Africa

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Bangladesh should align its many different plans and goals related to climate change for a greater impact. PHOTO: REUTERS

By Saleemul Huq
Jan 23 2019 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

Bangladesh has a long tradition of national development planning under the aegis of the General Economics Division (GED) of the Planning Commission, through the seven Five Year Plans prepared since we became an independent country. Recently, there have been a number of additional types of planning which will need to be well-aligned if we wish to achieve our goal of becoming a climate-resilient country by 2030. Some of these require examination and we need to discuss ways to ensure their mutual alignment going forward.

The first and longest-term one is the recently approved Delta Plan that has a time horizon up to 2100. Only the Netherlands has drawn up such a long-term plan and Bangladesh is the second country in the world to do so. It is more of an aspirational evolution towards our future development rather than a detailed plan, as the normal five-year plans will still remain the overriding planning vehicle, with the next one being the 8th Five Year Plan (8FYP)—which will start from 2021 onwards.

The second vehicle is to the year 2041 which is a perspective plan that is supposed to earn Bangladesh the middle-income status over the next few decades. This will also need to be translated into five-year segments to feed into the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th Five Year Plans to be implemented over that time period.

Then we have a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which have a time horizon of 2030 to be achieved. These goals are global goals agreed at the level of the United Nations for all countries to implement at the national level, using common metrics to measure progress towards each of the 17 goals. In case of Bangladesh, all 17 SDGs have been mapped onto different lead ministries and support ministries for each goal by the Planning Commission. In addition, a high-powered monitoring unit has been set up at the prime minister’s office to track progress by each ministry for each of the 17 SDGs.

In addition to these development-oriented goals, there is also a goal on disaster risk reduction under the global Sendai Framework which each country is supposed to try to achieve disaster resilience by 2030. In case of Bangladesh, the lead for this is assigned to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief (DMDR). There are also civil society and military allies and actors that are involved in the implementation of this plan.

Finally, there are two climate change related goals agreed globally under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to be achieved by 2030. The first goal—which is about mitigation—is to reduce emissions of Greenhouse Gases that cause climate change so that global temperatures are kept below 1.5 Degrees Centigrade by achieving 100 percent reliance on renewable energy in every country by 2050. The second goal is to achieve transformational adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change in every country in order to make them climate-resilient by 2030. In case of Bangladesh, we have a number of planning documents under the aegis of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC).

The first is the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP), first prepared in 2009 and now being updated to take it to 2030. There is another called the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) that every country has to prepare to show how it will achieve the mitigation goal of the Paris Agreement. The Bangladesh NDC has pledged to reduce the national emissions of Greenhouse Gases by 5 percent by 2030, and if we get additional funding and technology, then we can reduce them by up to 15 percent. Finally, we are about to develop the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) which every developing country has to prepare to chart its objective of becoming climate-resilient by 2030.

In addition to these plans and goals, there are also others in different sectors, such as health, energy, agriculture, and water development, which are being developed by the respective ministries and departments.

It is clear from the above discussion that there is a lot of potential overlaps and lack of synergies unless these are addressed from the very beginning to ensure that each plan is well-aligned and linked, where necessary, to the other relevant plan(s). Also, it is imperative that the Five Year Plans should be the main vehicles into which all the others will be mainstreamed, starting with 8FYP which we will have to start developing very soon.

There are three overarching ways in which we can ensure that such synergies and mainstreaming is effectively achieved over the coming decades.

The first is to ensure that all the plans are aligned with each other while the 8FYP is started and developed. This is the responsibility of each ministry to liaise with the General Economics Division in the Planning Commission to ensure that the 8FYP receives inputs from all the other plans and goals. It is up to the GED to lead this process.

The second major action that has to take place is a very robust monitoring system for all the plans and goals cutting across the different sectors. This has already been put in place by the prime minister under her own direction with a well-respected former civil servant in charge. This is indeed a very good development. In this connection, it will also be useful to add a section of academics and researchers so that in addition to simply monitoring progress, we also have genuine learning-by-doing to inform and improve future Five Year Plans after 8FYP.

