Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

A farmer transporting hay to Tera weekly market, Tera, Bajirga, Niger. Credit: FAO

By IPS Correspondents
MARRAKESH, Morocco, Nov 21 2016 (IPS)

“No country, irrespective of its size or strength, is immune from the impacts of climate change, and no country can afford to tackle the climate challenge alone.”

With this warning, the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, commented on the final conclusions reached at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 22) –which was held in Marrakech, Morocco on Nov. 7-18– to move forward on the implementation of the Paris Agreement that entered into force November 4.

In the Marrakech Action Proclamation, State Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) affirmed their strong “commitment” to the “full implementation” of the Paris Agreement.

They also welcomed the “extraordinary momentum on climate change worldwide,” as of Friday 18 November, 111 countries have ratified the Agreement.

Last December at the previous Conference, known as COP 21, 196 Parties to the UNFCCC adopted the Paris Agreement, so-named after the French capital where it was approved.

It aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. "Water scarcity - already a major global issue - will intensify with climate change and pressures linked to population growth," FAO

“This momentum is irreversible – it is being driven not only by governments, but by science, business and global action of all types at all levels,” adds the Marrakech Proclamation.

“Our task now is to rapidly build on that momentum, together, moving forward purposefully to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to foster adaptation efforts, thereby benefiting and supporting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

Negotiations between State-Parties concluded on Nov. 18 night. Governments set a rapid deadline of 2018 to complete the rulebook for “operationalizing” the Paris Agreement to ensure confidence, cooperation and its success over the years and decades to come.

In the Marrakech Proclamation, developed country reaffirmed their 100 billion dollars mobilisation goal per year by 2020 to support climate action by developing countries. All countries also called on all non-state actors to join them “for immediate and ambitious action and mobilisation, building on their important achievements.”

On Nov.17, the Conference launched the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action Agenda to further scale up cooperative efforts in which businesses, sub-national and local governments and civil society team up with national governments to promote low-emission and resilient development.

“Scale up Action, Rapidly”

“The world must rapidly move to scale up actions and ambitions on climate change,” said for his part José Graziano da Silva, Director-General the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) during the Marrakech summit.

Southern Madagascar has been hit by consecutive droughts. Credit: FAO

Speaking on Nov. 16 at a high-level action day on agriculture and food security, he noted that climate change impacts on agriculture – including crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries, land and water – are already undermining global efforts to assure food security and nutrition.

“And the rural poor are the most affected.”

With over 90 per cent of countries referring to the important role of agriculture in their national plans to adapt to and mitigate climate change, Graziano da Silva stressed, “it is time to invest in sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture as a fundamental part of the climate solution.”

Although agriculture contributes to nearly 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, it is a fundamental part of the solution to boost resilience and combat climate change impacts – especially in developing countries where agriculture is often the backbone of the economy.

Boosting agriculture can reduce malnutrition and poverty, create economic opportunities, and generate faster, fairer growth especially for young people. Sustainable agriculture also improves the management of natural resources such as water; conserves biodiversity and ecosystem services; and increases carbon sequestration while easing the pressures that drive deforestation.

“We have to transform agriculture to make it more productive and more resilient at the same time. This transformation will help to address, at the same time, the triple threat of hunger, poverty and climate change,” Graziano da Silva said. “Countries are recognizing this potential with unprecedented commitments.”

Scaling up international flows of climate finance and unlocking additional investment in adaptation in agricultural sectors is needed to give traction to the action, he added.

Water Scarcity, the Big Challenge

In a bid to tackle the impact of global water scarcity, FAO on Nov. 18 launched the Global Framework for Action to Cope with Water Scarcity in Agriculture in the Context of Climate Change.

Water scarcity – already a major global issue – will intensify with climate change and pressures linked to population growth.

“From California to China’s eastern provinces and from Jordan to the southern tip of Africa, an estimated four billion people – almost two-thirds of the global population – live with severe water shortages for at least some of the time.” Water scarcity “is one of the main challenges for sustainable agriculture,” Graziano da Silva said.

At another high-profile side event, he hailed the timely launch of the Initiative in Favor for the Adaptation of African Agriculture, which is the Kingdom of Morocco’s flagship programme and has been endorsed by 27 countries so far.

The so-called Triple A “will drive action in precisely the areas we need to transform the agriculture sectors” – sustainable land and soil management, better water management and comprehensive climate risk management – and FAO will collaborate strongly to scale up the initiative.

“That will require larger climate finance flows for adaptation, and for agriculture in particular, Graziano da Silva added, noting that currently only two per cent of climate finance is being directed at the agriculture sector. “That is extremely low, and quite below our needs,” he said.

Tera, Bajirga, Niger - Women at work for preparing the field for the next rainy season by escaving mid-moon dams to save water. Credit: ©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

By Baher Kamal
ROME, Nov 20 2016 (IPS)

Desertification, land degradation, drought, climate change, food insecurity, poverty, loss of biodiversity, forced migration and conflicts, are some of the key challenges facing Africa—a giant continent home to 1,2 billion people living in 54 countries.

And they are huge challenges indeed, in particular affecting Africa’s vulnerable drylands. Just think that the drylands of North Africa, Sahel and Horn of Africa extend over 1.6 billion hectares home to about 500 million people, i.e. slightly less than half of the entire population of the continent.

Nora Berrahmouni

Such rapidly deteriorating situation, which has been exacerbated by climate change and its growing impact, has mobilised more than 20 African countries around the Sahara (North, East and West), international organisations, research institutes, civil society and grassroots organisations, to build together what has been called: The Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative (GGWSSI) or simply Africa’s Great Green Wall (GGW).

On this, Nora Berrahmouni, Forestry Officer (Drylands) at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), tells IPS in an interview that the GGW core area (focus area for intervention identified) is about 780 million hectares.

What is this Wall all about? “Africa’s Great Green Wall, the so-called “Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative (GGWSSI)” is a Pan African initiative, established and endorsed by the African Union in 2007 and it is Africa’s flagship initiative to combat the effects of climate change, desertification, food insecurity and poverty.”"Drylands of North Africa, Sahel and Horn of Africa extend over 1.6 billion hectares home to about 500 million people"-- FAO

Here, Berrahmouni clarifies that the so-called Great Green Wall initiative “is not a line or a wall of trees across the desert. The “Wall” is a metaphor to express solidarity between countries and partners, a mosaic of sustainable land management and restoration interventions.”

Regardless of its name, the plan aims at promoting:

• Long-term solutions to the pressing challenges of desertification, land degradation, drought and climate change,

• Integrated interventions tackling the multiple challenges affecting the lives of millions of people in the Sahel and Sahara, including restoration of production systems, development of rural production and sustainable development hubs,

• And an urgent call to development actors and policy makers to invest more on long term solutions for the sustainable development of drylands in the Sahel and Sahara.

Asked about specific examples, these are “sustainable management of natural resources, including soils, water, forests, rangelands; promotion of sustainable rural production systems in agriculture, pastoralism and forestry, as well as sustainable production, processing and marketing of agricultural products and forest goods and services, says Berrahmouni.

Other examples include the diversification of economic activities through rural production centres, to stimulate job creation and offer income generation activities, in particular for youth and women, and to spread knowledge exchange about the causes of desertification and the best ways to combat and prevent it.

FAO is a key partner of the African Union and of its member states in implementing this initiative. Indeed, for FAO, this is a “game changer in addressing poverty eradication, ending hunger and boosting food and nutrition security in the continent,” the Algerian expert explains.

Djibo, Burkina Faso – Planting seeds and seedlings. Credit: ©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

From 2010 to 2013, FAO focused on supporting the African Union Commission and 13 member countries to put in place an enabling environment for the implementation of the GGWSSI. These countries are: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan.

With funding from the FAO Technical Cooperation Programme and the European Union (EU), this leading UN body in the field of food and agriculture has developed and implemented successfully two complementary projects.

These projects have lead to: the preparation and validation of national action plans and strategies for the implementation of the initiative in 13 countries; the development and validation of Regional Harmonized Strategy, ensuring that all stakeholders involved in the implementation of work towards a common and shared vision, objectives and results, and to put in place a community of practice for the effective implementation of Africa’s Great Green Wall.

Berrahmouni tells IPS that since July 2014 and with the support of European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) Secretariat, FAO is implementing with partners a project called “Action Against Desertification” in support of the implementation of the Great Green Wall in 6 countries (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal) and South-South Cooperation in ACP countries.

On November 16, FAO presented to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech, Morocco (7-18 November), a groundbreaking map of restoration opportunities along Africa’s Great Green Wall. at the UN climate change conference.

Announcing that there are 10 million hectares a year in need of restoration along the Great Green Wall, it informs that restoration needs along Africa’s drylands have been mapped and quantified for the first time.

The map is based on collection and analysis of crucial land-use information to boost action in Africa’s Great Green Wall to increase the resilience of people and landscapes to climate change.

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Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA

By Nteranya Sanginga
IBADAN, Nigeria, Nov 18 2016 (IPS)

Harvesting the benefits of core agricultural research, which often bears on improved crop varieties and plant diseases, increasingly depends on the social and economic conditions into which its seeds are sown.

It is a sign of the times that Kanayo F. Nwanze, the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development who started off as a cassava entomologist when ITTA posted him to Congo in the 1970s, was recently hailed for his efforts to create African billionaires.

That happened when youth from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture’s Agripreneur program gave Nwanze special lapel pins after his guest speech at our golden jubilee celebration kickoff.

Our institute, IITA, has evolved with the times. I trained in microbial ecology, yet while agronomy research –remains very important, it is initiatives like our Youth Agripreneur program that underscore how we are paying more and more attention to the need to boost youth employment, especially in Africa.

Creating decent employment opportunities, especially rural employment opportunities, is the critical challenge of our time in Africa. It is the lynchpin of any possible success in the noble goals of hunger and poverty eradication.

The most obvious reason for that is demographic: Africa’s population is set to roughly double to 2.5 billion by 2050. Many of them, perhaps the majority, have not been born. Income opportunities and healthy affordable food will be in unprecedented demand. Today’s youth play a huge role in making that possible.

While Africa’s cities are expected to grow, even that will depend on decent rural jobs being created. Agriculture is not only called upon to increase food output and productivity, but to create jobs and even bring in the best and brightest.

The prospects are, in theory, quite good. The world is increasingly turning to sustainable agriculture, and research shows that diversified farming systems are more challenging – experientially, cognitively and intellectually – which both cushions the drudgery and spurs innovation to reduce it.

Yet the challenge, as the population projections show, is formidable. Growing by around 300 million every decade means all sectors need a giant and focused developmental push. Perceiving agriculture as the rural sector from which one escapes will backfire.

That’s one of the reasons why entomologist-turned research administrator Dr Nwanze talks about the need to foster opportunities for youth.

The IITA Youth Agripreneur program has ambitious aims. It has expanded quickly around Nigeria and other African countries.

