international community, especially developing countries, of the dangers posed by the rich nations’ club. This became evident when the rich blocked and pre-empted the UN from leading on international tax cooperation.

Seeking quick fixes, ‘clever’ advisers or consultants may have persuaded the SG to embrace corporate-dominated multi-stakeholder partnerships contravening UN norms. More recent SG initiatives may suggest his frustration with the failure of that approach.

After the problematic and controversial record of such processes and events in recent years, the SG can still rise to contemporary challenges and strengthen multilateralism by changing course. By restoring the effectiveness and legitimacy of multilateralism, the UN will not only be fit, but also essential for humanity’s future.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Beauty salons used to be one of the few places where Afghan women could gather without male control. Credit: Learning Together

By External Source
Aug 23 2023 (IPS)

In July of this year, the Taliban issued a decree that resulted in the closure of hair salons and beauty parlors across Afghanistan. This directive aligns with the extreme Islamist policies now governing Afghanistan, which aim to confine women strictly within their homes.

A total of 12,000 predominantly women-led businesses have been closed down in Kabul, the capital city, and 33 other provinces. The Women's Hairdressers Union estimates that each hair salon employs on average three women

This action followed a prior decree in December of last year, which prohibited women from working in non-governmental organizations that provided humanitarian assistance particularly beneficial to women. Many of these organizations have subsequently closed down their operations in the country.

A total of 12,000 predominantly women-led businesses have been closed down in Kabul, the capital city, and 33 other provinces. The Women’s Hairdressers Union estimates that each hair salon employs on average three women.

“I was profoundly disheartened by this news,” expressed Shabnam (pseudonym), who added, “My friends were so sad that they started to cry. I tried to cheer them up, but I understand that nothing can be harder than losing your source of income and being the family’s only breadwinner.”

The closure of humanitarian organizations particularly affects women. These organizations note that female employees play a vital role due to their better understanding of women’s challenges, enabling tailored aid delivery to specific needs.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 25 million Afghan families live below the poverty line, earning less than two US dollars daily.

Before the Taliban’s return to power two years ago, numerous women held significant positions within government, non-governmental roles, as well as in national and international institutions in Afghanistan.

However, the Taliban, following a particularly stringent interpretation of Islam, intends to dismantle such progress, and it is women who bear the brunt of this policy.

 

This beauty parlor was discreetly situated on a side alley, but it is now also closed. Credit: Learning Together

 

Access to higher education has been denied to women, and they are prohibited from working outside the home – leading to economic sanctions imposed by the international community.

Several decades of warfare have devastated the Afghan economy, resulting in many households being headed by women as the sole breadwinners.

Mina (pseudonym), who reluctantly closed her salon, lamented: “Losing my job was very heavy for me because I am the guardian of four children who are under 18 years old, and all their expenses and responsibilities are on me.”

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

Excerpt:

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

There are still tens of thousands of people in need of health services including surgical interventions from the previous war that left almost 600,000 people dead. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Abdo Husen
ADDIS ABABA, Aug 23 2023 (IPS)

Less than a year since warring parties in Ethiopia signed a peace agreement, the country is on the brink of renewed bloodshed following escalating hostilities between government forces and the Fano militia in the Amhara region.

Government forces accuse the militant group of plotting a coup; while the militia maintain their marginalization in the post-war reconstruction arrangements including the peace process itself. Additionally, conflict in the Oromia region remains active and unresolved.

The Ethiopian government must leverage international systems and structures to mobilize external investment for healthcare, including quality and safe surgical care. A good starting point would be right at home with the African Union (AU). The AU has the power and influence to marshal financial and diplomatic support for its host country

As the poignant African adage goes, when mighty elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. Indeed, the common Ethiopian continues to get caught in the crossfire. They suffer the deleterious effects of a brutal conflict on all sectors of the economy including health. Unless a long-term solution is found, post-war reconstruction efforts in the past 9 months will be negated.

The Ministry of Health in collaboration with development partners had begun rebuilding health infrastructure and resourcing facilities. These include the rehabilitation of 69 hospitals and 709 health centers. The destruction of these facilities is imminent if hostilities between parties to the conflict continue to escalate.

Today, there are still tens of thousands of people in need of health services including surgical interventions from the previous war that left almost 600,000 people dead.

My recent visit to Tigray and Afar regions helped me see firsthand the current reality regarding the dire need for surgical services emanating from conflict. At Ayder Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, I met 9-year-old Selam* (not her real name) who is suffering leg bone fractures and an open wound on her knee. She is a blast survivor. Unable to extend her leg due to immense pain, she had to limp her way to the hospital using two canes taller than her height. It took her two years to make it to the hospital due to the long distance and transportation costs. Sadly, she must still wait for hospital admission as the waiting list is very long.

