Africa

Child labourers rescued in Delhi waiting to be sent back to their villages. Credit: Bachpan Bachao Andolan.

By Vladimir Bozovic
BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec 18 2018 (IPS)

Entire human history is one great struggle for freedom. To many, slavery is a synonym for something in the past, for transatlantic slave trade, but, unfortunately, slavery still exists in many different forms.

Records show that over twenty seven million men, women and children still live today in conditions that characterized social form of the slave ownership. They are trapped in forced labor and debt bondage, in domicile work and forced marriages, or they are being exploited by the human traffickers. We can easily speak of slavery as of great tragedy, and the fact that in this day and age still exists, is a downfall of human kind.

Modern slavery is a challenge for every democratic country. Suffering is the same as in the past, but methods are more sophisticated and perfidious, and most of those who suffer are the ones that should be protected the most – poor and socially excluded groups, who often live on the margins of our society, and young women and children. This is not an imaginary problem, it does not happen only to someone else and somewhere else; rather, it is a real threat and anyone can fall victim to.

The very first challenge in fight against slavery must be a cognizance: we must confess a bitter truth that slavery has been weakened, but still exists. Human trafficking is one of the growing forms of transnational crime, characterized by high profit and low risk, and it is followed by a grave statistics. It is crime of economic nature, and most efficiently organized, and we are currently fighting it on inconsistent and fragmented way. That is the dark side of globalization.

The issue of modern slavery is globally recognized by the UN in its millennium goals. Goal 8 is dedicated to increasing labor productivity, reducing the unemployment rate, especially for young people, improving access to financial services and benefits, fight against modern slavery and child labor. So many activities around this particular global goal prove that we don’t live anymore in a selfish world where we don’t consider other nations and their problems. No, the world of todays opens up to the misery of others, and everybody everywhere has to be good, for us to feel good. Employed, productive populations, sustainable economic growth, decent jobs with equal opportunities for fair salaries, safe working environments, social protection, these are all values that will ensure the progress of the entire world, and the whole world will benefit from the creativity, business and innovation of the free people.

Plenty has been done in delivering the Goal 8. UN reports that the average annual growth rate of real GDP per capita worldwide increased, the number of children from 5 to 17 years of age who are working has declined, access to financial services through automated teller machines increased… Plenty has been done, but also plenty has to be done. Child labor remains a serious concern with more than half of child laborers participate in dangerous work and 59% of them work in the agricultural sector; labor productivity has slowed down, the global unemployment rate hasn’t changed from 2016, with women more likely to be unemployed than men across all age groups. Youth were almost three times as likely as adults to be unemployed… It is clear that efforts provide results, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

There was a time we thought that the slavery is forever beaten, only to come back to us in new forms and shapes. That is why the solution must be fresh and brave. The only final answer to this problem is for every country, every government, every agency to work together, to unite and create an Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition that will engage entire society in fight against this crime, and combine all our efforts in protecting our citizens. It should be understood that eradicating the human trafficking is not solely a mission for the police or law enforcement agencies, this is a fight at all levels of society. We should campaign through media with the message that will define the problem, and develop the clear strategy that will unite countries and governments, churches and religious organizations, NGOs, youth, academic communities, media and all other important representatives of the society in one efficient and effective action with clear mechanisms of measuring the results. Everything should be designed in the way that those results are realistic and visible to the present victims, and to provide prevention and protection for potential victims. Time has clearly shown us, that this is one thing we can’t beat alone, nationally, rather, it’s a nick of time to do it globally.

The post Global Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Vladimir Bozovic is Advisor of Government of the Republic of Serbia

The post Global Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Nigeria and Brighton defender Leon Balogun becomes the first African Premier League star to pledge 1% of his wages to the Common Goal charity

The Tottenham fan who threw a banana skin during the north London derby at Arsenal is fined and banned from football for four years.

Ibeyi is a band made up of two French-Cuban sisters, who often sing in the West African language Yoruba.

Kakuma, one of Kenya's biggest refugee camps, holds an annual talent show.

Thousands have signed a petition against Disney registering Swahili phrase "hakuna matata".

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR & SYDNEY, Dec 18 2018 (IPS)

The notion of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and later, South Africa) was concocted by Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill. His 2001 acronym was initially seen as a timely, if not belated acknowledgement of the rise of the South.

But if one takes China out of the BRICS, one is left with little more than RIBS. While the RIBS have undoubtedly grown in recent decades, their expansion has been quite uneven and much more modest than China’s, while the post-Soviet Russian economy contracted by half during Boris Yeltsin’s first three years of ‘shock therapy’ during 1992-1994.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Unsurprisingly, Goldman Sachs quietly shut down its BRICS investment fund in October 2015 after years of losses, marking “the end of an era”, according to Bloomberg.

Growth spurts in South America’s southern cone and sub-Saharan Africa lasted over a decade until the Saudi-induced commodity price collapse from 2014. But the recently celebrated rise of the South and developing country convergence with the OECD has largely remained an East Asian story.

