Africa

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Spain coach Jorge Vilda warns there is more to come from his side after they thrashed Zambia to progress to the last 16 of the Fifa Women's World Cup with a game to spare.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 26 2023 (IPS)

Currency values and foreign exchange rates change for many reasons, largely following market perceptions, regardless of fundamentals. Market speculation has worsened volatility, instability and fragility in most economies, especially of small, open, developing countries.

US Fed pushing up interest rates
For no analytical rhyme or reason, US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) chairman Jerome Powell insists on raising interest rates until inflation is brought under 2% yearly. Obliged to follow the US Fed, most central banks have raised interest rates, especially since early 2022.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The US dollar or greenback’s strengthening has been largely due to aggressive Fed interest rate hikes. Undoubtedly, inflation has been rising, especially since last year. But there are different types of inflation, with different implications, which should be differentiated by nature and cause.

Typically, inflationary episodes are due to either demand pull or supply push. With rentier behaviour better recognized, there is now more attention to asset price and profit-driven inflation, e.g., ‘sellers inflation’ due to price-fixing in monopolistic and oligopolistic conditions.

Recent international price increases are widely seen as due to new Cold War measures since Obama, Trump presidency initiatives, COVID-19 pandemic responses, as well as Ukraine War economic sanctions.

These are all supply-side constraints, rather than demand-side or other causes of inflation.

The Fed chair’s pretext for raising interest rates is to get inflation down to 2%. But bringing inflation under 2% – the fetishized, but nonetheless arbitrary Fed and almost universal central bank inflation target – only reduces demand, without addressing supply-side inflation.

But there is no analytical – theoretical or empirical – justification for this completely arbitrary 2% inflation limit fetish. Thus, raising interest rates to address supply-side inflation is akin to prescribing and taking the wrong medicine for an ailment.

Fed driving world to stagnation
Thus, raising interest rates to suppress demand cannot be expected to address such supply-side driven inflation. Instead, tighter credit is likely to further depress economic growth and employment, worsening living conditions.

Increasing interest rates is expected to reduce expenditure for consumption or investment. Thus, raising the costs of funds is supposed to reduce demand as well as ensuing price increases.

Earlier research – e.g., by then World Bank chief economist Michael Bruno, with William Easterly, and by Stan Fischer and Rudiger Dornbusch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – found even low double-digit inflation to be growth-enhancing.

The Milton Friedman-inspired notion of a ‘non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment’ (NAIRU) also implies Fed interest rate hikes inappropriate and unnecessarily contractionary when inflation is not accelerating. US consumer price increases have decelerated since mid-2022, meaning inflation has not been accelerating for over a year.

At least two conservative monetary economists with Nobel laureates have reminded the world how such Fed interventions triggered US contractions, abruptly ending economic recoveries. Although not discussed by them, the same Fed interventions also triggered international recessions.

Friedman showed how the Fed ended the US recovery from 1937 at the start of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second presidential term. Recent US Fed chair Ben Bernanke and his colleagues also showed how similar Fed policies caused stagflation after the 1970s’ oil price hikes.

De-dollarization?
However, the US dollar has not been strengthening much in recent months. The greenback has been slipping since mid-2023 despite continuing Fed interest rate hikes a full year after consumer price increases stopped accelerating in mid-2022.

Many blame recent greenback depreciation on ‘de-dollarization’, ironically accelerated by US sanctions against its rivals. Such illegal sanctions have disrupted financial payments, investment flows, dispute settlement mechanisms and other longstanding economic processes and arrangements authorized by the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and UN charters.

Even the ‘rule of law’ – long favouring the US, other rich countries and transnational corporate interests – has been ‘suspended’ for ‘reasons of state’ due to economic warfare which continues to escalate. Unilateral asset and technology expropriation has been justified as necessary to ‘de-risk’ for ‘national security’ and other such considerations.

Horns of currency dilemma
For many monetary authorities, the choice is between a weak currency and higher interest rates. With growing financialization over recent decades, big finance has become much more influential, typically demanding higher interest income and stronger currencies.

Central bank independence – from the political executive and legislative processes – has enabled financial lobbies to influence policymaking even more. For example, Malaysia’s household debt share of national output rose from 47% in 2000 to over four-fifths before the COVID-19 pandemic, and 81% in 2022.

There is little reason to believe recent exchange rates have been due to ‘economic fundamentals’. Currencies of countries with persistent trade and current account deficits have strengthened, while others with sustained surpluses have declined. Instead, relative interest rate changes recently appear to explain more.

Thus, both the Japanese yen and Chinese renminbi depreciated by at least six per cent against the US dollar, at least before its recent tumble. By contrast, British pound sterling has appreciated against the greenback despite the dismal state of its real economy.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The progress made in HIV prevention is nothing short of a global success story. It is time that TB caught up to HIV. Medicine is simply too advanced for us to tolerate how one disease can be beaten back yet another continues to flourish. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS.

By Violet Chihota
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 26 2023 (IPS)

Before COVID-19 came along, the two most lethal infectious diseases were HIV and tuberculosis (TB). Even though HIV still lingers, with 1.5 million people contracting the infection every year, epidemiologists point to the availability of many HIV prevention options as a primary reason for the decreasing caseload.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over the past two decades, new HIV infections decreased by 49%, HIV-related deaths decreased by 61% and an estimated 18.6 million lives were saved because of new treatments that minimise the infection and prevent its spread.

We have so many options for HIV prevention at our disposal, including the dapivirine vaginal ring, oral Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), harm reduction for people who use drugs, condoms for both men and women, voluntary medical male circumcision and the recently approved long-acting cabotegravir, with other options in development.

We have a suite of prevention tools because everyone is different, and people need to be able to choose their methods according to the way they live their lives. We observe a similar abundance of choice within family planning with oral pills, a variety of injectables, intra-uterine devices and condoms—we share this prevention method with HIV programs.