Finally, it is important to recognise that one of the biggest differences between the past and the future of the country is the shift from public sources of investment to private sources and also for the private sector to implement most of the plans. Hence, the country will have to become better at ensuring a whole-of-society approach rather than just a whole-of-government one with regard to both the planning and implementation of all these tasks. Bangladesh would do well to ensure that we find synergies and alignments among all the different plans.

Saleemul Huq is Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development, Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB).
Email: Saleem.icccad@iub.edu.bd

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Aligning climate plans for a greater impact appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Getty Images

By Chandra Bhushan
NEW DELHI, Jan 23 2019 (IPS)

As I was attending the 24th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—to create a rulebook to operationalise the Paris Agreement—in Katowice, Poland, it dawned on me, like never before, that the negotiations were taking place in a make-believe world.

There was a stark disconnect between what is required to contain the impacts of climate change and what representatives of 197 parties were trying to achieve.

The world is reeling under the effects of climate disasters. From Kerala to California, extreme weather events are killing people, destroying properties and businesses.

This, when the global temperature has only increased by 1.0°C from preindustrial levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C makes it clear that the impacts are going to be substantially higher at 1.5°C warming and catastrophic at 2.0°C.

The worst part is that most countries, including the US and the European Union, were not even on track to meet their meagre commitments to curb emissions.

So why is it that three years after the “historic” Paris Agreement was signed, the global collective effort is in tatters? The reason is the architecture of the Paris Agreement itself.

The Paris Agreement is a voluntary agreement in which countries are free to choose their own climate targets, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Developed countries and rich developing countries were expected to take higher emission reduction targets than poor developing countries.

But if a rich country doesn’t commit to a higher emissions cut, no one can demand a revision of targets. Worse, if a country fails to meet its NDCs, there is no penalty. The agreement, therefore, based on the goodwill of countries.
Herein lies the catch.

Since the beginning, climate negotiations have been viewed as an economic negotiation and not as an environmental negotiation. So, instead of cooperation, competition is the foundation of these negotiations. Worst still, the negotiations are viewed as a zero-sum game.

For instance, Donald Trump believes that reducing emissions will hurt the US economy and benefit China, so he has walked out of the Paris Agreement. China too believes in this viewpoint, and despite being the world’s largest polluter today, it has not yet committed to any absolute emissions cut.

The fact is every country is looking for its own narrow interest and not the larger interest of the whole world. They are, therefore, committing to as little climate targets as possible.

This is the Achilles heel of the Paris Agreement. This is the reason why the Paris Agreement will not be able meet its own goal of limiting global warming well below 2°C. The negotiations, however, are devoid of this realisation.

We need to understand that the interest of countries and the interest of the world are two sides of the same coin. Climate change demands countries cooperate and work together to reduce emissions.

But this can only happen if the climate change negotiations move from being a zero-sum game to a positive-sum game. Today, it is possible to make this changeover because reducing emissions and increasing economic growth are no more incompatible to each other.

Costs of technologies such as batteries, super-efficient appliances and smart grids are falling so rapidly that they are already competitive with fossil fuel technologies.

So the reason for countries to compete with each other for carbon budget is becoming immaterial. If countries cooperate, the cost of low and no-carbon technologies can be reduced at a much faster pace, which will benefit everyone.

The bottom line is negotiations cannot continue in a business-as-usual fashion. The time has come to devise new mechanisms for a meaningful international collaboration to fight climate change.

The link to the original article:
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/climate-change/cop24-sum-and-substance-of-climate-diplomacy-62483

The post Sum & Substance of Climate Diplomacy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The 1.9km structure spanning the River Gambia is set to revolutionise trade with Senegal.

Joy Daniels now works at a Fair Trade travel company in Cape Town. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

By Ida Karlsson
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Jan 23 2019 (IPS)

Long before Joy Daniels became the manager of a travel company she was cleaning rooms at a guesthouse. But after joining a Fair Trade-certified business, a place that valued its staff, in a few years she was soon promoted to manager. 

