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Demonstrators in the neighborhood of Cotiza, on the north side of Caracas, where the protests in working-class areas of the Venezuelan capital against the government of Nicolas Maduro broke out on Jan. 21, before spreading to other parts of the country, and which resulted in 40 deaths in the first month of the year due to the brutal crackdown. Credit: Courtesy of EfectoCocuyo.com

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

The protests in Venezuela demanding an end to the presidency of Nicolás Maduro in the last 10 days of January, whose soundtrack was the sound of banging on pots and pans in working-class neighbourhoods, had a high human cost: more than 40 deaths, dozens wounded and about a thousand detainees, including 100 women and 90 children under 18.

In Catia, a working-class neighbourhood west of Caracas, a number of young people were shot dead between Jan. 21-25, while National Police and military National Guard commandos demolished improvised roadblocks and barricades made with trash, managing to quash the protests.

“They managed to do it. The local residents say that in the streets where several of these boys fell, silence and solitude have prevailed after 6:00 PM. The pots and pans have not returned,” sociologist Rafael Uzcátegui, head of Provea, an organisation that has been recording human rights violations in the country for decades, told IPS.

These protests have two special elements: they are taking place in neighborhoods and sectors that until recently formed part of the government’s social base, reflecting the anger felt by the poor in the face of the country’s socioeconomic collapse, which has turned their protests into “mini-Caracazos,” recalling the violent protests given that name in February 1989, which resulted in hundreds of deaths.

Furthermore, they have been submerged in the institutional crisis that has had the country in its grip since January and which has put Venezuela at the forefront of world geopolitics, with a struggle for power that is also playing out between the governments of the United States and other countries of the Americas and European countries, on the one hand, and China, Russia and Turkey, on the other.

Maduro, 56, who governed the country from 2013 to 2019, was sworn in on Jan. 10 for a second term after winning an election in May 2018, the results of which were not recognised by the legislature or by most of the opposition or the governments of the Americas and Europe.

The election was called outside the legal timeframe by a National Constituent Assembly composed solely of government supporters, the electoral authority banned the main opposition parties and leaders, and a cloud of irregularities enveloped the campaign and the voting day itself, according to complaints from local and international organisations.

The opposition-controlled National Assembly refused to recognise Maduro’s re-election and the president of the legislature, Juan Guaidó, 35, declared himself acting president on Jan. 23, before a crowd in Caracas, while mass opposition demonstrations were held in some 50 cities.

Since Jan. 21, when 27 members of the National Guard mutinied in a barracks in the neighborhood of Cotiza, north of Caracas, refusing to recognise the re-election of Maduro, “cacerolazos” – pots-and-pans protests – spread, and groups of local residents in poor neighborhoods of the capital and cities in the provinces improvised barricades and clashed with the security forces and irregular civil groups of sympathisers of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Looting of shops also broke out in several cities in the provinces.

Human rights organisations question the use of the Special Action Force (FAES) of the National Police in Venezuela to suppress popular protests, because these commandos are trained to use lethal force. Credit: PNB

The Jan. 21-25 crackdown left 35 people dead, dozens injured by bullets or plastic pellets, and 850 arrested.

“On Jan. 23 alone, 696 people were arrested – the largest number in a single day of protests in 20 years,” lawyer Alfredo Romero, director of the Penal Forum, an organisation that follows the question of those detained for political or social reasons, told IPS.

The Forum counted 12,480 arbitrary detentions from February 2014 – the year of the first mass protests against Maduro – to October 2018, classifying 1,551 people as political prisoners, of whom 236 were still in prison when the report was produced. The list has now grown with those arrested so far this year.

Since Maduro first took office in 2013, Provea and other human rights groups have reported that at least 250 people have died in street protests.

Romero said the state uses a “revolving door” strategy: when political detainees are released, usually on parole, another group is arrested for similar reasons.

In January, “the order the security forces received was to arrest protesters. It is clear that the government decided to assume the cost of stopping the protest in the poorer areas, which in the past were ‘Chavista’ but have now turned against Chavismo,” he said.

Chavismo was the political movement of Hugo Chavez, president from 1999 until his death in 2013.

For two decades, the urban poor and working-class supported Chavismo, but they have now increasingly turned against Maduro, exasperated by the high food prices, the collapse of services such as water, electricity, health and transport, and the increasingly acute shortage of medicines or cooking gas.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in Geneva on Jan. 29 that “just over 40 people have been killed” and of these “at least 26 were allegedly shot dead by security forces or pro-government armed groups during the demonstrations.”

Provea contends that at least eight people were killed in extrajudicial executions in Caracas and two provincial cities when members of the National Police’s elite FAES squad entered their homes.

