Africa

By Rose Delaney
MIAMI, Feb 20 2019 (IPS)

Inaccessible justice and socio-economic inequality act as core components of the United States criminal justice system.

Thousands of individuals are denied their basic human rights and treated as a criminal “underclass” in what appears to be a perfectly “legal” and “just” system.

Jean-Claude Nöel

The United States currently carries the world’s highest prison population with a staggering 2.3 million individuals behind bars. In other words, 1 out of every 99 North American adults are confined to a prison cell at present.

The state of Florida has the third largest prison population in the country. Over $2.7 billion per year is spent to house criminals for predominantly petty crimes.

U.S. prisoners have no political rights, no say in how they are treated, and almost no groups or organizations to advocate on their behalf.

Once released, they cannot avail of social housing or financial aid. In addition, they must state that they were a convicted felon on every job application they apply for.

According to the Bureau of Justice Studies due to poor rehabilitation and access to services in the public domain, 76% of prisoners will be re-arrested within 5 years of release.

I spoke to Jean-Claude Nöel, a former convict, on his experience within Florida’s criminal justice system.

Jean-Claude is well-poised and notably articulate. His family back in Haiti come from a long line of educators and influencers.

One could scarcely imagine such a man having spent close to 10 years behind bars.

Among other convictions, Jean-Claude was charged with conspiracy based on “hearsay evidence” related to racketeering, with no tangible evidence to prove his crime.

Jean-Claude claims that this is wrongful under the eyes of the law and cannot be used to convict an individual.

In 1998, Jean-Claude embarked on a 10-year battle with the state of Florida. He is still in the throes of a heated debate to revise legislation for statute 777.04 on “Attempts, Solicitation and Conspiracy.”

As the recount of Jean-Claude’s conviction progressed, a gross injustice was made apparent. After three and a half years behind bars, he went to trial.

He was offered a bond of over $1million. His requests for a reduction fell on deaf ears, and were denied by the court. His lawyer charged a hefty fee of $15,000 and did little to resolve his case.

Evidently, telling your side of the story proves exceedingly costly in the U.S. criminal justice system. It is not a right granted to low and middle socio-economic classes.

Jean-Claude’s case is distinct as 85% of prisoners in North America’s criminal justice system never go to trial.

From staggeringly high attorney’s fees and extortionate bonds, for many, it’s advised and encouraged to just plead guilty to crimes they may not have committed.

Jean-Claude explained, “the state and lawyers discourage one from going to trial, it is far too costly and time-consuming.”

As a Haitian immigrant, conditions within the U.S. prison system were exceptionally unjust, just two days before his release date, he was transported to a detention center for deportation.

In the detention center, was placed in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, which is considered to be a form of torture by prominent human rights groups such as Amnesty International.

He narrowly evaded deportation by pleading his case to a judge, highlighting the fact that his wife and kids, located in the United States were eagerly waiting for him on the outside after 9 years.

As echoed in Michelle Alexander’s work, The New Jim Crow, Jean-Claude shares the notion that prisoners are treated as a marginalized caste within North American society.

Both within and outside of prison walls, prisoners are stripped of their basic rights to reform and rehabilitation. “the majority leave the prison worse off than when they came in.” Jean-Claude stated.

To overcome such demoralizing setbacks, he decided to put his background in entrepreneurship to use.

A high percentage of male prisoners’ education in the state of Florida do not surpass students aged 11-12, or the U.S. schooling equivalent of the sixth grade.

Therefore, Jean-Claude’s introduction of an “Entrepreneurship and Innovation” program in his assigned prison proved impactful.

Over 150 students went through Jean-Claude’s program which focused on technological literacy and innovation. Although he’s now released, he continues to provide educational and job creation services to prisoners and ex-convicts.

Jean-Claude’s organization, Riemerge, focused on rehabilitating men who have been trapped in the U.S. criminal justice system through classes on technological innovation and advocacy for the employment of prisoners in major coporations.

As the children of inmates are six times more likely to end up incarcerated themselves, Jean-Claude also places a key focus on the sharing of ideas between parents and children.

Parents share their learnings and achievements with children and encourage them to think innovatively about technology and entrepreneurship as well.

Just where does the future lie for wrongfully convicted young men?

Jean-Claude highlights the importance of artificial intelligence in the criminal justice system.