At the same time, IITA is partnering with IFAD and the African Development Bank for the Empowering Novel Agribusiness-Led Employment for Youth in African Agriculture Program, dubbed ENABLE. The goal is to create 8 million agribusiness jobs within five years for youth.

How can IITA’s research contribute?

Take our project on Sustainable Weed Management Technologies for Cassava Systems in Nigeria. As its name suggests, this is very much geared to primary agricultural work. But it is not simply about having more cassava but about having enough extra cassava, and having it consistently, to support the use of this African staple food in flour.

As such it fits into other IFAD projects aimed at boosting the cassava flour value chain in the region. Once the weeds have been sorted out, this initiative is designed to require large gains in food processing capacity.

IITA researchers have managed to bake bread using 40 percent cassava in wheat flour, so the potential for this initiative is very large. Notice that it immediately suggests a role for bakers, confectionary products and others. That means more jobs.

This relates back to Dr. Nwanze’s time as an IITA field researcher, as he was involved in a successful effort to combat and control the cassava mealy bug that saved the continent millions of dollars.

One of the big challenges for scientists today is to make research contribute to growth. Breakthroughs often lead to solutions of food-system problems and thus relieve hunger and food and nutrition insecurity. IITA showed that by developing two new maize hybrids that deliver higher levels of vitamin A and improve child nutrition.

But we can go further, steering these breakthroughs into veritable engines of growth.

To be sure, this requires improvements on many fronts, such as better freight transportation networks. But such investments pay themselves off when they serve a common goal. Africa’s need and duty is to make sure that agriculture is ready to deliver the goods for such a take-off.

All this by the way will not only boost Africa’s agricultural productivity, which is lagging, but will boost the productivity of research itself, leading to higher returns and, one hopes, attractive jobs with higher incomes and better facilities. That’s important for future microbial ecologists and cassava entomologists!

Mary Robinson, the U.N. special envoy on El Niño and Climate. Credit: Fabiola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
MARRAKECH, Nov 18 2016 (IPS)

The world has been too slow in responding to climate events such as El Niño and La Niña, and those who are the “least responsible are the ones suffering most”, Mary Robinson, the special envoy on El Niño and Climate, told IPS at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Marrakech (COP22).

The first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997) and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), Robinson was appointed earlier this year by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the new mandate involving climate change and El Niño."I’ve seen a window into a ‘new normal’ and it is very serious." -- Mary Robinson

During the 22nd Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Robinson strongly advocated for engaging community-led solutions and for incorporating gender equality and women’s participation in the climate talks.

“Global warming is accelerating too much and it is being aggravated by El Niño and La Niña. They do not have to become a humanitarian disaster, but people have now been left to cope for themselves…I think we were too slow in many instances and this has become a humanitarian disaster for the 60 million people who are food insecure and suffering from droughts,” she said.

El Niño has been directly associated with droughts and floods in many parts of the world that have severely impacted millions of livelihoods. A warming of the central to eastern tropical Pacific waters, the phenomenon occurs on average every three to seven years and sea surface temperatures across the Pacific can warm more than 1 degree C.

El Niño is a natural occurrence, but scientists believe it is becoming more intense as a result of global warming.

How El Niño interacts with climate change is not 100 percent clear, but many of the countries that are now experiencing El Niño are also vulnerable to climate variations. According to Robinson, El Niño and its climate-linked emergencies are a threat to human security and, therefore, a threat to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) announced in September 2015 as the 2030 Agenda replacing the Millennium Development Goals.

“I have gone to Central America to the dry corridor in Honduras and have seen women crying because there is no water and they feel very neglected. They feel they are left behind and that nobody seems to know about them. I saw in Ethiopia severely malnourished children, it could affect them for life in terms of being stunted. The same thing in southern Africa. I feel I’ve seen a window into a ‘new normal’ and it is very serious. We need to understand the urgency of taking the necessary steps,” Robinson said.

Drought and flooding associated with El Niño created enormous problems across East Africa, Southern Africa, Central America and the Pacific. Ethiopia, where Robinson has visited earlier this year, is experiencing its worst drought in half a century. One million children in Eastern and Southern Africa alone are acutely malnourished.

It is very likely that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, with global temperatures even higher than the record-breaking temperatures in 2015, according to an assessment released at the COP22 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Preliminary data shows that 2016’s global temperatures are approximately 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Temperatures spiked in the early months of the year because of the powerful El Niño event.

These long-term changes in the climate have exacerbated social, humanitarian and environmental pressures. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees pointed that in 2015, more than 19 million new displacements were associated with weather, water, climate and geophysical hazards in 113 countries, more than twice as many as for conflict and violence.

“We need a much more concerted response and fund preparedness. If we have a very strategic early warning system, we can deal with the problem much more effectively. Building resilience in communities is the absolute key. We need to invest in support for building resilience now rather than having a huge humanitarian disaster,” stressed Robinson.

On Nov. 17, during the COP22 in Marrakech, the Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) – a coalition led by France, Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Japan and Canada launched at the Paris climate change negotiations in 2015 – announced a new goal to mobilise more than 30 million dollars by July 2017 and 100 million by 2020.

The international partnership aims to strengthen risk information and early warning systems in vulnerable countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and small island developing states in the Pacific. The idea is to leverage financing to protect populations exposed to extreme climate events.

There will be a special focus on women, who are particularly vulnerable to climate menaces but are the protagonists in building resilience. “Now we’ve moved from the Paris negotiations to implementation on the ground. Building resilience is key and it must be done in a way that is gender sensitive with full account of gender equality and also human rights. We must recognize the role of women as agents for change in their communities,” Robinson emphasised.

The number of climate-related disasters has more than doubled over the past 40 years, said Robert Glasser, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction.

“This initiative will help reduce the impact of these events on low and middle-income countries which suffer the most,” he said.

José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told IPS, “We can see already in Africa the impact of climate change that is undermining our efforts to bring food security for all. Take the example of El Niño that has affected all of Africa in the last two years. Countries that had made fantastic progress like Ethiopia, Zambia, Tanzania and Madagascar are now suffering hunger again. Countries that have eradicated hunger are back to face it again. We need to adapt.”

Climate change has different impacts on men and women, girls and boys, told IPS Edith Ofwona, the senior program specialist at International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

“Gender is critical. We must recognise it is not about women alone,” she said. “[But] women are important because they provide the largest labour force, mainly in the agricultural sector. It is important to appreciate the differences in the impacts, the needs in terms of response. There is need for balance, affirmative action and ensuring all social groups are taken into consideration.”

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The dry Sahelian semidesertic region around Tera, Niger. The proteins, vitamins, and micronutrients consumed in fish captured during the rainy seasons can make a major difference to the lives of these vulnerable rural communities, particularly if the fish can be dried and properly stored to be consumed throughout the year. Credit: FAO

By Baher Kamal
ROME, Nov 18 2016 (IPS)

To fight or to flee? These are the stark choices Maria, a single mother from the Bangalala midlands of Tanzania, faces repeatedly.

“After the rains failed for a few years, some neighbours claimed our trees were drawing too much water from the ground. We cut them down. Our harvests fell. My mother closed her stall at the local market. That is when my father and I moved from the midlands to the Ruvu Mferejini river valley.”

Maria, whose dramatic story has been told by the United Nations organization leading in combating desertification, goes on to say: “My brother quit school to help the family. He went to find work but he does not earn enough. My mother stayed in Bangalala so that my daughter could go to school because there are no schools in the valley.”

“But where we moved to, my crop also failed last year. That is why early this year I moved yet again, but I left my father behind. I hope to farm here much longer, as I am sure the people I left behind with my father will have to move too. But when will this moving end? I cannot afford it anymore.”

This is not an isolated case–Maria is in the same situation that women in Darfur, Mali, Chad or Afghanistan were in before local conflicts over water or land turned into civil wars, sexual violence or genocide, reports the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

“Nor is this situation unique to sub-Saharan Africa where half a billion inhabitants are rural, a majority lives off the land and desertification is a constant threat to their livelihoods,” it alerts in its report Desertification, the Invisible Frontline.“As the effects of climate change undermine livelihoods, inter-ethnic clashes are breaking out within and across states and fragile states are turning to militarisation to control the situation.” UNCCD

According to the Bonn-based UNCCD, more than 1.5 billion people in the world depend on degrading land, and 74 per cent of them, like Maria, are poor.

Desertification is a silent, invisible crisis that is destabilising communities on a global scale, says this international legal framework for tackling desertification, land degradation and drought, 169 of its 194 Parties have declared they are affected by desertification.

The consequences are dire. “As the effects of climate change undermine livelihoods, inter-ethnic clashes are breaking out within and across states and fragile states are turning to militarisation to control the situation.”

The effects of desertification are increasingly felt globally as victims turn into refugees, internally displaced people and forced migrants or they turn to radicalisation, extremism or resource-driven wars for survival, UNCCD continues.

“If we are to restore peace, security and international stability in a context where changing weather events are threatening the livelihoods of more and more people, survival options are declining and state capacities are overburdened, then more should be done to combat desertification, reverse land degradation and mitigate the effects of drought.’

Otherwise, many small-scale farmers and poor, land-dependent communities face two choices: fight or flight.

UP to 30% of World’s Land Affected by Desertification

For its part, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that desertification currently affects approximately twenty-five to thirty per cent of the world’s land surface area. About 1,2 billion people in at least 100 states are at risk.

Djibo, Burkina Faso – Seedlings are put in place before the planting. Credit: ©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

Over 42 billion dollars in lost productivity or human support occurs each year on account of it. According to UNEP, the global rate of desertification is increasing, although the local rates vary by region.

“Africa, with around sixty-six per cent of its land either desert or drylands, is particularly affected by desertification. Already, a number of large-scale famines have occurred in the Sahelian region, resulting in migration of people towards more hospitable lands.”

Desertification occurs mainly through over-cropping, over-grazing, improper irrigation practices, and deforestation. These activities arise from poor land management, which, in turn, stems from the socio-economic conditions in which the farmers live.

Monique Barbut, UNCCD Executive Secretary, gives specific figures.

“Globally, only 7.8 billion hectares of land are suitable for food production. About 2 billion hectares are already degraded, and of these 500 million hectares have been totally abandoned. These lands could be restored to fertility for future use.”

With 99.7 per cent of our food calories coming from the land –Barbut underlines– land degradation is a threat to our food security. But its effects are especially harsh for the poorest people who rely directly on the land for survival – food, employment and water. When their lands cannot produce any more, they have little choice but to migrate or fight over what little is left.

“Unless we change our approach, when drought comes and the rains fail, the future of the 400 million African farmers who rely on rain fed subsistence agriculture, for example, is put in jeopardy,” Barbut wrote on IPS.

Rain-fed agriculture accounts for more than 95 per cent of farmed land in sub-Saharan Africa. And water scarcity alone could cost some regions 6 per cent of their Gross Domestic Product, she added.