“FAES receives training for lethal action, against extortion or kidnapping. It is not trained to handle public order situations. Its codes and weapons, which are highly lethal, are not in proportion to the rules of proportional and gradual use of force applicable in situations of popular protest,” said Uzcátegui.

The arrests, which included 100 women and at least 90 children and adolescents, “have been carried out in indiscriminate sweeps, to spread fear and discourage protests,” Romero said.

One such case is that of Jickson Rodriguez, 14, who is epileptic as a result of an old head injury.

He and his young friends were banging on pots and pans near his family’s barbershop on the night of Jan. 22 in Villa Bahia, which is located in Puerto Ordaz, an industrial city on the banks of the Orinoco River, 500 kilometers southeast of Caracas, when National Guard units captured him and six others and took him to a barracks that guards a steel plant.

“Since I wasn’t crying, I was the one who received the most blows. I told the guards, ‘Why are you beating us when we’ve already been arrested?’ and they slapped me. They gave me blows to the head. I told them ‘you can’t hit me on the head, I have epilepsy, and they told me: ‘Shut up, you’re a detainee’,” he told his family and journalists a few days later.

“I found him, handcuffed, after searching for him in various places where they were holding people, the afternoon of the following day,” his mother Rosmelys Guilarte, 39, a hairdresser who also has three daughters, told IPS. “He was beaten on the soles of his feet, so there would be no visible bruises. He had a convulsion while he was in detention, which is why he was handed over to me two days later.”

Jickson “was accused by the judicial police of participating in looting that took place miles from where we were banging on pots and pans that night – something that was impossible. He has orders to report to the authorities every 30 days. I try to get him to rest a lot, this has been really hard on him,” she said from her home.

For Uzcátegui, “the government’s strategy has three components: repression in the face of the discontent shared by most of the population, betting that the current political conflict will wane, and attempts to limit the visibility of the crisis by going after the media and journalists.”

The post Bullets Against Pots and Pans: The Crackdown on Venezuela’s Protests Is Brutal appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Faustino Perez, Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Day of Solidarity with the People of Venezuela, 1969.

By Vijay Prashad
Feb 1 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Tricontinental) – On 15 September 1970, US President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger authorised the US government to do everything possible to undermine the incoming government of the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Nixon and Kissinger, according to the notes kept by CIA Director Richard Helms, wanted to ‘make the economy scream’ in Chile; they were ‘not concerned [about the] risks involved’. War was acceptable to them as long as Allende’s government was removed from power. The CIA started Project FUBELT, with $10 million as a first instalment to begin the covert destabilisation of the country.

CIA memorandum on Project FUBELT, 16 September 1970.

US business firms, such as the telecommunication giant ITT, the soft drink maker Pepsi Cola and copper monopolies such as Anaconda and Kennecott, put pressure on the US government once Allende nationalised the copper sector on 11 July 1971. Chileans celebrated this day as the Day of National Dignity (Dia de la Dignidad Nacional). The CIA began to make contact with sections of the military seen to be against Allende. Three years later, on 11 September 1973, these military men moved against Allende, who died in the regime change operation. The US ‘created the conditions’ as US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger put it, to which US President Richard Nixon answered, ‘that is the way it is going to be played’. Such is the mood of international gangsterism.

Phone Call between Richard Nixon (P) and Henry Kissinger (K) on 16 September 1973.

Chile entered the dark night of a military dictatorship that turned over the country to US monopoly firms. US advisors rushed in to strengthen the nerve of General Augusto Pinochet’s cabinet.

What happened to Chile in 1973 is precisely what the United States has attempted to do in many other countries of the Global South. The most recent target for the US government – and Western big business – is Venezuela. But what is happening to Venezuela is nothing unique. It faces an onslaught from the United States and its allies that is familiar to countries as far afield as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The formula is clichéd. It is commonplace, a twelve-step plan to produce a coup climate, to create a world under the heel of the West and of Western big business.

Tweet from US Senator Marco Rubio on 24 January 2019.

Step One: Colonialism’s Traps. Most of the Global South remains trapped by the structures put in place by colonialism. Colonial boundaries encircled states that had the misfortune of being single commodity producers – either sugar for Cuba or oil for Venezuela. The inability to diversify their economies meant that these countries earned the bulk of their export revenues from their singular commodities (98% of Venezuela’s export revenues come from oil). As long as the prices of the commodities remained high, the export revenues were secure. When the prices fell, revenue suffered. This was a legacy of colonialism. Oil prices dropped from $160.72 per barrel (June 2008) to $51.99 per barrel (January 2019). Venezuela’s export revenues collapsed in this decade.