“I am hopeful for reform because of technology, the criminal justice system is adopting new technologies at a brisk pace. I believe these technologies will remove bias out of the courts and out of policing.”

That saying, new technologies come with their own challenges. Jean-Claude offered the example of Brian Brackeen, an African-American entrepreneur, the founder of Kairos, who has developed a successful “face recognition” technology.

Brackeen openly refuses to sell his product to law enforcement, as bias can be passed on to computers.

“I’ve been pretty clear about the potential dangers associated with current racial biases in face recognition, and open in my opposition to the use of the technology in law enforcement.” Brackeen stated.

All in all, with enhanced awareness and dedication, ex-convicts like Jean-Claude are optimistic in their ability to eradicate the gross injustices imposed by the North American criminal justice system.

Jean-Claude’s story is one of many.

He will do everything in his power to advance access to justice and ignite change for inmates who are wrongfully silenced.

The post Intricacies of a Broken System: A Convict’s Tale appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Dr. Kakoli Ghosh, Strategic Program on Sustainable Agriculture Management Team, FAO Ms. Loreta Zdanovaite, Partnerships Officer, Division of Partnerships, FAO

By Kakoli Ghosh and Loreta Zdanovaite
ROME, Feb 20 2019 (IPS)

When young people from small towns and villages seek higher education they have to usually migrate to big cities leaving their local communities behind. On completion of their degree from the Universities, they generally prefer staying in cities, in search of a good job and a successful career. Though this is a standard practice, it is also a case of lost opportunities, especially for students who pursue higher education in agriculture. Here is why.

Mobilizing local farmers in for sustainable practices for common bean production, Uganda

Agriculture covers a range of subjects from agronomy and dairy science to plant and animal health–and for many small -holder farmers and producers, there is a tremendous need for infusion of new knowledge and innovations to upgrade farming practices to improve income and livelihoods. However, there is usually a lack of availability of such support for them in a timely manner. At the same time, all Master’s level students studying agricultural sciences have to conduct research and prepare their dissertations on topical issues as part of their courses. Could it be possible to incentivise students to return to their communities for some time to look at local agriculture problems with fresh eyes and share their new knowledge? Can such reverse engineering accelerate problem solving at a local level and spur innovations? What would entice young people and their local community to create such knowledge linkages?

An small initiative was carried-out with the partner RUFORUM1 to try this out to strengthen linkages between academic knowledge and its ground-based applications. The goal was to promote youth support for SDG2- End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. Graduate students from African agriculture universities were offered a six-month Community-Based Field Attachment2 to share their knowledge and research experience with rural communities and receive feedback from communities on their specific research areas. The expectation was that such an interaction would provide graduate students an opportunity to a) link academic work with experience of rural community, b) increase practical skills to apply research findings in development-related field projects as well as c) provide local agencies, farmers groups and organizations with the specialized knowledge that can generate innovative solutions to improve rural livelihoods.

Demonstrating vaccination of New Castle Disease vaccine for chickens, Uganda

There was a high response from students, however, based on available resources five each of male and female graduate students from RUFORUM member universities from Benin, Uganda, Kenya and Lesotho were selected for implementing their field projects (Table 1). During their stay with the rural communities, those students interacted with local farmers, village institutions and community elders to discuss and share their knowledge and work together to develop locally- based solutions. With the guidance of their professors as mentors, they reached out to a range of local stakeholders including farmers, agricultural traders, farmer associations, community health institutions, veterinary and extension services and rural community leaders to disseminate their research and also learn from them. They organized interactive workshops and trainings, made open-air presentations and hosted radio shows to increase outreach and share experiences. (Box 1). All participants provided regular reports of their progress to the RUFORUM Secretariat, who provided the necessary monitoring of the project.

This limited exercise has provided us with some interesting insights. It is clear that there is a genuine interest among youth to contribute to their local communities. The various topics of their projects on child nutrition, crop production and animal health among others, addressed a pertinent need in that community. The interactions allowed them to link their theoretical knowledge with practice on the ground. Both local communities and academic institutions expressed willingness to undertake more of such knowledge-exchange partnerships as it was a win-win. In future, perhaps such experiences could help universities to design short-term courses to address local issues and nurture innovations. If such initiatives were at scale and sponsored by local institutions, they might also encourage return of educated youth to agriculture in Africa and beyond. That would surely accelerate the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals.