The urgency of the need is clear: an estimated 1.6 million people lost their lives to the disease in 2021, the second consecutive year the death toll went up after 14 years of progress. In Africa, an estimated 2.5 million people contracted the disease in 2021, one million of which were never diagnosed and treated

We do not have this many options for TB prevention, but the world needs to adapt to embrace choice if we are to meet the globally agreed-upon goal of reducing TB deaths by 90% by 2030—referred to as the “End TB targets.”

The urgency of the need is clear: an estimated 1.6 million people lost their lives to the disease in 2021, the second consecutive year the death toll went up after 14 years of progress. In Africa, an estimated 2.5 million people contracted the disease in 2021, one million of which were never diagnosed and treated.

Yet there are glimmers of good news. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, estimates of TB incidence have slowly declined over the past few years in Angola, Ethiopia, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia—all countries with high burdens of TB.

Of these countries, Zambia has also had success in finding and diagnosing an increasing number of these infections; the pandemic impacted the surveillance efforts of the other governments.

As for HIV, there is no effective vaccine to prevent TB in adults: the BCG vaccine only prevents severe TB in children. However, there are ways to prevent TB when someone is potentially exposed to an infected person. In the workplace or when a family member at home becomes sick, for example, prevention starts with masking, which was traditionally used in clinical care settings. The other ways work through prophylactic regimens. For TB, we initially only had isoniazid that could be taken for six, nine, 12 or 36 months depending on country guidelines, but now we have shorter regimens that allow for patient choice.

These options include regimens lasting one (1HP) and three months (3HP), with different combinations of the antibiotic drugs rifapentine and isoniazid, all with vitamin B6 supplements to help counter some of the side effects of treatment. There is also a three-month regimen of rifampicin and isoniazid (often given to children and adolescents) and a four-month regimen of rifampicin alone. Longer courses of isoniazid taken for 6–36 months also remain options, though most people are eligible to take a shorter rifapentine- or rifampicin-based regimen and should be given the choice to do so.

We need to do a better job of making sure that people at risk of TB have access to the full range of prevention options. A recent peer-reviewed study underlines this point, estimating that tracing the personal contacts of people diagnosed with TB and providing them with prevention treatment would save the lives of 700,000 children under the age of 15 and 150,000 adults by 2035.

Even the financial benefits of the prevention program, in terms of increased economic productivity, would outweigh the costs. Nobody questions the need to have options for HIV prevention or family planning, but questions arise when trying to roll out a one-month TB prevention regimen when there’s already a three-month regimen available. We need them all. We also need to collect more data to differentiate which prevention regimens are best for each patient type to ensure success.

The WHO guidelines for preventive TB treatment create the possibility of choice among TB preventive treatments by not ranking the regimens by preference or effectiveness. But health care facilities and outreach programs need to embrace that range of options and make sure that a choice exists in practice. Supply chains may limit choice initially, but if there is no demand for more options from providers, there is no impetus to expand the supply chains.

The progress made in HIV prevention is nothing short of a global success story. It took a combination of scientific ingenuity and innovation, combined with an intensive dedication of resources that made a range of preventive options available around the world.

It is time that TB caught up to HIV. Medicine is simply too advanced for us to tolerate how one disease can be beaten back yet another continues to flourish.

Violet Chihota is an Adjunct Associate Professor and Chief Specialist Scientist at the Aurum Institute. She has been a researcher in global health for over 10 years, designing and managing the conduct of clinical research studies in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Cameroon, Georgia, India and Malaysia.

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Afshan Bhurgri, a cancer survivor, advises women to listen to their bodies and be aware of the symptoms of cervical cancer. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Jul 26 2023 (IPS)

“Listen to your body, and if there is anything strange happening, do not ignore it,” is the advice of 57-year-old Afshan Bhurgri, a cancer survivor.

Eight years ago, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer at a time when she was “in a good place” in life. Her kids were grown up, and she had more time to herself. A fitness freak, the schoolteacher’s daily routine included going to the gym daily. “I joined a creative writing class as I loved penning my thoughts!” she reminisced.

But then everything changed when she found out she had cancer.

Cancer of the cervix uteri is the fourth most common cancer among women worldwide, with an estimated 604,127 new cases and causing the death of 341,831 in 2020.

In Pakistan, an estimated 73.8 million women over the age of 15 are at risk of developing cervical cancer caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV).

Cervical cancer in Pakistan, according to the WHO. Credit: Shahzeb Ahmed

In the absence of complete data, it is estimated that of the 5,000 women diagnosed with this cancer in Pakistan, some 3,000 lose their lives every year due to lack of access to prevention, screening and treatment, thus making it the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women of the reproductive age group in the country, after breast and ovarian cancers. Up to 88 percent of cervical cancer cases are due to human papillomavirus (HPV) serotypes 16 and 18, as reported by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

“We are short on authentic data on the prevalence of the disease burden,” said Dr Arshad Chandio, who works at Jhpiego Pakistan as an immunisation lead. His organisation, which has supported HPV vaccine introduction in seven countries with Gavi support, is partnering with the federal and provincial governments, along with WHO, UNICEF, and USAID, to implement a roadmap for cervical cancer prevention and introduction of HPV vaccine in Pakistan. Cervical cancer is the only cancer that is preventable by a vaccine.

Cervical cancer worldwide, according to the WHO. Credit: Shahzeb Ahmed

“Without authentic data, our plan to eradicate this disease will not be watertight,” admitted Dr Irshad Memon, the director general of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation in Sindh.

Dr Shahid Pervez, senior consultant histopathologist at the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), co-chair of the country’s newly established National Cancer Registry, recommends legislation to make reporting of cancer mandatory. “This will be one way of collecting basic data, at one place, which is expected by international agencies to roll out an effective cancer control programme in Pakistan,” he added.

