Africa

Tosin Oshinowo is an architect in Lagos, Nigeria. She describes her style as "afro-minimalism".

A mother and a child in Melghat district, an area in India with high rates of malnourishment. The government’s new POSHAN campaign aims to curb malnutrition by a significant margin by also using smartphones to collect relevant data. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
MAYURBHANJ DISTRICT, India, Sep 26 2018 (IPS)

Kanaklata Raula from Kaptipada village in India’s Mayurbhanj District is on duty 24×7. The 52-year-old community health worker from Odisha state rides a bicycle for hours each day, visiting community members who need nutrition and reproductive healthcare.

Raula’s main job is to ensure that the women and young children in her community are using the integrated free basic healthcare and nutrition services at the government-run community health and nutrition centre, locally known as Anganwadi.“Technology alone is not enough, we need to also reach the unreached population like the migrants who are too poor to afford a nutritious meal.” -- Laila Garda, the director of the KEM Hospital Research Centre in Pune city.

Raula monitors the health of all children under the age of six, checks their weight and their growth, ensures they are immunised and advises their mothers and other pregnant and nursing women on basic healthcare and nutrition. She then encourages them to regularly visit the Anganwadi.

But most important of all her duties, Raula is the record keeper of the community and notes, through numbers and statistics, the health of her patients. She then submits regular reports on the health of the community to the government.

“I am in charge of five villages. There are 300 families and more than 80 percent of them are poor tribal people. Without Anganwadi they will not be able to get proper nutrition for their children or necessary health supplements for themselves,” Raula, who received the best Anganwadi worker award in July by Plan India, the Indian arm of Plan International, tells IPS.

Life has gotten a little easier for Raula as the ministry of women and child development has decided to provide Anganwadi workers with smartphones or tablets with software especially designed to make their record-keeping and reporting easier.

India currently has the fourth-highest number of stunted people in the workforce in the world. Of these, 66 percent of  stunting is a result of childhood malnutrition, says a new World Bank report.

The recent National Family Health Survey 2015-2016 shows that while there is a declining trend in child stunting, the levels remain high at 38.4 percent in 2015/2016.

The survey noted increased levels of child wasting (where one’s weight is too low for their height); from 19.8 percent in 2005/2006 to 21 percent in 2015/2016. The country also has high levels of anaemia among children–58.4 percent of children under the age of six are anaemic.

To curb the alarming rate of malnutrition and stunting, India launched a new nutrition drive last November called Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen and Harmonise Action for Nutrition (POSHAN). With a total budget of nine billion rupees (USD126 million), the campaign has an ambitious goal: to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anaemia and low birth weights by about two to three percent per annum.

According to information shared in national parliament by India’s minister of women and child development Maneka Gandhi, POSHAN is using:

• a mobile application that is made available to the community healthcare workers and is pre-loaded on mobile phones and,
• a six-tier monitoring dashboard for desktops.

 

IT for ground data

But how will smartphones be used by the Anganwadi workers while in the field?

Pramila Rani Brahma, the social welfare minister for Assam state, in north eastern India, explains that the phones will be loaded with software called the Common Application System or CAS, which was specially built for the POSHAN campaign and developed in collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Anganwadi workers will use the software to enter the details of their patients, including the number of children they see, their health updates, weight etc., and will send this report to headquarters.

Data on service delivery and its impact on nutrition outcomes will also be collected.

The desktop monitoring system will be used to monitor the delivery of services to children, pregnant women and lactating mothers. It will analyse the ground data and map the weight efficiency, height and nutrition status of children under five years.

“There are a total 11 registers which I have to regularly maintain. It [usually] takes many hours. I think it will save me a lot of time, which I can spend on serving the community better. I think it will also help send the information much more quickly to the higher officials,” Raula tells IPS.

According to Brahma, the 61,000-strong Anganwadi workers in Assam state have been struggling to submit their daily reports and even demanded computers or laptops.

There are currently nearly 1.3 million Anganwadi workers across India – all of whom will receive a simple, android data-enabled smartphone, according to the government. The phones will be distributed by the respective state governments, while the federal government and its ministry of women and child development will provide the funds.

“I was informed that, there are provisions to provide smartphones to the Anganwadi workers and several other states have already taken this initiative. We will provide the smartphones to the Anganwadi workers within a short period of time,” Brahma said to a group of journalists – which included IPS – at a state-organised workshop on nutrition in Guwahati, Assam.

An early success story

The IT-enabled nutrition campaign has already reaped some results, when it was first rolled out in June.

“We have given over 50,000 cellphones to Anganwadi workers through which they give us daily reports on how many children were provided food, how many were weighed, etc,” Gandhi said at press conference in New Delhi. “Until now, we have identified 12,000 children (as severely underweight) and we are following up on their status with the district officials,” she said.

Besides collecting numbers, Anganwadi workers are also using the smartphones for  surveying houses in their neighbourhoods and even sending photos of children eating a hot cooked meal at the Anganwadi.

An uphill task ahead

However, despite the new campaign, the road ahead for India to become malnutrition-neutral remains a difficult one.

One of the main reasons for this is that the country still has a huge population that continues to face acute hunger. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nation’s report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2018, some 159 million of the country’s 1.3 billion people are undernourished.

The Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition’s Food Sustainability Index (FSI) 2017 ranks 34 countries across three pillars: sustainable agriculture; nutritional challenges; and food loss and waste. India ranks close to bottom on the index at 33. According to the index India ranks 32 in the world in food sustainability and human development. The centre will be hosting an international forum on food and nutrition this week as a side event to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. One of the topics it will be discussing is food and migration.

Kavita, a 22 year old domestic worker in Hyderabad’s Uppal neighbourhood, presents a perfect example of this.