Table 1. Student projects for Community-Based Field Attachments in Africa

1 The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) is a network of 105 universities in 37 countries in Africa, www.ruforum.org.
2 Special Call for Applications: Ten RUFORUM Community-Based Field Attachment Programme Awards

The post Reverse Engineering for SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Kakoli Ghosh, Strategic Program on Sustainable Agriculture Management Team, FAO
Ms. Loreta Zdanovaite, Partnerships Officer, Division of Partnerships, FAO

The post Reverse Engineering for SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Boniface Murage's baby daughter was being held in a Kenyan hospital over unpaid medical bills.

The men were convicted of involvement in a car bombing that killed public prosecutor Hisham Barakat.

Kenya coach Sebastien Migne says he has not 'shut the door' on a possible return for the Harambee Stars' all-time record goal-scorer, Dennis Oliech.

Rights group Amnesty demands the release of a poet detained for insulting the Somaliland government.

SIPRI Director on Armament and Disarmament Dr Sibylle Bauer discusses the future of arms control at the Munich Security Conference.

By Dan Smith
MUNICH, Germany, Feb 20 2019 (IPS)

This year’s Munich Security Conference (the MSC), held on 15-17 February raised many questions but didn’t have the answer. It was not a happy and certainly not a self-confident gathering. Yet a couple of moments suggested the first new blooms of new ways to think about security might soon poke through the soil.

The MSC is the annual meeting of makers, shakers and influence-makers on the Euro-Atlantic security scene. Its recent editions have all been full of doubt and query. In 2015 the conference theme was ‘Collapsing Order, Reluctant Guardians?’

That was followed the next year by ‘Boundless Crises, Reckless Spoilers, Helpless Guardians’ – no question-mark this time but not any better or more confident because of that.

In February 2017, with the impact of the newly inaugurated Trump administration as yet unclear, it was ‘Post-Truth, Post-West, Post-Order?’. And last year it was ‘To the brink—and back?’, which, if you look hard, at least has a drop of optimism hidden behind the query.

This year the theme was ‘The Great Puzzle: Who Will Pick Up the Pieces?’ To make sure everybody got the point, there was a little jigsaw puzzle in the conference packs. But by the end of the gathering, not to anybody’s surprise, there was no real answer.

The components of anxiety and uncertainty are not new or surprising for anybody who follows international politics. In the last several years there has been a general deterioration in geopolitical stability.

A key dark moment was the Russian takeover in Crimea during February and March 2014 but the problem goes back further than that. In 2009, as Secretary of State in the new Obama administration, Hillary Clinton aimed for a major “reset” in US-Russia relations because of the negative turn they had taken in the previous years.

US-Russian relations remain at a low ebb, especially over arms control. The expression “INF Treaty” seemed to be used every other sentence that was uttered at the MSC.

It was not like that last year when the prospects for the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 was a matter of interest only for the specialists among the specialists.

Now people were discussing whether there is any hope at all for nuclear arms control between the US and Russia and what happens if there is none – a new arms race? Or is a more likely prospect perhaps something new, more of an asymmetric nuclear arms competition in which each is spurred by the other’s new systems but not to match them?

Along with this, tensions are growing between the rest of NATO and Russia, punctuated by further dark moments such as last year’s novichok poisonings in the UK.

There is the trade dispute between the US and China, and close military encounters in the South China Sea where, late last year, US and Chinese warships passed within 40 metres of each other.

Beyond the great power rivalries, there is widespread violent conflict and a re-ordering of power in the Middle East. Worldwide, the incidence of armed conflict is much greater than ten years ago.

Military spending and arms transfers are at their highest levels since the end of the Cold. Regional rivalries, as between Iran and Saudi Arabia and between India and Pakistan remain heated.

There are also rifts and significantly divergent perspectives within NATO. At the MSC, it was instructive to compare the quiet politeness that greeted US Vice-President Pence’s speech with the enthusiastic applause that greeted a single mention of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s name.

As represented here, the European part of the Euro-Atlantic security community, yearning always for a strong western alliance, seriously does not like the Trump administration.

Presumably because they recognised this in their separate ways, those consummate opportunists of the annual MSC platform, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarid, both devoted their time to attacking America, not Europe.