Cervical cancer warning signs. Credit: Shahzeb Ahmed

Although Bhurgri had knowledge about cancer of the cervix and went for regular health checkups and screenings, her doctors did not carry out full examinations, which led to the infection turning cancerous. It all started in 2009, five years prior to being diagnosed with cancer when she started noticing a “foul smell emanating from my vagina” after her period became “heavier” than usual.

“Let alone screening and testing for the cancer, many healthcare professionals do not even know of the disease, or how women get infected,” pointed out Chandio.

“I am an educated person, I could afford to get the best medical help, and I went to three of the city’s top gynaecologists, got pap smears done on their requests over the years, and I was only sent for HPV test when it was too late,” rued Bhurgri. In 2014, a doctor suggested an ultrasound which gave a true picture. A biopsy confirmed she had cervical cancer.

After her biopsy, Bhurgri started reading up on cervical cancer, and one of the indications was the foul vaginal smell.

“It could have been nipped in the bud if only the doctors had carried out a thorough examination,” said gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Azra Ahsan, president of the Association for Mothers and Newborns, blaming “sheer negligence” on the part of her fraternity.

“A gynaecological consultation must not only be limited to a conversation across the table,” said Ahsan, but should include an “examination on the couch including a proper internal examination, ideally a pap smear and visual inspection,” especially if, like Bhurgri, a patient was complaining of heavy bleeding and a foul smell.

Bhurgri’s journey towards wellness was tough. A radical hysterectomy was recommended, and her cervix, her uterus and her ovaries were removed. Twenty-eight radiations and five chemos later, over a five-month period, she was given a clean chit by her oncologist. The cost of treatment, back in 2014 at a private hospital, was a whopping Rs30,000,000 (USD 1,097) back then.

Screening Can Save Lives

Although Bhurgri’s cancer may have remained under the radar despite regular screening via pap smears, doctors say HPV and pap smear tests are the best way to screen a woman for cervical cancer. They can identify patients who are at high risk of developing pre-cancerous changes on the cervix as well as pick up those who have already developed these changes.

These precancerous lesions can be treated before they turn into cancer. Sadly, in Pakistan, the uptake of pap smears is negligible and estimated to be as low as 2 percent.

According to Dr Uzma Chishti, assistant professor and consultant gynecologic oncologist, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, AKUH, Pakistan’s health system is so financially stretched that it cannot afford to provide screening of women by these expensive tests. Instead, she recommends WHO’s recommendations of performing a visual inspection of the cervix by acetic acid (VIA) to screen women to help reduce the incidence of cervical cancer. “VIA is an alternative screening test for low-and-middle-income countries like ours,” she said.

Vaccinations the Best Option

The WHO triple intervention recommendation to eliminate cervical cancer in countries like Pakistan includes scaling up HPV vaccination to 90 percent for girls aged between 9 to 14, twice-lifetime cervical screening to 70 percent and treatment of pre-invasive lesions and invasive cancer to 90 percent by 2030. “All three are essential if we want to eliminate cervical cancer completely,” emphasised said Ahsan.

HPV vaccinations to prevent cervical cancer are the way forward as it provides primary prevention, said Chishti, in the absence of VIA, screenings and pap smear tests. Almost 60 per cent of cervical cancer cases occur in countries that have not yet introduced HPV vaccination. Pakistan is one of them.

Once up and about, the first thing Bhurgri did was get her 14-year-old daughter vaccinated for human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. “My older daughter remains unvaccinated as she was 21 then and studying abroad. She needed three shots and could not make it to that timeline,” she said.

In Pakistan, two globally licensed HPV vaccines – Cervarix (protective against HPV serotypes 16 and 18) and Gardasil (against 6, 11, 16, and 18) were available till a few years ago, but very few doctors, even in the private sector, were prescribing them.

“We made it available in our clinic and counselled any and everyone, but it mostly fell on deaf ears, and very few people actually got vaccinated. As a result, huge amounts of vaccines expired in the warehouses, and the pharmaceutical firms decided to not make it available in Pakistan,” explained Ahsan.

In 2021, medical students at the AKUH interviewed 384 women attending outpatient clinics between the ages of 15 to 50 to find out their knowledge about cervical cancer. They found that of the 61.2 percent of women who had heard about cervical cancer, 47.0 percent knew about pap smear tests, and among them, 73 percent had gotten a pap test. A total of 25.5 percent of women, out of the 61.2 percent, knew that a vaccine existed for prevention, but only 9.8 percent had been vaccinated against human papillomavirus. The study concluded that a majority of the women interviewed for the study belonged to a higher socioeconomic class and were mostly educated, yet their knowledge regarding the prevention and screening of cervical cancer was poor. “This reflects that the knowledge levels as a whole would be considerably lower in the city’s general population,” the study concluded.

Shamsi highlighted the challenges of discussing HPV in a conservative society where sexual health topics are hardly discussed due to the embarrassment and taboo associated with sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This communication conundrum has resulted in a general lack of information about the disease. “There is a total lack of information about HPV, cervical cancer, and its prevention among the masses,” she said.

But this may change if Pakistan introduces the HPV vaccine at a national level, utilising routine effective and established immunisation delivery strategies. According to Dr Uzma Shamsi, a cancer epidemiologist at the AKUH, implementing the HPV vaccine at a national level in Pakistan could save hundreds of thousands of lives annually.

The benefits are enormous, and hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved each year, she emphasised.

Pakistan is in talks with Gavi the vaccine alliance, to support the country in including the single-dose HPV (two covers four strains) vaccine in its routine immunisation programme. “It will probably take another two years and USD 16 million before we can roll out the vaccine, but when it happens, it will be a country-wide campaign,” confirmed Memon.

Shamsi predicted some tribulation because the primary target group for vaccination is pre-adolescent girls. “A new vaccine for a new target age group comes with its own set of challenges in a society where conspiracy theories about vaccination programmes, stigma and misinformation about cancer and sexual health persist,” she said. And so before the actual rollout,  Shamsi emphasised, it was important to increase awareness about the HPV virus, cervical cancer causes, and vaccine’s safety and usage among the general public, patients, and healthcare professionals while actively dispelling misinformation.