She is a migrant labourer from Mahbubnagar—a rural district some 150 km away from Hyderabad—and despite labouring for nearly 12 hours each day, she is unable to afford a nutritious meal for her and her 18-month old daughter.

Every day Kavita cooks a simple meal of rice and tomato chutney for her and her child. Both the mother and daughter appear underweight and malnourished with a yellowish tinge to their hair and dark circles under their eyes. But the mother says that she has no time to visit an Anganwadi.

“I start working at 5 am and finish only at 4 pm. I have to work seven days a week. If I take one holiday, my employers will fire me. I heard that at the Anganwadi they give dhal, curry and even eggs to children. But I can’t afford to leave work and take my child there,” she tells IPS.

There are millions of poor migrants and floating workers like Kavita across urban India who are not aware of the government facilities or the POSHAN campaign and continue to be left out of these initiatives. According to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, there were 326 million internal migrants in the country as of 2007/2008.

Unless this huge population is covered, it will be difficult to achieve the targets of the POSHAN campaign, says Laila Garda, the director of the KEM Hospital Research Centre in Pune city, Maharashtra.

“Technology alone is not enough, we need to also reach the unreached population like the migrants who are too poor to afford a nutritious meal,” Garda, who has been working in community health for nearly two decades, tells IPS.

Chuna Ram, a community reporter and nutrition activist in Barmer, Rajastahan—one of the states in the country with the highest rate of malnutrition—says that government action must go beyond the rhetoric.

In Rajasthan, he says, the government has talked of providing smartphones  to the Anganwadi workers, but it has not happened yet.

“The general election is going to take place in 2019, so the government is making a lot of promises to woo the voters. But how much of these promises will actually be kept will decide how far the situation will change,” he tells IPS.

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The post India Uses Tech to Power its New Battle Against Malnutrition appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Gambian side Buckingham Street FC had to wait more than a year to receive Buckingham United FC's old kit.

In Cameroon, a nutritionist assesses the health of a child: red indicates severe malnutrition. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Matthew L. Norman
NEW YORK, United States, Sep 26 2018 (IPS)

Each year as hundreds of billions of dollars are invested and critical decisions are made in agriculture, there is often little evidence or research to back these choices. 

According to experts, this lack of data “leads to less than optimal decisions, causing losses in productivity, lost agricultural income, and ultimately more hunger and poverty.”

“The data gaps in agriculture are widespread, affecting 800 million, or 78 percent of the world’s poorest. The problem is especially dire in Sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly half of countries have incomplete information about the [agriculture] sector and farmers,” Emily Hogue, a senior advisor with Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), explains to IPS.

“Assessments have shown that those countries are able to meet half or less of their basic data needs, largely due to a lack of [agriculture] surveys.”

Citing the foundational role data plays in directing development efforts and monitoring progress towards the U.N’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Gates Foundation, World Bank, FAO and others have launched a partnership aimed at investing in the agricultural data capabilities of low and middle-income countries. 

Dubbed the 50 x 2030 Initiative, the plan aims to invest USD 500 million in data gathering and analysis across 50 developing nations by 2030.

On Monday, the governments of Ghana, Kenya and Sierra Leone joined the coalition in hosting an event at the U.N. General Assembly to announce the initiative. Panellists representing several of the initiative’s key partners shared the impetus behind their involvement.

Rodger Voorhies, executive director for Global Growth and Opportunity at the Gates Foundation, noted that “almost no country has come out of poverty in an inclusive way without agricultural transformation being at the centre of it.” 

However, the panellists noted, the data needed to design evidence-based agricultural policy and target agricultural investments is severely deficient in many developing nations. This data gap represents a “critical obstacle to agricultural development,” according to Beth Dunford of USAID.

“There is no efficient path to meeting SDG2 or other [agriculture] development goals without improved agricultural data. Improved data will promote more effective targeting of interventions, improved national [agriculture] policies, and increased resources for the sector. As FAO is the organisation that is at the forefront of the activities to promote [agriculture] development and reduce hunger and malnutrition, we see filling in the agricultural data gap as a prerequisite to achieving agricultural development goals,” Hogue says. SDG2 is the goal to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

The 50 x 2030 Initiative’s announcement comes in the wake of the FAO’s recent revelation that world hunger has risen for a third straight year, with 821 million people worldwide facing chronic food deprivation. 

Panellists emphasised that the data gap limits the ability of many nations to direct resources towards populations most in need, including smallholders affected by gender inequality or climate change. 

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) president Gilbert Houngbo, formerly the prime minister of Togo, observed that granular data could reveal regional, ethnic or gender disparities that are obscured by aggregate data. He recalled that during his time as Togo’s leader, progress in achieving inclusive poverty reduction was made more challenging because the country “did not have the disaggregated data to better adjust the implementation of our policies.”

In addition to driving better policy design and implementation, improved agricultural data will make it possible to better monitor progress in achieving the SDGs. 

Claire Melamed, CEO of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, noted that many countries lack any data for several of the most critical SDG indicators, making it impossible to set a baseline and monitor progress towards the goals.

José Graziano da Silva, director general of FAO, explained that the initiative would initially focus on scaling up existing surveys of farming households. The FAO’s AGRISurvey is expected to expand to nineteen nations by 2021, and Graziano da Silva noted that this initiative would allow it to eventually expand to 50 or more. The initiative will also build upon the World Bank’s Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (ISA), part of the Bank’s Living Standards and Measurement Study (LSMS).

“The goal of this initiative is to have 50 low and lower-middle income countries (LMICs) with strong national data systems that produce and use high-quality and timely agricultural data for evidence-based decision-making. The survey programs are the vehicle through which we will build capacities and strengthen the institutions in those systems. We also aim to include the private sector, especially agribusinesses, as users and supports of these data,” Hogue adds.