Step Two: The Defeat of the New International Economic Order. In 1974, the countries of the Global South attempted to redo the architecture of the world economy. They called for the creation of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) that would allow them to pivot away from the colonial reliance upon one commodity and diversify their economies. Cartels of raw materials – such as oil and bauxite – were to be built so that the one-commodity country could have some control over prices of the products that they relied upon. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), founded in 1960, was a pioneer of these commodity cartels. Others were not permitted to be formed. With the defeat of OPEC over the past three decades, its members – such as Venezuela (which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves) – have not been able to control oil prices. They are at the mercy of the powerful countries of the world.

Step Three: The Death of Southern Agriculture. In November 2001, there were about three billion small farmers and landless peasants in the world. That month, the World Trade Organisation met in Doha (Qatar) to unleash the productivity of Northern agri-business against the billions of small farmers and landless peasants of the Global South. Mechanisation and large, industrial-scale farms in North America and Europe had raised productivity to about 1 to 2 million kilogrammes of cereals per farmer. The small farmers and landless peasants in the rest of the world struggled to grow 1,000 kilogrammes of cereals per farmer. They were nowhere near as productive. The Doha decision, as Samir Amin wrote, presages the annihilation of the small farmer and landless peasant. What are these men and women to do? The production per hectare is higher in the West, but the corporate take-over of agriculture (as Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Senior Fellow P. Sainath shows) leads to increased hunger as it pushes peasants off their land and leaves them to starve.

Step Four: Culture of Plunder. Emboldened by Western domination, monopoly firms act with disregard for the law. As Kambale Musavuli and I write of the Democratic Republic of Congo, its annual budget of $6 billion is routinely robbed of at least $500 by monopoly mining firms, mostly from Canada – the country now leading the charge against Venezuela. Mispricing and tax avoidance schemes allow these large firms (Canada’s Agrium, Barrick and Suncor) to routinely steal billions of dollars from impoverished states.

Step Five: Debt as a Way of Life. Unable to raise money from commodity sales, hemmed in by a broken world agricultural system and victim of a culture of plunder, countries of the Global South have been forced to go hat in hand to commercial lenders for finance. Over the past decade, debt held by the Global South states has increased, while debt payments have ballooned by 60%. When commodity prices rose between 2000 and 2010, debt in the Global South decreased. As commodity prices began to fall from 2010, debts have risen. The IMF points out that of the 67 impoverished countries that they follow, 30 are in debt distress, a number that has doubled since 2013. More than 55.4% of Angola’s export revenue is paid to service its debt. And Angola, like Venezuela, is an oil exporter. Other oil exporters such as Ghana, Chad, Gabon and Venezuela suffer high debt to GDP ratios. Two out of five low-income countries are in deep financial distress.

Step Six: Public Finances Go to Hell. With little incoming revenue and low tax collection rates, public finances in the Global South has gone into crisis. As the UN Conference on Trade and Development points out, ‘public finances have continued to be suffocated’. States simply cannot put together the funds needed to maintain basic state functions. Balanced budget rules make borrowing difficult, which is compounded by the fact that banks charge high rates for money, citing the risks of lending to indebted countries.

Step Seven: Deep Cuts in Social Spending. Impossible to raise funds, trapped by the fickleness of international finance, governments are forced to make deep cuts in social spending. Education and health, food sovereignty and economic diversification – all this goes by the wayside. International agencies such as the IMF force countries to conduct ‘reforms’, a word that means extermination of independence. Those countries that hold out face immense international pressure to submit under pain of extinction, as the Communist Manifesto (1848) put it.

Step Eight: Social Distress Leads to Migration. The total number of migrants in the world is now at least 68.5 million. That makes the country called Migration the 21st largest country in the world after Thailand and ahead of the United Kingdom. Migration has become a global reaction to the collapse of countries from one end of the planet to the other. The migration out of Venezuela is not unique to that country but is now merely the normal reaction to the global crisis. Migrants from Honduras who go northward to the United States or migrants from West Africa who go towards Europe through Libya are part of this global exodus.

Step Nine: Who Controls the Narrative? The monopoly corporate media takes its orders from the elite. There is no sympathy for the structural crisis faced by governments from Afghanistan to Venezuela. Those leaders who cave to Western pressure are given a free pass by the media. As long as they conduct ‘reforms’, they are safe. Those countries that argue against the ‘reforms’ are vulnerable to being attacked. Their leaders become ‘dictators’, their people hostages. A contested election in Bangladesh or in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in the United States is not cause for regime change. That special treatment is left for Venezuela.