Memon agreed that “conversation around the vaccine must begin”. For its part, the Sindh government set aside Rs 100 million ($365,884) for advocacy of HPV vaccine uptake in its current budget. “We will initiate a dissemination campaign once we know when the HPV vaccination programme is to begin,” he said. The Sindh province was also the first to initiate the typhoid conjugate virus vaccine after an extensively drug-resistant virus was found in the province. He was hopeful there would be less resistance to the HPV vaccine after the successful administration of measles and rubella and the pediatric Covid-19 vaccines earlier.

However, said Memon, “We will need more women vaccinators this time as young girls are shy of rolling their shirt sleeves up for male vaccinators.” With up to 125,000 female health workers across Pakistan, who were earlier trained by Gavi for MR immunisation, which is a much more difficult vaccine to administer (being subcutaneous) as opposed to the HPV one (which is muscular), he said, this workforce can be engaged to get trained for this vaccination campaign too.

In the end, however, according to Chandio, “without a strong political will and leadership, a national HPV vaccination programme cannot become a reality in Pakistan to eliminate this largely preventable cancer among women”.

Fighting her cancer has changed Bhurgri in more ways than one. Her message to women is to “not put yourself aside; make yourself a priority.” While she continues to lead a healthy life – going to the gym, eating healthy, resting, she said, “You cannot go on and pick up where you left off”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: UNICEF/UNI403619/Karimi

By James Elder
KABUL, Afghanistan, Jul 26 2023 (IPS)

The needs of Afghanistan’s children and families are immense. So are the efforts of those supporting them: teams of community workers made up of family members, teachers in community-based schools, vaccinators, and health workers working around the clock to bring life-saving services in the face of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

I recently traveled to eastern Afghanistan to meet some of the inspiring heroes who, this year already, helped UNICEF reach around 19 million children and their families with health and nutrition services.

UNICEF’s incredible health and nutrition response is supported by people across Afghan society. One of them is Mangal, a hero on two wheels. Every morning, Mangal picks up vaccines at a UNICEF-supported district hospital.

He carefully packs them in a cooler, which he straps to his motorbike before setting off to remote villages. Mangal braves rough, narrow roads, the scorching heat, and genuine security risks.

“I ride for nine kilometres every day to bring these vaccines to the people who need them,” he tells me. “They understand how important it is to protect their children from diseases. They don’t need any persuasion to come here. They greet me with gratitude and hope.” 

A doctor prescribes medicine for mothers and children during a UNICEF-supported mobile health and nutrition team visit. Credit: Karim / UNICEF

Some of Mangal’s supplies land here, with a UNICEF-supported mobile health and nutrition team providing services straight to the communities who need them most and who have no other way to access health care.

Like so much of UNICEF’s health and nutrition work across Afghanistan, these programmes are game-changers.

But these teams have their work cut out for them.

“Nearly half of all children under five in Afghanistan are malnourished, a truly devastating number,” UNICEF’s head of nutrition, Melanie Galvin, tells me. “Some 875,000 of them are expected to need treatment for severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of undernutrition and one of the top threats to child survival across the globe.”

Ramping up the response means staffing up the response, too. UNICEF has more than doubled the number of places where a child can be treated.

“Last year we put more nutrition nurses and nutrition counsellors into overflowing hospitals,” Melanie says. “We put them directly into communities where people live. We put them into mobile clinics that reach very small and isolated populations. We put them into day care centre spaces in poor urban areas.”

A child receives RUTF during a visit by a UNICEF-supported mobile health and nutrition team. Credit Karim/UNICEF

Mobile health and nutrition teams are critical in reaching rural areas with basic services like pre-natal checkups, vaccinations, psycho-social counselling, and ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF). It’s a heartbreaking condition to see up close. In this photo, little Zarmina receives an RUTF sachet from Melanie.

RUTF really is a magical paste – energy dense and full of micronutrients. Used to treat severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting, RUTF is made using peanuts, sugar, milk powder, oil, vitamins and minerals, and has helped treat millions of children in Afghanistan.

As we tour a hospital, Dr. Fouzia Shafique, UNICEF Afghanistan’s Principal Health Advisor, explains how UNICEF has managed to support so many children, despite all the challenges.

“Health clinics, family teams of community workers, community-based schools, vaccinators, and trained female health workers,” she tells me. Donors such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank have also been critical partners, helping UNICEF provide care even in difficult-to-reach areas of the country.

So many of the life-saving interventions I encountered on my mission are made possible by the tireless work of UNICEF staff such as Dr. Shafique and Dr. Nafi Kakar, who fill a multitude of roles, including inspecting vaccines and parts of the cold chain system that is used to store them.

Helping families access quality primary and secondary health care means supporting thousands of health facilities, covering operating costs, paying the salaries of tens of thousands of health workers, and procuring and distributing medical supplies.

Together, these efforts are helping UNICEF reach many of the more than 15 million children in Afghanistan who need support. It’s a difficult number to comprehend, but easier to appreciate when you meet some of those very same children.

There’s the baby fighting for her life in an incubator; the children working for their families in fields of unexploded mines; the children grappling with the anxieties and pressures of poverty; or the girls deprived of their greatest hope – education. Each child is like my own. Unique. Each child is special.

The smiles say it all: For Dr. Shafique and young girls in Afghanistan, it’s been a good day. But there remains so much to do. Supporting the health and well-being of people in Afghanistan isn’t only about access to health services, it’s also about the protection of rights – notably, ensuring rights and freedoms for women and girls.

Given the enormity of UNICEF’s role in the health and nutrition sector, it’s critical for UNICEF – and for children in Afghanistan – that funding is maintained. So that the country’s children can grow up safe, healthy and be the heroes in their own stories.