A big part of the problem about is that there is not much appetite for a thoroughgoing rethink. For most MSC participants, the answer to the question – “Who will pick up the pieces?” – is, despite Trump, “America, please!” And into what shape should the picked-up pieces be assembled?

Few addressed the question directly but a fair inference is that, for most, the new shape should be as much like the old one as possible. According to one sharp observer of the scene, Carnegie’s Judy Dempsey in her post-MSC wash-up, what was on display at MSC was “a bickering West reluctant to address the new geostrategic realities.”

There were just a couple of moments that suggested something different. One was the first session on climate change and security that the MSC has ever staged in the main conference hall. It is about time.

We have got beyond asking whether climate change causes conflict – a dumb question because no conflict has a single cause; the discussion now is about the circumstances in which climate change contributes to insecurity.

What starts out as growing human insecurity because of, for example, over-use and inefficient management of water, can translate over time into the open warfare and human catastrophe that is Yemen today. Looking ahead, the discussion needs to address the impact of sea-level rise on low-lying coastal areas.

One billion people live less than five metres above current sea-level. What happens to the security agenda ten to fifteen years from now as these areas start to be endangered, if their governments and city authorities cannot help citizens ride out the impact of the change?

If nobody else was prepared to confront the bigger picture, Angela Merkel was. The German Chancellor opened her speech by noting that in 2016 geologists confirmed the view that we now live in the Anthropocene Epoch, when human action is the biggest influence upon nature.

And this, she said, formed the context in which all discussions of security should be held henceforth.

In sum, then: many questions, no satisfying answers, but a couple of glimmers of light showing where to look.

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Excerpt:

Dan Smith is Director, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

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Egypt choose six venues across five cities to host this year's Africa Cup of Nations including the Cairo International Stadium and the Port Said Stadium.

By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, Feb 20 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Geneva Centre) – On the occasion of the 2019 World Day of Social Justice observed on 20 February, the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue Ambassador Idriss Jazairy stated that the promotion of international solidarity and social justice are vital to the building of peaceful and inclusive societies.

Idriss Jazairy

The Geneva Centre’s Executive Director observed that “social inequality gives rise to social tensions that destabilize societies. Lack of employment opportunities stifle economic growth and result in poverty, social exclusion and discrimination.”

The rise of protest movements in developed societies – he said – is a telling testimony that economic growth can often generate deep inequalities and marginalize the lower middle class and the working class and in particular vulnerable groups such as female-headed households.

“In view of the fact that the value-chain of wealth creation knows no borders, such policies will be self-defeating and may end up in violent confrontation,” suggested the Geneva Centre’s Executive Director. The recent social tensions in Europe is a telling testimony that freewheeling globalization has translated into rising inequality of income and social exclusion.

“Indeed, while the acceleration of globalization and advances in information technology did have some upsides contributing to economic growth and material well-being, it triggered a whole range of complex problems. These include, in particular, growing inequality, increasing poverty, mismatch between qualification and employment opportunities, social disintegration and environmental degradation. The effects of materialism has adversely affected compassion, solidarity and spirituality,” Ambassador Jazairy underlined.

To address this ominous situation, the Geneva Centre Executive Director stressed the importance of identifying a more sustainable and inclusive model of globalization. Domestic and international solidarity – he said – need to be reinvented as reaffirmed in the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda of the United Nations.

In this connection, Ambassador Jazairy said: “We need to seize the opportunity to address the causes of social instability and economic backsliding. People must be empowered so as to enable them to realize their potential and take ownership of their destinies. The gap between the growing elites and ordinary people must be bridged.

“Identifying, addressing and eradicating the root-causes of social injustice will enable us to promote a more equitable development that puts the human being at the centre, and creates synergies between societal development, human security and peaceful societies. There can be no social justice without promoting peace and enhancing equal citizenship rights,” concluded the Geneva Centre’s Executive Director in his statement.

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Dorianne Rowan-Campbell is an organic coffee farmer in Jamaica. Taking over her father’s farm in 1992 and turning it into an organic one was a huge risk at the time. However, she sustainably grows 1,800 coffee trees and harnesses nature to deal with pests, rather than using pesticides. Courtesy: Dorienne Rowan-Campbell

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 20 2019 (IPS)

In 1992, the idea of replanting her father’s ruined coffee farm seemed foolhardy at the time. But in retrospect it was the best business decision that Dorienne Rowan-Campbell, an international development consultant and broadcast journalist, could have made.