Alfredo Rostgaard, OSPAAAL poster, 1969.

Step Ten: Who’s the Real President? Regime change operations begin when the imperialists question the legitimacy of the government in power: by putting the weight of the United States behind an unelected person, calling him the new president and creating a situation where the elected leader’s authority is undermined. The coup takes place when a powerful country decides – without an election – to anoint its own proxy. That person – in Venezuela’s case Juan Guaidó – rapidly has to make it clear that he will bend to the authority of the United States. His kitchen cabinet – made up of former government officials with intimate ties to the US (such as Harvard University’s Ricardo Hausmann and Carnegie’s Moisés Naím) – will make it clear that they want to privatise everything and sell out the Venezuelan people in the name of the Venezuelan people.

Step Eleven: Make the Economy Scream. Venezuela has faced harsh US sanctions since 2014, when the US Congress started down this road. The next year, US President Barack Obama declared Venezuela a ‘threat to national security’. The economy started to scream. In recent days, the United States and the United Kingdom brazenly stole billions of dollars of Venezuelan money, placed the shackles of sanctions on its only revenue generating sector (oil) and watched the pain flood through the country. This is what the US did to Iran and this is what they did to Cuba. The UN says that the US sanctions on Cuba have cost the small island $130 billion. Venezuela lost $6 billion for the first year of Trump’s sanctions, since they began in August 2017. More is to be lost as the days unfold. No wonder that the United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy says that ‘sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela’. He said that sanctions are ‘not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes’. Further, Jazairy said, ‘I am especially concerned to hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela’. He called for ‘compassion’ for the people of Venezuela.

Step Twelve: Go to War. US National Security Advisor John Bolton held a yellow pad with the words 5,000 troops in Colombia written on it. These are US troops, already deployed in Venezuela’s neighbour. The US Southern Command is ready. They are egging on Colombia and Brazil to do their bit. As the coup climate is created, a nudge will be necessary. They will go to war.

Edson Garcia, Titina Silá (1943-1973).

None of this is inevitable. It was not inevitable to Titina Silá, a commander of the Partido Africano para a Independència da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) who was murdered on 30 January 1973. She fought to free her country. It is not inevitable to the people of Venezuela, who continue to fight to defend their revolution. It is not inevitable to our friends at CodePink: Women for Peace, whose Medea Benjamin walked into a meeting of the Organisation of American States and said – No!

It is time to say No to regime change intervention. There is no middle ground.

The post Twelve Step Method to Conduct Regime Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

From the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

The post Twelve Step Method to Conduct Regime Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

An investigation is under way after at least three pupils are killed by a collapsing walkway.

The case, which involved the woman's daughter, is the first FGM conviction in the UK.

In Bol, Chad, the Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed meets Halima Yakoy Adam who survived a Boko Haram suicide bombing mission. Credit: Daniel Dickinson / UN News

By Amina J. Mohammed
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

After flying into the city of Bol in the Republic of Chad, over the lush fields and receding lakes, we landed to a rapturous welcome from traditional rulers and local women. Their faces reflected a hope and dignity slipping away under the harsh reality of poverty and insecurity.

The women, smiling at us as we disembarked, showed the same resilience I have seen in women in countless contexts: an ability to survive, even in the face of multiple forms of violence and insecurity at home, in public or from political conflict.

I visited Chad last summer as part of a three-country mission that included South Sudan and Niger, leading a delegation of senior women from the United Nations and the African Union.

In Niger and Chad, we were joined by Margot Wallström, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden, a country that has pioneered the idea of a feminist foreign policy and given prominence to the dynamic between women’s status in society and international peace and security during the country’s two years on the Security Council.

Throughout the mission, I could not shake what we have come to know, that women, and their rights, are the first to suffer in times of crisis. And that this often compounds already high levels of inequality and violence.

I met Halima, a young girl whose life had not been her own. Against her will she was forced to marry. Then her husband, a member of Boko Haram, indoctrinated her with promises of a better afterlife. Halima strapped on a suicide belt, yet never made it to what they were told was a target, as the belts of two other girls went off as they stopped to pray.

Halima lost both her legs. Her future seemed grim, yet she had a measure of hope as she spoke and is working as a paralegal in her community to empower other women.

In Niger, at a centre for fistula survivors, we met girls as young as 12 and 13. Mere children forced into marriage and then raped by their husbands, without any agency or voice over their futures, their bodies, their lives.

Over 75% of girls in Chad and Niger marry before they are 18. They drop out of school and many become pregnant soon after, and because of their young age and complications during pregnancy, these countries have some of the highest maternal mortality rates globally.