Source: UNICEF Blog
The UNICEF Blog promotes children’s rights and well-being, and ideas about ways to improve their lives and the lives of their families. It also brings insights and opinions from the world’s leading child rights experts and accounts from UNICEF’s staff on the ground in more than 190 countries and territories. The opinions expressed on the UNICEF Blog are those of the author(s) and may not necessarily reflect UNICEF’s official position.

James Elder is UNICEF Spokesperson in Afghanistan.

IPS UN Bureau

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Marisol and Misael Menjívar pose next to the biodigester installed in March in the backyard of their home in El Corozal, a rural settlement located near Suchitoto in central El Salvador. With a biotoilet and stove, the couple produces biogas for cooking from feces, which saves them money. The biotoilet can be seen in the background. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador , Jul 25 2023 (IPS)

A new technology that has arrived in rural villages in El Salvador makes it possible for small farming families to generate biogas with their feces and use it for cooking – something that at first sounded to them like science fiction and also a bit smelly.

In the countryside, composting latrines, which separate urine from feces to produce organic fertilizer, are very popular. But can they really produce gas for cooking?

“It seemed incredible to me,” Marisol Menjívar told IPS as she explained how her biodigester, which is part of a system that includes a toilet and a stove, was installed in the backyard of her house in the village of El Corozal, near Suchitoto, a municipality in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán."When the first ones were installed here, I was excited to see that they had stoves hooked up, and I asked if I could have one too." -- Marisol Menjívar

“When the first ones were installed here, I was excited to see that they had stoves hooked up, and I asked if I could have one too,” added Marisol, 48. Hers was installed in March.

El Corozal, population 200, is one of eight rural settlements that make up the Laura López Rural Water and Sanitation Association (Arall), a community organization responsible for providing water to 465 local families.

The families in the small villages, who are dedicated to the cultivation of corn and beans, had to flee the region during the country’s 1980-1992 civil war, due to the fighting.

After the armed conflict, they returned to rebuild their lives and work collectively to provide basic services, especially drinking water, as have many other community organizations, in the absence of government coverage.

In this Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, 78.4 percent of rural households have access to piped water, while 10.8 percent are supplied by wells and 10.7 percent by other means.

With small stoves like this one, a score of families in El Corozal in central El Salvador cook their food with biogas they produce themselves, thanks to a government program that has brought clean energy technology to these remote rural villages. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Simple green technology

The biodigester program in rural areas is being promoted by the Salvadoran Water Authority (Asa).

Since November 2022, the government agency has installed around 500 of these systems free of charge in several villages around the country.

The aim is to enable small farmers to produce sustainable energy, biogas at no cost, which boosts their income and living standards, while at the same time improving the environment.

The program provides each family with a kit that includes a biodigester, a biotoilet, and a small one-burner stove.

In El Corozal, five of these kits were installed by Asa in November 2022, to see if people would accept them or not. To date, 21 have been delivered, and there is a waiting list for more.

In El Corozal, a rural settlement in the municipality of Suchitoto in central El Salvador, the technology of family biodigesters arrived at the end of last year, and some families are now producing biogas to light up their stoves and cook their food at no cost. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

“With the first ones were set up, the idea was for people to see how they worked, because there was a lot of ignorance and even fear,” Arall’s president, Enrique Menjívar, told IPS.

In El Corozal there are many families with the surname Menjívar, because of the tradition of close relatives putting down roots in the same place.

“Here we’re almost all related,” Enrique added.

The biodigester is a hermetically sealed polyethylene bag, 2.10 meters long, 1.15 meters wide and 1.30 meters high, inside which bacteria decompose feces or other organic materials.

This process generates biogas, clean energy that is used to fuel the stoves.

The toilets are mounted on a one-meter-high cement slab in latrines in the backyard. They are made of porcelain and have a handle on one side that opens and closes the stool inlet hole.

One of the main advantages that family biodigesters have brought to the inhabitants of El Corozal, a small village in the Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán, is that the whole process begins with clean, hygienic toilets, like this one set up in Marleni Menjívar’s backyard, as opposed to the older dry composting latrines, which drew flies and cockroaches. To the left of the toilet is the small handle used to pump water to flush the feces into the biodigester. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

They also have a small hand pump, similar to the ones used to inflate bicycle tires, and when the handle is pushed, water is pumped from a bucket to flush the waste down the pipe.

The underground pipe carries the biomass by gravity to the biodigester, located about five meters away.

The system can also be fed with organic waste, by means of a tube with a hole at one end, which must be opened and closed.

Once it has been produced, the biogas is piped through a metal tube to the small stove mounted inside the house.

“I don’t even use matches, I just turn the knob and it lights up,” said Marisol, a homemaker and caregiver. Her husband Manuel Menjívar is a subsistence farmer, and they have a young daughter.

In El Corozal, biodigesters have been installed for families of four or five members, and the equipment generates 300 liters of biogas during the night, enough to use for two hours a day, according to the technical specifications of Coenergy, the company that imports and markets the devices.

But there are also kits that are used by two related families who live next to each other and share the equipment, which includes, in addition to the toilet, a larger biodigester and a two-burner stove.

With more sophisticated equipment, electricity could be generated from biogas produced from landfill waste or farm manure, although this is not yet being done in El Salvador.

Marleni Menjivar gets ready to heat water on her ecological stove, watched closely by her four-year-old daughter, in El Corozal in central El Salvador, where an innovative government program to produce biogas has arrived. With this technology, people save money by buying less liquefied gas while benefiting the environment. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Saving money while caring for the environment

The families of El Corozal who have the new latrines and stoves are happy with the results.

What they value the most is saving money by cooking with gas produced by themselves, at no cost.

They used to cook on wood-burning stoves, in the case of food that took longer to make, or on liquefied gas stoves, at a cost of 13 dollars per gas cylinder.