Over time the initiative should allow more countries to take advantage of advances in data gathering and analytics. Laura Tuck, vice president of Sustainable Development at the World Bank, suggested that new tools for “real-time, high-definition data” would lead to smarter policies that increase sustainable food production. Tuck also noted that the structure of the 50 x 2030 initiative would allow countries the autonomy to drive their own use of data.

*Additional reporting by Carmen Arroyo in New York.

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The post How Filling in the Agricultural Data Gap Will Fill Empty Plates appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Former France under-21 international Gilles Sunu is cleared to switch national allegiance to Togo to follow in the footsteps of his father Manu.

Secretary-General António Guterres (centre) poses for a photo with youth participants of the high-level event on Youth2030, to launch the United Nations Youth Strategy and the Generation Unlimited Partnership organized by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). UN Photo / Mark Garten 2018

By International Organization for Migration
Sep 26 2018 (IOM)

There are an estimated 1.8 billion people aged 10–24 around the world; nearly 90 per cent of these young people live in developing countries. This is the largest generation of young people in history, and in recognition of its significance, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres made youth a priority from the onset of his mandate.

This commitment was manifested on 24 September 2018 when the Secretary-General presented Youth 2030: The United Nations Youth Strategy.

“With Youth 2030, I want the UN to become a leader in working with young people: in understanding their needs, in helping to put their ideas into action, in ensuring their views inform our processes.”

 
– UN Secretary-General António Guterres

The Strategy is aimed at guiding the entire United Nations (UN) system to empower young people to realize their full potential and stand up for their rights. It also aims to ensure youth engagement and participation in the implementation, review, and follow-up of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as other relevant global agendas and frameworks.

“I have come to love myself for who I am, for who I was, and for who I hope to become. Now I urge you to speak yourself.” A member of the band BTS, also known as the Bangtan Boys, from the Republic of Korea, speaks at the Youth 2030 event. UN Photo: Mark Garten / 2018

Globally, there were an estimated 258 million international migrants in 2017. Of these international migrants, 14 per cent were under 20 years of age; this means 36 million young people are international migrants.

Whether on their own or with family, adolescents and youth are increasingly migrating in search of security, improved standards of living, education, and protection from discrimination and abuse.

Young migrants have a lot to offer. They fulfill many roles in their communities and societies; they are agents of social progress and development; they are crucial to peace-building and security; they are important contributors to political change; and they are crafters of new solutions.

Youth participants in Jordan discussing how to film the closing scene of a video they created. Photo: IOM 2017

During the President of the General Assembly’s 2018 Youth Dialogue and International Youth Day 2018, many of the youth representatives present were migrants, bringing important migrant voices to the debate and highlighting the need to engage and work with young people and recognize the different experiences that they have.

It is also noteworthy that young migrants are a large constituency whose lives will be impacted by implementation of the Global Compact for Migration, which is the first, intergovernmentally negotiated agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner, and which will be adopted in Marrakesh, Morocco this December.

More generally, one of the greatest opportunities we have today to eradicate poverty and promote prosperity is to take advantage of the shifting demographics in the world. To do this, we need to pay attention to the situation of young people around the world.

Young boys and girls at school in Pohnpei, Micronesia. Photo: Muse Mohammed/ IOM 2017

While young people are key players when it comes to the future and health of our planet, they currently experience many challenges. For example, 61 million adolescents of lower secondary school age (about 12 to 14 years old) and 139 million youth of upper secondary school age (about 15 to 17 years old) are out of school.

Today, nearly 64 million young people are unemployed, and they are three times more likely than adults to be unemployed. Furthermore, young people are not at the centre of political decision making even though more than half of the world’s population is under 30 years old.

Poverty, displacement, conflict, climate change and restricted access to accessible, youth-friendly health services can further compound existing challenges or threats. Young women in particular continue to face multiple barriers when trying to enter the labour force, including unequal pay for work of equal value, and widespread violence and harassment in different contexts.

Syrian youth in Turkey get ready for class. Muse Mohammed / IOM 2016

The UN has set five priorities for the next 12 years in order to operationalize the UN Youth Strategy. The priorities of the strategy include amplifying youth voices for the promotion of a peaceful, just and sustainable world; supporting young people’s greater access to quality education and health services; supporting young people’s greater access to decent work and productive employment; protecting and promoting the rights of young people and supporting their civic and political engagement; and supporting young people as catalysts for Peace and Security & Humanitarian Action.

2018 is a landmark year for shaping the ways in which the international community will approach working with young people for years to come. When given the opportunity, they can effect positive change in several fields.

By recognizing this key demographic as the future leaders of tomorrow, the UN Youth Strategy will empower youth to recognize their potential and become the positive agents of change that the world needs. 2018 is also a landmark year for the international governance of migration.

We know that well-managed migration provides a net benefit to countries of origin and destination, as well as to migrants themselves. Migrants give more back to the societies that they have moved to, and those they have come from, than what they take out.

Central African Republic. Photo: Amanda Nero / IOM 2018

As a significant demographic within the migrant population, and one which has so far arguably been largely underserved, young migrants stand to gain significantly from both the implementation of the UN Youth Strategy and the adoption and subsequent implementation of the Global Compact for Migration.

Multiple factors have compounded the challenges faced by young people, and young people on the move in particular; these two historic documents can work to realize their true potential — especially in the many areas where the two initiatives see real overlap.

In turn, the world stands to gain much from young people and young migrants in particular.

The article was prepared by Amira Nassim, Migration Policy Officer at IOM’s Office to the United Nations.

The post United Nations Launches Youth2030 Strategy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Secretary-General António Guterres (2nd right) delivers his remarks at the high-level meeting on the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. Credit: UN Photo-Evan Schneider

By Paula Donovan
NEW YORK, Sep 26 2018 (IPS)

The UN’s youngest entity, UN Women, announced last week that a senior official, Ravi Karkara, had been found guilty of sexual transgressions against an unspecified number of men after a 15-month internal investigation. Newsweek reported that “at least” eight made accusations against him. Karkara’s punishment? Dismissal.