“Unless we change our approach, people are going to be increasingly forced to decide whether to ride out a drought disaster and then rebuild. Or simply leave.”

According to Barbut, “It is a form of madness that we force our people to make these difficult choices.”

Food Insecurity Triggering Riots

In 2008, food insecurity triggered riots in over 30 countries, ccording to the UNCCD. But it is rural communities like those of Bangalala, who depend on rainfed agriculture that contribute to global food security.

The livelihoods of over 2 billion people worldwide depend on 500 million small-scale farmers. Drylands, which make up nearly 34 per cent of the land mass and are a major source of food security especially for the poor, are being degraded day-by-day, it adds.

“Desertification does not always lead to conflict. But it is an amplifier of displacement, forced migration, radicalisation, extremism and violence.”

The US National Security Strategy refers to climate change as a key global challenge that will lead to conflicts over refugees and resources, suffering from drought and famine, catastrophic natural disasters, and the degradation of land across the globe, it reminds.

Therefore, “investing in practical solutions that transform lives and reduce the vulnerability of communities like Maria’s would be cheaper and work better than investing in walls, wars and relief.”

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By Zahid Hussain
Nov 17 2016 (Dawn, Pakistan)

The targets may be different but the perpetrators of the two deadly attacks carried out in Balochistan in the space of one month are the same. The responsibility of the carnage at the shrine in Khuzdar as well as the slaughter of police cadets in Quetta have been claimed by the militant Islamic State group and its affiliates.

Zahid Hussain

In August this year, militants wiped out almost an entire generation of senior lawyers in the province in a suicide bomb attack inside a hospital. The restive province seems to have become the main battleground of the militants. Some recent sectarian terrorist attacks in upper Sindh have also been traced to militant groups based in Balochistan.

It is not for the first time that a terrorist attack in Pakistan has carried the IS footprint. Last year’s bus massacre of over 40 members of the Ismaili community in Karachi was among the most gruesome of its kind. There have also been reports of security agencies busting militant cells affiliated with the group in other parts of the country. But it is Balochistan which is in the cross hairs.

Islamic State’s apparent involvement in the latest attacks shows it has gained a foothold in the region.

What is more troubling is the emerging nexus between local sectarian outfits and the lethal global jihadi group. We, however, are still in a state of denial about the looming threat. IS is not present in Pakistan; the idea is just a part of our enemies’ conspiracy to isolate the country — this is the patent response by government officials after every attack.

It may be true that the Middle Eastern jihadi group does not have a formal organisational structure in Pakistan, but over the past years it has found allies among Sunni extremist groups such as the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) and some splinter factions of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. What has brought them together is the strong anti-Shia bent of their jihadist ideology.

Most of these local militant groups were earlier affiliated with Al Qaeda which has lost its appeal after losing ground in Pakistan’s tribal areas and in Afghanistan. The spectacular advances of IS and its territorial control in Iraq and Syria have now made it much more attractive to militants in search of a new and more radical identity.

Although IS has now lost much of the territory under its control and is on the retreat in the Middle East, it has maintained links with its allies in Pakistan. These groups operate more like a franchise than a formal centralised structure. Hence it is not surprising that the pictures of the Quetta police academy attackers were posted on the group’s official website hours after the incident.

Some radicalised, educated young Pakistanis, influenced by its powerful online propaganda, have also pledged allegiance to IS. Quite a few were involved in attacks in Karachi and have recently been convicted by military courts. But some of these cells are still actively forming a nexus with sectarian groups, raising fears of continuing terrorist attacks across the country despite crackdowns by law-enforcement agencies. The breakdown of governance and an increasingly ineffective policing system, especially in Karachi, provide space for such groups.

However, it is the rise of sectarian militancy in Balochistan over the last few years that has provided a foothold for IS in the province. A major factor in the ascent of violent sectarian outfits is the mushrooming of foreign-funded radical madressahs in the province. Seen to be primarily financed by Gulf donors, they are largely concentrated in Mastung and Khuzdar districts, the latter being the site of the latest attack on a remote shrine.

While travelling on the RCD highway some 15 years ago, I remember seeing madressahs dotting the area where no other amenities were available. The administration either approved of them or looked the other way, boosting foreign-funded Sunni radicalisation. There is also strong evidence of a nexus between sectarian groups and the militias allegedly sponsored by the intelligence agencies to counter Baloch separatists. Such tacit support has allowed the militants to spread their tentacles.

Over the years Mastung has emerged as the main centre of sectarian militancy. There is still a madressah complex set up by anti-Shia groups operating in the region. It is serving as one of the bastions of religious extremism in the province. Dawood Badani, a relative of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was responsible for the first major sectarian terrorist attack on an imambargah in Quetta in 2004.

The trail of most of the attacks on Hazara Shias in Quetta that have claimed hundreds of innocent lives over the last decade leads to this district. Many top LJ leaders have reportedly been killed in the latest crackdown by security agencies, but the recent surge in violence indicates that sectarian networks are still capable of launching high-profile terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, Pakistani sectarian militants have also found sanctuaries in Afghanistan, allowing them to move about freely on both sides of the border and making it much harder for Pakistani law-enforcement agencies to track them down.

Just a few months ago, Pakistan’s chief military spokesman declared that IS plans to expand into the country had been thwarted. But the group’s apparent involvement in the latest attacks shows that it has gained a foothold in the region despite the crackdown.

It is not just for publicity’s sake that the banner of IS is being used by various factions of the LJ; there is strong evidence of organisational links between them. The latest wave of terrorist attacks in Balochistan appears to be part of the strategy to hit soft targets as IS suffers huge setbacks in its strongholds in the Middle East.

Surely, one must not exaggerate the IS threat, but it is also unwise to underestimate the growing influence of the group, especially given the surge in sectarian militancy and the weakened authority of the state. We are reaping the whirlwind of our misplaced policies.

The writer is an author and journalist.
zhussain100@yahoo.com
Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2016

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

By Nicholas Rosellini
Nov 17 2016 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

We live in a world of increasing interdependency and complexity, where international cooperation is necessary, however increasingly multifaceted and complicated. Global challenges such as climate change, global health and security issues require ever higher degrees of global effort and collaboration if they are to be overcome. This calls for new ideas on how to make global governance work better for all countries and people.

Source: mareeg.com

In light of this, the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), potentially the world’s largest economic corridor, is part of a new trend and an innovative contribution to global governance. It represents an opportunity to build a shared vision for common prosperity through regional cooperation, and could act as an accelerator for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The BRI covers a vast population of 4.4 billion and an economic output of USD 21 trillion in more than 70 countries in the Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Africa. The majority of them are emerging and developing countries. Through connectivity, it aims to foster trade, financial integration, and people-to-people bonds, while promoting inclusiveness and win-win cooperation – hence reshaping the landscape of international cooperation.

In today’s globalised world, economic and social linkages inevitably transcend borders, as does environmental sustainability. A key strength of the BRI is that it strategically targets recipient countries’ development gaps. According to the ADB-ESCAP-UNDP joint study (Making it Happen, 2015), in the Asia Pacific Region alone total financing requirement for infrastructure is at USD 8.3 trillion between 2010 and 2020, or USD 750 billion per year. While the majority of financing is expected from government revenues, FDI will play an increasingly important role – making the BRI a powerful framework for facilitating its flow.

Some countries are already fully engaged and investment and trade are expanding rapidly. Outbound direct investment made by Chinese companies to BRI countries reached USD 12 billion in the first three quarters of 2015, growing by 66 percent from same period a year earlier. For example in Pakistan, where the Pakistan Economic Corridor has been initiated, this will amount up to USD 46 billion mainly for the energy and logistics sector. Similarly, in the case of Indonesia, financing frameworks are set for around 52 planned projects, to be funded by the China Development Bank and local Indonesian financing institutions.

The question is how these investments can be a new wave that brings not only economic development, but human development benefits along the way. The BRI will contribute to improved infrastructure and industrialisation, but it should not stop there, and must also transform local communities and bring about poverty reduction, environmental sustainability and inclusive social development, contributing to the achievement of Agenda 2030.

Highlighting sustainability is a critical aspect of the BRI’s credibility, and the synergies and complementarities between BRI and SDGs can help create a win-win outcome. The BRI is intended primarily to be driven by commercial and economic priorities, relying heavily on the private sector, guided by market rules and international laws. Yet, its success will critically depend on the ability to contribute to national and local development objectives, and inter alia improving the livelihoods of local communities, through for example creating decent jobs, increasing capacities and overall living standards. Social cohesion should also be strengthened by the BRI through including the most vulnerable, hence address issues of equity, positively impacting migration flows and demographic changes. At the level of policies, the BRI should equally target policy harmonisation to further facilitate investments with lowered risks and transaction costs.

The broader UN system, including agencies, such as UNDP, UNICEF and UNIDO, is ready to play a facilitating role to ensure alignment of the BRI with the SDGs. UNDP recently signed an agreement with the Government of China, aiming to support China and the other Belt and Road countries in achieving their development aspirations, building more consensus, providing analytical basis for policy makers to engage on the BRI, and identifying practical projects coupled with investments to ensure that common economic prosperity will go hand-in-hand with inclusive social and environmental gains.

This is just the beginning. We have a long road ahead of us, but we at UNDP truly believe that development can be achieved only through a broader vision bringing together ideas, resources and partners with capacity to reach the common goal of shared prosperity for sustainable development.

The author is UN resident coordinator and UNDP resident representative in China.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

Zainab Bangura, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe.

By Lindah Mogeni
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 2016 (IPS)

The governments of Rwanda and Iraq have agreed to work together to fight rape as a weapon of genocide, noting disturbing similarities between sexual violence in Iraq today to the Rwandan genocide twenty years ago.

Just as targeted rape was as much a tool of the Rwandan genocide as the machete, an estimated 3000 Iraqi Yazidis under ISIL’s captivity are currently facing acts of genocide and targeted sexual violence, including sexual slavery.

Given Rwanda’s experience with sexual violence during the Rwandan genocide, Iraq’s permanent mission to the UN has signed a joint communique, an official statement establishing a relationship, with Rwanda’s permanent mission to the UN.

The joint effort will be aimed at sharing action plans to rehabilitate women victims and reintegrate them into their communities.

Rwanda was the first country where rape was recognised as a weapon of genocide by an international court. This court case was the subject of a documentary, The Uncondemned, which recently premiered at the UN.

The documentary is centred around the case of Jean Paul Akayesu, the mayor of Taba in Rwanda between April 1993 and June 1994, who was brought before the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR).

Akayesu was found guilty of nine counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, including the landmark conviction of rape as an act of genocide, in 1998.

“I decided to shame the act, I decided to put it out there, I wanted the truth to be known, but most importantly I wanted justice." Rwandan Witness "JJ".

Prior to the film screening, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Bangura, described the importance of recognising rape as an act of genocide.

