Africa

Ons Jabeur faces Marketa Vondrousova in Saturday's women's singles final at Wimbledon, with both players aiming for a slice of history.

The announcement comes a day after a court ruled he was released from jail on parole unlawfully.

A transgender person participates in health services provided by the Khmer HIV/AIDS NGO Alliance (KHANA) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, December 2019. Credit: UNAIDS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jul 14 2023 (IPS)

A report released this week has highlighted how continuing criminalisation and marginalisation of key populations are stymying efforts to end the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The report from UNAIDS, entitled ‘The Path that Ends AIDS’, says that ending AIDS is a political and financial choice, and that in countries where HIV responses have been backed up by strong policies and leadership on the issue, “extraordinary results” have been achieved.

It points to African states that have already achieved key targets aimed at stopping the spread of HIV and getting treatment to people with the virus. It also points out that a further 16 other countries, eight of them in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 65% of all people living with HIV, are close to doing so.

But the report also focuses on the devastating impact HIV/AIDS continues to have and how alarming rises in new infections in some places are being driven largely by a lack of HIV prevention services for marginalized and key populations and the barriers posed by punitive laws and social discrimination.

Estimated adults and children living with HIV. Credit: UNAIDS

“Countries that put people and communities first in their policies and programmes are already leading the world on the journey to end AIDS by 2030,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS.

Experts and groups working with key populations have long warned of the effect that the stigmatisation, persecution and criminalisation of certain groups has on the AIDS epidemic.

They point to how punitive laws can stop many people from accessing vital HIV services.

Groups working with people living with HIV in Uganda, which earlier this year passed anti-LGBTQI legislation widely considered to be some of the harshest of its kind ever implemented (it includes the death penalty for some offences) say service uptake has fallen dramatically.

“The law has had a very negative effect in terms of health,” a worker at the Ugandan LGBTQI community health service and advocacy organisation Icebreakers told IPS.

“Community members are threatened by violence and abuse by the public, many are afraid to go out. HIV service access points are now seen by LGBTQI community members as places where they will be arrested or attacked,” he said.

Newly infected adults and children. Credit UNAIDS

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the worker added: “This is going to affect adherence to treatment and will be bad for the spread of HIV. Some people are being turned away at service centres, including places where people go for ARV refills because although the president has declared that treatment will continue for members of the community, there are individuals at some centres who say the law has been passed, and so they don’t need to give treatment to members of the community.”

Groups working with people with HIV in other countries where strict anti-LGBTQI laws have been introduced have also warned that criminalisation of the minority will only worsen problems with the disease.

In Russia, which has one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics, anti-LGBTQI legislation brought in last year has effectively made outreach work illegal, potentially severely impacting HIV prevention and treatment. Widespread antipathy to the community also forces many LGBTQI people living with HIV to lie to doctors about how they acquired the disease, meaning the epidemic is not being properly treated.

A worker at one Moscow-based NGO helping people with HIV told IPS: “What this means is that the right groups in society are not being targeted [with measures to prevent the epidemic growing] and so the epidemic in Russia is what it is today.”

Harsh legislation, conservative policies and state-tolerated stigmatisation also impact another key population – drug users.

Countries in regions where drug use is the primary or a significant driver of the epidemic, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Asia and the Pacific, drug users often struggle to access harm reduction and HIV prevention services. They fear arrest at needle exchange points, attacks from a general public which often views them negatively, and prejudice and stigmatisation from workers within the healthcare system.

At the same time, in states with harsh laws targeting the LGBTQI community, drug users, sex workers or other vulnerable groups, civil society organisations helping those populations are also affected by the legislation, meaning that vital HIV prevention and treatment services they provide are hampered or halted completely.

And these problems are not confined to a handful of states. The UNAIDS report states that laws that criminalize people from key populations or their behaviours remain on statute books across much of the world. The vast majority of countries (145) still criminalize the use or possession of small amounts of drugs; 168 countries criminalize some aspect of sex work; 67 countries criminalize consensual same-sex intercourse; 20 countries criminalize transgender people; and 143 countries criminalize or otherwise prosecute HIV exposure, non-disclosure or transmission.