A Fair Trade certification is one of several initiatives in South Africa aimed at developing tourism in a responsible way.

“The way they were running that guesthouse and the way they were dealing with staff was totally different from what I experienced later on. I tried to help out here and there but I was kept back. I was just a cleaner and that was it,” she says of her previous company.

But after joining a Fair Trade-certified business she got the opportunity to develop new skills. There was a position available as manager and people encouraged her to apply.

“I have not studied management. Everything I learnt was day-to-day stealing with the eye. And I had never worked on my own without supervisor. I was very scared, but I realised I had nothing to lose.”

She was offered the job and she says the experience made her grow both personally and professionally.

“I used to be very shy. It built up my self-esteem. And when you run a company you think differently in other parts of life as well. There is a lot of things that I learnt, how to manage my life and my time, to make sure that my personal life is also in order,” Daniels says.

The impact on her life was enormous. The single mum was soon able to move from Mitchell’s Plain—a former apartheid suburb for people of colour that is still troubled by gang violence—to Sea Point, a trendy residential area on the edge of the Atlantic ocean in Cape Town.

Beneath the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town, another Fair Trade Tourism accredited business, a backpacking hostel started in 1990, welcomes travellers from all over the world.

Lee Harris at the hostel in Cape Town. She hopes that in the future responsible tourism is nothing unusual. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

“Me and my best friend Toni wanted to make a difference right from the start and our very first brochures were printed on recycled paper. Unheard of in those days, in fact it was a little difficult to get the paper,” Lee Harris, co-owner, told IPS.

Harris and Toni Shina have invested heavily in the well-being and professional development of the staff members. There is a staff bursary fund, which supports the education of employees and their children with up to 15,000 Rands (around 1,000 dollars) per year. The bursary means a chance for families to put their children in good schools.

The owners pay the school fees directly to the school so they get it timeously. While schooling is free in all South African government schools, some former “whites-only” government schools (which are now open to all races by law) are administered by school boards that charge minimal fees for the maintenance of the schools and provisions of extra murals etc.

One of the security guards used the bursary to pay for studies to become a pastor. Another employee used it for studies in tourism. They also have a provident fund, which is a retirement fund that the staff pay towards.

“It is like an enforced saving which is theirs when they either leave or retire,” Harris says.

They also make sure the staff members can see a doctor four times a year and that people are treated well if they become seriously ill. One of the staff members suffered from tuberculosis.

“We never get rid of people if they are sick, we try to work around it instead,” Harris explains.

The hostel has also implemented a number of eco-friendly practices; recycling, worm farms, water-wise shower, tap heads and solar panels.

“We have a company that comes every Monday to recycle our waste. The table scraps are put in a bin and used by a city farm nearby,”  Harris says.

They only buy vegetables and fruits in season. Leftovers are packed and handed out to people in the street. The hostel is also actively involved in a range of social initiatives.

At the hostel they let the staff decide on the rules of the workplace, which are integrated into the employment contract.

The staff members travel long distances to work as they cannot afford to live in the city.

“It costs about 1,000 Rands (around 70 dollars) a month to get to work and the government basic salary is 3,200 Rands (around 200 dollars) so what can you do with that? Our entry level salary is 2.6 times the basic wage – 8,500 Rand (around 590 dollars), ” Harris says.

Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa, FTTSA, started initially as a project of IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But later a separate local non-profit organisation was formed. FTTSA has six guiding principles – fair share, fair say, respect, reliability, transparency and sustainability.

“There are 230 certification criteria. Businesses struggle with the administration involved to pass the audit. We do a lot of consulting to get them through the process,” Jane Edge, Managing Director, FTTSA, tells IPS.

The Fair Trade Tourism standard is directly applicable in four other countries – Malawi, Zambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe – and through mutual recognition agreements in additional five countries.

Edge says there are plans for expansion.

“In a year or so we want to be active in 12-13 African countries,” she tells IPS.

Meanwhile, Harris says: “I hope that in the future responsible tourism is nothing unusual.”