Preventing emulation
Increasingly, that has involved China’s and South Korea’s continued ascendance after Japan’s financial ‘big bang’ and ensuing stagnation three decades ago. They have progressed and grown rapidly for extended periods precisely because they have not followed rules set by the advanced economies.

Industrial policy — involving state owned enterprises (SOEs), technology transfer agreements, government procurement, strict terms for foreign direct investment and other developmental interventions — was condemned by the Washington Consensus, promoting liberalization, privatization and deregulation favouring large transnational corporations.

Anis Chowdhury

Well-managed SOEs, government procurement practices and effective protection conditional on export promotion accelerated structural transformation. When foreign corporations were allowed to invest, they were typically required to transfer technology to the host economy.

Countries have only progressed by using industrial policy judiciously when sufficient policy space was available, as was the norm in most developed countries. But such successful development practices have been denied to most developing countries in recent decades. Instead, the North now emphasizes the dangers of industrial policy, subsidies, SOEs and technology transfer agreements, to justify precluding their use by others.

Blocking the alternative
Instead, corporate-led globalization continues to be sold as the way to develop and progress.
Some advocates insist that global value chain participation will provide handsome opportunities for sustained economic development despite the evidence to the contrary.

Major OECD economies appear intent on tightening international rules to further reduce developing countries’ policy space under the pretext of reforming the multilateral trading system in order to save it.

Trump and other challenges to this neoliberal narrative do not offer any better options for the South. Nevertheless, their nationalist and chauvinist rhetoric has undermined the pious claims and very legitimacy of their neoliberal ‘globalist’ rivals on the Right.

Infrastructure finance
UNCTAD’s 2018 Trade and Development Report emphasizes the link between infrastructure and industrialization. It argues that successful industrialization since 19th century England has crucially depended on public infrastructure. Infrastructure investment is thus considered crucial for economic growth and structural transformation.

The ascendance of the neoliberal Washington Consensus agenda has not only undermined public interventions generally, but also state revenue and spending in particular, especially in the developing world. But even the World Bank now admits that it had wrongly discouraged infrastructure financing, which it now advocates.

Most Western controlled international financial institutions have recently advocated public-private partnerships to finance, manage and implement infrastructure projects. The presumption is that only the private sector has the expertise and capacity to be efficient and profitable. In practice, states borrowed and bore most of the risk, e.g., of contingent liabilities, while private partners reaped much profit, often with state guaranteed revenues.

Unexpected policy space
Infrastructure, including both its construction and financing, has been central, not only to China’s own progress, but also to its international development cooperation. China’s financial redeployment of its massive current account surplus has created an alternative to traditional sources of investment finance, both private and public.

The availability of Chinese infrastructure finance on preferential or concessionary terms has been enthusiastically taken up, not least by countries long starved of investible resources. Not surprisingly, this has resulted in over-investments in some infrastructure, resulting in underutilization and poor returns to investment.

The resulting debt burdens and related problems have been well publicized, if not exaggerated by critics with different motivations. Now threatened by China’s rise, Western governments and Japan have suddenly found additional resources to offer similar concessionary financing for their own infrastructure firms.

Thus, not unlike the US-Soviet Cold War, the perceived new threat from China has created a new bipolar rivalry. That has inadvertently created policy space and concessions reminiscent of the post-Second World War ‘Golden Age’ for Keynesian and development economics.

The post Taking Away the Ladder appeared first on Inter Press Service.

City view of Hanoi, Vietnam. Vietnam is prioritising green growth. Credit: Adam Bray/IPS

By Pascal Laureyn
PHNOM PENH, Dec 18 2018 (IPS)

Vietnam’s shift from a centrally planned to a market economy has transformed the country. And while it is now is one of the most dynamic emerging countries in Southeast Asia, this has sometimes been at the expense of the environment. But the country has begun to prioritise green growth.

Vietnam’s economic growth has been accompanied by significant rural to urban migration, which has led to increased social and environmental challenges. Over the past decade, 700 square kilometres of land has been converted into urban areas. Vietnam’s emissions per unit of GDP are surpassing all other Asia-Pacific developing countries, except for China. This is fuelled by domestic coal consumption, which currently accounts for 36 percent of electricity supply and is projected to increase 56 percent by 2030.

But recently the concept of an inclusive green economy has emerged as a strategic priority in the country. A green growth economy is one that improves human well-being and builds social equity while reducing environmental risks.

The intergovernmental organisation, the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), is trying to promote just that. GGGI is working to increase green energy production and reduce greenhouse gases emissions and has been assisting with the development of green master plans, strategies for renewable energy and bankable projects for Vietnam’s cities.

IPS spoke to Adam Ward, the Country Representative of GGGI for Vietnam. Excerpts of the interview follow.