Several of his accusers have gone public, describing how Karkara sexually assaulted and harassed them. One accuser, Steve Lee, alleged that Karkara grabbed his genitals in a Montreal hotel room—clearly, a crime. In announcing the firing, the executive director of UN Women said that Karkara “cannot be protected by diplomatic immunity” and UN Women “stands ready to cooperate with any national authority that decides to investigate this matter.”

So: UN Women conducted a lengthy administrative investigation before announcing it was ready to cooperate with law enforcement.

While the UN has rights as an employer, employers’ rights must never take precedence over criminal matters. Shouldn’t the UN, as a matter of policy, inform victims that potential crimes can be reported to and handled immediately by law enforcement?

Shockingly, it does not. The United Nations has no uniform standard when criminal allegations of sexual abuse are lodged against its personnel. Our Code Blue Campaign’s work with victims in recent cases involving accused UN perpetrators—including Luiz Loures of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and Diego Palacios of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)—reveals that different parts of the UN deploy different policies and procedures in a thoroughly ad hoc and inconsistent manner. The only consistent feature is a systemic protection of alleged perpetrators at the expense of victims.

The United Nations is, of course, a distinctive institution that must be permitted to operate on the world stage as a fearless arbiter of international norms. Since the world body’s founding, UN officials have enjoyed “immunity”—codified protections from the willful actions of vengeful localities and governments.

Upon learning of alleged sexual violence by one of its non-military personnel, the United Nations can and should quickly make two determinations.

First, could the allegation in any way be construed as an activity the UN official was conducting as part of his official UN duties? According to a 1946 convention on the “privileges and immunities” of the UN, most UN officials—including Ravi Karkara and Diego Palacios—have “functional immunity,” which means they are only immune from legal process for “words and deeds” committed in service of their UN functions. The UN has affirmed the truism that sexual crimes can never be part of UN functions.

Second, is it possible that the alleged crime could have occurred? The UN has a reasonable responsibility to ascertain not if the incident happened, but whether it could have happened. The UN should determine whether the alleged offender, for example, was in the vicinity of the alleged incident.

Once the UN has determined that the alleged act could have occurred and the alleged perpetrator is not protected by UN immunity, the UN must stand aside and let the national authorities of the country where the alleged crime took place do their job. Law enforcement and legal systems must be allowed to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute. Such are the necessary protocols of justice worldwide.

It must be emphasized: This does not currently happen. In sexual abuse cases, the UN routinely misapplies immunity to hinder police investigations of its accused personnel.

Take the case of UNFPA’s Palacios. After a woman named Prashanti Tiwari filed a criminal sexual assault complaint against Palacios in early 2018, the UN asserted immunity. The police investigation stalled while the UN conducted a months-long internal investigation. Because Ms. Tiwari persisted, the police investigation is now resuming, but only haltingly and with continued UN interference.

The UN takes advantage of widespread, and wrongheaded, assumptions about UN immunity, which is imbued with an almost mystical power in the public mind. The notion that a UN official cannot be arrested is so deeply embedded that the Indian government had to ask the UN for official “clarification.” (It received such clarification in writing—from the accused, Diego Palacios, the senior UNFPA official in India—who declared himself immune.)

The UN fosters the misapprehension by shrouding its immunity in mystery. It consistently prevents any external oversight of its actions. It refuses to disclose basic information about cases, asserting “confidentiality” over the public’s and victims’ rights to information.

Our thorough examinations of cases reveal that UN policies and procedures are so deficient—so rife with conflicts of interest—that the 193 governments that govern the bureaucracy must undertake a radical overhaul and pay no more heed to avowals of “zero tolerance” from the Secretary-General.

As a necessary first step, UN Member States must temporarily impanel impartial experts—not employees—to oversee the UN’s responses to claims of sexual exploitation and abuse across all parts of the UN.

It would monitor every step taken in real time, from receipt of each claim, through fact-finding and investigation, to the final outcome. We submit that a “Temporary Independent Oversight Panel,” reporting directly to Member States, could be well placed to gauge the level of the organization’s problems and make expert recommendations on the UN bureaucracy’s policies and procedures.

The UN should not be making headlines for impeding law enforcement investigations of accused sexual predators within its own ranks. It should leave criminal justice where it belongs, in the hands of national authorities, and make headlines instead for solving the grave crises that are rending the planet.

The post It’s Not Complicated: UN Must Clarify Immunity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Paula Donovan is Co-Director of AIDS-Free World and its Code Blue Campign

The post It’s Not Complicated: UN Must Clarify Immunity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A 27-year-old referee, Victor Marah, collapses and dies in front of a large crowd while officiating a match in Sierra Leone.

South Africans are outraged following the alleged rape of a seven-year-old in a restaurant toilet.

The majority of Cambodia’s exports to the European Union (EU), are textiles such as garments and shoes. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY , Sep 26 2018 (IPS)

Trade liberalization, a key dimension of recent globalization, has failed to promote broad structural transformation in developing countries and has instead contributed to increased worldwide inequality, a new United Nations report shows.

The Trade and Development Report 2018: Power, Platforms and the Free Trade Delusion (TDR 2018) suggests that the profits surge and growing concentration of large transnational corporations, have depressed labour’s global income share, worsening income inequality.

The UN report also finds that policies that helped China to successfully develop, diversify and upgrade are now being discouraged, if not blocked, by developed countries influenced by transnational corporations threatened by such policies.