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The post Making Tourism More Responsible appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Ode Fulutudilu becomes the first South African woman to sign in the Spanish top-flight as she joins Malaga.

Credit: Dinh Manh Tai

By Rebecca Ricks
CAMBRIDGE, MA, USA, Jan 23 2019 (IPS)

On December 6, the Australian parliament rushed to pass a bill that could weaken security on the phones and software people rely on every day, in Australia and worldwide. The sweeping law could force tech companies to take vaguely described actions to access encrypted data.

For example, authorities could order Apple and WhatsApp to send secretly altered software updates that would undermine the encryption they use to protect our data and communications.

At a time when governments across the globe are engaging in increasingly invasive surveillance, unfettered public access to encryption protects our basic rights to privacy and freedom of expression. Users should call on their governments to promote strong encryption, not undercut efforts to protect our safety and rights.

Encryption ensures that our information stays private, whether we are browsing the web, buying things, chatting online, or sending an email. We may not always know it, but the security of our networks relies on encryption, which scrambles our data so no one else can see what we’ve written or said unless we want to share it with them.

The Australian law passed despite strong opposition by cybersecurity experts, human rights groups, and some members of parliament. It is modelled on the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, which similarly requires companies to potentially break encryption and hack into their own systems

Strong encryption also ensures our safety in other critical ways. It protects our communications networks, our power grids, our hospitals, and our transportation systems.

Encryption is especially important for the most vulnerable among us. Access to encrypted tools is critical to maintaining the safety of people who are disproportionately subjected to surveillance and scrutiny, whether victims of domestic abuse or minorities and other marginalized members of society. Political dissidents, journalists, and activists are vulnerable to retaliation for expressing their views or exposing wrongdoing. By encrypting our devices and our messages by default, we–along with the companies that build these tools–are taking steps to ensure that we can speak out without endangering ourselves.

Encryption also helps protect us in our personal lives, keeping us safe from online harassers, abusive partners, or other malicious people. The market for commercial spyware products has skyrocketed, and there is mounting evidence that these tools are being used to monitor, abuse, intimidate, and victimize people, especially intimate partners. When our tools use encryption by default, we have more control over our information from people in our lives who might want to hurt us.

As companies and nongovernmental organizations have taken steps to secure communications by using encryption, many governments have complained that it is hampering their ability to investigate criminals and conduct surveillance. In recent years, some governments have called for building intentional weaknesses, or backdoors, into encrypted technologies.

The Australian law passed despite strong opposition by cybersecurity experts, human rights groups, and some members of parliament. It is modelled on the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, which similarly requires companies to potentially break encryption and hack into their own systems. In the US, law enforcement officials continue to call for anti-encryption legislation, even though they have been criticized for overstating the problem encryption poses to investigations.

Cybersecurity experts have repeatedly explained that laws addressing the challenges raised by encryption misunderstand how the technology  works. There is no plausible way to build tools to undermine encryption without eroding everyone’s security.  People with technical expertise and bad intentions will figure out how to manipulate such tools. By weakening encrypted technologies for government agencies, we weaken it for everyone.

The issue is so important that UN human rights experts have warned governments that weakening encryption could have a devastating impact on human rights.  Governments should be seeking to strengthen, not weaken, encryption.

Digital security is about tradeoffs: There will always be risks when you use the internet. Encryption simply helps us manage those risks and make sure that we are taking steps toward securing our communications. Human Rights Watch has created a new interactive game about digital security to help people understand why encryption is needed to protect us.

The Australian government promised to consider amendments to the anti-encryption law next year in response to opposition. We hope the public will use the game to understand just how much their security could be put at risk if the law isn’t substantially revised to prevent encryption backdoors.

We all pay a price when the tools we rely on every day to keep us secure are compromised.

 

Rebecca Ricks was the 2017-2018 Ford-Mozilla Open Web Fellow at Human Rights Watch. She now works as an independent researcher.

