Africa

Irene Salvador arranges tortillas that she made on a table full of ears of corn of different varieties, during a forum on tortillas in Mexico City. An alliance has just emerged in the country to promote the production and consumption of this traditional food, due to its nutritional, social, economic and environmental benefits. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 30 2018 (IPS)

Agronomist Irene Salvador decided to learn the process of making corn tortillas in order to preserve and promote this traditional staple food in the Mexican diet, which has lost its presence and nutritional quality.

“I wanted to make my own experience. It has been very enriching, because I have regained knowledge and learned other things. I also did it because of the situation we are living in, importing food and renouncing our staple foods,” she told IPS.

Salvador began making tortillas in March, after harvesting four tons of blue-grain maize on two hectares of land on a family farm in the municipality of Juchitepec, in the state of Mexico, some 70 km southeast of the capital.

With this raw material, she has produced by hand every week up to 30 kg of tortillas, which are a round, fine and flat dough made with nixtamalised corn, which in different preparations has long been part of the meals in this Latin American country."New generations are losing the right to a quality tortilla. Consumption of tortillas in Mexico is dropping at an alarming rate, because the tortilla has changed, and there is easier access to processed food and junk food.” -- Rafal Mier

She sells them in her home in the municipality of Magdalena Contreras, one of the 16 boroughs that make up Mexico City, in the south of the capital, and is now thinking about buying a machine to expand her production.

Salvador, who toured four states to learn about the process and has invested about 6,000 dollars, struggled to sell the product in her neighbourhood, but as buyers began to try it, demand started growing.

The new Alliance for Our Tortilla, launched this month by organisations of food producers, corn planters and academics, is aimed at enterprises like hers.

The aim is to promote the activity and spread a traditional form of low-cost nutrition in this country of 130 million inhabitants. The tortilla, in different presentations, has become part of the gastronomy of many other countries, but it is becoming less and less part of the everyday life of many Mexican tables.

“New generations are losing the right to a quality tortilla. Consumption of tortillas in Mexico is dropping at an alarming rate, because the tortilla has changed, and there is easier access to processed food and junk food,” one of the promoters of the alliance, Rafael Mier, told IPS.

“The alliance seeks to reverse this situation,” said Mier, who is the director of the non-governmental Mexican Corn Tortilla Foundation.

The basic tenets of the alliance include the consumption of native grains, a fair price for tortillas, the defence of nixtamalisation – the ancestral technique for preparing maize to be made into tortillas – and the nutritional benefits of tortillas.

In 2017, five non-governmental organisations launched the “I want my tortilla 100 percent nixtamalised” campaign, in another initiative to save the product in which members of the new alliance took part.

Pre-Columbian heritage

Nixtamalisation, a combination of the Nahuatl words “nextli” (ash) and “tamalli” (corn dough), is the technique of cooking the grain with calcium hydroxide or lime, which dates back to the time before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico in the 15th century.

This method neutralises aflatoxins, a type of micro-toxins produced by certain fungi in acrops such as maize, which can contaminate grains on the plant, during harvest or in storage, and can cause various types of cancer, according to scientific studies.

In addition, the cooking opens the grain cuticle which releases vitamins and facilitates the absorption of nutrients during its consumption.

Georgina Trujillo checks the white maize that she is cooking in the back room of the Cintli tortilla factory in Mexico City. The nixtamalisation of maize, which is cooked for hours with water and lime, releases its nutritional properties. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The Mexican dough and tortilla industry encompasses around 80,000 establishments, including mills and tortilla factories or combinations of the two, accounting for one percent of the country’s GDP.

With the nixtamalisation process, one kg of maize becomes two kg of dough.

Maize is the staple food of Mesoamerica, the region that stretches from central Mexico down to Costa Rica. In Mexico, some 60 varieties of maize are grown, and the white, yellow, blue, red and bicolored grains – among others – are used to make tortillas.

But consumption of tortillas has dropped to less than half in Mexico: from 170 kg a year per person in the 1970s to 75 kg today, as fast food has expanded and eating habits have changed.

In February, official figures indicated that in the last year, adding the two harvest cycles, the country produced 23.8 million tonnes of white maize and imported 912,000 tonnes. Some12.9 million tonnes were used by people, of which 5.07 million were for self-consumption, and the rest was for export, seeds and livestock.