Despite long-standing concerns in developing countries about the international trading system, heightened recent anxiety in developed countries has strengthened scepticism about the supposedly shared benefits of trade liberalization.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

More positive attitudes to trade liberalization will require more than seductive, but also deceptive slogans such as ‘freer trade lifts all boats’. Instead, a new momentum based on a more inclusive and developmental trade agenda is needed, reflecting the raison d’etre of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the TDR’s author.

Trade-induced structural change?
While the growing role of developing countries in international trade has been important for recent globalization, the ‘rise of the Rest’ – mainly developing countries or the ‘South’ – is a mainly East Asian story.

TDR 2018 shows that rapid export growth mainly came from the first-tier East Asian newly industrialized economies, and then China. Meanwhile, developed countries’ share of world exports declined, from nearly three-quarters of gross merchandise exports in 1986, to just over half in 2016. Export shares in most other developing countries remained constant or declined, except when commodity prices rose.

China stands out among the BRICS, whose share of world income soared from 5.4 per cent to 22.2 per cent during this period. Without China, the share of Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa in global output only rose from 3.7 per cent in 1990 to 7.4 per cent in 2016.

Anis Chowdhury

In 2016, East Asia accounted for about 70 per cent of all developing countries’ manufactured exports. Only East Asian developing economies have headquarters of leading transnational corporations. Of the world’s top 2,000 transnational corporations, transnational corporations’ share of profits rose from 7 per cent in 1995 to over 26 per cent in 2015.

More exports, less diversity
As developing countries increasingly rely on global market access, their exports have generally become less diverse. TDR 2018 associates these trends with spreading global value chains and the challenges of ‘catching up’ without a strong ‘developmental state’.

In fact, such value chains have long characterized commodity trade. Since 1995, 18 of the 27 developing countries with the relevant data had increased shares of extractive industries in export value added.

But, except for China, spreading global value chains have seen declining shares of domestic value added in gross exports. Except in East Asia, there is little evidence of ‘upgrading’ in these chains. While growing demand from China has stimulated growth in many developing countries in recent decades, it has not enhanced or diversified their export profiles.

Unfair trade
Size matters for corporate behaviour, both at home and abroad. Trade has been dominated by big firms, especially since the mid-1990s. Among exporting firms, the top percentile accounted for 60 per cent of exports, while an average of ten firms accounted for 40 per cent of exports.

Unsurprisingly, new entrants and smaller exporters have low survival rates, with three quarters giving up exports after two years, with developing country firms faring worse than their developed country counterparts.

Besides ‘hollowing out’ due to ‘offshoring’ from advanced economies, the income shares of low and medium skilled production workers in most developing country value chains besides China have been declining due to fabrication’s falling share of value added.

Size also matters for profitability, with the rapid profit growth of the top 2,000 firms depressing global labour income share. Worsening inequality attributed to trade is due to more profits from ‘intangible assets’, higher headquarters’ incomes, and cutting production costs.

Many big international firms engage in trade resulting in greater income flows to low-tax or no-tax jurisdictions. Payments for intellectual property have risen sharply in the last two decades in countries such as Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Transnational corporate incomes in such locations have been rising far more than where their products are made or sold.

Policy space
TDR 2018 concludes that the problem is not with trade per se, but rather with its management and regulation. Rhetoric about ‘win-win’ solutions typically obscures how benefits can be more broadly shared.

UNCTAD argues that South-South trade agreements are less susceptible to such abuses of corporate power and influence. In contrast, policy space has been increasingly constrained by typical free trade agreements, reflecting powerful corporate influences via opaque negotiations.

Such agreements augment corporate profits, especially through ‘non-trade’ provisions. Inter alia, such clauses enhance intellectual property rights, cross-border capital flows, investor-state dispute settlement procedures, and harmonization of regulatory standards.

The post New Trade Realities Cause Concern appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A Rohingya woman and her child at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Credit: Kamrul Hasan/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2018 (IPS)

Over one year ago, Bangladesh opened its doors in response to what is now the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis. But questions still remain on how to rehabilitate the steadily growing population. 

After a military crackdown on suspected terrorists in August 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya fled from their homes in Rakhine State, Myanmar to Bangladesh, bringing with them stories of the horrors they have experienced.

The United Nations described the military offensive as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and a recent fact-finding mission called for the investigation and prosecution of top officials from Myanmar’s military for possible crimes of genocide.

However, recurring cycles of violence can be traced back to 1978 and now 1.3 million Rohingya reside in Bangladesh, leaving the small South Asian nation straining for resources to provide to grief-stricken refugees and overcrowded camps.

So far, only one third of the humanitarian appeal for refugees and local host communities have been met and still many challenges remain from environmental stress to trafficking to the lack of shelters.

Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was in Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people of 2018, has been lauded for her humanitarian gesture and her government’s work in addressing the crisis.

Many international and national organizations are working to support the Rohingya refugees. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in particular and its head William Lacy Swing have worked relentlessly to not only provide support to the refugees but also to find a lasting solution to the crisis. Swing has worked closely with the prime minister and her government and engaged with the many parties involved to bring about an end to the tragedy.

In recognition of his untiring efforts, Inter Press Service (IPS) is honouring Swing with the Person of the Year Award at an event to be held at the U.N. headquarters on Sept. 27. The prime minster will receive the IPS U.N. North America’s Humanitarian Award for her decision to give shelter to the over one million Rohingya refugees who were driven out of their homes, tortured, burnt, raped and left stateless and hopeless.

Ahead of the Hasina’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly, which is expected to focus on the Rohingya crisis and call for international action to resolve the crisis, IPS spoke to ambassador Masud Bin Momen, permanent representative of Bangladesh to the U.N.about the ongoing challenges, support, and future action plans.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Could you talk about the situation in Bangladesh—are refugees still arriving? What conditions are Rohingya refugees arriving in and what conditions are they seeing and living with in Bangladesh?