 

The post Protecting Your Security and Rights Online appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Educo Education in Emergencies specialist reviews damage at a school caused by Typhoon Usman in the Philippines. Educo has been working in the Philippines since 2005. January 2019. Credit: Educo

By José María Faura
BARCELONA, Jan 23 2019 (IPS)

Children´s education is in a state of emergency when it comes to protracted crises. 75 million school-aged children and young people are in desperate need of educational support, are either in danger of or are already missing out on their education in countries facing war and violence (1*).

Yet education has traditionally been the most underfunded area regarding humanitarian aid, coming in at less than 3% of total global funding (2*).

This year not only marks the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but the world´s first International Day of Education. As an organization focused on child rights, Educo welcomes this UNESCO marker.

We share the conviction that while education is an end in itself, it is also the ideal means for guaranteeing the exercise of rights, the enjoyment of wellbeing and a life of dignity.

Education in emergencies has historically not been a priority for governments, international institutions or donors. This is despite schooling being what children want the most when faced with a crisis (3*).

On average, conflicts last 20 years. A childhood lasts 18, if a child survives an emergency of course. With little access to education, a child´s recovery from a crisis is much more difficult. For generations of children caught up in conflicts, this lack of opportunity all too often leads to a cycle of poverty alongside societal and political instability.

A child´s right to quality education regardless of where or who they are is being ignored; this cannot continue. Children out of school are exposed to increased risks of sexual and gender-based violence, violent extremism, forced marriage, early pregnancy, child labor and recruitment by armed groups.

A school is used as an emergency shelter following the Mayon Volcano eruption in the Philippines. Educo has been working in the Philippines since 2005. January 2018. Credit: Educo

Protracted conflicts heighten children’s vulnerability and weaken often already under-resourced education systems. Added to this are the increased attacks on educational facilities, making teachers and students vulnerable (4). Overall, we are seeing a growing trend of violent attacks on education for political, military and ideological reasons, among others.

Though governments signed up to the UN´s Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, which include educational targets, there has been little to no tangible progress since. Education must be at the center of humanitarian action otherwise governments today will continue to fail the most vulnerable of children for generations to come.

Educo’s humanitarian mandate is to protect, help and assist the most vulnerable people, especially children, in their right to life and security, with dignity and comprehensive coverage of rights and needs in the face of risk situations and of humanitarian crises. Defending the right to education in humanitarian disasters is the backbone to its mandate.

The right to education cannot be put on pause due to emergencies or crises, no matter how challenging.

Almost half of primary school age refugees are not in school. These children, as well as those on the move, should be guaranteed quality education on an equal footing to national children (5).

With funding so low, however, hundreds of thousands more children could miss out on an education because they are unable to be in their home or more usual setting. Providing funding and specific measures for these children to access education, be they migrants or refugees, must be a global priority.

Educo is a global development and humanitarian NGO with over 25 years’ experience working to defend children and their rights. As part of ChildFund Alliance, we are working in more than 60 countries around the world.

The Alliance helps over 14 million children and their families to overcome poverty and create sustainable solutions that protect and advance their rights and well-being.

In El Salvador, for example, Educo runs a project in six areas of the country where there is prolonged violence. It aims to protect children from forced displacement due to the protracted crisis there – one that is largely forgotten on the international stage.

The project provides assistance and protection to children and their families, supporting them with housing, food and hygiene as well as psychosocial assistance. All of this work runs alongside the focus of the project, which is to ensure children do not fall out of education and if they have, to re-integrate them.

It is heartening to see some governments and institutions finally recognizing the need to focus on education in emergencies. The EU Commission’s aim of improving joint planning, coordination and response is timely.

This collaboration within the Commission, with EU Member States and among other donors and partners is fundamental if we are to reach the millions of children at risk of becoming a lost generation.

Boosting the Commission’s allocation of humanitarian assistance to 10% for education in emergencies and protracted crises is also a great step, but as we have seen before, governments fall short of meeting their commitments.

If the countries that agreed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals really want to meet them, and stay on top of the Education 2030 Agenda, pressure on governments is also required.

We cannot have any more children ending up in the emergency room rather than the classroom.