Nearly three decades later, Rowan-Campbell grows organic coffee on her two hectare, Rowan’s Royale farm. The nearly 60-year-old farm is situated on a steep slope western Portland, a parish northeast of Jamaica overlooking the famous Blue Mountains, known for their coffee plantations.

Rowan-Campbell is a select grower of the famous Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, one of the most rare and expensive coffees, favoured for making delectable espresso.

“I was foolhardy I just wanted to get up in the mountains and try farming,” Rowan-Campbell tells IPS about her foray into growing coffee, an energy-boosting beverage loved the world over, which may well become scarce, thanks to climate change.

Freshly picked coffee beans. Credit: Will Boase/IPS

Shifting to organic farming a big risk but not for nature

Growing organic coffee was a major shift from conventional coffee farming but it was a big bet. Her father grew coffee the conventional way using polluting pesticides, herbicides and industrial fertilisers to manage pests and diseases while maintaining soil nutrition. She cultivates over half a hectare of the farm with more than 1,800 coffee trees.

“Organic came [about] because everyone said ‘You need a big 50-60 gallon drum to mix pesticides’ and I thought not me,” says Rowan-Campbell, a former Commonwealth Director of the Women and Development Programme at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London.

She beat the odds of having initially a poor knowledge about organic farming. Her husband and small staff were trained in organic farming techniques. And the organic farming experiment worked. In 2002, BCS OEKO-GARANTIE in Germany—which certifies some 35 percent of all organic products in the country— certified the farm organic.

Since 2004, it has been inspected and certified annually by the Certification of Environmental Standards (CERES), an organic certification agency that uses the presence of birds as one indication of environmental balance.

A 2006 study, by Humbolt University and the University of the West Indies, into birds as vectors of pest control found that although Rowan’s Royale was the smallest farm in the sample, it had the most birds, the greatest variety of birds and the least coffee berry borer (a beetle harmful to coffee crops).

“As an organic farmer, I have to harness nature and work with it because we do not use any chemicals on my farm. I have insects and birds and they eat more than 50 percent of any pests that would attack my coffee so the quality of the coffee is naturally protected,” she says, explaining that she mulches and prepares natural compost for the coffee trees and manages pests and diseases with natural chemicals.

“We have coffee rust disease right now, decimating the coffee industry in Central, South America and the Caribbean. Some people are using extremely strong chemicals to deal with it. I use a mixture of garlic and water. It works, and I share it with all the farmers.”

An estimated 4,000 farmers are growing Blue Mountain Coffee in Jamaica. This year Rowan-Campbell expects to harvest up to four tonnes of coffee beans and is marketing the coffee in America, Europe and Asia.

Dorianne Rowan-Campbell’s farm is a select producer of the famous Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, one of the most rare and expensive of coffees, favoured for making delectable espresso. Courtesy: Dorienne Rowan-Campbell

Beating climate change

Once Rowan-Campbell packed a packaged, a box with various coffee roasts and sent it to Prince Charles, the future king of England via a courier. But he never got it.

“He had asked about organic coffee and was told there was none,” she remembers. “Organic farming is an adaptation strategy against climate change and I try to teach others.”

Coffee is vulnerable to temperature change as it only grows at specific temperatures around the tropics.

Scientific research is showing that climate change will reduce coffee growing areas around the world by up to 88 percent by 2050. It has become necessary for more than 25 million coffee farmers in more than 60 tropical countries to adapt to climate change using a blend of techniques such as shade improvement and crop rotation.

“Our results suggest that coffee-suitable areas will be reduced 73–88 percent by 2050 across warming scenarios, a decline 46–76 percent greater than estimated by global assessments,” says a study by the PNAS journal.

Coffee is the second most commonly traded commodity in the world, trailing only as a source of foreign exchange to developing countries, according to the International Coffee Organisation.

Bouyed by global demand for organic produce, Rowan-Campbell—an active member of the Jamaica Organic Agriculture movement—is also growing root vegetables and makes organic jams and marmalade.

“For me organic farming it is the most important thing in farming because it says you are building a sustainable future for your great [grand] children,” she said.

However, what has made organic farming work? “Probably love and passion,” she says.