Faced with dire poverty and often conflict, families believe they have no choice. They cannot feed their children, but hope maybe a husband can.

As we commemorated 16 days of activism to end violence and harmful practices against women and girls last year, it is important that we acknowledge the multiple forms of violence women and girls face, and the consequences they have for individuals, families, communities, and our shared agendas for development—the 2030 Agenda and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

From early forced marriage to femicide, from trafficking to sexual harassment, from sexual violence to harmful traditional practices: violence in all its forms is a global impediment to sustainable development, peace and prosperity.

It prevents women from fully engaging in society, scars successive generations, and costs countries millions in health expenses, job days lost, and long-term impacts.

The United Nations, together with partners, national governments and civil society, is leading efforts to end all forms of violence against women and girls by 2030. And we have existing efforts we can build on.

During our trip, we met traditional leaders, in particular men, who are taking actions in their own communities to stop early marriage. We talked to fisherwomen on Lake Chad who have taken over a traditionally male job in order to provide for their families and who are engaged in sustainable resource management, income generation and empowerment.

And across a number of countries in Africa, we are implementing a new effort with the European Union—the Spotlight Initiative to eliminate violence against women and girls. The approximately $300 million investment in Africa will target all forms of gender-based violence, with a particular focus on child marriages, female genital mutilation and the sexual and reproductive health needs of women and girls.

I finished my travels with a great sense of urgency and hope. The visit reinforced my conviction that we need to implement our global agenda on sustainable development—the 2030 Agenda—with urgency, and gender equality is at the very heart of this.

I am inspired and hopeful because of women like Halima, like the survivors of marriages they never chose, like the girls who were forced into sex and pregnancy long before their bodies were ready. They survived. They are telling their story, and they are determined to have a better future, not only for themselves, but also for their sisters.

In the words of the late Kofi Annan, “Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.”

The link to the original article:
https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/ending-violence-against-women-and-girls-sahel-crucial-sustainable

The post Ending Violence Against Women & Girls in the Sahel: Crucial for Sustainable Development appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Amina Mohammed is the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations

The post Ending Violence Against Women & Girls in the Sahel: Crucial for Sustainable Development appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Hafiz Johari / Shutterstock.com

By Yina Shan, Praem Mehta, Duminda Perera, & Yurissa Varela
HAMILTON, Canada, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

Cost-effective technologies are available to remove arsenic in groundwater. Why then do tens of millions still fall ill to this chronic problem?

High natural levels of arsenic are characteristic of the groundwater supply in many countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Mongolia, and the United States.

Some of the contamination is caused by mining, fertilizers and pesticides, waste disposal, and manufacturing, but mostly it is due to arsenic leeching — dissolved from rocks underground by highly acidic water.

At least 140 million people in 50 countries have drinking water containing arsenic at levels above the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline — 10 μg/L (micrograms per litre). In some places, people are using groundwater with arsenic levels 10 times or more the WHO’s recommended limit.

This exposure, through drinking water and crops irrigated with contaminated water, can lead to severe health, social and economic consequences, including arsenicosis (symptomized by muscular weakness, mld psychological effects), skin lesions, and cancers (lung, liver, kidney, bladder, and skin). The social implications of these health impacts include stigmatization, isolation, and social instability.

Arsenic-related health problems lead to significant economic losses due to lost productivity in many places. In Bangladesh, where the groundwater arsenic problem is most acute, the economic burden from lost productivity is expected to reach an estimated US$ 13.8 billion in about 10 years.

There are many technologies today that, broadly speaking, use one of six approaches to remove arsenic, described in an abundance of scientific studies. Between 2014 to 2018 alone, over 17,400 papers were published describing elements of the problem and a myriad of low-cost treatment technologies.

A report, published by the UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health, draws on 31 peer-reviewed, comparable research papers that appeared between 1996 and 2018, each describing new technologies tested in laboratories and / or in field studies. The papers covered:

* 23 lab-tested technologies that used groundwater from nine countries (Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Guatemala, India, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam) and demonstrated arsenic removal efficiencies ranging from 50% to almost 100%, with a majority reaching over 90%. About half achieved the WHO standard of 10 µg/L.

* 14 technologies tested at the household or community level (in Argentina, Bangladesh, Chile, China, India, and Nicaragua) achieved arsenic removal efficiency levels ranging from 60% to about 99%, with 10 removing more than 90%. Only five reached the established WHO standard.

For lab-tested technologies, the cost of treating one cubic meter of water ranged from near-zero to about US$ 93, except for one technology (US$ 299 per m³). For field tested technologies, the cost of treating a cubic meter of water ranged from near-zero to about US$ 70.