Adam Ward, the Country Representative of Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) for Vietnam says that his organisation is working on policies for the growth of green cities. Courtesy: Adam Ward

Inter Press Service (IPS): GGGI does not donate funds. So how can you develop green growth?

Adam Ward (AW): We support planning for projects like solar power and electric buses. We also seek finance for the government and the private sector at accessible rates so these projects can get implemented.

We have worked with the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) to develop guidelines for prioritisation and allocation of funding to public infrastructure. We have also worked on a process to solicit projects from small and medium enterprises and appraise them. We helped them to understand how to submit projects and access financing.

The government sees the value in our work. With MPI, we developed a handbook for the appraisal of public investment projects, [which is] becoming government policy. Projects worth over four billion dollars have been appraised under this inclusive framework. Like components of the airport, metro lines in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. It is really great to see that our guidelines are being used for sustainable growth.

IPS: Economic growth needs energy. How do you keep it sustainable?

AW: For example, we advised the government on generating energy from bagasse (the dry pulpy residue that remains after sugarcane is crushed to extract the juice). And how much can they potentially generate, how much investment is required and how to sell it to the grid. This makes sense, both economically and environmentally. It is clean energy that can be sold. Then we presented our advice to the government on better tariffs to stimulate the production of this green energy.

IPS: Does GGGI advise on national policies. How does it affect local decision making?

AW: We are also working on policies for the growth of green cities. The Ministry of Construction has already approved one of our suggestions, which has been incorporated into an Urban Green Growth Development Plan. Another one is the set-up of green growth indicators. Cities are now legally required to report the implementation of green growth. We also worked on waste water treatment and city planning. And we are kicking off a project on generating energy with municipal waste.

IPS: Vietnam has only recently risen out of poverty. Is green growth a real concern?

AW: There is definitely openness for green growth. Vietnam wants their development to be inclusive, sustainable and as green as possible. However, what we have seen is that growth has taken an upper hand on the environment. What we really want to tell the government is that the quality of growth matters for the future. [Especially] in Vietnam, a country that is very vulnerable to climate change.

Emissions are increasing rapidly. There are challenges with air quality in cities. Growth is important, we recognise that Vietnam wants to develop. But our message is that the quality of growth matters too. By embracing green growth there will be no downsides in terms of economic development.

IPS: What are the challenges facing GGGI?

AW: Vietnam has a high energy demand. And given the GDP growth, it will increase dramatically. They want to meet a large part of that via coal, which will have a serious impact on carbon emissions. But it will also pollute the surrounding cities and the agricultural lands surrounding coal plants. That’s going to be a massive challenge.

The second challenge facing Vietnam is climate change. The Mekong Delta is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to climate change. Sea level rise and droughts are more common. Typhoons are more extreme.

The third area is the cities. Around 30 percent of the population lives in or around cities. This is set to increase to over 50 percent by 2050.
This brings a lot of benefits in terms of economic development, however, this mass influx of people brings challenges in terms of infrastructure in a way to support transport, housing, etc. This is exactly why GGGI is working on renewable energy, sustainable waste management, providing guidance on increasing investment into green projects and also specifically working with cities to make them cleaner.

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The advertising authority says a commercial showing an African conquering Europe is offensive.

Fifa bans the former president of The Gambia Football Federation Seedy Kinteh for four years after finding him guilty of corruption.

Chris Wellisz is on the staff of Finance and Development at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) *

By Chris Wellisz
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 18 2018 (IPS)

Oleksii Sobolev was a fund manager by day and a pro-democracy protester by night. After work, he would leave his office at Dragon Asset Management in Kiev to join the crowds camped out in Independence Square demanding the resignation of a president they viewed as corrupt.

Sobolev handed out food and helped clean up the square. When police started firing at the so-called Maidan protesters, he brought tires that were burned to create a protective curtain of smoke.

“The saying was, ‘Fires save lives,’” Sobolev recalls.

Ukraine’s president ended up in exile, and Sobolev gave up managing money to take an unpaid advisory post helping to restructure state-owned enterprises. Four years later, he has put his business skills to work fighting corruption, a problem that continues to bedevil the eastern European country of 44 million people.

Ukraine ranked 131st among 176 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2016.

Sobolev’s team of activists created an electronic auction system that brought transparency to notoriously murky sales of public assets ranging from bank loans to scrap metal.

In its first 13 months, the system, ProZorro.Sale, handled $210 million, almost as much as the money raised from conventional privatization sales in the past five years, says Max Nefyodov, Ukraine’s first deputy economy minister. That’s a significant boost for the cash-strapped Ukrainian government.

Sobolev belongs to a new breed of idealistic young people who are using digital technologies to promote transparency and integrity. Just as smartphones and social media helped empower popular uprisings from Ukraine to Tunisia, 21st century technologies such as blockchain and big data offer powerful new weapons against corruption, a phenomenon that dates back at least as far as the first century BC, when Julius Caesar secured the office of Pontifex Maximus by greasing voters’ palms.