Marleni Menjívar, for example, used two cylinders a month, mainly because of the high level of consumption demanded by the family business of making artisanal cheeses, including a very popular local kind of cottage cheese.

Every day she has to cook 23 liters of whey, the liquid left after milk has been curdled. This consumes the biogas produced overnight.

For meals during the day Marleni still uses the liquefied gas stove, but now she only buys one cylinder a month instead of two, a savings of about 13 dollars per month.

“These savings are important for families here in the countryside,” said Marleni, 28, the mother of a four-year-old girl. The rest of her family is made up of her brother and grandfather.

“We also save water,” she added.

The biotoilet requires only 1.2 liters of water per flush, less than conventional toilets.

In addition, the soils are protected from contamination by septic tank latrines, which are widely used in rural areas, but are leaky and unhygienic.

The new technology avoids these problems.

The liquids resulting from the decomposition process flow through an underground pipe into a pit that functions as a filter, with several layers of gravel and sand. This prevents pollution of the soil and aquifers.

Also, as a by-product of the decomposition process, organic liquid fertilizer is produced for use on crops.

Most families in the rural community of El Corozal have benefited from one-burner stoves that run on biogas produced in family biodigesters. Larger two-burner stoves are also shared by two related families, where they cook on a griddle one of the favorite dishes of Salvadorans: pupusas, corn flour tortillas filled with beans, cheese and pork, among other ingredients. CREDIT: Coenergy El Salvador

Checking on site: zero stench

Due to a lack of information, people were initially concerned that if the biogas used in the stoves came from the decomposition of the family’s feces, it would probably stink.

And, worst of all, perhaps the food would also smell.

But little by little these doubts and fears faded away as families saw how the first devices worked.

“That was the first thing they asked, if the gas smelled bad, or if what we were cooking smelled bad,” said Marleni, remembering how the neighbors came to her house to check for themselves when she got the latrine and stove installed in December 2022.

“That was because of the little information that was available, but then we found that this was not the case, our doubts were cleared up and we saw there were no odors,” she added.

She said that, like almost everyone in the village, her family used to have a dry composting toilet, but it stank and generated cockroaches and flies.

“All that has been eliminated, the bathrooms are completely hygienic and clean, and we even had them tiled to make them look nicer,” Marleni said.

She remarked that hygiene is important to her, as her little girl can now go to the bathroom by herself, without worrying about cockroaches and flies.

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Children celebrate during a ECW high-level mission to South Sudan. Credit: ECW

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2023 (IPS)

In times of crisis, education is an essential component of humanitarian intervention packages, South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction Awut Deng Acuil told IPS in an exclusive interview.

She was speaking to IPS during the UN’s ECOSOC High-Level Political Forum, during which she participated in the side event, “Ensuring Education Continuity: The Roles of Education in Emergencies, Protracted Crises and Building Peace.”

Years of conflict in South Sudan and the region, combined with recurring disasters, massive population displacement and the impact of COVID-19, have adversely impacted the Government’s efforts in delivering quality education to all. Yet, their interest and commitment to invest in inclusive education remains.

“Every time there is a crisis, there is a rush for humanitarian assistance as a life-saving intervention. But I think education (should be part) of this as well. When people run away from conflict or natural disasters, they are mostly women and children,” Acuil said.

“These children arrive exhausted and traumatized, and what is crucial is that the (humanitarian) intervention is integrated. We must also work at the same time to create a safe environment where these children can continue to go to school. This helps them psychologically to be engaged in learning (rather) than thinking of what they have gone through,” she continued.

“Education is lifesaving. They will play, they will get lessons, they will get counseling from those teachers who are well-trained in [trauma] counseling… All these interventions provide them with a crucial sense of normalcy.”

Interestingly, she said, the first thing children in crisis ask is: “Can we go to school?”

According to UNHCR, close to 200,000 people – a majority of whom are children and women – have crossed to South Sudan in recent weeks to flee the conflict in Sudan. International humanitarian partners work with the Government to ensure the new arrivals receive health, nutrition, and schooling.

South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction Awut Deng Acuil.

“South Sudan has an open-door policy. As soon as they are settled, children have to go to school. [We are] building temporary shelters for them to go to school. Supporting teachers, who will be helping these children, is key.”

Acuil said Education Cannot Wait has been at the forefront of assisting with setting up quality, holistic education opportunities for incoming children. She also stressed the importance of integrating refugees into the national system, citing South Sudan’s inclusion policy as a best practice in the region.

“We have refugee teachers who are head teachers in our public schools. We have refugees in our boarding schools and public schools in South Sudan.”

ECW recently extended its Multi-Year Resilience Programme in the country with a new US$40 million catalytic grant. GPE provided an additional US$10 million for the programme.

The three-year programme will be delivered by Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Finn Church Aid, in close coordination with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction and others partners. The investment will reach at least 135,000 crisis-affected children and youth – including refugees, returnees and host-community children – with holistic education supports that improve access to school, ensure quality learning, enhance inclusivity for girls and children with disabilities, and build resilience to future shocks.

Total ECW funding in South Sudan now tops US$72 million. ECW is calling on five donors to step up with US$5 million each to provide an additional US$25 million in funding to the education in emergencies response in South Sudan.

The needs are pressing for the world’s youngest nation.  South Sudan continues to receive refugees fleeing the conflict in Sudan and requires additional support to address the converging challenges of conflict, climate change, forced displacement and other protracted crises.

“The multi-year programme that was launched last month will help a lot in terms of access, infrastructure, and teacher training. We have ‘hard-to-reach areas’ that have never seen a school, never seen a classroom. These are the places we have prioritized and targeted with this $40 million grant. Along with girls’ education, and children with disabilities, and also materials for education, especially printing more books.”