Bangura paid tribute to the Rwandan women who testified in the Akayesu trial as well as two Iraqi Yazidi women, one of whom is an ISIL rape survivor, present at the screening, and praised them for “giving other women the confidence to emerge from the shadows.”

A report to the UN human rights council has found that ISIL – also known as ISIS – has committed the crime of genocide against the Yazidis, an ethnically Kurdish religious group.

“The film demonstrates that only when survivors and civil society come together and join forces with investigators, prosecutors and policy makers, that justice can be delivered in its fullest sense,” said Bangura.

“The silver lining in these encounters is the exceptional courage and resilience of the rape victims to overcome their traumatic experience…they defied traditions and taboos by standing and speaking up, despite the fear of stigma and rejection or retribution from perpetrators,” said Jeanne D’arc Byaje, the Charge d’Affaires to the Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the UN.

Thousands of people were targeted with sexual violence during the Rwandan genocide, said the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng.

According to Byaje, in a span of 22 years since the genocide, Rwanda has “been able to reverse the deplorable situation by eliminating gender-based abuse and violence to increase the capacity of women and girls to protect themselves.”

Byaje called for “an international community that is a partner and not a bystander…and that is willing to work towards long-term efforts to promote unity and reconciliation.”

Iraq’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Mohamed Ali Ahakim, similarly appealed to the international community for help with the dire situation faced by Yazidi, as well as other minorities, women and children currently under ISIL”s captivity.

“Young women and children have been specifically targeted by ISIL and are being systematically sold in slave markets sometimes for a dollar or a pack of cigarettes…this is a tragedy that has not been experienced before in any of Iraq’s diverse communities,” said Ahakim.

However, Ahakim said that the problem is not confined to the current situation – “it would be easy to work with a coalition of 65 countries to defeat ISIL militarily.”

“The main problem is what we are going to do next once we liberate Iraq and free the young women and children…I don’t have the ability to comprehend the difficulties that will be faced trying to infuse normality into these communities,” said Ahakim

From the testimonies given at the UN, after the film screening, by the Rwandan witnesses at the Akayesu trial and the Yazidi rape survivor, it is evident that justice is the most crucial component of any next-step action plans for survivors.

“I decided to shame the act, I decided to put it out there, I wanted the truth to be known, but most importantly I wanted justice…what happened to us was horrible but we are still here…and that is because of justice” said one Rwandan witness, known as “Witness JJ”.

Yazidi rape survivor of ISIL, 18 year old Lea Le, who escaped her captors by tying scarves together and using them to climb out of a window along with some friends, said that “we should not hide what happened, it is very important for justice to be carried out…it is unfair that survivors have to wait so long for justice.”

Asked about the impact of the Akayesu case on other war crimes trials, Ambassador Pierre R. Prosper, the lead prosecutor during the Akayesu trial, admitted that there have been some subsequent prosecutions as result of the international precedent set by Akayesu’s case.

However, “we have lost the momentum, the political will to deal with the issue of not just rape but other genocide atrocities in general…we are waving the flag of saying this is wrong but we are not acting,” said Prosper.

Prosper called for governments to direct resources to relevant entities to pursue accountability and ensure justice.

“We need to re-energise ourselves,” said Prosper.

Although class has not declined in significance, by shaping the institutional context, political geography has become a key determinant of income. Credit: IPS

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 17 2016 (IPS)

Global income inequality among different regions began to increase about five centuries ago, before accelerating about two centuries ago, according to the great economic historian Angus Maddison. After the brief reversal during the ‘Golden Age’ quarter century after the Second World War, higher commodity prices in the decade until 2014, despite protracted slowdowns in most rich countries following the 2008 financial crisis, reduced international disparities between North and South.

Before the Industrial Revolution, inequalities among regions were relatively small, while within-‘country’ inequalities accounted for most of overall global income inequality. But inter-country income inequalities now account for about two-thirds of world inequality, with intra-country inequality accounting for a third.

Short 20th century
National income distribution trends do not necessarily follow those for global income inequality. National level inequality in 22 developed economies grew up to the second decade of the 20th century, with inequality declining thereafter until the 1970s. The trend then reversed again with the market fundamentalist counter-revolution and changing role of the state in recent decades.

The general trend for these countries is quite clear, but does not hold for all other countries. For example, many developing countries fared badly in the 1920s and 1930s as primary commodity prices fell, especially during the Great Depression.

The late historian Eric Hobsbawm famously described the period from the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, as the ‘short twentieth century’. Other pundits identify the end of the First World War, or the creation of the ILO in 1919, as an alternative starting point for Karl Polanyi’s ‘second movement’.

For many, the ascendance of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan led the ‘neo-liberal’ counter-revolution against the post-World War Two ‘Golden Age’ marked by decolonization, Keynesianism, the welfare state, agrarian reforms and rapid employment expansion.

Washington Consensus
The ‘Washington Consensus’ from the early 1980s – shared by different branches of the US government and the Bretton Woods institutions located in the American capital – brought an end to earlier policy interventions associated with Keynesian and development economics.

The breakdown of the international monetary system and other developments of the 1970s led to ‘stagflation’ – economic stagnation despite high inflation — in much of the West while growth accelerated in other regions, notably East Asia. The US Fed raised interest rates sharply from 1980, inducing an international recession, and eventually, fiscal and sovereign debt crises in some developing countries and ‘communist’ economies. High debt and the Volcker-induced interest rate spike forced many governments to pursue macro-financial stabilization policies to defeat inflation besides microeconomic structural adjustment policies.

But the so-called Washington Consensus was not really about market liberalization, as little was done to check, let alone undermine private oligopolistic and oligopsonistic trends. Instead, despite the market rhetoric, neo-liberalism is really about strengthening property rights and capturing rents.

This involved a shift away from public authority and coordination, redefining the role of the state and enhancing private power. Good governance in the new order means upholding the rule of law, especially strengthening property rights and related privileges and entitlements. To secure political support, it appeals to all as consumers, and to all asset-owners, including petty ones and rentiers seeking to maximize net income flows by minimizing rent-seeking costs. Not surprisingly then, recent trends in the functional distribution of income reflect a declining share for labour despite rising labour productivity.

Labour solidarity?
This disconnect between labour productivity and income is not unfamiliar to developing economies with high unemployment and underemployment. In such labour markets, characterized by ‘unlimited supplies of labour’ associated with economics laureate Arthur Lewis, productivity gains did not translate into higher wages, or a ‘producer surplus’, but instead lowered prices, contributing to the ‘consumer surplus’. This contrasts sharply with strong labour market institutions where wages rise with productivity.

Growing wealth concentration in recent decades reflects enhanced rentier power in most economic sectors and activities as well as the ascendance and globalization of finance in recent decades. Rentier income flows from legally sanctioned monopolies associated with intellectual property rights have grown greatly in recent years, increasingly capturing productivity gains at the expense of labour.

Although class has not declined in significance, by shaping the institutional context, political geography has become a key determinant of income. This not only helps explain the continuing strong economic incentive for international migration, but also the growing barriers to such movement, often supported by those who feel threatened about losing their privileges.

Not surprisingly, international labour solidarity has become much more difficult, while foreign advocacy of labour rights or the environment is treated with suspicion as self-interested, or even as protection by another name.

About a hundred Central American migrants crammed into a large truck were rescued in the Mexican state of Tabasco in October. It is not likely that Donald Trump’s arrival to the White House will dissuade people from setting out on the hazardous journey to the United States. Credit: Courtesy of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Nov 17 2016 (IPS)

“Donald Trump will not stop me from getting to the U.S.,” said Juan, a 35-year-old migrant from Nicaragua, referring to the Republican president-elect who will govern that country as of Jan. 20.

Juan, who worked as a street vendor in his country and asked that his last name not be mentioned, told IPS: “I got scared when I heard that Trump had won the election (on November 8). Maybe with Hillary (Clinton) there would have been more job opportunities. But that won’t stop me; it has never been easy to cross, but it is possible.”

Juan set out from Nicaragua on September 13, leaving his wife and son behind, and on the following day crossed the Suchiate River between Guatemala from Mexico, on a raft.

In Mexico, he experienced what thousands of migrants suffer in their odyssey towards the “American dream”. He evaded at least four checkpoints in the south of the country, escaped immigration officers, walked for hours and hours, and was robbed of money, clothes and shoes by three men wearing hoods in El Chagüite, in the southern state of Oaxaca.

After filing a complaint for assault in a local public prosecutor’s office, he has been living since October in the “Hermanos en el Camino” shelter, founded in 2007 by the Catholic Church division of pastoral care for human mobility of the Ixtepec Diocese in Oaxaca, awaiting an official humanitarian visa to cross Mexico.

“I want to get to the United States. What safeguards me is my desire and need to get there. I want to work about three years and then return,” Juan said by phone from the shelter, explaining that he has two friends in the Midwestern U.S. state of Illinois.

The struggles and aspirations of migrants such as Juan clash with Trump’s promise to extend the wall along the border with Mexico, to keep out undocumented migrants.

While they digest the triumph by Trump and his Republican Party, migrant rights organisations and governments in Latin America fear a major migration crisis.

During his campaign, Trump vowed to deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants who live in the United States, about half of whom are of Mexican origin.

And on Sunday Nov. 13 the president-elect said that as soon as he took office he would deport about three million unauthorised immigrants who, he claimed, have a criminal record.

A member of the migrant aid group “Las Patronas” waits for the train known as “The Beast”, that was used by undocumented migrants to cross southern Mexico, to give them water and food. The Mexican government shut down the notorious train in August. Credit: Courtesy of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement

“Trump’s policy would aggravate the migratory situation,” said Alberto Donis, who works at Hermanos en el Camino, one of the first Mexican shelters for migrants, which currently houses some 200 undocumented migrants, mainly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

“With Trump, we don’t know what else he will do, but it will be worse than what we have now. After what happened in the elections, people who are not able to cross will stay here. Mexico will be a country of destination. And what does it do? Detain and deport them,” he said, talking to IPS by phone from the shelter.

For the last eight years, the outgoing administration of Democratic President Barack Obama has implemented contradictory migration policies, that have demonstrated the scant influence that sending countries have on U.S. domestic policies.

On the one hand, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which delays deportation for migrants who arrived as children, was adopted in 2012. And a similar benefit was created in 2014: the Deferred Action for (undocumented) Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA).

However, DAPA has been suspended since February by a court order and it is taken for granted that Trump will revoke both measures when he takes office.

And on the other hand, the Obama administration set a new record for deportations: Since 2009, more than two million migrants have been deported, mainly to Mexico and Central America.

In 2015 alone, U.S. immigration authorities deported 146,132 Mexicans, which makes an increase of 56 per cent with respect to the previous year, 33,249 Guatemalans (14 per cent less than in 2014), 21,920 Salvadorans (similar to the previous year) and 20,309 Hondurans (nine per cent less).