No single technology offers a universal solution, but the report helps point to remedies likely to prove most economical and efficient given the many variables present in different locations worldwide.

Key factors influencing removal efficiencies and costs are:

• the arsenic concentration of the influent water,
• pH of the influent water,
• materials used,
• the energy required,
• absorption capacity,
• labour used,
• regeneration period and
• geographical location

The report also notes that a technology can only be considered efficient if it successfully removes arsenic to a level that meets or exceeds the WHO standard of 10 µg/L.

Bangladesh, China and India and some other countries with resource constraints or certain environmental circumstances – such as very high arsenic concentrations in groundwater – set higher, easier-to-reach national arsenic concentration targets.

In Bangladesh, for example, where the nationally-acceptable arsenic limit in water is set to 50 µg/L, it’s estimated that more than 20 million people consume water with arsenic levels even higher than the national standard.

Globally, despite international efforts, millions of people are exposed to arsenic concentrations reaching 100 µg/L or more.

While national limits higher than the WHO standard may help policymakers report better arsenic reduction results, if a country feels that the situation is coming under control it may reduce the sense of urgency in policy circles to eradicate the problem, and the population continues to suffer from ingesting high levels of arsenic.

A limit less stringent than the WHO guideline effectively shifts attention from the problem and impacts and postpones the best health outcome for citizens — and needlessly so, given the technologies available.

The technologies in hand today can significantly reduce the numbers of people affected by this public health problem. Needed is a sustained, concerted effort from policymakers, engineers, healthcare providers, donors, and community leaders to achieve quantifiable and sustainable impacts.

Over the next decade, we need wide-scale implementation of remediation solutions to meet the WHO standard and achieve two key Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 3 (“Good health and wellbeing” and SDG 6 (“Clean water and sanitation”).

We have cost-effective tools to alleviate and ultimately eradicate the problem of arsenic-contaminated water consumption. Let’s use them.

The post Removing Arsenic from Groundwater: We Have the Tools, Let’s Use Them appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Researchers Yina Shan, Praem Mehta, Duminda Perera and Yurissa Varela developed this report at the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, hosted by the Government of Canada and McMaster University

The post Removing Arsenic from Groundwater: We Have the Tools, Let’s Use Them appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Nigeria goalkeeper Francis Uzoho joins Cypriot giants Anorthosis Famagusta on a six-month loan from Spanish side Deportivo La Coruna.

Ghana is accused of refusing to accept the return of 7,000 nationals living illegally in the US.

International Migration Organisation Volunteer Field Officers campaign in public places in Nigeria’s Edo State against irregular migration. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

“Don’t assume if you attempt the journey your fortune will change for the better,” a woman says over the public address system in the crowded Uselu market in Benin City, the capital of Nigeria’s Edo State. “Many embarked on the journey and never made it. Many people are dying in the Sahara Desert.” 

She was speaking of a journey that many here in this West African nation have sought to go on in the hope of making a better life for themselves and their families. But it entails embarking on a route of irregular migration reportedly fraught with danger, trauma and abuse.

But in an ironic twist of fate, many young Nigerians who have attempted the irregular travel to Europe, through the Sahara Desert and across the Mediterranean sea, are back home and campaigning against the practice.

Using experience to teach about the dangers of irregular migration

Known as Volunteer Field Officers, VFOs, a group of 15 returnee migrants are working with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), under its Migrants as Messengers (MaM) Programme in Nigeria.

These VFOs were among the Nigerian migrants the IOM brought home from Libya and other transit countries under the European Union-IOM Joint Initiative For Migrant Protection and Reintegration. Since the beginning of the project in April 2017 more than 11,500 migrants have been returned home after their failed attempt to reach Europe.

Marshall Patsanza of the IOM  described it as a peer to peer advocacy programme under which “migrants who embarked on the journey to Europe through Libya are sharing their experiences, thus informing others of the dangers of the journey.”

It includes a series of messages and videos posted on social media, interviews on community radio stations, and community screenings of a movie on irregular migration.

The campaign has also taken place in the media, at schools and in public places like on busy highways and markets.

A dangerous journey and a sensitive subject

The Uselu campaign starts with the female VFO addressing traders and customers in the market over a public address system.

She tells her audience that irregular migration through the desert to Libya and then over the Mediterranean sea to Europe is highly dangerous and no one should undertake it, irrespective of the hardships they face at home.

But the market turns rowdy when she criticises the widespread practice in Edo State where poor mothers encourage their children to embark on the dangerous journey, hoping that they will earn a lot of money abroad to lift their families out of poverty.