The harvest of yellow corn, mainly destined for industrial use, amounted to additional 3.04 million tonnes, while imports reached a historic 14.37 million.

Undernourishment and obesity

Advocates say increasing tortilla consumption can help Mexico achieve its goals of ending poverty, reaching zero hunger, and boosting health, well-being, responsible production and consumption and healthy terrestrial ecosystems, within the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be met by 2030.

In 2016, when the SDGs began to be implemented, there were 53.4 million people living in poverty in Mexico, including 9.4 million in extreme poverty, according to the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy. There were a total 24.6 million undernourished people.

In adolescents aged 12 to 19, the prevalence was 36 percent, and in adults aged 20 years and older, 72 percent.

By contrast, the National Health and Nutrition Survey Mid-way 2016 found a prevalence of overweight and obesity in the five to 11 age group, of 33 percent that year.

In adolescents aged 12 to 19, the prevalence was 36 percent and in adults aged 20 years and older, 72 percent.

The survey also found, among the three age groups, low proportions of regular consumption of most of the recommended food groups, such as vegetables, fruits and legumes.

Against this backdrop, several initiatives have emerged in the last two years to support the tortilla.

José Castañón also went through a learning process in the southern state of Oaxaca to learn about the relationship between maize and tortillas.

“I began to wonder: why not do something similar in Mexico City? I look for the junction between organic production, nutritional culture and fair trade. People come here because of values and health,” he told IPS.

Parallel to his audiovisual work, Castañón inaugurated in November 2017 the “Cintli” (ear of corn in Nahuatl) tortilla factory in a western neighbourhood of the capital, where he sells white and blue grain products from the municipality of Vicente Guerrero, in the southern state of Tlaxcala, including 16 varieties of tortillas.

The business, in which he has invested about 25,000 dollars and where two other people also work, processes about 70 kg of maize a day and sells retail tortillas to organic shops and restaurants, as well as dishes made with maize.

While the sector is committed to strengthening the culture of corn and tortillas, with initiatives such as the alliance, Salvador lamented that “there is a lack of information on the importance of the tortilla, and we really need it, because we are in the process of losing awareness.”

For Mier, the solution lies in tackling the marketing and supply of the grain. “Talking about differentiated markets and paying a reasonable price, encouraging more tortilla factories to use native maize,” he said.

According to Castañón, whose next move is to sell tortillas over the internet, it is necessary to promote the nutritional benefits of tortillas and the variety of flavours. “The issue must be put on the national agenda in an informed manner,” he said.

Related Articles

• Poor Rural Communities in Mexico Receive a Boost to Support Themselves
• Traditional Mexican Recipes Fight the Good Fight
• Mexico to Export Nixtamalisation of Grains to Africa

The post Putting Tortillas on Mexico’s Tables Again appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Communities in Uganda learn how to make recyclable products for periods to stop girls dropping out of school.

Communities in Uganda learn how to make recyclable products for periods to stop girls dropping out of school.

Russia is providing military support to the Central African Republic (CAR) – but what is Moscow getting in return?

Russia is providing military support to the Central African Republic (CAR) – but what is Moscow getting in return?

Frustration over the slow pace of land reform mounts amid a bitterness about the enduring economic power of the white minority.

Frustration over the slow pace of land reform mounts amid a bitterness about the enduring economic power of the white minority.

Jubilant supporters welcomed the release of the activist, who had been accused of plotting a coup.

Jubilant supporters welcomed the release of the activist, who had been accused of plotting a coup.

Credit: Bigstock

By Danielle Nierenberg and Emily Payne
NEW ORLEANS, United States, May 29 2018 (IPS)

Many factors contribute to the cost of a tomato. For example, what inputs were used (water, soil, fertilizer, pesticides, as well as machinery and/or labor) to grow it? What kind of energy and materials were used to process and package it? Or how much did transportation cost to get it to the shelf?

But that price doesn’t always reflect how the plant was grown—overuse and misuse of antibiotics, water pollution from pesticide runoff, or whether or not farm workers harvesting the tomatoes were paid a fair wage. It turns out cheap food often comes with an enormously expensive cost to human and planetary health.