Masud Bin Momen (MBM): The situation in Cox’s Bazar is terrible. Having to shelter more than 700,000 Rohingyas from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which is the fastest-growing crisis of its kind in the world, and provide them with humanitarian support is an onerous responsibility. It was the bold decision of our honourable prime minister to take up such a huge responsibility responding to humanity’s call. It takes a lot of courage and magnanimity of heart to make such a politically sensitive decision.

And the influx of Rohingyas has not stopped. It is continuing although in much smaller numbers. The freshly-arrived Rohingyas are still giving a grim picture of the ground situation in the Rakhine state. They are telling us about insecurity, threat, persecution, hunger, lack of livelihood opportunities, which is forcing them to leave Myanmar.

IPS: What has the government been doing as of late with regards to supporting Rohingya refugees there now? What have been some of the challenges to support these refugees?

MBM: The camp conditions in Cox’s Bazar may not be perfect and surely, one would understand how difficult it is for a developing country to cater to the humanitarian needs of such a huge population. But our government is trying its best to further improve the camp conditions to ensure basic necessities of the Rohingyas.

The challenges are manifold, I would mention only a few. Providing them with the basic amenities has been the biggest challenge.

For firewood, the Rohingyas have destroyed the forest and vegetation around the camps creating serious threat to the ecology of the area. The shelters that they have built on the slope of the hills are vulnerable to landslide during the monsoon.

For livelihood they are competing with the locals. This is reducing employment opportunities of the local population thus creating concern among the host communities. Their presence is affecting the local law and order situation. The possibility of radicalisation looms large. As their stay lingers, there is the possibility of mingling with the local population which could make their repatriation more difficult.

A Rohingya girl proudly holds up her drawing at a UNICEF school at Balukhali camp, Bangladesh. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

IPS: Could you talk about the controversies surrounding repatriation? Why has it been stalled, and are conditions favourable or safe for Rohingya refugees to go back to Myanmar right now? 

MBM: Although Rohingyas want to return to their homes in Rakhine they would not return to Myanmar until and unless the ground condition in the Rakhine state is conducive for their return. This is the singular impediment to return. Improving ground conditions is entirely Myanmar’s responsibility. Since the ground condition is not yet conducive, the Rohingyas are not signing the declaration for voluntary return and hence repatriation is being delayed.

IPS: If refugees cannot return to Myanmar yet, what does Bangladesh plan to do with regards to support? Are there future actions planned to enhance camps and living conditions?

MBM: If they do not return in the foreseeable future we perhaps have no other option but to continue to give them refuge. We would not send them back against their will. As our prime minister said, we would share our meals with them (Rohingyas). There cannot be a more poignant message of our goodwill to the Rohingyas. Our government is relentlessly working to improve the camps and the living conditions therein. We are also developing an island for relocation of some of the Rohingyas.

IPS: What are your thoughts to the criticism that the island which you mentioned is not safe to live, particularly due to violent weather and high risk of floods? 

MBM: This is an entirely wrong perception. Keeping the entire Rohingya population in a geo-politically sensitive place like Cox’s Bazar is not feasible at all. Cox’s Bazar simply does not have the physical capacity or the infrastructure to sustain such a huge Rohingya population. So, they have to be relocated and the island you are talking about is one such place for possible relocation.

Initially about 100,000 Rohingyas are planned to be relocated. The criticism that you have referred to is baseless coming from ill-informed quarters. Our government is working hard to make the island livable with self-sustaining livelihood options. And until it is made entirely livable, Rohingyas are not going to be relocated there.

IPS: What are your thoughts on the International Criminal Court (ICC) launching a preliminary examination? 

MBM: We feel that this is a positive development in ensuring accountability of the perpetrators. If the ICC can come up with some concrete outcome, it might also serve as an important factor in building confidence among the Rohingyas which will facilitate their repatriation.

IPS: Do you have a response or message to Myanmar’s government regarding the crisis? And perhaps a message to the International community in addressing the situation? 

MBM: We would urge upon Myanmar to make ground conditions in the Rakhine state conducive for return and take back the Rohingyas as soon as possible. The comprehensive implementation of the Kofi Annan Commission’s recommendations would be able to address the root causes of the Rohingyarians.

We urge upon the international community is to take custodianship of the bilateral arrangements for return that Bangladesh and Myanmar have signed and impress upon Myanmar to take back the Rohingyas.

*Interview has been edited for length and clarity

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The post Q&A: An Uncertain Future Ahead for Rohingya in Bangladesh appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

IPS Correspondent Tharanga Yakupitiyage talks to AMBASSADOR MASUD BIN MOMEN, permanent representative of Bangladesh to the U.N about the Rohingya' crisis.

The post Q&A: An Uncertain Future Ahead for Rohingya in Bangladesh appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By WAM
DUBAI, Sep 26 2018 (WAM)

Regional and international experts on sustainable built environments will come together at the 7th Annual Emirates Green Building Council, EmiratesGBC, Congress to discuss best practices and strategies to go beyond net zero carbon buildings, and explore the significance of net zero cities in ensuring the viability and liveability of our cities in the future.

Organised by EmiratesGBC, an independent forum aimed at conserving the environment by strengthening and promoting green building practices, the Congress will be held under the theme “Targeting Zero: A Vision for Future Cities”, on 9th October, 2018 at the Pullman Dubai Creek City Centre hotel.

The congress will commence with welcome addresses by Saeed Al Abbar, Chairman of EmiratesGBC; Eng. Aisha Al Abdooli, Director of Green Development, Ministry of Climate Change & Environment; and Ahmed Muhairbi, Secretary-General, Dubai Supreme Council of Energy. It will be moderated by Holley Chant, Executive Director of Corporate Sustainability, KEO International Consultants.