Consequently, the HIV pandemic continues to impact key populations more than the general population. In 2022, compared with adults in the general population (aged 15-49 years), HIV prevalence was 11 times higher among gay men and other men who have sex with men, four times higher among sex workers, seven times higher among people who inject drugs, and 14 times higher among transgender people.

Ann Fordham, Executive Director at the International Drug Policy Consortium, told IPS there was an “urgent need to end the criminalisation of key populations”.

“Data shows HIV prevalence among people who use drugs is seven times higher than in the general population and this can be directly attributed to punitive drug laws which drive stigma and increase vulnerability to HIV. It is devastating that despite evidence that these policies are deeply harmful, the majority of countries still criminalise drug use or the possession of small quantities of drugs,” she said.

But it is not just minorities which are disproportionately affected by HIV.

Globally, 4,000 young women and girls became infected with HIV every week in 2022, according to the report.

The problem is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa region, where there is a lack of dedicated HIV prevention programmes for adolescent girls and young women and where across six high-burden countries, women exposed to physical or sexual intimate partner violence in the previous year were 3.2 times more likely to have acquired HIV recently than those who had not experienced such violence.

Research has suggested that biological, socio-economic, religious, and cultural factors are behind this disproportionately high risk of acquiring HIV. Many girls and young women in the region are economically marginalized and therefore struggle to negotiate condom use and monogamy. Meanwhile, a predominant patriarchal culture exacerbates sexual inequalities.

“For girls and women in Africa, it is general inequalities which are driving this pandemic. It is social norms which don’t equate men and women, girls and boys, it is norms which tolerate sexual violence, where a girl is forced to have unprotected sex and that is then dealt with quietly rather than tackling the abuser,” Byanyima said at the launch of the report.

UNAIDS officials say that promoting gender equality and confronting sexual and gender-based violence will make a difference in combatting the spread of the disease, but add that specific measures aimed at young women and girls, and not just in sub-Saharan Africa, are also important.

“[Sexual and reproductive health] services are not designed for young women in many parts of the world – for instance girls cannot access HIV testing or treatment without parental consent up to a certain age in some countries,” Keith Sabin, UNAIDS Senior Advisor on Epidemiology, told IPS.

“A lack of comprehensive sexual education is a tremendous barrier in many places. It would go a long way to improving the potential for good health among girls,” he added.

But while the report highlights the barriers faced by key populations, it also shows how removing them can significantly improve HIV responses.

It cites examples from countries from Africa to Asia to Latin America where evidence-based polices, scaled up responses and focused prevention programmes have reduced new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths, while some governments have integrated addressing stigma and discrimination into national HIV responses.

It also noted that progress in the global HIV response has been strengthened by ensuring that legal and policy frameworks enable and protect human rights, highlighting several countries’ removal of harmful laws in 2022 and 2023, including some which decriminalized same-sex sexual relations.

“Studies strongly suggest a better uptake of services among men who have sex with men (MSM) in countries where homosexuality has been decriminalised or is less criminalised. A certain policy environment can improve uptake [of HIV services] and outcomes,” said Sabin.

The UNAIDS report calls on political leaders across the globe to seize the opportunity to end AIDS by investing in a sustainable response to HIV, including effectively tackling the barriers to prevention and services faced by key populations.

Experts agree this will be crucial to ending the global epidemic.

“We have long known that we will not end AIDS without removing these repressive laws and policies that impact key populations. Today, UNAIDS is once again sounding the alarm and calling on governments to strengthen political will, follow the evidence and commit to removing the structural and social barriers that hamper the HIV response,” said Fordham.

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By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jul 14 2023 (IPS)

We all know and agree that patience is a virtue. It is indeed. With one exception.

In the face of a child’s suffering, impatience is the highest virtue. Or as we say in the spirit of Education Cannot Wait: “We must be unapologetically impatient” in our collective goal to reach 224 million crisis-affected children and adolescents with quality education.

Over the past few months, we have met with refugee children, teachers, parents, community leaders, implementing partners, strategic donors and government officials in Colombia, South Sudan and Chad. Time and again we have seen first-hand how climate change, armed conflict and forced displacement severely disrupt lives, destroy hope and dramatically impede progress toward our global promise of inclusive quality education for all.