Corruption’s toll
Worldwide, bribery alone is estimated to cost as much as $2 trillion a year, about equal to the GDP of Italy and many times the $142 billion in global development aid. But corruption takes a much bigger toll, according to a 2016 IMF study “Corruption: Costs and Mitigating Strategies.” It discourages private investment, curbing economic growth.

Corrupt officials channel public funds to wasteful projects that generate bribes, depleting funds that could be spent on health, education, and other services that benefit the poor. And young people have little incentive to acquire new skills in societies where who they know is more important than what they know.

“Countries that are less corrupt have higher growth rates, have higher levels of GDP, and have higher levels on the Human Development Index of the United Nations,” which measures things like life expectancy and years of schooling, says Susan Rose-Ackerman, a Yale University law professor who studies the political economy of corruption.

That explains why international financial institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, are helping governments fight corruption through improved transparency, accountability, and institution building.

The anti-corruption drive is providing opportunities for private technology companies like the Bitfury Group, which signed a contract with the Republic of Georgia to register land titles using blockchain technology. Blockchain serves simultaneously as a means of exchange—of money or information—and a database that automatically registers transactions.

Records are encrypted and stored across a network of computers, rather than in a central location, so they cannot be altered or stolen.

Some start-ups are offering their services to charitable organizations as well as governments. Among them is Dublin-based AID:Tech, which created a platform that ensures the integrity of charitable contributions and social welfare payments.

“I know a lot of people who would love to give money but don’t because they don’t know where it goes,” says AID:Tech’s CEO and cofounder, Joseph Thompson.

AID:Tech was inspired by a charity event in 2009. Thompson ran 152 miles across the Sahara Desert to raise money for children who needed reconstructive surgery. When he asked for evidence that the aid had been delivered to the intended recipients, the charity couldn’t provide it.

Thompson, who has master’s degrees in business, digital currencies, and computer science, set out to find a way to make sure that charitable donations don’t go astray. He found it in blockchain, also known as distributed ledger technology.

Originally developed to store and exchange Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, it has since been adapted for a variety of uses.

“If you can get an end-beneficiary on the blockchain, that’s their bank account,” Thompson says. Donations go straight to the beneficiary, without intermediaries; the company provides the technology but doesn’t handle any money.

“There’s no more fraud, no more people claiming benefits for dead parents or brothers and sisters who have emigrated.”

The Irish Red Cross agreed to test Thompson’s solution with a program to distribute aid to Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Each recipient was given a small plastic card stamped with a QR code—a type of machine-readable optical label.

Money was deducted when the cards were scanned at supermarket checkout counters. Five hundred electronic vouchers worth $20 apiece were redeemed in Lebanon, and not a penny went astray.

“The results were fantastic,’’ says Daniel Curran, head of fundraising for the Irish Red Cross. Using a dashboard Thompson set up, he tracked spending by recipients in real time, gleaning valuable insights into their needs. (He was surprised to learn that refugees bound for resettlement in Ireland bought dental products rather than winter clothes.)

The technology also allows charities to appeal to a younger class of smartphone-wielding donors, and it reduces their reliance on expensive direct-marketing campaigns. That means more money will flow to the people who need it.

“This is a cheaper, more transparent, faster, and efficient way of not just obtaining the donation, but actually getting the donation to the beneficiary in the end,” Curran says.

Doing well by doing good
AID:Tech is expanding rapidly, with contracts to provide software for the delivery of remittances to Serbia, social welfare payments in Jordan, and aid to homeless women in Ireland. It is raising between $3 million and $5 million from investors and plans to open offices in Singapore and Dubai. The goal is to have at least 100,000 people on the platform by June.

Thompson doesn’t hesitate to say he aims to do well by doing good. “We are a for-profit, but we’re using technology to solve some of the world’s biggest problems,’’ he says. The platform, he says, can be used by governments and social welfare agencies around the globe, with a potential customer base in the billions.

Another promising use for blockchain: secure digital storage of documents.

“Blockchain is so powerful because it gives us something we didn’t have in the digital world,” says Gonzalo Blousson, cofounder and CEO of Signatura, a platform that can be used to sign and notarize documents among multiple people. “Digital information is easy to modify. Blockchain gives us immutability.”

Blousson is working with Argentina’s second-largest city, Córdoba, which recently passed a law requiring public officials to file financial disclosure forms. Blockchain ensures that the forms are both visible to the public and cannot be altered.

Blousson and his team also used the technology to build a procurement platform, called Teneris, which companies and governments can use to solicit bids from suppliers of goods and services, a process that is often rife with opportunities for bribery and bid rigging.

Still, blockchain has its limitations, says Beth Noveck, a New York University (NYU) professor who specializes in the use of technology to bring transparency to government. Corruption also occurs after bids are awarded—when a building contractor uses shoddy materials to cut corners, for example.