Acuil highlighted the importance of girls’ education, in a context where cultural norms and practices, including child marriage, hinder their access to school. She said the country is tackling the issue through a vast campaign championed by the President that targets traditional leaders, civil society, members of parliament, executives, educators, teachers and students themselves.

“Our President has taken the lead in campaigning for girls’ education. This year he declared free and compulsory education for all to ensure South Sudan makes up for the two lost generations due to conflict in the country. He is encouraging us to [open] boarding schools for girls, especially. In primary school, the disparity is so close, and in some states, we have more girls than boys. But when they transition to the secondary level, only 18% complete their 12-years education.”

Acuil called on UN Member States to support education in emergencies and invest more resources.

“Education Cannot Wait has shown and demonstrated that when there are crises, they have a prompt response to help children. Whether during disasters or man-made wars, ECW has been able to do that. We need to focus on that, prioritizing education and also investing in education.”

“If you invest in children today, they will be the leaders of tomorrow. We must help facilitate their education and empower them to help their countries and communities. That is why humanitarian assistance and education should go hand-in-hand.”

“I would like to end this with something I heard from a local girl who said: ‘Education cannot wait, but marriage can wait.’ Our humanity’s strength lies in education, and we must continue to remind those who keep forgetting, and ensure to awaken those who have not yet woken up to be part and parcel of education.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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IPS – UN Bureau, IPS UN Bureau Report, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), South Sudan

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By Lawrence Wittner
ALBANY, USA, Jul 25 2023 (IPS)

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the immensely destructive Ukraine War lies in the fact that it could have been averted. The most obvious way was for the Russian government to abandon its plan for the military conquest of Ukraine.

The Problem of Russian Policy

The problem on this score, though, was that Vladimir Putin was determined to revive Russia’s “great power” status. Although his predecessors had signed the UN Charter (which prohibits the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”), as well as the Budapest Memorandum and the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership (both of which specifically committed the Russian government to respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity), Putin was an ambitious ruler, determined to restore what he considered Russia’s imperial grandeur.

This approach led not only to Russian military intervention in Middle Eastern and African nations, but to retaking control of nations previously dominated by Russia. These nations included Ukraine, which Putin regarded, contrary to history and international agreements, as “Russian land.”

As a result, what began in 2014 as the Russian military seizure of Crimea and the arming of a separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine gradually evolved into the full-scale invasion of February 2022―the largest, most devastating military operation in Europe since World War II, with the potential for the catastrophic explosion of the giant Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and even the outbreak of nuclear war.

The official justifications for these acts of aggression, trumpeted by the Kremlin and its apologists, were quite flimsy. Prominent among them was the claim that Ukraine’s accession to NATO posed an existential danger to Russia.

In fact, though, in 2014―or even in 2022―Ukraine was unlikely to join NATO because key NATO members opposed its admission. Also, NATO, founded in 1949, had never started a war with Russia and had never shown any intention of doing so.

The reality was that, like the U.S. invasion of Iraq nearly two decades before, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was out of line with both international law and the imperatives of national security. It was a war of choice organized by a power-hungry ruler.

The Problem of UN Weakness

On a deeper level, the war was avoidable because the United Nations, established to guarantee peace and international security, did not take the action necessary to stop the war from occurring or to end it.

Admittedly, the United Nations did repeatedly condemn the Russian invasion, occupation, and annexation of Ukraine. On March 27, 2014, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution by a vote of 100 nations to 11 (with 58 abstentions), denouncing the Russian military seizure and annexation of Crimea.

On March 2, 2022, by a vote of 141 nations to 5 (with 35 abstentions), it called for the immediate and complete withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukraine. In a ruling on the legality of the Russian invasion, the International Court of Justice, by a vote of 13 to 2, proclaimed that Russia should immediately suspend its invasion of Ukraine.

That fall, when Russia began annexing the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, the UN Secretary-General denounced that action as flouting “the purposes and principles of the United Nations,” while the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 143 nations to 5 (with 35 abstentions), called on all countries to refuse to recognize Russia’s “illegal annexation” of Ukrainian land.

Tragically, this principled defense of international law was not accompanied by measures to enforce it. At meetings of the UN Security Council, the UN entity tasked with maintaining peace, the Russian government simply vetoed UN action. Nor did the UN General Assembly circumvent the Security Council’s paralysis by acting on its own. Instead, the United Nations showed itself well-meaning but ineffectual.

This weakness on matters of international security was not accidental. Nations―and particularly powerful nations―had long preferred to keep international organizations weak, for the creation of stronger international institutions would curb their own influence.

Naturally, then, they saw to it that the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations, could act on international security issues only by a unanimous vote of its membership. And even this constricted authority proved too much for the U.S. government, which refused to join the League.

Similarly, when the United Nations was formed, the five permanent seats on the UN Security Council were given to five great powers, each of which could, and often did, veto its resolutions.

During the Ukraine War, Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky publicly lamented this inability of the United Nations to enforce its mandate. “The wars of the past have prompted our predecessors to create institutions that should protect us from war,” he remarked in March 2022, “but they unfortunately don’t work.”

In this context, he called for the creation of “a union of responsible countries . . . to stop conflicts” and to “keep the peace.”

What Still Might Be Done

The need to strengthen the United Nations and, thereby, enable it to keep the peace, has been widely recognized. To secure this goal, proposals have been made over the years to emphasize UN preventive diplomacy and to reform the UN Security Council.

More recently, UN reformers have championed deploying UN staff (including senior mediators) rapidly to conflict zones, expanding the Security Council, and drawing upon the General Assembly for action when the Security Council fails to act. These and other reform measures could be addressed by the world organization’s Summit for the Future, planned for 2024.

In the meantime, it remains possible that the Ukraine War might come to an end through related action. One possibility is that the Russian government will conclude that its military conquest of Ukraine has become too costly in terms of lives, resources, and internal stability to continue.