Saeed Al Abbar said, “The congress this year will drive the conversation forward and take a deep dive into the net zero building movement and explore how we can apply and rapidly expand the approach to our cities in the UAE, the region and around the world. The fast pace of urbanisation today is a fundamental challenge, and we are bringing both regional and international experts to the UAE to participate in this dialogue as the emphasis on sustainable buildings and cities becomes more crucial than ever. From the government to the public and private sectors, the UAE has shown its commitment and now we must boldly deliver on it as the global net zero emissions timeline approaches.”

The Annual EmiratesGBC Congress brings together international experts in diverse aspects of energy management and sustainable development to discuss strategies for promoting sustainable built environments for the cities of the future in line with UAE Vision 2021 and the objectives of the Paris COP21 Climate Agreement. The event aims to influence sustainable practices in the UAE’s built environment and to help identify key industry challenges and solutions as well as catalyse innovation in green building practices to create new models that support the country’s efforts to be more sustainable.

The discussions will focus on three sub-themes that are closely related to honouring and promoting the values associated with the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the Founding Father of the nation, as the UAE marks the Year of Zayed this year to commemorate his 100th birth anniversary. These are “Inspired Cities reflecting the Wisdom of Sheikh Zayed”, “Collaborative Cities focusing on the value of Respect” and “Holistic Cities mirroring the value of Sustainability” which cater to the needs of future generations.

WAM/Esraa Ismail/Nour Salman

The post Experts to discuss Net Zero Cities at 7th EmiratesGBC Congress appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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In Rwanda the banana disease BXW is detrimental to a crop and has far-reaching consequences not only for farmers but for the food and nutritional security of their families and those dependent on the crop as a source of food. Credit: Alejandro Arigón/IPS

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Sep 25 2018 (IPS)

When Telesphore Ruzigamanzi, a smallholder banana farmer from a remote village in Eastern Rwanda, discovered a peculiar yellowish hue on his crop before it started to dry up, he did not give it the due consideration it deserved.

“I was thinking that it was the unusually dry weather causing damage to my crop,” Ruzigamanzi, who lives in Rwimishinya, a remote village in Kayonza district in Eastern Rwanda, tells IPS.

But in fact, it was a bacterial disease.

Ruzigamanzi’s crop was infected with Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW), a bacterial disease that affects all types of bananas and is known locally as Kirabiranya. "Our ongoing effort to develop, test, and deploy smart or normal mobile applications is a critical step towards cost-effective monitoring and control of the disease spread." -- Julius Adewopo, lead of the BXW project at IITA.

Here, in this East African nation, BXW is detrimental to a crop and has far-reaching consequences not only for farmers but for the food and nutritional security of their families and those dependent on the crop as a source of food.

Banana is an important crop in East and Central Africa, with a number of countries in the region being among the world’s top-10 producers, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database.

According to a household survey of districts in Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda, banana accounts for about 50 percent of the household diet in a third of Rwanda’s homes.

But the top factor affecting banana production in all three countries, according to the survey, was BXW.

Researchers have indicated that BXW can result in 100 percent loss of banana stands, if not properly controlled.

Complacency and lack of information contribute to spread of the disease

The BXW disease is not new to the country. It was first reported in 2002. Since then, there have been numerous, rigorous educational campaigns by agricultural authorities and other stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations.

Farmers in Ruzigamanzi’s region have been trained by a team of researchers from the Rwanda Agriculture Board and local agronomists about BXW. But Ruzigamanzi, a father of six, was one of the farmers missed by the awareness campaign and therefore lacked the knowledge to diagnose the disease.

Had he known what the disease was, and depending on its state of progress on the plant, Ruzigamanzi would have had to remove the symptomatic plants, cutting them at soil level immediately after first observation of the symptoms. If the infection is uncontrolled for a long time, he would have had to remove the entire plant from the root.

And it is what he ended up doing two weeks later when a visiting local agronomist came to look at the plant.

By then it was too late to save the banana stands and Ruzigamanzi had to uproot all the affected mats, including the rhizome and all its attached stems, the parent plant and its suckers.

Ruzigamanzi’s story is not unique. In fact, a great number of smallholder farmers in remote rural regions have been ignoring or are unaware of the symptoms of this bacterial banana infection. And it has increased the risk of spreading of the disease to new regions and of resurgence in areas where it had previously been under control. Several districts in eastern Rwanda have been affected by the disease in recent years.

An enumerator for the ICT4BXW project conducting a baseline assessment of Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW), a bacterial disease, status in Muhanga district, Rwanda. Courtesy: Julius Adewopo/ International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

Using technology to strengthen rural farmers and control spread of BXW

Early 2018, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), in partnership with Bioversity International, the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies and the Rwanda Agriculture Board, commenced a collaborative effort to tackle the disease through the use of digital technology. IITA scientists are exploring alternative ways of engaging farmers in monitoring and collecting data about the disease. The institute is renowned for transforming African agriculture through science and innovations, and was recently announced as the Africa Food Prize winner for 2018.

The new three-year project (named ICT4BXW), which launched with a total investment of 1.2 million Euros from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, seeks to explore the use of mobile phones as tools to generate and exchange up-to-date knowledge and information about BXW.

The project builds on the increasing accessibility of mobile phones in Rwanda. According to data from the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority, this country’s mobile telephone penetration is currently estimated at 79 percent in a country of about 12 million people, with a large majority of the rural population currently owning mobile phones.

“Our ongoing effort to develop, test, and deploy smart or normal mobile applications is a critical step towards cost-effective monitoring and control of the disease spread,” says Julius Adewopo, who is leading the BXW project at IITA. He further explained that, “Banana farmers in Rwanda could be supported with innovations that leverages on the existing IT infrastructure and the rapidly increasing mobile phone penetration in the country.”