Danielle Nierenberg

Agricultural production, from clearing forests to producing fertilizer to packaging foods, contributes 43 to 57 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). And almost 40 percent of all food that is produced is lost or wasted. As that food decomposes in landfills, it releases methane, which is 25-times more potent of a GHG than carbon dioxide—in fact, landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the U.S.

Often, today’s food systems are incentivized to favor low-cost, processed foods. Corporations and large-scale producers are often subsidized to grow select staple crops, which are typically grown in monocultures using practices that strip soils of nutrients. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that poor diets have produced a global public health crisis.

Six of the top eleven risk factors driving disease worldwide are diet-related, and the World Health Organization estimates the global direct costs of diabetes to be more than US$827 billion per year.

To feed 10 billion people by 2050, we need to start thinking of food production, health care, and climate change as interconnected. As the world’s population grows, so does the need for more resilient food and agricultural systems that address human need while minimizing environmental damage and further biodiversity loss.

Emily Payne

In a recent report by The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Agriculture & Food (TEEBAgriFood), a new framework was developed to look at all the impacts of the value chain, from farm to fork to disposal. The framework hopes to give policymakers, researchers, and citizens more reliable information on the real and unaccounted for costs of our whole food system—not just parts of it.

This type of systems thinking supports a shift away from measuring the success of food production by metrics like yield per hectare, which fails to provide a complete picture of the true, often invisible costs of the entire system.

Changemakers across the globe are rising to this challenge and bringing sustainable and regenerative practices into the farming of the future. Recognizing that farming is in a period of transition, they are helping build a system that increases food production to meet a growing population while reducing harm on the environment and feeding those in need.

It’s now easier than ever to access resources and learn how our everyday decisions impact not just ourselves, but our environment and public health. The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition developing the Double Pyramid to help people make food choices which are both healthy for people and sustainable for the planet. And recognizing carbon footprints and water footprints allow individuals to better understand how deeply intertwined the food system and climate change are.

No one person or organization will be able to fix this food system. Businesses, policymakers, farmers, and, of course, eaters have a responsibility to help protect natural resources, improve social equity, and create a more sustainable food system through more informed decisions and responsible consumption.

 

 

The post Are You Paying Enough for Your Food? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Danielle Nierenberg is Founder and President of Food Tank. Emily Payne is a food and agriculture writer based in New York

The post Are You Paying Enough for Your Food? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ashley suffers from kidney failure but a lack of BAME organ donors means her doctors have not found a match.

Ashley suffers from kidney failure but a lack of BAME organ donors means her doctors have not found a match.

On March 8, 2018, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and his wife, Sara, toured the “3000 Years of History: Jews in Jerusalem” exhibition at the UN in New York. Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, right. Israel recently dropped its campaign to run for a seat in the next term of the Security Council. The election is June 8. Credit: ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO

By Kacie Candela
UNITED NATIONS, May 29 2018 (IPS)

From the start, it was a closely watched contest pitting Germany, Belgium and Israel against one another for their regional bloc’s two seats in the next term on the United Nations Security Council. Israel has never held a seat on the Council, and as it celebrates its 70-year membership in the UN in 2018, the country was aiming high for the June 8 election.

But it was never going to be a shoo-in for Israel. It has been a permanent member of WEOG, or the Western Europe and Others Group, since 2004, falling into this UN regional slot first as a renewable member in 2000, because its Arab neighbors refused to let it into their Asia-Pacific group.

So, when Israel announced abruptly on May 4 that it was withdrawing from the Council race, just as a debate for the contestants was being staged at the UN, the campaigning by Germany and Belgium was done.

Competing for the 10 elected seats on the Council seats is always intense, but Israel’s last-minute withdrawal leaves the overall election for the 2018-2019 term with few surprises. Only the Maldives and Indonesia, from the Asia-Pacific group, are left competing — for that region’s open seat.

The Security Council’s 10 nonpermanent members hold staggered two-year terms, which are not immediately renewable.

For the upcoming term, the African group has pre-selected South Africa; the Latin American and Caribbean group has preordained the Dominican Republic. The one seat allotted for Eastern Europe will be open next year.