An estimated 500,000 undocumented migrants from Central America cross Mexico every year in their attempt to reach the 3,185-km border separating Mexico from the United States, according to estimates from organisations that work with migrants.

In the first nine months of this year, Mexico deported 43,200 Guatemalans, 38,925 Hondurans and 22,582 Salvadorans.

Central American mothers in search of their children who went missing on their way to the United States take part in a caravan that set out on Nov. 10 and is set to reach the Mexico-U.S. border on Dec. 2. Credit: Courtesy of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement

Activists criticize the Comprehensive Plan for the Southern Border, implemented since August 2014 by the Mexican government with the help of the United States to crack down on undocumented migrants. The plan includes the installation of 12 bases on rivers and three security belts along the Mexico-U.S. border.

But some migrant rights’ organisations have doubts as to whether Trump will actually carry out his threats, due to the social and economic consequences.

“He says so many outrageous things that I cannot imagine what he may do. He is a businessman and I don’t think he will risk losing cheap labour. None of it makes sense, it is nothing more than xenophobia and racism. The United States would face long-term consequences ,” Marta Sánchez, executive director of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement, told IPS.

The Movement is taking part in the XII caravan of mothers of Central American migrants who have gone missing on their journey to the United States, made up of mothers from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, which set out on Nov. 10 in Guatemala and reached Mexico Nov. 15.

On Nov. 12 Claudia Ruiz Massieu, Mexico’s secretary of foreign affairs, meet with this country’s ambassador and consuls in the U.S. to design plans for consular protection and assistance for Mexican nationals, with a view to the expected increase in tension.

The governments of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador do not appear to have devised plans to address the xenophobic campaign promises of Trump.

These economies would directly feel the impact of any drop in remittances from migrants abroad, which, in El Salvador for example, represent 17 per cent of GDP.

But the U.S. economy would suffer as well. The American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, estimated that the mass deportation of all undocumented migrants would cause an economic contraction of two per cent and a drop of 381 to 623 billion dollars in private sector output.

Juan just wants to cross the border. “The idea is to better yourself and then return home. People keep going there and they will continue to do so, because in our countries we cannot get by; the shelters are full of people looking for the same thing. If they were to deport me, I would try again,” he said.

For Donis from Hermanos en el Camino, migrant sending countries are not prepared to receive the massive return of their citizens.

“They already don’t have the capacity to sustain the people that are living in the country; it would be even more impossible for them to receive millions of deported migrants. Nor are shelters prepared. What these countries need to do is invest in sources of employment, in the countryside, in infrastructure, invest in their people, in order to curb migration,” said the activist.

During the caravan of mothers of missing migrants, which will end on Dec. 2 in Tapachula, Mexico, on the border with the United States, Sánchez anticipated that they would mention Trump and define their position. ”We will reject those measures and fight against them, this is just beginning,” she said.

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• Mexico, a Democracy Where People Disappear at the Hands of the State
• Mexico Creates First and Second-class Migrants
• Migrants Deported from the U.S. in Limbo on the Mexican Border
• Child Migrants – A “Torn Artery” in Central America

Crimes against women rose during 2001-15 despite greater affluence and an improved sex ratio

By Geetika Dang, Vani S. Kulkarni and Raghav Gaiha
Nov 17 2016 (The Hindu)

If we go by the National Crime Records Bureau reports, incidence of serious crimes against women rose from 237 per day in 2001 to 313 per day in 2015. These crimes include rape, kidnapping and abduction, dowry deaths and cruelty by husbands and relatives. Minor girls, adolescent and old women are frequently victims of brutal rapes and murders. Of these crimes, 30 per cent were rapes (including intent to rape). Higher incidence of crimes during 2001-2015 coupled with low conviction rate of 21 per cent of cases reported suggests that women are more vulnerable to serious crimes.

“The three worst States in incidence of crimes in 2001—Delhi, Haryana and Assam—remained largely unchanged in 2015.” A scene in Delhi. PHOTO: RAMESH SHARMA

Women’s vulnerability varies enormously across States. Incidence of serious crimes was as high as 75 per lakh women in Delhi in 2015 as against approximately 5 per lakh women in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

There are huge gaps in incidence of crimes between the three worst and the three best States. The three worst States in 2001 — Delhi, Haryana and Assam — remained largely unchanged in 2015, with Assam replacing Haryana as the second worst State. The best performers, however, changed during this period. Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Sikkim displayed the lowest incidence of crimes in 2001 but the top two were replaced by Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in 2015. However, across States, the overall concentration of serious crimes did not change significantly. For example, the three States (Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra) that accounted for 37 per cent of the crimes in 2001 were responsible for a slightly lower share of 34 per cent in 2015.

Factors behind inter-State variations

Here we focus on two related questions: (i) Why have crimes against women risen between 2001 and 2015? What are the factors associated with huge inter-State variation in these crimes in 2015? As answers to these questions lie in the interplay of affluence of a State, religion, demographics including female/male ratio, employment opportunities for women, their literacy, rural/urban population ratio, quality of governance in the State and media exposure, we carried out a detailed analysis that allows us to assess their individual and joint contributions to variation of serious crimes over time and across States.

Our analysis reveals the following effects. A 1 per cent increase in State GDP (per capita) is associated with a 0.42 per cent reduction in the incidence of serious crimes. It follows that greater affluence is accompanied by a reduction in such crimes. If alcoholism and substance abuse are lower among men, or if these addictions are better treated in more affluent States, sexual or physical assaults on women are less likely.

Another factor is the sex imbalance measured as the number of females per 1,000 males. The sex ratio norm is 950. India’s ratio was below this (944 in 2015). A one per cent increase in the sex ratio lowers serious crimes against women by 8 per cent. Indeed, a skewed sex rationmore than undermines the affluence effect. So, if Delhi and Haryana continue to be the worst States despite being affluent (relative to, say, Andhra Pradesh), it is largely because of the abysmally low sex ratio in these two States. While the sex ratio increased in several States but remained low (Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan), in others (Bihar, Maharashtra) it remained low and barely changed.

Other influential factors include female literacy and labour force participation. Female bargaining power depends on both their literacy and outside employment. However, the evidence also suggests a backlash in which male spouses — especially those who are unemployed — assert their superiority by retaliatory physical and sexual violence. Our analysis points to a favourable joint effect of female literacy and labour force participation, though the positive individual effects of female literacy and labour force participation are larger. If brutality in marriage becomes unbearable, exit options for women who are both literate and employed become more viable for them. Promoting both jointly is likely to be more effective in curbing domestic violence against women.

A somewhat surprising finding is that the higher the rural/urban population, the higher the incidence of serious crimes against women. A one per cent decline in the rural/urban population ratio is associated with a reduction of 0.4 per cent in the incidence of such crimes. Even though such crimes in urban areas have greater visibility in the media, the grim reality is that women in rural areas are more vulnerable. Despite likely under-reporting of such crimes, it is revealing that rural women more often seek remedial action against them. This, of course, doesn’t imply that they are more likely to succeed.

Although cultural norms and context take diverse forms — whether, for example, it is a matriarchal or patriarchal society — religion is one key dimension. Classifying the populations into Hindus and Muslims, we find that in both groups women are vulnerable to serious crimes but more so among the former. A one per cent increase in the share of the Hindus increases such crimes by 1.64 per cent — double the incidence among Muslims. That a greater frequency of wife-beating and dowry-related violence among Hindus — in extreme cases “bride burning” — still persists is worrying.

Exposure to media — captured through readership of newspapers in English and major Indian languages — has two effects: one is better reporting of crimes and perhaps, more importantly, a crime deterrence effect. It is difficult to separate the two and so the combined effect is that a one per cent increase in readership is associated with a 1.9 per cent reduction in such crimes. The Delhi gang rape case of 2012, for example, wouldn’t have sparked a national uproar and led to the speedy arrest of the perpetrators without sustained media activism.

Governance, a key determinant

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has emphasised that rape and other serious crimes against women are closely intertwined with inefficient policing and judicial systems, and callousness of society. So the quality of governance in States is key to understanding the huge variation in incidence of serious crimes against women. In a recent but ambitious study this year led by economist Sudipto Mundle, 19 States have been ranked on the basis of a composite indicator of governance in 2001 and 2012. This indicator combines five criteria — infrastructure, social services, fiscal performance, justice, law and order, and quality of the legislature. Even if some State rankings are intriguing because of the failure to take into account rampant political corruption, it is significant that the best five and the worst five performers remained largely unchanged during 2001-2012. Subject to this caveat and the fact that 2015 is not covered, using this measure of governance, we find that the incidence of serious crimes against women declines with better governance.

In conclusion, if the crimes against women rose despite greater affluence and a slight increase in the sex ratio during 2001-15, the answer must lie in likely deterioration of governance and persistence of low sex ratios in certain States. Illustrative cases include Bihar, Delhi and Maharashtra.

Geetika Dang is an independent researcher; Vani S. Kulkarni is with the Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania; Raghav Gaiha, is with the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health & Global Development Institute, University of Manchester.

This story was originally published by THE HINDU, India

Men from the Koloma IDP camp in Goz Beida, Eastern Chad, build a shelter for a generator that the community has purchased in order to pump water through a water system built by Oxfam and handed over to the IDP committee in 2012. Credit: OCHA/Pierre Peron

By IPS Correspondents
MARRAKECH, Morocco, Nov 17 2016 (IPS)

“Climate change will make a difficult situation much worse, and will affect millions of people in the Middle East and North Africa region,” World Bank MENA Vice-President Hafez Ghanem stated at the 22nd Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech, Morocco on 7-18 November.

Aware of their vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change, countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have begun taking action to confront the phenomenon and today, several highlighted their initiatives at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech, Morocco, known as COP 22.

Agriculture in the MENA region is especially vulnerable to changes in temperature and precipitation. As global temperatures rise, they will rise even faster in MENA, causing more frequent and severe droughts.

The 2015 drought in Morocco destroyed more than half the wheat harvest and led to a 1.5 per cent drop in the country’s Gross Domestic Output.

During a panel discussion on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Initiative on Climate Resilience at COP 22 on November 11, Saudi Arabia’s Chief Climate Negotiator, Khalid Abuleif, said that the region “is going to see a lot of challenges from an ecosystem point of view and from a socio-economic point of view.” The challenge is not only about reducing gas emissions but also about raising “our resilience.”

Abuleif stressed that as Saudi Arabia is diversifying its economy, any new sector will be put under regulations that will address sustainability and climate resilience.

He added that his country is focusing especially on water management, “making sure we are using water in a sustainable manner,” and on the protection of coastal zones.

Tunisia has announced a 41 per cent emission reduction by 2030. Most importantly, 13 per cent will be based on national efforts, while the rest will come from support provided by the international community.