Sources:
1. ODI Education cannot wait. Proposing a fund for education in emergencies, p. 7
2. http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/news/Communication_on_Education_in_Emergencies_and_Protracted_Crises.pdf
3. https://www.savethechildren.org/content/dam/global/reports/education-and-child-protection/what-children-want.pdf
4. https://www.savethechildren.net/malala-day
5. https://www.childrenonthemove.org/our-recommendations/

The post World’s First International Day of Education Could Not Come Soon Enough appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

José María Faura is the Executive Director of Educo, a global development and humanitarian action NGO with over 25 years’ experience working to defend children and their rights, and especially the right to an equitable and quality education.

The post World’s First International Day of Education Could Not Come Soon Enough appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Solar panels can be seen on three buildings in the Morro de Santa Marta favela in Rio de Janeiro. In the middle is the CEPAC daycare center, with a green terrace and two sets of photovoltaic panels, which reduced its expenses by 80 percent thanks to solar energy. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RÍO DE JANEIRO, Jan 22 2019 (IPS)

“We can’t work just to pay the electric bill,” complained José Hilario dos Santos, president of the Residents Association of Morro de Santa Marta, a favela or shantytown embedded in Botafogo, a traditional middle-class neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro.

The high cost of electricity in the favela is due to consumption estimates made by Light, the local electricity distributor, based on telemetry, without reading the meters in each home, Santos believes.

“The bill is high even when you’re not home, when you’re traveling,” he lamented.

The steady years-long rise in electricity has turned solar energy into a general desire, especially among the poor in the favelas, who account for nearly a quarter of the 6.6 million inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro proper, because the electric bill absorbs a large proportion of their income.

 

 

At least 15 public institutions in Santa Marta already have solar installations that lower their energy costs, thanks to Insolar, a “social business” company active in the neighborhood since 2015.

Four daycare centres, churches, the Residents Association, a music school and the local samba school now have solar power systems, with the support of Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell.

Now the idea is to extend the initiative to 30 businesses on the “morro” or hill where the Santa Marta favela is located. In addition, Insolar is seeking funding to install pilot systems in 14 other favelas in Rio de Janeiro, to expand solar energy, for which there is growing demand in these areas, said Henrique Drumond, the company’s founder.

“Our goal is to democratise solar energy,” he explained. “We are doing it together with the local residents, involving them in the whole process, training local labour,” he told IPS, which made several tours of Santa Marta and other favelas to talk with residents about the arrival of solar power in their lives and their economies.

For further information read Solar Energy Drives Social Development in Brazil’s Favelas

The post Solar Energy Begins to Light Up Favelas in Rio de Janeiro appeared first on Inter Press Service.

President Omar al-Bashir waves to supporters during a rally in Khartoum on January 9. Sudanese authorities have revoked the credentials of at least six journalists working for international outlets. (Reuters/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)

By Staff Correspondent
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 22 2019 (CPJ)

Sudanese authorities yesterday revoked the credentials of at least six journalists working for international news outlets, including Qatar-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera, according to news reports. The outlets have been covering demonstrations against President Omar al-Bashir. Bashir is due to travel to Qatar today for his first international trip since the protests began in December, according to reports.

“Sudan’s move against the international media is another desperate attempt to muzzle the press during this period of unrest,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour. “It is particularly ironic that Al-Jazeera journalists are denied their right to report as Bashir travels to Qatar.”

Sudanese security officials yesterday revoked the credentials of Al-Jazeera correspondents Osama Ahmed and Ahmed Alrehaid and camera operator Badawi Bashir; and Al Arabiya correspondent Saad el-Din Hassan, the journalists’ outletsreported. The same day, authorities revoked the credentials of Turkish Anatolia Agency correspondent Bahram Abdel Moneim and photographer Mahmoud Hajjaj, according to the local press freedom group Sudanese Journalists Network. In a statement, Al-Jazeera denounced Sudan’s “arbitrary decision” and called on authorities to reinstate the accreditation.

The post As anti-Bashir protests continue, Sudan revokes credentials of foreign press appeared first on Inter Press Service.