The work to win a Council seat can begin years before the election. Besides events like cultural affairs (Italy, campaigning in 2016 at UN headquarters, showcased its cinema and food), freebies like felt satchels and more extravagant ventures such as a free trip for diplomats to visit a candidate’s country, the campaigns’ expenses are rarely publicized. There are virtually no rules on spending limits.

According to a report by the CBC on Canada’s candidacy for the 2021-22 Council term, countries have spent anywhere from $4 million to $85 million on campaigns.

The money goes to everything from postage stamps to travel and hospitality, but it does not include the salaries of those appointed to lead the efforts, although not all countries have a designated campaign staff, like Canada.

Israel, however, never had a slogan, website or logo. According to the General Assembly Affairs Branch of the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management, it never received notification from Israel that it was a candidate.

Israel’s campaign was less focused on cultivating an image with the UN press corps and civil society and more on currying favor among countries whose votes it needed. The Israeli mission paid for three visits of groups of UN diplomats to Jerusalem over the last few months.

The delegates were predominantly from countries in Africa and Latin America and Pacific island nations. Some Eastern European countries, such as Hungary, were rumored to have supported Israel’s bid, as well as a handful of US allies, like Guatemala.

When asked a few days after its withdrawal from the race which countries had supported Israel, Ambassador Danny Danon told PassBlue that it was a “long list” but not enough to meet the two-thirds’ threshold to win the election, which is held in the UN General Assembly among all 193 member nations. Danon declined to name any of the countries on the list.

When the Israeli mission announced its decision to drop out, some ambassadors at the UN said they were not surprised. Arab countries in the UN had been actively lobbying against Israel, especially after the Great March of Return in Gaza began this spring and Israeli forces killed more than 100 protesters at the rallies. Various high-level officials said there were rumors that Danon had even hinted about Israel foregoing the race.

One irony of Israel’s decision is that Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, has repeatedly bemoaned the back-room negotiating and lack of competition in UN elections generally.

The race among Israel, Belgium and Germany had been awkward all along, notably because of Israel’s odd place in WEOG as a Middle Eastern country among Western Europeans and Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The United States is not a member of any regional group but votes in the WEOG bloc.

Israel has vied for a Council seat for more than 10 years. It announced it would run for the 2018-2019 seat in 2005, after it agreed to withdraw from Gaza. At the time, 2018-2019 was the next term for which the WEOG seats had not been claimed. Belgium announced its candidacy in 2009.

But in 2013, Germany announced it too would run, meaning Israel and Belgium would no longer be running uncontested. Germany could not have announced its intention earlier because it served on the Council from 2011-2012, and it is against UN election rules to campaign for a Council seat until a country is done with an active term. Germany has repeatedly contended it decided to run because by practice it sought a seat every eighth year.

In March 2018, reports in Israeli and American media contended that Germany’s bid violated an agreement brokered in the 1990s by Richard Holbrooke, the US ambassador to Germany from 1993-1994, to allow Israel to run unopposed for a seat after Israel became a member of WEOG.

In an interview with PassBlue in April 2018, Christoph Heusgen, Germany’s ambassador to the UN, said, “Israel is very grateful to Germany for its help getting Israel out of the Asian group and into the Western Europe and Others Group.

“We have excellent bilateral relations with Israel, but there has never been an agreement between Israel and Germany. We have been very straightforward to all our partners since we arrived at the UN in 1973. We have been a candidate for the Security Council every eight years and we have never departed from this. We want to be very clear in what we do. There was no deal with Israel that I read in some papers, and the Israeli government has never accused us of breaking any deal.”

Both East and West Germany joined the UN in 1973, but when German officials reference the country’s history on the Security Council, they usually refer to West Germany, which has served on the Council about every eight years since its first term in 1977-78. According to the United Nations Association of Germany, until German unification, the two nations took turns serving on the Council.

The May 4 announcement by Israel seemed timed to coincide with the start of the debate among the WEOG candidates. The public forum, sponsored by the New York-based World Federation of United Nations Associations, was designed to make Council elections more transparent.

WFUNA, as the group is known, held hearings for Council candidates for the first time in 2016, but last year there were no competitive slates, so no hearings were held.

Up to the minute the debate began, the organizers still did not know whether Israel would show up, but soon into the program, the Israeli press release arrived in email in-boxes, saying that “after consulting with our partners, including our good friends, the State of Israel has decided to postpone its candidacy for a seat on the Security Council.