Country Flags outside the UN COP22 venue in Marrakech, Morocco. Photo: UNFCCC

A week after COP 22 concludes, Tunisia will host an international investment conference (29-30 November) to mobilize 2.4 billion dollars, 40 per cent of which will be allocated to projects pertaining to the ‘green economy,’ with a focus on renewable energy.

In Morocco, to meet the country’s commitments on climate action, the “Bank Al Maghrib” (Central Bank of Morocco) recently unveiled the road map of the Moroccan financial sector in climate financing.

The country has also taken steps to adapt its agriculture, with better water management and more climate-resistant crops, while also lowering its emissions by eliminating most energy subsidies and with the construction of the large solar plant in Ouarzazate, World Bank senior official Hafez Ghanem noted.

“This is the kind of comprehensive climate action we will support across the region, with a special focus on the poorest and most vulnerable,” he added.

The World Bank Group announced on November 15 a new plan to ramp up support for countries in the MENA region by nearly doubling the portion of Bank financing dedicated to climate action, taking it to around 1.5 billion dollars per year by 2020.

The plan focuses on four priorities: food and water security; sustainable cities adapted to new climate conditions; the transition to low-carbon energy; and the protection of the poorest that are most exposed to the impacts of climate change.

The Marrakech Conference follows the adoption by 196 UNFCCC States Parties last December, of the Paris Agreement, so-named after the French capital where it was approved, which aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The Agreement entered into force in time for COP 22, which has been under way since 7 November. Before the meeting wraps up on18 November, parties hope to define the rules of implementation of the Paris Agreement and establish a viable plan to provide financial support to developing countries to support climate action.

President Jacob Zuma answers questions at the National Council of Provinces on Oct. 25, 2016. During the session, he said Operation Phakisa helped drive investments worth R17 billion toward ocean-based aspects of the economy since 2014. Courtesy: Republic of South Africa

By Mark Olalde
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 17 2016 (IPS)

A persistent fear of diminishing phosphorus reserves has pushed mining companies to search far and wide for new sources. Companies identified phosphate deposits on the ocean floor and are fighting for mining rights around the world.

Countries in southern Africa have the potential to set an international precedent by allowing the first offshore mining operations. South Africa specifically is one of the first countries on the continent to begin legislating its marine economy to promote sustainable development, and questions surround mining’s place in this new economy.While the fishing and coastal tourism industries account for slightly more than 1.4 billion dollars of GDP, the potential economic benefits from marine mining remain unclear.

From April 2007 to August 2008, the price of phosphate, a necessary ingredient in fertilizer, increased nearly 950 percent, in part due to the idea that phosphate production had peaked and would begin diminishing. Before prices came back down, prospectors had already begun looking for deep sea phosphate reserves around the world.

Since then, the fledgling seabed phosphate industry has found minimal success. While several operations are proposed in the Pacific islands, New Zealand and Mexico rejected attempts at offshore phosphate mining in their territory.

This means southern African reserves – created in part by currents carrying phosphate-rich water from Antarctica – are the new center of debate.

Namibia owns identified seabed phosphate deposits, and the country has recently flip-flopped about whether to allow mining. A moratorium was in place since 2013, but in September the environmental minister made the controversial decision to grant the necessary licenses. Since then, public outcry forced him to set those aside.

Most attempts at seabed phosphate mining have sputtered in the face of moratoriums and other roadblocks. Graphic courtesy of Centre for Environmental Rights

The former general project manager of Namibian Marine Phosphate (Pty) Ltd, a company that applied to mine in Namibia, told IPS that environmental groups and fisheries proved to be a loud and organised opposition. He predicted the debate in South Africa would be just as difficult for mining companies to win with no precedent for such mining.

Adnan Awad, director of the non-profit International Ocean Institute’s African region, said, “There is generally this anticipation that South African processes for mining and for the policy around some of these activities are setting a bit of a precedent and a bit of a model for how it can be pursued in other areas.”

Three companies, Green Flash Trading 251 (Pty) Ltd, Green Flash 257 (Pty) Ltd and Diamond Fields International Ltd., hold prospecting rights covering about 150,000 square kilometers, roughly 10 percent, of the country’s marine exclusive economic zone.

Diamond Fields International’s prospecting right along 47,468 square kilometres of the Indian Ocean shares space with areas of oil exploration and production. Source: Diamond Fields International Ltd. background information document

The law firm Steyn Kinnear Inc. represents both Green Flash 251 and Green Flash 257. “Currently it does not seem as if there is going to be any progress, and there is definitely not going to be any mining right application,” Wynand Venter, an attorney at the firm, said, calling the project “uneconomical.”

Venter said the Green Flash companies received drill samples, which showed current prices could not sustain seabed phosphate mining.

This leaves Diamond Fields as the only remaining player in South African waters. The company announced in a January 2014 press release that it received a 47,468 square kilometer prospecting right to search for phosphate.

According to information the company published summarising its environmental management plan, prospecting would use seismic testing to determine the benthic, or seafloor, geology. If mining commenced, it would take place on the seafloor between 180 and 500 meters below the surface.

“A vital and indisputable link exists between phosphate rock and world food supply,” the company stated, citing dwindling phosphate reserves.

Diamond Fields did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Environmentalists argue that not only would phosphate mining destroy marine ecosystems, but it would also lead to continued overuse of fertilizers and associated pollution. They call for increased research into phosphate recapture technology instead of mining.

“We could actually be solving the problem of too much phosphates in our water and recapturing it. Instead we’re going to destroy our ocean ecosystems,” John Duncan of WWF-SA said.

The act of offshore mining requires a vessel called a trailing suction hopper dredger, which takes up seafloor sediment and sends waste back into the water column.

A southern right whale swims off the coast of the Western Cape province near Hermanus, a town renowned for its whale watching. South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources granted three prospecting rights covering about 150,000 square kilometers, or 10 percent, of the country’s exclusive economic zone. Credit: Mark Olalde/IPS

“It amounts to a kind of bulldozer that operates on the seabed and excavates sediment down to a depth of two or three meters. Where it operates, it’s like opencast mining on land. It removes the entire substrate. That substrate become unavailable to fisheries for many years, if not forever,” Johann Augustyn, secretary of the South African Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association, said.

In addition to direct habitat destruction, environmentalists argue the plume of sediment released into the ocean could spread out to smother additional areas and harm wildlife.

Mining opponents also worry offshore mining would negatively impact food production and economic growth.

Several thousand subsistence farmers live along South Africa’s coast, and the country’s large-scale fishing industry produces around 600,000 metric tonnes of catch per year.

“[Mining] may lead to large areas becoming deserts for the fish populations that were there. If they don’t die off, they won’t find food there, and they’ll probably migrate out of those areas,” Augustyn said.

While the fishing and coastal tourism industries account for slightly more than 1.4 billion dollars of GDP, the potential economic benefits from marine mining remain unclear. There are no published estimates for job creation, but Namibian Marine Phosphate’s proposal said it would lead to 176 new jobs, not all of them local.

“The benefits are not coming back to the greater South African community,” Awad said. “African countries generally have been quite poor at negotiating the benefits through multinational companies’ exploitation of coastal resources.”

South Africa is one of only three African nations – along with Namibia and Seychelles – implementing marine spatial planning. This growing movement toward organised marine economies balances competing uses such as oil exploration, marine protected areas and fisheries. Earlier this year, the Department of Environmental Affairs, DEA, published a draft Marine Spatial Planning Bill, the first step toward creating marine-specific legislation.

According to government predictions, a properly managed marine economy could add more than 12.5 billion dollars to South Africa’s GDP by 2033. What part mining will play in that remains to be seen.

“Internationally the off-shore exploration for hard minerals is on the increase and it is to be expected that the exploitation of South Africa’s non-living marine resources will also increase,” the DEA’s draft framework said.

Neither the Department of Mineral Resources nor the DEA responded to repeated requests for comment.

Mark Olalde’s mining investigations are financially supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Fund for Environmental Journalism and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Additional support for this story was provided by #MineAlert and Code for Africa.

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Paloma Durán is Director of the Sustainable Development Goals Fund (SDG Fund).

By Paloma Durán
NEW YORK, Nov 17 2016 (IPS)

One of the key features of the 2030 Agenda which the United Nations and member states identified in the lead up to the SDG agreement was the principle of universality.

Courtesy of Paloma Durán/UNDP

After managing to get the pivotal agreement on the global framework for the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed upon last year, it is now critical to continue this momentum and understand the opportunities and challenges it creates for the private sector as partners in sustainable development efforts.

Building on our interest to tip the scales and generate greater private sector engagement, the UN Sustainable Development Goals Fund (SDG Fund) in collaboration with its Private Sector Advisory Group and the Global Compact examined these questions through a new report, Universality and the SDGs: A Business Perspective. The report, launched last week highlights varied perspectives from both large and small companies working to understand the commonality of the new development agenda.

Universality in this context is defined by the UN as “applicable to all countries, while taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development that respect national policies and principles.” Thus the notion of Universality also envisions that everyone has a role to play in development and poverty alleviation efforts framing the development agenda.

The business community has, and continues to be deemed an important partner for us, serving as a critical economic engine and multiplier to catalyze economic and social development programs in our 23 joint programs around the world. The task at hand is to now reinforce this commitment and ensure that companies of all sizes and sectors are properly aware of the new SDGs.

To this end, the outcomes of the report were based on a year-long series of workshops and dialogues and reflected input from over 100 firms across a variety of regions and industry sectors. These findings stemming from countless interviews and in-depth questions were not unexpected and mainly in-line with our experience at the SDG Fund. We found that companies were keen to address the new set of goals which they viewed as critical to their core business activities, but many firms still struggled to fully understand the depth of the goals.

The report also mirrored some of our unique experience working with the private sector. For example, while many firms are already working in areas linked to the SDGs, this work is not always associated with the same “UN” or development language. In fact, many companies articulate the “global goals” using other mechanisms, including using other metrics or reporting based on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) indicators or other industry standards.

The new report offers some other useful findings. First, companies both small and large are increasingly aware of the concept of the SDGs, but many firms did not fully grasp the intricacies of the SDGs in context of their work or internal operations.

In addition, although many companies find a clear and added value to framing sustainability initiatives through the SDGs which provide a unified set of globally accepted principles–many companies are still accustomed to working within the confines of their philanthropic and CSR programs.

Despite a strong willingness to embrace the SDGs, many companies are exploring how to best integrate the SDGs into their work. But perhaps the most compelling case for the SDG Fund’s continued efforts to engage companies in a “co-design, co-invest and co-implement policy” is that the private sector remains eager to work on global challenges.

Companies continue to express their desire to be brought into the process to build innovative and robust multi-stakeholder partnerships at the local level and very often with UN partners.

Undoubtedly, with the one-year anniversary of the 2030 agenda approaching in January, this new report reminds us that the UN can and should play a more active role in educating and informing companies on the “universal” dimensions of the SDGs.