“I think it is important that in Jamaica we have this wonderful flavour of coffee. It is a gift because coffee is grown at a certain elevation and the soil is good.

“When I started, I did not know I was taking such a major step in Jamaica. I have many women who come to me and say they want to grow organic.”

Since 2004, the farm purchased by her father in 1960 has weathered four hurricanes with Hurricane Dean in 2007 damaging close to 70 of the coffee trees. Despite this, Rowan-Campbell says organic methods have prevented landslides and soil erosion on the farm.

Rowan-Campbell is a certified inspector and trains other famers in organic farming and promoting certification. Last year she was part of an initiative to develop a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) standard for organic coffee production.

Organic coffee farmers in Jamaica have had to overcome the challenges of poor regulations for organic coffee, high license fees and local certification.

Rowan-Campbell says she has no plans of expanding the business. She wants to keep it small, efficient, profitable and delivering high quality export coffee.

“I am meticulous. I want only well ripened cherries and I reap a little at a time. No big pay-out at end of the day, but sustainable production and high quality coffee.”

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Botswana Football Association sacks national team coach David Bright after a poor 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying campaign.

The top contenders have both cried foul over the delay, accusing each other of trying to rig the vote.

Some 50 human rights defenders from Latin America held a meeting at the Journalists Club in Mexico City to exchange strategies and analyse the challenges they face in the most lethal region for activists. Special rapporteurs on indigenous peoples, displaced persons and freedom of expression attended the meeting. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Feb 20 2019 (IPS)

“We’re in a very difficult situation. There is militarisation at a regional level, and gender-based violence. We are at risk, we cannot silence that,” Aura Lolita Chávez, an indigenous woman from Guatemala, complained at a meeting of human rights defenders from Latin America held in the Mexican capital.

The Quiché indigenous activist and leader of the K’iche’s People’s Council for the Defence of Life, Mother Nature, Land and Territory, told IPS that the Guatemalan government “has said that we are violent trouble-makers, but we defend our territory and we say no to the mining companies.”

Chávez, who was a finalist for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2017, and winner of the Ignacio Ellacuría Prize of the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation that same year, is an organiser of the opposition by native communities in western Guatemala against mining companies, hydroelectric dams and African oil palm producers.

She has received death threats and attacks that forced her to seek refuge in Spain in 2017.

But her case is far from an exception, in Guatemala and in the rest of Latin America, the most lethal region for human rights defenders according to different reports, especially activists involved in defending land rights and the environment.

In this increasingly alarming context, Chávez and some 50 activists from Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, the United States and Uruguay participated in the International Meeting of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists in Mexico City from Feb. 15-18, under the slogan “Defending does not mean forgetting.”

Guests at the meeting were United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz from the Philippines; UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Cecilia Jiménez-Damary from the Philippines; and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Edison Lanza from Uruguay.

The human rights defenders identified common threats such as interference by mining and oil companies in indigenous territories, government campaigns against activists, judicial persecution, gender-based violence, and polarised societies that often fail to recognise the defence of human rights.

Evelia Bahena, an activist from the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, told IPS about “the suffering and destruction” at the hands of “companies that make profits at the cost of the lives of others.”

In the municipality of Cocula, Bahena has fought against mining projects, which drew threats and lawsuits against her, forcing her to flee her community – a common fate for activists struggling against mega-projects that harm the social fabric and natural resources of the villages and towns where they are built, and the rights of local residents.

Award-winning Guatemalan indigenous activist Aura Lolita Chávez, leader of the K’iche’s Council of Peoples, has been forced to seek refuge in Spain because of death threats and attacks, due to her struggle against the activities of companies that affect the environment and indigenous territories in her country. Credit: Courtesy of ETB

A number of reports have focused on the plight of human rights defenders in the region. In the report “At what cost? Irresponsible Business and the Murder of Land and Environment Defenders 2017”, published in July 2018, the international organisation Global Witness stated that of the total of 201 murders of human rights defenders in the world in 2017, 60 percent happened in Latin America.

Brazil recorded the highest number of homicides of activists of any country, 57. In Mexico, the number was 15, five times more than the year before, while Nicaragua recorded the highest murder rate of activists relative to its population, with four killings, according to the British-based organisation.

The “Global Analysis 2018”, produced by the international organisation Front Line Defenders, also depicts a grim outlook, counting 321 human rights defenders killed in 27 countries, nine more than in 2017. Of that total, 77 percent involved defenders of the land, the environment and indigenous people.