That’s where big data offers a promising investigatory tool, Noveck says. The technology makes it possible to aggregate data on government spending and contracting and to analyze it for signs of waste, fraud, and corruption. As Noveck puts it, “You can spot the patterns of whose brother-in-law got too many contracts.”

Mobilizing citizen involvement also makes a difference, says Noveck, a lawyer by training who heads NYU’s Governance Lab. People like Diego Mendiburu are doing just that. A former journalist and technology buff, he put together a team of programmers to develop a mobile app that allows Mexicans to report substandard public services.

Users with smartphones can capture and share short videos of potholes that go unfilled or trees that are cut down illegally as a way of shaming public officials and pressuring them to act.

The app, Supercivicos, uses GPS technology to pinpoint the date and location of the videos, then builds a database of reports that can be used by civic groups and government agencies to identify problem services and find solutions.

Mendiburu wants users to become engaged citizen-journalists. “It’s not only about pointing out what’s wrong, it’s about telling stories,” he says. “We believe that this project can be exported to other countries in Latin America.”

In Ukraine, there are similar ambitions for ProZorro.Sale (the name combines the Ukrainian word for transparency with Zorro, the fictional Mexican who defended the poor against corrupt officials). As of December, Transparency International Ukraine was in talks with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to adapt the system for use elsewhere in Europe.

Of course, digital technology, while effective, can be stymied by governments, whose support is needed in the fight against official corruption. Late last year, the IMF and World Bank criticized Ukraine for undermining its recently established National Anti-Corruption Bureau and for failing to make good on promises to create an independent anti-corruption court.

“E-tools are important, but institutions are far more important,” says Viktor Nestulia, director of the Innovation Projects Program at Transparency International Ukraine.

*https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2018/03/pdf/wellisz.pdf

The post Digital Crusaders: Technology Offers Weapons for the Battle Against Corruption appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Chris Wellisz is on the staff of Finance and Development at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) *

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President Uhuru Kenyatta signs the Universal Health Coverage charter during the launch of the UHC pilot programme in Kisumu on 13 December 2018. Photo courtesy: PSCU

By Sicily Kariuki and Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 18 2018 (IPS)

According to Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, the implementation of UHC is “more a political than an economic challenge”.

Of all the Sustainable Development Goals, few would rival good health as the definition of a country that has a sustainable, inclusive, peaceful and prosperous future, and the launch this week of the pilot phase of Kenya’s journey towards Universal Health Coverage heralds a major step towards that future.

It was a fitting statement of national intent and unity to make UHC a success in Kenya to see President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto preside over the launch of the pilot programme in Kisumu county. They were joined by erstwhile political contenders, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka, united by a shared vision to improve health coverage in Kenya.

Ensuring that the pursuit of good health leaves no one in financial dire straits is a task that requires much more than good intentions. WHO estimates that to achieve SDG target 3.8 requires one billion more people to have universal health coverage by 2023.

In Kenya, health-related expenses are driving about one million into poverty every year, and health care is second only to food in family budgets. These are families that wake up every day to the reality that they could be within just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy and penury.

In demonstration of his commitment to keep health front and centre of the development agenda, President Kenyatta has identified health as one of the key pillars of his legacy.

The promise of UHC is based on real-life experiences of countries with whom we have much in common. The transformation of countries now known as Asian Tigers was largely driven by investments in the health of the citizens, with special focus on sexual and reproductive health.

When the health of the mother is provided for, the cyclical benefits in terms of physical and cognitive development of the subsequent generations is assured.

The Ministry of Health has been working with the United Nations (UN) in Kenya & various stakeholders to identify what interventions represent the most effective pathways for attaining UHC in Kenya. These partners include civil society and the private sector.

Our vision is for approaches that are not just affordable, but those that promote equity and effectiveness, ensuring that the rights of the most vulnerable are not forgotten, as the central tenet of universality.

Kenya also announced that UHC will involve scaling up immunization, prevention of water borne, vector borne, TB, HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, improving maternal and child health as well as nutrition of women who conceive. Kenya will also focus on prevention of non-communicable diseases like diabetes and hypertension.

Our mission is to deliver a robust system that will reach out to those who have been left behind. Through community health workers and volunteers, we know that a few more vaccines will be delivered to children in a remote village; there might be new case of an infectious outbreak detected, reported and averted.

It is because of the primacy of these community volunteers as frontline workers and their role in the achievement of UHC that the Government has established a fund to provide a stipend as an incentive for the workers.

The partnership between the Ministry and the UN system in Kenya is steadily building the foundations for a responsive health system for communities, for whom health was inaccessible, unaffordable or altogether unavailable.

In the frontier counties of North-eastern Kenya, flagship programmes such as the Area-based joint programme with the county of Turkana are steadily delivering results. We are targeting not just dramatic, overnight success, but the incremental changes that for instance involve building the capacity of community health workers to deliver primary health care.