Edo is the Nigerian state with the highest incidence of irregular migration.
Data gathered from the IOM under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative, shows that about 50 percent of migrants returned from Libya under the initiative since April 2017 are from Edo State.

It is here that the VFOs are most active, many times going the extra mile to ensure a successful campaign. And it is what they do now in Uselu market.

“Many of our mothers here, some of them have sent their children to the Libyan route, it is bad, you should advise yourselves because there is nothing in the Libya route,” the female returnee migrant says.

Economic recession leads to support for irregular migration

But angry women shout her down and engage the VFO team in a war of words. They insist that irregular migration has become inevitable in the face of the economic situation in the country, which has left many families extremely poor. In 2017 the country began recovering from the worst economic recession in a quarter of a century. But rising inflation, and a slowdown in the oil sector are among the contributors to a sluggish growth.

“Many of the good houses in Benin [City] were built with money sent home by those who went abroad through Libya,” one woman says. Another argues that it is unfair to ask people not to travel to Europe through the desert and the sea when they are not allowed to travel by air.

Such deep support for irregular migration from parents account for the widespread practice of it in Edo State.

This and the long history of irregular migration in the state, which started in the 1980s following a downturn in Nigeria’s economy, makes the work of the VFOs challenging at times.

Personal, traumatic stories and photographic evidence change minds

But the personal stories of the VFOs remain an effective tool in their campaigns. They are also armed with posters and handbills that illustrate their near-death experiences when they attempted the journey to Europe.

VFO Jude Ikuenobe says when confronted with a situation similar to the one faced at Uselu Market he always tells people about his imprisonment in Libya. He supports this by showing people photos, taken shortly after his return from Libya, of how emaciated he was due to his imprisonment.

He also tells people how his friends died while crossing the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean sea.

Because traditionally people from Edo State are buried near their loved ones, Ikuenobe often tells people how sad it is to die in a place like Libya or how tragic it is to have their bodies thrown away in the desert, rather than being buried by their loved ones at home. He says when people hear his first-hand experience and see his photographs they often become discouraged to attempt irregular migration.

The VFOs use their new communications skills with good result at the Uselu market. A tensions soon calm down after people see the photographs, posters and handbills.

A safe space to share own stories of tragedy

Some people in the market even feel safe enough to share their own stories. One lady admits her young, beautiful friend drowned at sea as she attempted to cross from Libya to Europe.

One man, Chinedu Adimon, says two of his friends also drowned making the same crossing. “One of them had two young daughters,” he recalls.

Many in the market whose relatives have embarked on irregular migration, and whom they have not heard from since, are sobered by the reality of the dangers. They wonder what could have happened to their loved ones.

Pius Igede bursts into tears.

He says his daughter recently made the irregular journey to Europe and he does not know her whereabouts.

“She only made a phone call that she is out of the country. I don’t even know where she is now, whether it is Libya or any other place I don’t know,” he explains.

He adds that he suspects some of his other children are planning to travel to Europe as well.
And for him, the VFO’s posters and handbills may be the saving grace to convince them to remain at home.

“I want to collect the posters to show my children to discourage them from going to Libya,” he says. “I got scared when I saw the posters. I am frightened [that] my children will secretly travel without my knowledge.”

Closing a vital information gap

Osita Osemene of the Patriotic Citizen Initiatives, a non governmental organisation campaigning against irregular migration, says the VFOs were able to convince people in the market about the dangers of irregular migration because they have first-hand experience.

“It would have been very difficult to convince anyone in the market if the VFOs were just ordinary people who had no experience of irregular travels,” says Osemene, who is himself a returnee migrant.

He explains that lack of information about the true impact of irregular migration is a serious problem as many people assume those who attempt the dangerous journey to Europe actually arrive there and attain success.

“They were surprised when we showed them some of the things people go through, how people cross the sea in boats that can easily sink,” he says.

Ikuenobe says as VFOs they are working to close a vital information gap.

“So many mothers are not educated, so many mothers are desperate to see their children succeed, but we have to make them understand that irregular migration would not bring success,” Ikuenobe says.

For Patsanza the performance of the VFOs at Uselu Market shows how effective they can be in the fight against irregular migration.

Ikuenobe says the campaign is being conducted continuously in order to educate as many people as possible.

“The  message is that even if things are bad at home, that is no justification for people to go and commit suicide. It is like going to kill yourself when you attempt to travel to Europe through the desert and sea.”

 

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The post Nigerians Hear How Migrating Irregularly “Is Like Killing Yourself” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD’s) is focusing more on a drought preparedness approach which looks at how to prepare policymakers, governments, local governments and communities to become more drought resilient. Credit: Campbell Easton/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD’s) Drought Initiative is in full swing with dozens of countries signing up to plan their drought programme.