In the Americas, the most common violations consisted of threats and smear campaigns, according to the Irish-based organisation. In Colombia, 126 activists were murdered; in Mexico, 48; in Guatemala, 26; in Brazil, 23; and in Honduras, eight.

For Ana María Rodríguez, a representative of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, difficult conditions persist in her country, where 20 human rights activists have been murdered so far in 2019.

“We still don’t have an effective response from the state” to guarantee the safety of human rights defenders, Rodríguez told IPS.

The most numerous victims are social organisers from areas once controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a guerrilla group that is now a political party with representation in parliament, after signing a peace agreement with the government in 2016, ending half a century of armed conflict.

Special rapporteurs on different aspects of human rights take part in the Feb. 18 closing ceremony of the Latin American meeting of human rights defenders and journalists in Mexico City. Credit: Courtesy of CMDPDH

“There are delays and non-compliance with the peace agreement,” which have contributed to the defencelessness of human rights activists, according to the lawyer.

In Mexico, this year has already claimed a deadly quota, with at least six human rights defenders and three journalists killed.

Added to this record number are the ongoing crises in Nicaragua and Venezuela, the arrival in January of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who has issued open threats against civil society, and statements by leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in office in Mexico since December, against civil society organisations and journalists who take a critical stance.

The rapporteurs present at the meeting, on unofficial visits to Mexico, listened to the accounts given by activists and recalled that governments in the region have international obligations to respect, such as guaranteeing the rights of indigenous people, displaced persons and journalists, as well as protecting human rights defenders.

“One of the basic rights is to prior consultation and obtaining free, prior and informed consent,” especially with respect to megaprojects, Tauli-Corpuz, UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, who belongs to the native Kankanaey Igorot people of the Philippines, told IPS.

In her October report on Mexico, the special rapporteur criticised the violation of rights of indigenous people, especially the right to prior consulation on energy, land or tourism projects in their territories.

López Obrador’s government plans to build a railway running through five states in the south and southeast of the country and to create an overland route linking the Pacific and Atlantic coasts that runs across native lands – projects that are opposed by affected communities.

For his part, Lanza, the IACHR special rapporteur, said the recommendations of the joint report released in June 2018 with David Kaye, UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, should be the starting point for the measures to be adopted by the Mexican government.

“The important thing is for the State to comply with the recommendations. We are following that up,” he told IPS. In March, his office will present its annual regional report on freedom of expression.

Jiménez-Damary highlighted that Colombia is the most critical case of forced internal displacement, with some 6.5 million victims as of 2017, while in Mexico some 345,000 people have had to leave their homes and in El Salvador, 296,000.

“One displaced person is already one too many. The state has the main responsibility” in such cases, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of internally displaced persons told IPS.

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 19 2019 (IPS)

For two centuries, all too many discussions about hunger and resource scarcity has been haunted by the ghost of Parson Thomas Malthus. Malthus warned that rising populations would exhaust resources, especially those needed for food production. Exponential population growth would outstrip food output.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Humanity now faces a major challenge as global warming is expected to frustrate the production of enough food as the world population rises to 9.7 billion by 2050. Timothy Wise’s new book [Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food. New Press, New York, 2019] argues that most solutions currently put forward by government, philanthropic and private sector luminaries are misleading.

Malthus’ ghost returns
The early 2008 food price crisis has often been wrongly associated with the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. The number of hungry in the world was said to have risen to over a billion, feeding a resurgence of neo-Malthusianism.

Agribusiness advocates fed such fears, insisting that food production must double by 2050, and high-yielding industrial agriculture, under the auspices of agribusiness, is the only solution. In fact, the world is mainly fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale, often called family farmers who produce over two-thirds of developing countries’ food.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, neither food scarcity nor poor physical access are the main causes of food insecurity and hunger. Instead, Reuters has observed a ‘global grain glut’, with surplus cereal stocks piling up.

Meanwhile, poor production, processing and storage facilities cause food losses of an average of about a third of developing countries’ output. A similar share is believed lost in rich countries due to wasteful food storage, marketing and consumption behaviour.

Nevertheless, despite grain abundance, the 2018 State of Food Insecurity report — by the Rome-based United Nations food agencies led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) — reported rising chronic and severe hunger or undernourishment involving more than 800 million.