Central to the project is the citizen science approach, which means that local stakeholders, such as banana farmers and farmer extensionists (also called farmer promoters), play leading roles in collecting and submitting data on BXW presence, severity, and transmission. Moreover, stakeholders will participate in the development of the mobile application and platform, through which data and information will be exchanged.

About 70 farmer promoters from eight different districts in Northern, Western, Southern, and Eastern province will be trained to use the mobile phone application. They will participate in collecting and submitting data for the project—about incidence and severity of BXW in their village—via the platform. The project expects to reach up to 5,000 farmers through engagement with farmer promoters and mobile phones.

Further, data from the project will be translated into information for researchers, NGOs and policy makers to develop effective and efficient support systems. Similarly, data generated will feed into an early warning system that should inform farmers about disease outbreaks and the best management options available to them.

A real-time reporting system on the disease

While the existing National Banana Research Programme in Rwanda has long focused on five key areas of interventions with strategies used in the control or management of plant diseases, the proposed mobile-based solution is described as an innovative tool that it is easily scalable and flexible for application or integration with other information and communications technology (ICT) platforms or application interfaces.

“We observe limitations in the availability of reliable and up-to-date data and information about disease transmission patterns, severity of outbreaks, and effect of control measures,” Mariette McCampbell, a research fellow who studies ICT-enabled innovation and scaling on the ICT4BXW project, tells IPS. “We also have lack good socio-economic and socio-cultural data that could feed into farmer decision-making tools and an early warning system.”

The new reporting system intends to develop into an early warning system that will allow the Rwandan government to target efforts to mitigate the spread of BXW, it also aims to serve as a catalyst for partnerships among stakeholders to strengthen Banana production systems in the country.

“This [ICT] innovation could enable [near-]real-time assessment of the severity of the disease and support interventions for targeted control,” explains Adewopo.

The project team is currently working hard to co-develop the ICT platform, with farmer promoters and consultants. By the second quarter of 2019, tests with a pilot version of the platform will start in the eight districts where the project is active.

The project team have already identified a variety of scaling opportunities for a successful platform.“Problems with Banana Xanthomonas Wilt are not limited to Rwanda, neither is it the only crop disease that challenges farmers. Therefore, our long-term goal is to adapt the platform such that it can be scaled and used in other countries or for other diseases or other crops,” McCampbell explains.

According to Adewopo, “the vision of success is to co-develop and deploy a fully functional tool and platform, in alignment with the needs of target users and with keen focus on strengthening relevant institutions, such as the Rwanda Agricultural Board, to efficiently allocate resources for BXW control and prevention through democratised ICT-based extension targeting and delivery.”

There is increasing need for smarter and faster management of risks that have limited production in agricultural systems.

In recognition of BXW’s terminal threat to banana crops, there is no doubt that the use of ICT tools brings a new hope for banana farmers, and can equitably  empower them through improved extension/advisory access, irrespective of gender, age, or social status – as long as they have access to a mobile phone.

*Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Johannesburg

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IOM has deployed a fleet of 10 new, fully equipped ambulances to support emergency health services for Rohingya refugees and local residents in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo: IOM 2018

By International Organization for Migration
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Sep 25 2018 (IOM)

The UN Migration Agency (IOM) has deployed a fleet of ten new ambulances fitted with critical medical equipment to support emergency health services for Rohingya refugees and local host community residents in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh.

The vehicles, funded by the United Kingdom, Sweden, the United States and the European Union, contain specialist equipment to deliver high dependency first aid during complex emergency situations. This includes equipment to cope with head injuries, heart problems, pregnancy complications and cases requiring admission to intensive care.

“These ambulances are going to be at the front line of saving lives and providing better health care for local people and refugees in Cox’s Bazar,” said IOM Emergency Coordinator Manuel Pereira. “They not only increase our ability to move people swiftly and safely to wherever they can receive the best health care. The specialist medical equipment inside the vehicles also means that we can help prevent tragedies while on the move.”

IOM is the lead agency for medical referrals in the area and runs a 24-hour hotline to ensure patients from across the district can receive urgent transfer by ambulance to the most appropriate health facility.

The new ambulances began operating as an IOM community clinic in Kutapalong, Cox’s Bazar, serving refugee and local mothers, was ranked by Bangladesh’s Ministry of Health among the top five in the country for maternal and child health services. The clinic was named number one for such services out of more than 2,200 clinics in Bangladesh’s Chittagong division, which includes Cox’s Bazar.

There are now almost a million refugees living in Cox’s Bazar after violence in Myanmar forced over 700,000 people to flee to Bangladesh over the past year. The dramatic increase in population has resulted in a spike in demand for medical services.

Since the refugee crisis in Cox’s Bazar began in late August 2017, IOM medics have carried out over 600,000 consultations with patients from the refugee and local communities. Over that period IOM health staff have also supported over 9,000 referrals to secondary and tertiary medical facilities in the area.

IOM in Cox’s Bazar currently oversees the referral of over 200 patients each week from medical facilities run by different organisations in the refugee camps and surrounding towns and villages to facilities across the area, including the Cox’s Bazar Sadar District Hospital and Chittagong Medical College.

The launch of the new ambulances was welcomed by Commissioner of the Office of Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission (RRRC) Mohamed Abul Kalam, who officiated at the inaugural event, which was also attended by representatives of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare.

As part of IOM’s commitment to continuing to improve access to health care in Cox’s Bazar for all those affected by the crisis, health experts are also working to support emergency response capacity for ambulance staff. This week they are being trained by UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) specialists on first responder use of the Emergency Trauma Bag.

“This training will help us to further improve services and benefit the local community, the refugees and UN agencies working here in the Cox’s Bazar,” said IOM Emergency Health Programme Coordinator Dr. Andrew Mbala.

For more information please contact Fiona MacGregor at IOM Cox’s Bazar. Tel. +88 0 1733 335221, Email: fmacgregor@iom.int

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