Another is that the countries of the world, fed up with disastrous wars, will finally empower the United Nations to safeguard international peace and security. Either or both would be welcomed by people in Ukraine and around the globe.

Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany, the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press) and other books on international issues, and a board member of the Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund.

Source: Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) which envisions a peaceful, free, just, and sustainable world community

Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the official policy of Citizens for Global Solutions.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A Ghanaian minister allegedly lost $1m cash, handbags and jewels from her house.

Credit: Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

At a meeting with European and Latin American leaders in Brussels this July, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva reiterated the bold commitment he had made in his first international speech as president-elect, when he attended the COP27 climate summit in November 2022: bringing Amazon deforestation down to zero by 2030.

Lula’s presence at COP27 was a signal to the world that Brazil was willing to become the climate champion it needs to be. Following a request by the Brazilian Forum of NGOs and Social Movements for Environment and Development, Lula offered to host the 2025 climate summit in Brazil; it has now been confirmed that COP30 will be held in Belém, gateway to the Amazon River.

At COP27 Lula also said he intended to revive and modernise the 45-year old Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation, a body bringing together the eight Amazonian countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – to take concerted steps to protect the Amazon rainforest.

Four years of regression

In his four years in office, Lula’s far-right climate-denier predecessor Jair Bolsonaro dismantled environmental protections and paralysed key environmental agencies by cutting their funding and staff. He vilified civil society, criminalised activists and discredited the media. He allowed deforestation to proceed at an astonishing pace and emboldened businesses to grab land, clear it for agriculture by starting fires and carry out illegal logging and mining.

Under Bolsonaro, already embattled Indigenous communities and activists became even more vulnerable to attacks. By encouraging environmental plunder, including on protected and Indigenous land, the government enabled violence against environmental and Indigenous peoples’ rights defenders. A blatant example was the murder of Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips in June 2022. The two were ambushed and killed on the orders of the head of an illegal transnational fishing network. Both the material and intellectual authors of the crimes have now been charged and await trial.

Reversing the regression

Having being elected on a promise to reverse environmental destruction, the new administration has sought to restructure and resource monitoring and enforcement institutions. It strengthened the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), the federal agency in charge of enforcing environmental policy, and the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), which for the first time is now headed by an Indigenous person, Joenia Wapichana.

Bolsonaro had transferred FUNAI to the Ministry of Agriculture, run by a leader of the congressional agribusiness caucus. Instead of protecting Indigenous land, it enabled deforestation and the expansion of agribusiness.

In contrast, Lula’s first political gestures were to create a new ministry for Indigenous peoples’ affairs, appointing Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara to lead it, and to make Marina Silva, a leader of the environmentalist party Rede Sustentabilidade, Minister for the Environment, a position she had held between 2003 and 2008.

Lula also restored the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon, launched in 2004 and implemented until Bolsonaro took over. In February, the government set up a Permanent Inter-Ministerial Commission for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation and Fires in Brazil to coordinate actions across 19 ministries and develop zero deforestation policies.

The strategy establishes a permanent federal government presence in vulnerable areas with the aim of eliminating illegal activities, setting up bases and using intelligence and satellite imagery to track criminal activity.

The newly appointed Federal Police’s Director for the Amazon and the Environment, Humberto Freire, launched a campaign to rid protected Indigenous land of illegal miners. It appears to be paying off: in July he announced that around 90 per cent of miners operating in Yanomami territory, Brazil’s largest protected Indigenous land, had been expelled. According to police sources, there were 19 mine-related deforestation alerts in April 2023 – compared to 444 in April 2022.

But the fight isn’t over. There are still a couple of thousand miners active and the criminal enterprises employing them remain very much alive. The key task of recovering damaged land and rivers can only begin once they’re all driven away for good. And an issue that cries out for international cooperation remains unresolved: violence and environmental degradation continue unabated in Yanomami communities across the border in Venezuela, and will only increase as illegal miners jump jurisdictions.

Achieving the ambitious zero-deforestation goal will require efforts on a much bigger scale than those of the past. And such efforts will further antagonise very powerful people.

Obstacles ahead

With the environmental agenda back on track, the pace of Amazon deforestation slowed down in the first six months of 2023, falling by 34 per cent compared to the same period in 2022. However, numbers still remain high and reductions are uneven, with two states – Roraima and Tocantins – showing increases. Deforestation is also still rising in another important part of Brazil’s environment, the Cerrado, where preservation areas are few and most deforestation happens on private properties.

For the Amazon, a crucial test will come in the second half of the year, when temperatures are higher. A stronger El Niño phase, with warming waters in the Pacific Ocean, will make the weather even drier and hotter than usual, helping fires spread fast. Anticipating this, IBAMA has scaled up its recruitment of firefighters to expand brigades in Indigenous and Black communities and conduct inspections and impose fines and embargoes. To discourage people from starting fires to clear land for agriculture, the agency prevents them putting that land to agricultural use.

But in the meantime, Brazil’s Congress has gone on the offensive. In June, the Senate made radical amendments to the bill on ministries sent by Lula, diluting the powers of the Ministries of Indigenous Peoples and Environment and limiting demarcation of Indigenous lands to those already occupied by communities by 1998, when the current constitution was enacted.

Indigenous leaders have complained that many communities weren’t on their land in 1998 because they’d been expelled over the course of centuries, and particularly during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. They denounced the new law as ‘legal genocide’ and urged the president to veto it. Civil society has taken to the streets and social media to support the government’s environmental policies.

They face a formidable enemy. A recent report by the Brazilian Intelligence Agency exposed the political connections of illegal mining companies. Two business leaders directly associated with this criminal activity are active congressional lobbyists and maintain strong links with local politicians. They also stand accused of financing an attempted insurrection on 8 January.

Against these shady elites, civil society wields the most effective weapon at its disposal, shining a light on their dealings and letting them know that Brazil and the world are watching, and will remain vigilant for as long as it takes. The stakes are too high to drop the guard.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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