“It was decided that we will continue to act with our allies to allow for Israel to realize its right for full participation and inclusion in decision-making processes at the U.N. This includes the Security Council as well as an emphasis on areas related to development and innovation.”

After the debate, a question-and-answer format proceeded. Kelley Currie, the US representative for the UN’s Economic and Social Affairs Council, asked about human rights being discussed more actively in the Security Council. She then gave a statement about Israel, America’s close ally.

“We respect the decision by Israel to postpone its Security Council candidacy today,” Currie said. “We note the United Nations’ poor record of inclusion of Israel in membership in UN bodies and on the Security Council throughout Israel’s nearly 70 years as a UN-member state in good standing. This is a shameful record. The United States looks forward to the day when Israel is treated like every other member state and is appropriately included in this organization.”

Heusgen responded by saying the US gave “a remark, not a question with regard to Israel.”

He continued, “We can only underline that Germany together with others in the west European and others group have seen to it that Israel has become a member of this group to be able to exercise its rights and possibility to participate in this organization.”

*PassBlue is an independent, women-led digital publication offering in-depth journalism on the US-UN relationship as well as women’s issues, human rights, peacekeeping and other urgent global matters, reported from our base in the UN press corps. Founded in 2011, PassBlue is a project of the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs in New York and not tied financially or otherwise to the UN; previously, it was housed at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. PassBlue is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News.

The post Why Israel Dropped Out of the Security Council Race: Not Enough Votes appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Kacie Candela, PassBlue*

The post Why Israel Dropped Out of the Security Council Race: Not Enough Votes appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The French president, who hosted the talks, says it is an essential step towards reconciliation.

The French president, who hosted the talks, says it is an essential step towards reconciliation.

Cranes used to offload containers from cargo ships at the Port of Mombasa. Kenya signed anagreement with the Government of Japan for the construction of extra berths at the port. Credit: KEVIN ODIT | NATION MEDIA GROUP

By Ambassador Macharia Kamau and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 29 2018 (IPS)

In April 2018, Commonwealth leaders met in a retreat at a royal residence in the English county of Berkshire and agreed on strategies to deepen trade in their 53-member organisation, improve security, tackle climate change, and work togetherfor the betterment of the lives of the people of the Commonwealth.

During the Commonwealth Summit, Kenya received support forits plan to host aHigh Level Sustainable Blue Economy Conference scheduled to take place from 26-28th November 2018 in Nairobi. Under the theme Blue Economy and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the conference presents an opportune moment for advancing global conversation on both the productive and sustainable side of the blue economy.The conference will lay the case for a sustainable exploitation of the oceans, seas, rivers and lakes for the economic empowerment of all communities.

Canada stepped forward as a co-host during bilateral talks between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Lancaster House, London, on the margins of the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meeting. “Our meeting gives us an opportunity to speak about the great relationship between Kenya and Canada. Canada is pleased with the excellent conference on the blue economy you are hosting and is ready to partner with you,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Kenya welcomes other countries to join this important initiative as co-hosts. Kenya also welcomes partnerships from governments, academia, private sector, international organizations, political and thought leaders from around the world to share ideas, experience and knowledge on how countries can implement Blue Economy action plans in their countries.

Africa’s economies have continued to post remarkable growth rates, largely driven by the richness of its land-based natural resources. Yet even though 38 of the continent’s 54 states are coastal and 90% of its trade is sea-borne, Africa’s blue potential remains largely untapped. The African Great Lakes constitute the largest proportion of surface freshwater in the world and it is easy to see why the African Union refers to the Blue Economy as the “New Frontier of African Renaissance”.

Ambassador Macharia Kamau

The potential of the blue economy in Africa is largely unexploited due to uneven focus on land as the most important factor of production. While Africa is endowed with large water bodies, the communities living in close proximity to such lakes, seas and oceans in the continent are among the poorest in the region. The realization of the limitations presented by land as a factor of production in the continent, especially in view of climate change, has necessitated governments and other stakeholders to focus on the immense potential for growth presented by the water resources.

A good illustration of Africa’s maritime resources potentialis the island nation of Mauritius, one of the smallest countries in the world, which has territorial waters the size of South Africa but has one of the strongest blue economies in Africa, ranking 3rd in per capita income in 2015.