It is also important to continue to translate the new agenda into language and simplified reporting metrics that are palatable for businesses of all sizes – all of which means greater education on how companies can integrate the SDGs in their value chains, disseminate accessible resources and tools to promote learning, and support implementation and alignment across sectors.

In the end, the universality principle embedded in the SDGs provides a clear invitation for action and alignment to advance the new development agenda.

We hope to continue to raise public awareness and foster the much needed dialogue and advocacy required to encourage business to support the SDGs. In addition, our report highlights additional information on the ongoing work of the SDG Fund, including Private Sector Advisory Group case studies that continue to build the case for greater engagement in development, especially across sectors and with welcome actors like the private sector.

Karachi's slums interfere with planning. Credit: Muhammad Arshad/IPS

By Josefina Stubbs and David Lewis
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic and LONDON, Nov 17 2016 (IPS)

As the dust has settled on Habitat III and the summit in Quito, Ecuador, we now have a clear vision and a concrete road map for how to transform our cities into inclusive, safer and more productive environments. The New Urban Agenda comes at a propitious time. Urbanization is growing at a fast pace, particularly in developing countries, where the urban population is expected to double by 2050. In South Asia alone, the urban population grew by 130 million between 2001 and 2011, according to recent World Bank study. Another 250 million are expected to join them by 2030.

A woman at a public water tank in a Bangalore slum. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

But to lead to lasting change and prosperity for all, investments in cities must come hand in hand with massive transformation of rural areas to bring them up to par, if not to make them more attractive than cities. The exponential growth of cities is by and large the result of a growing divide between urban and rural realities, where the endemic lack of basic services and jobs drive rural people away from their rural communities and into cities. In the rush to engage with the challenges of urbanization we cannot afford to lose sight of the rural.

Rural communities are no longer isolated from the rest of the world. Young people all have smartphones with an Internet connection. They know that there are places that offer better services, better jobs and a better life than the one they can hope for back home.

As young women and men leave rural areas in large numbers, they leave the very communities that they should be strengthening and shaping, abandoning their friends, families and culture. They migrate to larger cities in search of work and of a better future, but without formal education or skills, many are confined to the fringes of the society to which they aspire. The exodus of young people threatens the fabric of rural societies and exacerbates the problems the New Urban Agenda is designed to tackle: precarious and insalubrious housing, joblessness, insecurity and overpopulation.

Kisenyi slum, in Uganda’s capital Kampala is believed to be home to a large portion of the country’s almost 12,000 Somali immigrants. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

People migrate when their choices at home are limited. By investing in people’s skills and knowledge, rural business development, technical assistance and by providing financial support, connectivity, quality roads, health services, electricity and connectivity, we can widen people’s options and reduce the pressure on urban areas. I have seen this happen in countries where the creation of a decentralized university network increased the number of highly educated youth in rural communities and contributed to transforming once abandoned rural centers into bustling rural towns. I have seen this happen in communities where small investments in business development and access to financial services allowed rural entrepreneurs to start viable business activities, generating income for their families, jobs for their neighbors and services for their community.

There is another reason why thriving rural areas are essential to the prosperity of urban centers. Smallholder farmers and fisher folk are the primary producers of food in most of the developing world. In Asia, Africa and in the Caribbean, they produce up to 90 per cent of the food people eat every day. As urban populations grow, there will be a need to step up the quantity and the quality of food produced by rural communities. Fresh produce will need to get to the markets faster and in better conditions, and farmers will have to be paid fairer prices for their products to be able to make investments to improve production, safeguard the environment, and build resilience to a changing climate.

Children in a slum in Peru. Courtesy of La República/IPS

Rural and urban communities are highly dependent on each other for sustainable growth. We live in one, interconnected world where inequalities between people, regions and countries drive more and more people out of their communities and into cities in search of a better life. By improving the living conditions of poor rural people and giving them opportunities for growth, we can reduce the pressure on large metropolises and create more balanced, prosperous societies.

The President meets Mrs Jumwa Kabibu who after 50 years of misery underwent a successful UN supported fistula surgery. Photo Credit: Newton/UNIC

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 16 2016 (IPS)

President Uhuru Kenyatta warmly welcomed dozens of U.N Agencies, development partners and senior Government officials to the State House on 02 November 2016 to discuss the joint development plan from 2014 – 2018.

He is perhaps the only head of state in Africa to take on this responsibility personally and believes in the transformational power of the Government-UN partnership to address national priorities for sustainable development. (Speech/audio)

The United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) is a critical document that guides government and U.N, partnership, ensuring the UN system is fit for purpose and contributes effectively to national development priorities.

The framework is nurturing a partnership grounded in dialogue and learning, leading to concrete action and progress. Important progress has been made in areas like HIV/AIDS, clean water, energy, food security, and the environment during the past 2 years of this UNDAF(PDF document).

“I am impressed by the progress achieved since our last meeting in August, 2015. It is truly encouraging to see the Vision turn to Action,” he said during this year’s review.

He was alluding to progress resulting from a joint Government-UN approach to addressing issues such as poverty and various vulnerabilities; progress coming from commitment to joining up efforts and pooling respective expertise and resources to make an impact on Kenyans.

Testimonials abound regarding this impact. (Watch UNDAF video). They include a 70 year-old lady who received treatment after suffering fistula for 50 years; matatu (public transport vehicle) owners who have improved the terms and conditions of matatu drivers and conductors as per international labour and a women’s community group bordering the Amboseli National Park who are part of conservation efforts through livelihood programmes.

The UNDAF has leveraged the devolved system of government with tremendous results in some counties. The innovative Governments of Kenya-Ethiopia Cross-border Program on Peace and Socio-economic Development supported by the UN has potential of being replicated in other parts of the world.

These are the kind of stories coming out of the UNDAF review process, whose emphasis is on accountability for results. The stories tell of impact across most of the major pillars of the country’s Vision 2030, which also overlap with UN priorities such as peace, security, and poverty reduction.

The UNDAF in Kenya is recognized by the UN Development Group as a best practice in creating an alliance shaped by common interests and shared purpose, and bounded by clear principles that encourage autonomy and synergy.

The Framework was developed according to UN Delivering as One principles (DaO) aimed at ensuring Government ownership, demonstrated through UNDAF’s full alignment to Government priorities and planning cycles, and internal coherence among UN agencies and programmes operating in Kenya.

The partners have also been able to jointly recognize and agree on the national, regional and global realities that should inform their interventions. For instance, both the Government of Kenya and the UN are aware of Kenya’s looming youth bulge with 1 million young people joining the work force annually and the need to turn it into a demographic dividend, lest it turn into a demographic disaster.

“We must focus on our youth and provide alternatives to crime, violent extremism and despondency,” the President said during the review.

Kenya is on a journey to realizing Vision 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. The UNDAF has demonstrated that it presents the best opportunity for powering the implementation of Kenya’s development agenda. Kenya’s engagement with the United Nations Country Team and indeed all development partners brought together under a solid framework is therefore a plus for the people of Kenya.

The UN and Government must not relent in pursuing more gains. New realities are bringing about new threats to social and economic development, calling for new approaches, but also creating new opportunities for collaboration.

These new approaches may for instance involve deepening private-public partnerships to engage a third force – private companies – that have unique innovation and implementation capabilities. This engagement can only develop better and more integrated solutions to important national challenges. (RC Speech Audio)

Ultimately, this framework is not about the UN or the Government or non-state actors, but is aimed at achieving a transformation in the lives of every Kenyan and ensuring that “no one is left behind”.

Credit: Transparency International

By IPS Correspondents
BERLIN, Nov 16 2016 (IPS)

One in three people living in Europe and Central Asia think that corruption is one of the biggest problems facing their country, a figure that rises to two in three in Spain, Moldova and Kosovo, showing that urgent action against the abuse of power and secret deals is needed.

These are some of the key findings that Transparency International (TI) has revealed in a new report, which adds that a nearly a third of citizens across Europe and Central Asia believe that their government officials and lawmakers are highly corrupt. A majority of people say their governments are not doing enough to stop corruption.

Over half the people in European Union (EU) countries (53 per cent), EU accession candidate countries (53 per cent) and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), mainly former Soviet Union countries, (56 per cent) said their governments had failed to curb corruption, according to the TI new report People and Corruption: Europe and Central Asia.

The governments of Ukraine (86 per cent), Moldova (84 per cent), Bosnia and Herzegovina (82 per cent), and Spain (80 per cent) were judged worst by their citizens, adds the report, which was released on November 16.

Transparency International spoke to nearly 60,000 citizens in 42 countries in Europe and Central Asia on their experiences with corruption in their daily lives for its, which is part of the Global Corruption Barometer 2016 series.

On average, it adds one in six households paid a bribe when they accessed public services. Although fewer households paid bribes for public services in many EU member states, rates were significantly higher further east; the highest rates were in Tajikistan (50 per cent), Moldova (42 per cent), Azerbaijan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Ukraine (38 per cent), and Russia (34 per cent), says TI.

Romania had the highest rate for a EU member state at 29 per cent, followed by Lithuania with 24 per cent.

In the richest countries, it adds, almost two out of three people (65 per cent) believe the wealthy have too much influence on policy compared to 44 per cent in the EU accession countries and 46 per cent in CIS countries.

In Spain, 88 per cent of people said wealthy individuals had undue influence over government decisions; in Portugal, it was 85 per cent, in France 79 per cent, in Germany and the United Kingdom 77 per cent.

“Corruption is a significant problem all across the Europe and Central Asia region. In EU countries many citizens see how the wealthy and those in government distort the system to their advantage,” said José Ugaz, chair of Transparency International.

“Governments are simply not doing enough to tackle corruption because individuals at the top are benefiting. To end this deeply troubling relationship between wealth, power and corruption, governments must require higher levels of transparency, including around who owns and controls companies through public beneficial ownership registries.”

“By their very positions at the top of the power pyramid, corrupt elites and oligarchs are hard to remove. But we have seen that it can be done if people stand together to demand higher standards from their leaders and the judiciary acts independently to hold them to account,” said Ugaz.

Yet one key stumbling block to fighting corruption is the lack of protection for those who speak up against it, the Berlin-based organisation says.

“And 30 per cent of all those questioned across Europe and Central Asia said that the main reason more people don’t report cases of corruption is because they fear the consequences. Two out of five who blew the whistle suffered retaliation as a result.”

Fear of Speaking Out

There is also a stigma attached to speaking out, according to the new report. Particularly in CIS countries, only a quarter of people think that reporting corruption was socially acceptable (27 per cent).

“Few citizens feel empowered to help stop corruption in their country: Less than half of people (47 per cent) in EU countries feel that they can make a difference in the fight against corruption, and this falls to less than a third (31 per cent) in CIS countries.”

Transparency International makes four key recommendations to reduce political corruption and help people speak up without fear of retaliation. Governments across Europe and Central Asia should:
• Have transparent rules on lobbying and a public lobbying register, so that policy decisions can be better scrutinised.