Investing in making progress towards universal health coverage, they lay the foundation for making progress towards all the other health targets and other goals – like ending poverty, improving gender equality, decent work and economic growth, and more.

With Kenya’s Vision 2030 ambition of providing a high quality of life to all its citizens, the most urgent need is to ensure that everyone stays healthy to participate in economic development.

The Government of Kenya and UN partnership is committed to make Kenya the blueprint for the rest of Africa on how Universal Health Coverage can be attained.

The post United Towards Achieving Health For All in Kenya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sicily Kariuki is the Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Health in Kenya. Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

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Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, nicknamed "make-it-happen", is the president's preferred successor in Sunday's election.

Racism remains deeply embedded in South Africa nearly 25 years after minority rule ended, writes Fergal Keane.

By Amnesty International
Dec 17 2018 (Amnesty International)

After a record number of UN member states today supported at the final vote a key UN General Assembly resolution calling for a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty, Amnesty International’s Death Penalty Expert Chiara Sangiorgio said:

“The fact that more countries than ever before have voted to end executions shows that global abolition of the death penalty is becoming an inevitable reality. A death penalty-free world is closer than ever.

“This vote sends yet another important signal that more and more countries are willing to take steps to end this cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment once and for all.

“The result also shows the increasing isolation of the 35 countries that voted against the resolution. Those countries still retaining the death penalty should immediately establish a moratorium on executions as a first step towards full abolition.”

Background
121 of the UN’s 193 member states voted in favour of the seventh resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty at the UNGA plenary session in New York, while 35 voted against and 32 abstained. 117 had done so in December 2016. This resolution was proposed by Brazil on behalf of an Inter-Regional Task Force of member states and co-sponsored by 83 states.

For the first time, Dominica, Libya, Malaysia and Pakistan changed their vote to support the resolution, while Antigua and Barbuda, Guyana and South Sudan moved from opposition to abstention. Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Mauritius, Niger, and Rwanda once again voted in favour of the call for a moratorium on executions, having not done so in 2016.

Five countries reversed their 2016 votes, with Nauru moving from vote in favour to vote against and Bahrain and Zimbabwe switching from abstention to opposition. Congo and Guinea changed from voting in favour to abstention.

When the UN was founded in 1945 only eight of the then 51 UN member states had abolished the death penalty. Today, 103 of 193 member states have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, and 139 have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. In 2017 executions were reported in 22 UN member states, 11% of the total. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception.

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The bodies of two Scandinavian women are found in the Atlas mountains with cuts to their necks.

The Mayan Train megaproject in southern Mexico will affect key ecosystems of the Yucatan Peninsula, which is home to 25 protected natural areas, such as this lake in the SíijilNohá community reserve, next to the Sian Ka'an protected area. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO, Mexico, Dec 17 2018 (IPS)

“If thousands of people flock to this town, how will we be able to service them? I’m afraid of that growth,” ZendyEuán, spokeswoman for a community organisation,said in reference to the Mayan Train (TM) project, a railway network that will run through five states in southern Mexico.

Euán, a Mayan indigenous woman living in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto (FCP), told IPS that they lack detailed information about the megaproject, one of the high-profile initiatives promised during his campaign by the new leftistPresident Andrés Manuel LópezObrador, popularly known by his acronym AMLO.

“It’s not clear to us. We don’t know about the project,” said Euán, who also questioned the benefits promised by the president, who was sworn in on Dec. 1, for the local population, as well as the mechanisms for participation in the project and the threats it poses to the environment."They are violating our indigenous rights. We don't agree with how the consultation was carried out, and we don't see the benefits for the local communities. This is aimed at tourist spots. Those who will benefit are the big businesses." -- Miguel Ku

“What will be the benefit for the local community members, for the craftswomen? As ecotourism communities, will we be able to promote our businesses and goods?” said the spokeswoman for the Community Tourism Network of the Maya Zone of Quintana Roo, one of the states in southeastern Mexico that share the Yucatan Peninsula, on the Atlantic coast, with 1.5 million inhabitants.

The network, launched in 2014, brings together 11 community organisations from three municipalities of Quintana Roo and offers ecotourism and cultural tours in the area, its main economic activity.

In the municipality of FCP, home to just over 81,000 people, there are 84 ejidos,areas of communal land used for agriculture, where community members own and farm their own plots, which can also be sold.

One of them, of the same name as the municipality, FCP, covering 47,000 hectares and belonging to 250 “ejidatarios” or members, manages the ejidal reserves Síijil Noh Há (“where the water flows,” in the Mayan language) and Much’KananK’aax (“let’s take care of the forest together”).

Euán’s doubts are shared by thousands of inhabitants of the peninsula, which receives almost seven million tourists every year.

IPS travelled a stretch of the preliminary TM route through Quintana Roo and the neighboring state of Campeche and noted the general lack of detailed information about the project and its possible ecological, social and cultural consequences in a region with high levels of poverty and social marginalisation.