Political, philanthropic and corporate leaders have promised to help struggling African and other countries grow more food, by offering to improve farming practices. New seed and other technologies would modernize those left behind.

But producing more food, by itself, does not enable the hungry to eat. Thus, agribusiness and its philanthropic promoters are often the problem, not the solution, in feeding the world.

Eating Tomorrow addresses related questions such as: Why doesn’t rising global food production feed the hungry? How can we “feed the world” of rising populations and unsustainable pressure on land, water and other natural resources that farmers need to grow food?

Family farmers lack power
Drawing on five years of extensive fieldwork in Southern Africa, Mexico, India and the US Mid-West, Wise concludes that the problem is essentially one of power. He shows how powerful business interests influence government food and agricultural policies to favour large farms.

This is typically at the expense of ‘family’ farmers, who grow most of the world’s food, but also involves putting consumers and others at risk, e.g., due to agrochemical use. His many examples not only detail and explain the many problems small-scale farmers face, but also their typically constructive responses despite lack of support, if not worse, from most governments:

• In Mexico, trade liberalization following the 1993 North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) agreement swamped the country with cheap, subsidized US maize and pork, accelerating migration from the countryside. Apparently, this was actively encouraged by transnational pork producers employing ‘undocumented’ and un-unionised Mexican workers willing to accept low wages and poor working conditions.
• In Malawi, large government subsidies encouraged farmers to buy commercial fertilizers and seeds from US agribusinesses such as now Bayer-owned Monsanto, but to little effect, as their productivity and food security stagnated or even deteriorated. Meanwhile, Monsanto took over the government seed company, favouring its own patented seeds at the expense of productive local varieties, while a former senior Monsanto official co-authored the national seed policy that threatens to criminalize farmers who save, exchange and sell seeds instead!
• In Zambia, greater use of seeds and fertilizers from agribusiness tripled maize production without reducing the country’s very high rates of poverty and malnutrition. Meanwhile, as the government provides 250,000-acre ‘farm blocks’ to foreign investors, family farmers struggle for title to farm land.
• In Mozambique too, the government gives away vast tracts of farm land to foreign investors. Meanwhile, women-led cooperatives successfully run their own native maize seed banks.
• Meanwhile, Iowa promotes vast monocultures of maize and soybean to feed hogs and bioethanol rather than ‘feed the world’.
• A large Mexican farmer cooperative launched an ‘agro-ecological revolution’, while the old government kept trying to legalize Monsanto’s controversial genetically modified maize. Farmers have thus far halted the Monsanto plan, arguing that GM corn threatens the rich diversity of native Mexican varieties.

Much of the research for the book was done in 2014-15, when Obama was US president, although the narrative begins with developments and policies following the 2008 food price crisis, during Bush’s last year in the White House. The book tells a story of US big business’ influence on policies enabling more aggressive transnational expansion.

Yet, Wise remains optimistic, emphasizing that the world can feed the hungry, many of whom are family farmers. Despite the challenges they face, many family farmers are finding innovative and effective ways to grow more and better food. He advocates support for farmers’ efforts to improve their soil, output and wellbeing.

Eating better
Hungry farmers are nourishing their life-giving soils using more ecologically sound practices to plant a diversity of native crops, instead of using costly chemicals for export-oriented monocultures. According to Wise, they are growing more and better food, and are capable of feeding the hungry.

Unfortunately, most national governments and international institutions still favour large-scale, high-input, industrial agriculture, neglecting more sustainable solutions offered by family farmers, and the need to improve the wellbeing of poor farmers.

Undoubtedly, many new agricultural techniques offer the prospect of improving the welfare of farmers, not only by increasing productivity and output, but also by limiting costs, using scarce resources more effectively, and reducing the drudgery of farm work.

But the world must recognize that farming may no longer be viable for many who face land, water and other resource constraints, unless they get better access to such resources. Meanwhile, malnutrition of various types affects well over two billion people in the world, and industrial agriculture contributes about 30% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Going forward, it will be important to ensure affordable, healthy and nutritious food supplies for all, mindful not only of food and water safety, but also of various pollution threats. A related challenge will be to enhance dietary diversity affordably to overcome micronutrient deficiencies and diet-related non-communicable diseases for all.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

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