For Selam and patients like her, the next best time to provide surgical care to restore functionality to their limbs and improve their shot at returning to school is now. There is a potential to leave tens of thousands disabled if they do not access surgical services and associated therapies. Yet, these disabilities are preventable.

In Mekelle – the regional capital of Tigray, unpublished health and regional administration records show that there are over 20,000 patients waiting for plastic and orthopaedic surgery from injuries sustained in the previous war. Compare this to the supply-side that points to only two plastic and reconstructive surgeons available to cover the demand.

With their current weekly surgical output, it is going to take 8-10 years to provide much-needed surgery to all their patients. These depressing statistics will only get worse if a lasting resolution to the conflict in other parts of the country is not urgently arrived at.

Additionally, surgical care for congenital anomalies – including cleft conditions- have long been relegated since the COVID-19 pandemic hit as most elective surgeries were pushed back. Furthermore, the previous conflict in Tigray made them less priority as the health system faced a total collapse and every effort was directed towards emergency trauma care.

At one Hospital alone – Ayder, there are over 500 registered cleft patients waiting for surgery. The hospital has recently restarted providing cleft correction surgeries. However, the workforce is overstretched, and stockouts of essential supplies hamper their ability to provide the services at scale. With the new outburst of hostilities in Amhara and unresolved conflict in Oromiya, this situation is set to worsen.

In the previous Tigrayan war that spilled over to other parts of the country, sexual and gender-based violence was highly reported. There are often breakdowns of social and legal protections in conflict situations. Consequently, perpetrators take advantage of vulnerable women and children.

In fact, United Nations investigators reported that rape was used a weapon of war. This has far-reaching negative health repercussions including mental health disorders. If this new war between the federal government and the Fano militia is not curtailed, the human cost, particularly borne by women and girls, could be even worse than previous conflicts.

Moreover, conflicts result in the disruption of health systems and delivery, resulting in preventable morbidity and mortality. The lack of well-resourced health facilities also increases the chances of maternal complications such as obstetric fistula that require surgical interventions.

Additionally, consider the long distances that pregnant women are forced to cover due to the destruction of their nearest health facilities. This exerts negative pressure on their physiological and psychological health. Furthermore, the long transit exposes them to added risks emanating from the breakdown of peace and security.

It is a depressing situation. It is important that the federal government and regional administrations in areas that are experiencing peace, prioritize access to health services as a matter of urgency. This prioritization is not only towards catering for the healthcare needs of their populations but also in response to the increased demand from conflict-affected areas including surgical care.

It could be argued that singling out the health sector as a priority for domestic investment is not realistic given the limited resources available to the government for security and the operation of other sectors of the economy.

However, ensuring health is the foundation of efforts to rebuild a functional society that can work towards comprehensive national development.

Therefore, the Ethiopian government must leverage international systems and structures to mobilize external investment for healthcare, including quality and safe surgical care. A good starting point would be right at home with the African Union (AU). The AU has the power and influence to marshal financial and diplomatic support for its host country.

Secondly, the United Nations must step up to its role in this crisis. In September, world leaders convene in New York for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Midpoint Summit. To fulfil these goals by 2030, the UN must act on its clarion call of leaving no one behind by ensuring that seemingly challenged nations like Ethiopia that are deep in a poly-crisis are brought along. This can be done by facilitating neutral party-led talks with the government and the rebels.

Additionally, the United States as a key governmental partner whose geopolitical interests in Ethiopia are vast and have long been secured must be reciprocal with goodwill in this time of need. However, the onus remains on the government towards preventing a total collapse of the peace and its attendant consequences.

Ethiopia cannot do it all on its own.

All parties to the current conflict have a responsibility to respect international humanitarian law and the right to health. Above all it is not long ago that we have seen the power of dialogue to peacefully resolve conflicts in Ethiopia. In the same vein, the peaceful resolution for the renewed conflict has importance going beyond the health care and surgical services. Without this, innocent civilians will continue to suffer preventable injury and deaths.

Abdo Husen is a Program Coordinator at Operation Smile Ethiopia and a Global Surgery Advocacy Fellow

 

Badri Acharya is currently at the helm of the public health office in Pokhara, a prominent city within Nepal’s Himalayan region and a renowned tourist hotspot. However, in the past, he worked in the field, leading and delivering essential public health provisions in the isolated and demanding terrain of the Manang district-some 198 km north […]