The government’s National Tourism Fund (Fonatur) is promoting the project, at a cost of between 6.2 and 7.8 billion dollars. The plan is for it to start operating in 2022, with 15 stations along 1,525 kilometers in 41 municipalities in the states of Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Yucatán.

The locomotives will run on biodiesel -possibly made from palm oil- and the trains are projected to move about three million passengers annually, in addition to cargo.

Zendy Euán, spokesperson for a community tourism network, explains in the Mayan Museum of the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in the state of Quintana Roo, that the Mayan Train will run through key environmental areas of southern Mexico. Social and indigenous organisations question the benefits of the megaproject, one of the star projects of the new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The new government argues that the project will boost the region’s socioeconomic development, foster social inclusion and job creation, safeguard indigenous cultures, protect the peninsula’s Protected Natural Areas (PNA), and strengthen the tourism industry.

Ancient ecosystems

The railway will cut through the heart of the Mayan jungle, an ecosystem that formed the base of the Mayan empire that dominated the entire Mesoamerican region – southern Mexico and Central America – from the 8th century until the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century.

This is the most important rainforest in Latin America after the Amazon region and a key area in the conservation of natural wealth in Mexico, which ranks 12th among the most megadiverse countries on the planet.

The region belongs to the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor consisting of habitats running from southern Mexico to Panama, the southernmost of the seven Central American countries, and is home to about 10 percent of the world’s known species.

In the Yucatan Peninsula, shared by the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatan, there are 25 PNAs, with a total area of 8.5 million hectares.

In fact, two TM stations will be contiguous to the 725,000-hectare Calakmul Biosphere Reserve and the 650,000-hectare Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve.

“What’s going to happen? We don’t know the route, we don’t have information. We have to study this closely,” Luís Tamay, the indigenous president of the Commissariat of Common Assets of the Nuevo Becal ejido in the municipality of Calakmul, in Campeche, told IPS.

Like Euán, Tamay fears the arrival of crowds of tourists, for which Calakmul “is not prepared; this is a high-impact project” for a municipality of just over 28,000 people.

Nuevo Becal has 84 landowners, covers 52,800 hectares and carries out six projects of timber exploitation, agroforestry, seeds and environmental conservation.

Although the TM will not pass through the immediate vicinity of Nuevo Becal, the megaproject will have impacts on the area.

In Calakmul, the government will carry out technical and environmental impact studies in 2019, with the idea of starting construction the following year in the locality.

To build the railway network, the government must negotiate with the ejidatarios, who own most of the land in the five states along the planned railway, as there are 385 in Campeche, 279 in Quintana Roo and 737 in Yucatán.

The government has already asked for 30 hectares in the Felipe Carrillo Puerto ejido to build a station, as a contribution to the project, which was first proposed in 2007 by the then governor of Yucatan, Yvonne Ortega, who projected the Transpeninsular Rapid Train in 2007.
Shortly after taking office in December 2012, AMLO’s predecessor, conservative Enrique Peña Nieto, adopted it as a national plan to connect the region. But public spending cutbacks in 2015 put the project on hold.

To the original project which will be added more than 300 kilometers of rundown railroads that functioned between 1905 and 1957, first for military transport and then also for passenger traffic.

On Nov. 24-25, before AMLO took office, his team obtained support for the railway network, along with a new refinery in the state of Tabasco and the execution of other projects, during a National Consultation on 10 Priority Social Programmes.

But this support, in a consultation that was only carried out in certain localities through a process that was not very representative, did not appease the criticism of the TM in the region.

On Nov. 15, a group of academics asked López Obrador to stop the works because of their ecological, social, cultural and archaeological impacts.

Three days later, a collective of indigenous organisations rejected the project, demanded respect for their forests and jungles, and called for free, prior, informed and culturally appropriate consultation.

“They are violating our indigenous rights. We don’t agree with how the consultation was carried out, and we don’t see the benefits for the local communities. This is aimed at tourist spots. Those who will benefit are the big businesses” in the sector, Miguel Ku, representative of the Network of Environmental Service Producers, told IPS.

This organization brings together 3,756 ejidatarios from 33 agrarian communities in the municipality of José María Morelos, and three more in the municipality of FCP, all of which are in Quintana Roo. Together, they own 257,000 hectares that are used for forestry, agriculture, beekeeping and livestock.

Local organisations are seeking another socioeconomic model. “We have shown that conservation allows for good development. We have natural resources, let us take advantage of them, that’s how we can support ourselves,” said Tamay.

Ku protested what he called a repeat of what has happened with previous projects. “We are sick and tired of others taking the benefits even though we own the land. The government could do something else. We want the ejidos to develop their own projects,” he said.

But López Obrador appears to be in a hurry to move forward with the Mayan Train, and on Dec. 16 he laid the first stone in the city of Palenque, Chiapas, without waiting for Fonatur to present the environmental impact assessment to the environment ministry.