• Ensure the independence of the judiciary, particularly in EU accession and CIS countries, by reducing the influence of the executive over the judiciary and prosecutorial services and including transparent and objective systems for the appointment, transferral and dismissal of judges and prosecutors.

• Adopt and enforce comprehensive legislation to protect whistle-blowers.

• Support whistle-blowers and reporters of corruption and ensure appropriate follow-up to their disclosures.

Transparency International is a global movement working for a world free of corruption. Through chapters in more than 100 countries and an international secretariat in Berlin, it works together with governments, businesses and citizens to stop the abuse of power, bribery and secret deals.

For a downloadable map showing bribery rates across Europe and Central Asia, click here. To see the previous reports on Africa and the Middle East and North Africa click here and here. Reports on the Americas and Asia Pacific are upcoming in 2017.

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Mustapha Bakkoury, President of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN), speaking at the COP22 in Marrakesh. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
MARRAKECH, Nov 16 2016 (IPS)

Lowering investment risks in African countries is key to achieving a climate-resilient development pathway on the continent, say experts here at the U.N.-sponsored Climate Conference.

Mustapha Bakkaoury, president of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN), says his country’s renewable energy revolution would not have been possible if multilateral partners such as the African Development Bank had not come on board to act as guarantors for a massive solar energy project, tipped to be one of a kind in Africa.Renewable energy has been identified as a key driver for Africa’s economic growth prospects, but requires multi-million-dollar investments which cannot be done by public financing alone.

The multi-billion-dollar solar power complex, located in the Souss-Massa-Drâa area in Ouarzazate, is expected to produce 580 MW at peak when finished, and is hailed as a model for other African countries to follow.

“Africa has legitimate energy needs, and development of Africa will happen through mobilisation of energy resources,” Bakkaoury told IPS at COP 22 after a roundtable discussion on de-risking investment in realising groundbreaking renewable energy projects.

Bakkauory believes it is possible for Africa to develop its energy sector while respecting the environment. “What we say is that there is no fatality between having energy resources and respect towards the environment, and Africa has abundant resources to do this through its key partner—the African Development Bank,” he said, noting the instrumental role of Africa’s premier multilateral financier to renewable energy in Africa.

And in affirming its continued commitment to universal access to energy for Africa, Alex Rugamba, AfDB Director for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, told IPS that “the Bank’s commitment has shifted gear as it has now a fully-fledged vice presidency dedicated to Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth.”

Rugamba added that the Bank has learnt valuable lessons from various initiatives it is already supporting, and knows what is required to move forward with the initiatives without many challenges.

Renewable energy has been identified as a key driver for Africa’s economic growth prospects, but requires multi-million-dollar investments which cannot be done by public financing alone.

Private sector involvement is required to drive this agenda, a point underscored by World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development, Laura Tuck.

“Private sector cannot be ignored because the money they have is more than what is available under public financing,” she says.

But the risk is believed to be too high for private investors to off-load their money into Africa’s renewables, a relatively new investment portfolio with a lot of uncertainties. German Parliament State Secretary Thomas Silberhorn says the highest risk in Africa is politically related.

“It’s not about economic risks alone, but also political risks,” said Silberhorn. “You don’t need to convince German investors about solar energy because they already know that it works, what they need is reliability on the political environment and sustainability of their investments.”

Silberhorn, who gave an example of a multi-million-dollar project in Kenya currently on hold due to political interference, added that ways to reduce political risks should be devised for Africa to benefit from private sector investments in renewables.

But even as risk factors abound, World Bank’s Tuck believes there is hope for Africa, citing Zambia, where record cheap solar energy has been recorded.

“Through a competitive bidding process, we have in Zambia under the Bank’s ‘Scaling Solar’ program, recorded the cheapest price at 6.02 cents per KWh,” she said, heralding it as a model to follow in de-risking climate investments for Africa’s growth.

And in keeping with the objective of universal energy for all, experts note the need to ensure that the end users are not exploited at the expense of investors.

“While the state should not interfere in this business model to work, modalities have to be put in place to ensure that the people for which energy is needed, afford it, otherwise, the project becomes useless,” said MASEN’s Bakkaoury.

Following up on this key aspect and responding to the political risk question, Simon Ngure of KenGen Kenya proposes a key principle to minimise political interference—involvement of the local communities.

“If you involve the local communities from the onset, regardless of whether governments change, the projects succeed because the people will have seen the benefits already,” said Ngure, who also noted policy restructuring as another key component to de-risk climate investments.

Agreed that de-risking investment is a crucial component, small grants are another issue that the African Union Commission’s implementing Agency, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), believes could unlock the continent’s challenge of access to climate financing.

NEPAD Director of Programmes Estherine Fotabong told IPS that it was for this reason that the agency established the NEPAD Climate Change Fund to strengthen the resilience of African countries by building national, sub-regional and continental capacity.

“One of the objectives of the fund is to support concrete action for communities on the ground, but most importantly, to help with capacity building of member states to be able to leverage financing from complicated climate financial regimes,” said Fotabong, citing ECOWAS which she said used the funding to leverage financing from the Green Climate Fund, one of the financing regimes under the UNFCCC.

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Students in Havana participate in an October protest, part of a campaign to fight the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Nov 15 2016 (IPS)

Cuba’s economic difficulties will be aggravated by the uncertainty regarding how U.S. president-elect Donald Trump will deal with the thaw inherited from President Barack Obama.

Experts consulted by IPS preferred not to speculate. But they did recommend that the Cuban authorities adopt all measures within their reach to cushion the blow and reinforce what has been achieved on the economic front with the outgoing U.S. administration.

“In any case, Cuba will have to continue moving forward with its economic reforms and try to resolve whatever has clearly not functioned for decades and is within our reach to fix,” said Cuban economist Pável Vidal, a professor at the Javeriana University in Cali, Colombia.“As a businessman, he could be inclined towards pragmatic policies that favour business interests. He doesn’t have a personal history against Cuba, and as a Republican he doesn’t have a complex about appearing weak. Since he doesn’t have prior experience in public office, a large part of his decisions will be reached with the advisers who surround him.” – Ricardo Torres

Vidal is studying the economic reforms implemented since 2008 by the government of Raúl Castro, which has been facing major difficulties this year due to liquidity problems and oil shortages caused by the political and economic crisis in Venezuela, this country’s main trading partner and energy supplier.

In the first six months of this year, GDP grew just one percent, half of what was expected. And forecasts for the rest of 2016 are bleak, projecting a drop of one percent.

Further muddying the picture are the doubts with respect to the recently restored relations with the United States, now that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was defeated by her Republican rival in the Nov. 8 elections.

“With regard to Cuba, I don’t think (Trump) will roll back the important steps taken by the Obama administration to normalise relations between the two countries,” John Gronbeck-Tedesco, assistant professor of American Studies at Ramapo College in New Jersey, told IPS by email.

“But with a Republican-controlled Congress, it’s harder to know when the United States will fully commit to lifting the embargo and truly open up trade between the two countries,” said the academic, the author of the book “Cuba, the United States, and Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975”.

The U.S. embargo against Cuba, in place since 1962, consists of a complex web of laws that can only be fully repealed by Congress.

Cuba sees the embargo as the biggest obstacle it faces to development and a normalisation of ties with its giant neighbour to the north.

Since the start of the move towards reestablishing bilateral ties, in December 2014, Obama has taken measures to undermine the embargo and attempted to protect his efforts by means of Presidential Policy Directive 43 on the normalisation of relations between the United States and Cuba, issued on Oct. 14.

He even took an enormous symbolic step on Oct. 26, when for the first time in 25 years the United States abstained in the United Nations vote on the resolution that Cuba has presented annually since 1992, condemning the U.S. embargo, which it blames for 125.873 billion dollars in losses.

Tourists enjoy the beach at the western Cuban resort town of Varadero. The number of U.S. tourists arriving jumped 80 percent in the first half of 2016, with respect to the same period in 2015. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Obama said his aim was to make the opening to Cuba “irreversible”. But just a week before the election, Trump said “We will cancel Obama’s one-sided Cuban deal, made by executive order, if we do not get the deal that we want and the deal that people living in Cuba and here deserve, including protecting religious and political freedom.”

But the business community and Cuban-Americans are largely in favour of the thaw, as analysts in both countries have been pointing out.

In Gronbeck-Tedesco’s view, “The United States will continue treating Cuba and Venezuela as separate political issues. And since Venezuela is still suffering from economic and political uncertainty, Trump’s plans would not appear to include an improvement in relations with Venezuela or help in rebuilding that country.”

In a reaction that observers like Vidal describe as “tardy”, Havana appears to be pushing for more foreign investment, especially in the energy industry, which is heavily dependent on the shrinking deliveries of Venezuelan crude.

“The tendency is for foreign investment in energy to pick up speed,” Juan Manuel Presa, an official at Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines, told IPS. “There are a large number of projects in different stages of progress to use renewable sources, mainly wind and solar power.”

The engineer said the industry “is seeking a diversity of partners in a diversity of formulas: external financing of Cuban projects, companies that are made up 100 percent of foreign capital, and the new legal status of mixed – Cuban and foreign – companies.”

Cuba is still far from its goal of drawing 2. 5 billion dollars a year in foreign investment – the amount needed to put the economy on a steady footing. The 83 projects approved since a new law on foreign investment went into effect in 2014 have attracted just 1.3 billion dollars so far.

But to some extent, the thaw is easing the tense economic situation in this country.

Between 2.0 and 2.5 billion dollars in remittances from abroad flow into Cuba annually, mainly coming from the Cuban-American community, according to estimates by Cuban economist Juan Triana.

Only exports of medical services bring in more hard currency revenues, he said.

Another major source of hard currency is tourism. Cuba’s colonial cities and white sand beaches are experiencing an unprecedented tourism boom, with the number of visitors from the U.S. growing every month, despite the fact that they can only travel here under one of 12 approved categories, such as family visits, academic programs, professional research, journalistic or religious activities.

In the first half of this year, Cuba received 2,147,912 visitors from abroad, including 136,913 from the U.S. This latter number was 80 percent higher than the total for the first half of 2015, according to the national statistics office, ONEI.

In that period, tourism brought in more than 1.2 billion dollars, only counting public installations, not the growing private sector, which rents out rooms and runs taxis and restaurants.

Cuban economist Ricardo Torres showed IPS a novel analysis on the U.S. president-elect, who was widely criticised during the campaign for his racist, xenophobic and misogynistic remarks.

“There are three aspects (of Trump) that could benefit relations with Cuba,” the academic researcher said.

“As a businessman, he could be inclined towards pragmatic policies that favour business interests,” he said. “He doesn’t have a personal history against Cuba, and as a Republican he doesn’t have a complex about appearing weak. Since he doesn’t have prior experience in public office, a large part of his decisions will be reached with the advisers who surround him.”

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