Ironically, the narrative on the continent’s maritime space has for long veered towards the bad news on illegal harvesting, degradation, depletion and maritime insecurity. This narrative is changing gradually, with recent initiatives indicating that countries are looking at full exploitation and management of Africa’s Blue Economy as a potential source of wealth for the continent’s growing population. With forecasts placing the value of maritime-related activities at 2.5 trillion euros per year by 2020, the continent’s hidden treasure could catapult its fortunes.

Kenya is one of several African countries that are formulating strategies to mainstream the Blue Economy in national development plans. Broadly the sub-sectors of the blue economy in Kenya include fisheries & aquaculture, maritime transport & logistics services, extractive industries which include offshore mining of gas &oil, titanium, rare earth (niobium), and culture, tourism and leisure & lifestyle. In the past the country has largely focused on fisheries both for domestic and export markets – a sector that accounts for only about 0.5 per cent ofGDP – yet Kenya has a maritime territory of 230,000 square kilometres and 200 nautical miles offshore.

Siddharth Chatterjee

The groundwork for regulatory and policy changes has started, with the Fisheries Management and Development Act 2016 and establishment of theBlue Economy Implementation Committee indicating the government’s intention to utilize its marine resources for economic growth while conserving the same for future generations. The government ban on single use plastic bags is another demonstration of commitment to ensuring plastic waste does not continue to threaten the environment, including marine life. There has also been a move to protect the coral reef, home to one of the world’s most diverse marine eco-systems.

As Africa enjoins itself to the a paradigm shift to the blue economy, and looks for pathways towards being at the centre of global trade based on the Blue Economy, rather than just the supplier of unprocessed raw materials, among the greatest hurdles will be responsible management, so that the wealth generation is inclusive and ecologically sound.

To achieve this, countries must importantly work on current conflicts that are driven by lack of demarcation of maritime and aquatic boundaries.This has been a constant source of tensions between neighbouring countries, not only threating any long-term investment considerations, but also leading to irresponsible use of resources.

With the potential gains from the Blue Economy, states have no option but to fast-track resolution of disputes and strengthen their maritime and ripariancooperation mechanisms. This will provide grounds for working on interstate economies of scale and develop strategies for bridging technical and infrastructure gaps among States.

In line with SDG 14, development of this sector must alsopromote social inclusionwhile ensuring environmental sustainability. In this respect, the continent owes special consideration to people living along the shores of oceans, lakes and rivers, essentially youth and women. The question of how this“new frontier” can address poverty reduction and hunger whenleaving no one behind must be a central consideration.

Sadly,Global citizens have already demonstrated considerable recklessness in managing land-based resources. The relatively untouched frontier of Blue Economy must be handled with the highest environmental stewardship and social responsibility.

Kenya and Canada are committed to this and the United Nations family is fully in support of this important initiative which could leapfrog Kenya’s and indeed the world’s economic growth.

We therefore invite the world to Nairobi on 26th to 28th November 2018, to participate in a global conversation and showcase technology and innovation on the most appropriate strategiesfor productive, sustainable and inclusive use ofthe numerous resources in the seas, oceans, rivers and lakes.

The post Harnessing the Blue Economy Must Consider Social Inclusion and Responsible Stewardship appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Amb. Macharia Kamau is the Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Kenya.
Siddharth Chatterjee is the UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Kenya.

The post Harnessing the Blue Economy Must Consider Social Inclusion and Responsible Stewardship appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Staging the 2026 World Cup in Morocco would make it "almost a European" tournament, bid chief Hicham El Amrani says.

Women activists in Zimbabwe have long demanded a fair share of power. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, May 29 2018 (IPS)

Zimbabwe goes to the polls in July for the first general election since the departure of Robert Mugabe, and the jockeying over who will represent the country’s major political parties is in full throttle.

Primary elections are internal processes by political parties to allow aspiring candidates to contest among themselves with the eventual winner being the one who will represent the party at national elections.“It’s evident that the political space, despite constitutional provisions, is overall not conducive for women and intra-party violence against women is very high." --Glanis Changarirere

As soon as the political parties announced the primaries in April this year, thousands of candidates submitted their names, with sitting parliamentarians also having to contest in what the ruling party Zanu PF said was a sign of democracy.