The Drought Initiative involves taking action on national drought preparedness plans, regional efforts to reduce drought vulnerability and risk, and a toolbox to boost the resilience of people and ecosystems to drought.

“As of right now we have 45 countries who have signed on to our drought programme,” UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Dr. Pradeep Monga told IPS.

He said UNCCD is focusing more on a drought preparedness approach which looks at how to prepare policymakers, governments, local governments and communities to become more drought resilient.

UNCCD says that by being prepared and acting early, people and communities can develop resilience against drought and minimise its risks. UNCCD experts can help country Parties review or validate existing drought measures and prepare a national drought plan to put all the pieces together, identify gaps and ensure that necessary steps are taken as soon as the possibility of drought is signalled by meteorological services. It is envisaged that such a plan would be endorsed and eventual action triggered at the highest political level.

UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Dr. Pradeep Monga said UNCCD is focusing more on a drought preparedness approach which looks at how to prepare policymakers, governments, local governments and communities to become more drought resilient. Courtesy: Desmond Brown

“Drought is a natural phenomenon. It’s very difficult sometimes to predict or understand when it happens or how it happens. Yes, prediction has become better with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) so we know in advance that this year there can be more drought than last year so we can prepare communities better,” Monga said.

He said the more resilient communities are, the better they can face the vagaries of climate change.

“They can also preserve their traditional practices or biodiversity, and most importantly, they can help in keeping the land productive,” Monga said.

“This is also important to migration – whether it’s migration of people from urban areas to borders and then to other countries and regions. We believe that addressing drought, preparing communities, governments, policymaker and experts better in drought becomes very relevant for addressing those issues which otherwise will have cascading effects.”

He spoke to IPS at the 17th Session of the Committee for the Review of Implementation of the UNCCD (CRIC 17), which wrapped up in Georgetown, Guyana on Jan. 30.

Minister of State in the Ministry of the Presidency Joseph Harmon says Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean are faced with their own problems with drought.

He said that Guyana is looking at the utilisation of wells in the communities which have been hit the hardest.

Harmon said Guyana and the Federative Republic of Brazil have signed an agreement where the Brazilian army, working together with Guyana Water Incorporated, Civil Defence Commission and the Guyana Defence Force are drilling wells in at least eight major indigenous communities in the southern part of the Rupununi.

“That will now allow for them to have potable water all year round and that’s a major development for those communities,” Harmon told IPS.

“Here in Guyana we speak about the Green State Development Strategy and part of our promotion is that we speak about the good life for all Guyanese. So, when we are able to provide potable water to a community that never had it before, then to them, the good life is on its way to them.

“This is what we want to replicate in every part of this country where people can be assured that drought will never be a factor which they have to consider in planning their lives, in planting their crops, in managing the land which they have again,” Harmon added.

UNCCD Executive Secretary Monique Barbut said droughts are becoming more and more prevalent. For this reason, she said it is even more crucial for countries to prepare.

“We see them more and more, and if you look at all the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] IPCC reports, we know that they are going to become even more severe and more frequent. This is the reality we are faced with, whatever increase of temperature we get,” Barbut told IPS.

“We have been looking in NCCD at what we do on drought. Last year, I did propose a new initiative to the Parties because we noticed that only three countries in the world had a drought preparedness plan. Those three countries are the United States, Australia and Israel.”

Barbut said while preparedness planning will not stop drought, it will mitigate its effects if it is well planned.

“We launched an initiative last year and we’ve got the resources to help 70 countries with their planning. They are now in the process of doing that exercise and we hope that at the next Conference of the Parties in October, we will be able to report on those 70 countries and extend it to the rest of the world.”

According to the latest report from the IPCC, without a radical transformation of energy, transportation and agriculture systems, the world will hurtle past the 1.5 ° Celsius target of the Paris Climate Agreement by the middle of the century.

Failing to cap global warming near that threshold dramatically increases risks to human civilisation and the ecosystems that sustain life on Earth, according to the report.

To keep warming under 1.5 °C, countries will have to cut global CO2 emissions 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero by around 2050, the report found, re-affirming previous conclusions about the need to end fossil fuel burning. Short-lived climate pollutants, such as methane, will have to be significantly reduced as well.

More than 1.5 °C warming means nearly all of the planet’s coral reefs will die, droughts and heat waves will continue to intensify, and an additional 10 million people will face greater risks from rising sea level, including deadly storm surges and flooded coastal zones. Most at risk are millions of people in less developed parts of the world, the panel warned.

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The post Making Communities Drought Resilient appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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