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Former Leicester midfielder Riyad Mahrez "deserves respect" on his first return to the King Power Stadium, says Foxes manager Claude Puel.

Labourers urgently construct new roads ahead of the monsoon season in Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Abdur Rahman Jahangir
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Dec 17 2018 (UNB and IPS)

Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, has long been witnessing an abnormal shift in its traditional six seasons due to changes in temperature, wind-flow and rainfall patterns, threatening the country’s future food security, according to local environment and weather experts.

They also said frequent natural disasters like flashfloods, cyclones, growing incidents of lightning strikes and landslides, induced by global warming are also causing huge losses to human lives and natural resources.

According to a recent report of Global Climate Risk Index 2019, Bangladesh is the seventh most-affected country in the world due to “extreme weather events” over the last 20 years from 1998 -2017.

The report also said 407 people died in Bangladesh in 2017 due to extreme weather-related events while the country suffered an economic loss of about USD 2,826.68 million during the same period.

Talking to UNB, M Abdul Mannan, a senior meteorologist at the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), said Bangladesh has been experiencing abnormal behaviour of the weather pattern over the recent few years with a change in length and duration of sessions. “We can’t now predict when a season will exactly start or end due to a freak behaviour of weather.”

For example, he said, “We felt less cold during December last year and the length of winter was very short that year. But we’re witnessing that mercury dropped in December this year, but the intensity of clod is not at the expected level. The winter season will be very short this year as well as we may see rise in temperature from mid-January. Usually, winter begins early December and ends on February 28 in Bangladesh.”

Besides, Manna said, a depression was formed over the Southwest Bay and adjoining areas this month which is very unusual. “We’re supposed to experience such disturbance during pre-monsoon (March-April) period, but we didn’t face it at that time.”

He said the rainy season was very dry this year and its duration was short with inadequate rainfall, hampering paddy, jute and other crop cultivation. “The situation was so bad that the farmers in the country’s northern region had to cultivate paddy with groundwater for lack of rainwater during the rainy season. It’s very unusual behaviour of weather.”

Mannan also said several heatwaves swept the country during rainy season-–June, July and August–this year which also an unusual behaviour of weather. “We’re facing the growing number of cyclones, floods, lightning strikes and landslides as seasons in Bangladesh are shifting a bit arbitrarily,” he added.

According BMD statistics, the lightning frequency is gradually rising in the country during pre-monsoon period since 1981 due to change in the thunderstorm formation area along with other causes like deforestation, climate variability and global warming.
“We’re observing greater number of fatal incidents of lightning in recent years due to global warming,” said.

Manan said nearly 200 people were killed in lightning strikes this year and 270 in 2017.
Bangladesh’ noted environmental expert Dr Atiq Rahman said the country’s farmers are facing immense difficulties with the cultivation of various crops due to abnormal weather events.

Citing an example, he said, farmers face problem in rotting their jute plants for lack of rainwater while they cannot plant their paddy during the traditional monsoon period for lack of adequate rainfall.

Besides, Dr Atiq said, the winter is getting less biting one gradually but causing greater fogs. “Crops are being affected adversely with the increased fogs.”

He said disorders are now visible in the pattern of traditional seasons of Bangladesh due to the rise in temperature affecting the flowering periods of various other plants. “The overall uncertainty in crop production in Bangladesh is on the rise.”

Dr Atiq, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, think warmer weather and climate change are causing more water evaporation from the land and ocean, increasing cumulonimbus cloud which is generating fatal lightning strikes in Bangladesh and its adjoining regions.

Another eminent climate expert Ainun Nishat thinks wind-flow and precipitation pattern always play a role in breeding of animals and plants. “The rise in temperature and changes in wind-flow and rainfall patterns ultimately lead to a disarray in the agricultural calendar that has long been followed by the farmers of the country. It’s also harming the food chain.”

Mentioning that rainy season comprises the cultivation and harvesting periods of the country’s major crops like paddy and jute, he said annual rainfall intensity has declined in the country over the last few years.

Dr Nishat, Professor Emeritus of BRAC University, said as the seal level is rising due to global warming as the annual rise in sea level in Bangladesh ranges between 6mm and 20mm. “It’ll have a serious impact on the country in the future as salinity will be increased.”

According to the annual report 2016 of BRAC, an international non-government organization based in Bangladesh, some 27 million people are “predicted to be at risk” of sea-level rise in Bangladesh by 2050.

It said two-thirds of the country’s land is less than five metres above sea level, and floods are increasingly destroying homes, croplands and damaging infrastructure.

Approximately 10,000 hectares of land is lost every year due to riverbank erosion, the port said.

It said agricultural land is shrinking by 1 percent annually while the population is growing by 1.2 percent. This is creating a rise in demand for food, while increasingly unpredictable weather conditions pose a growing challenge to farmers trying to meet those demands, the report added.

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Excerpt:

This report is produced by UNB United News of Bangladesh and IPS Inter Press Service.

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