However, from the lists that were released by Zanu PF and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, the roster was dominated by men, with women largely staying away.

This at a time when there is a huge global drive towards realising the United Nations-driven Planet 50-50 by 2030 gender equality campaign in public office positions by year 2020.

One female Zanu PF legislator, hoping to retain her parliamentary seat, complained last month that she was being intimidated by aspiring male candidates, reporting that the men were going around telling prospective voters not to vote for a woman.

She eventually lost the election to a male candidate.

It was one of many troubling reports concerning women aspiring for public office, with political parties accused of failing to address these concerns.

Glanis Changachirere, Team Leader at the Institute for Young Women Development (IYWD), which lobbies for women’s participation in political processes, says women seeking public office are still marginalised by political parties and discouraged from participating because of widespread political violence.

“It is worrisome that as we enter the second term of the Constitutional provision for gender parity, women’s political representation is under threat,” Changachire told IPS.

“Leads from Zanu PF primary elections are indicating a regression in women’s representation. Women only constitute 8 percent of that party’s parliamentary and senatorial candidates. There are examples in some provinces where there was not a single woman elected in the primaries,” she said.

The ruling Zanu PF announced the final list of parliamentary candidates on May 3, revealing that the preliminary results where dominated by men with women who were seeking re-election failing to make the cut.

Some of the losers, who again were dominated by men, contested the results in 10 constituencies, citing among other things political violence against their supporters, forcing the party to call for a re-run.

“It’s evident that the political space, despite constitutional provisions, is overall not conducive for women and intra-party violence against women is very high,” Changarirere said.

Perhaps highlighting the extent of the odds stacked against women, Oppah Muchinguri, Zanu PF’s first ever female national chairperson, who was elevated to the post last year and sought to retain her parliamentary seat, was one of the heavy casualties in the primary elections.

Under the Zimbabwe constitution adopted in 2013, 60 uncontested seats are reserved for women in the legislature in what is termed proportional representation where political parties nominate female candidates based on the number of seats the party won in the general elections.

In the 2008 elections, only 34 women made it to the 210-member parliament, and a decade later political parties are still struggling to make up the numbers that meet their commitment to global standards.

In 2013, the number grew to 86 elected female legislators, an increase of 39 percent, according to UN Women statistics.

According to Morgan Komichi, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) national chairperson, the party has set aside 50 percent of parliamentary seats for women, but from the number of women who have expressed interest in actually contesting the primaries, Zimbabwe’s main opposition could well be lagging behind in realising its own gender balance benchmarks.

“The patriarchal and primitive thinking of women playing second fiddle roles — for example, women are expected to sing and ululate and provide care work roles in political parties — are still entrenched. No deliberate mechanisms [exist] to ensure proportional presentation of women in key leadership positions and government line-up,” Changachirere said.

However, the political opposition MDC national spokesperson Tabitha Khumalo told IPS that the MDC had ratified the Women’s Charter as set out by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development targeting 50 percent women’s representation in decision making and already has provisions to allocate gender in the party, but it was up to the women to take up the mantel.

“There is a belief that women should be handed political office. They should go out there and work for it. There are constitutional provisions to meet these standards, my question is who lobbies who to get those numbers,” Khumalo told IPS.

One-time deputy prime minister and former MDC vice president Thokozani Khuphe, who was expelled from the party in March, has since formed her own splinter political party, accusing rivals of denying her the constitutional right to lead the country’s largest  opposition political party.

Khuphe accused her rivals of sexism, saying it was clear they did not want a women to lead, vowing that a woman is also constitutionally empowered to lead Zimbabwe.

Former Deputy President Joice Mujuru, also expelled from Zanu PF, and once considered by some as former President Robert Mugabe’s successor, now leads the National People’s Party (NPP), with smaller parties led by women such as Lucia Matibenga’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and rallying behind Mujuru as the sole female presidential candidate for the July national elections.

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• Zimbabwe Traverses a Rugged Political Terrain
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Petitions, public outrage and a €1 billion lawsuit - what happens when a controversial goal makes a footballer public enemy number one?

Petitions, public outrage and a €1 billion lawsuit - what happens when a controversial goal makes a footballer public enemy number one?