As stressed by United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Chad, Violet Kenyana Kakyomya, in this month’s ECW high-level interview: “Refugees have been exposed to trauma due to the violence they witnessed and experienced, which for children can have short- and long-term negative effects on their physical, mental, cognitive and emotional development.” In this context, access to education is a crucial protection measure.

Unless we act now as a global community, we will lose an entire generation of children and, with them, future generations. We will leave behind a legacy of broken promises, denial of opportunity and loss of hope. The most effective way to counter this is to empower today’s generation with the academic, social-emotional learning, mental health, self-confidence, empathy skills and tools to reverse and mitigate the avalanche of despair and destruction and to build back better.

Above all, we need to #EmpowerHer – namely the millions of crisis-affected girls who are among the furthest left behind and yet who have so much to contribute in changing the world for the better.

Education is the most powerful means to break cycles of violence – committed on both human beings and mother nature. Education is the best pathway to end conflicts and climate disasters. Because the world needs profoundly educated people who can both think and feel; and, who know how to put this vision into action. None of this can wait.

The task is daunting, urgent and requires immediate action. Our recent global estimates study provides a clearer picture than ever of the growing challenges. In all, the new estimates indicate as many as 224 million crisis-impacted children are in urgent need of a quality education.

As we reflect on our progress in advance of this year’s UN SDG Summit, UN General Assembly, Climate Talks (COP28), and Global Refugee Forum, we must unite with a sense of urgency, impatience and concrete action to ensure Education Cannot Wait and our global strategic partners receive the financing required to deliver an inclusive and continued quality education. Our shared goal is to make more than #222MillionDreams come true.

With more funding, we can deliver faster and further, together.

In June, we launched new investments in South Sudan, Central African Republic and Somalia. Our proven results-focused strategy exists. The political will is there. The systems and processes for coordination of joint programming are in place. The missing link is financing. We need fully funded joint programmes across sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.

It is possible to do: together, we continue our global advocacy efforts to urgently mobilize more than US$1.5 billion to realize ECW’s goal of reaching 20 million children and adolescents over the next four years of our strategic plan.

This is not only a very realistic and logical goal. It is an existential imperative requiring action now – not waiting for better financial prospects or until the world is a better place.

As the late UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, said: “It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.”

We can’t play it safe. If there is any virtue we all need today, it is to be unapologetically impatient.

Yasmine Sherif is Director of Education Cannot Wait.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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To mitigate the worst climate change impacts, we need to consider implementing climate solutions outside of the free economic market.

By Michael Davies-Venn
AMSTERDAM, Jul 14 2023 (IPS)

The dangerous state of global climate has reached a new low as a World Metrological Organisation (WMO) analysis reveals. It confirms a known obvious: human activities continue to worsen conditions that have changed our planet’s climate.

Most distressing is that ‘there is a 66 per cent likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for at least one year.’

With under five years before the much dreaded 1.5 degrees set by the Paris Agreement becomes a reality – and with it ‘a 98 per cent likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record’ – politicians and policy-makers have received the loudest definitive clarion call that should induce urgent and fundamental changes in approaches to mitigating and adapting to climate change impacts.

It had been known for decades that the African continent is highly vulnerable to such impacts as drought, flooding and heatwaves. What remains unknown but can be reasonably discerned is the scale of human catastrophe and its resulting global impacts that are certain to happen should – so far unsuccessful – climate governance approaches remain unchanged.

Already observed impacts of climate change

It is now reasonable to conclude that climate actions that should have been undertaken at a continental scale will not be completed within five years to avert climate change impacts. Over decades, predictions in earlier International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports have already become a reality.

Its latest special report – focused on the 1.5 degrees threshold – details climate impacts that have claimed lives and livelihoods among Africans who contributed the least to climate change. Six climate impacts assessed between ‘medium, high and very high confidence’ such as displacement, heat and losses in agriculture and crop production, are no longer just predictions — and are certain to further increase within the next five years.

A certain outcome of this will be increases in false solutions, such as techno-scientific babble to spray silver iodide into the atmosphere to create rain, as well as inflame nationalistic policy responses, such as the British government’s current inhumane policy to return a growing number of people fleeing from the most vulnerable continent to climate change impacts.

Any effort, worthy of being considered serious, to avert further callous suffering and wanton waste of lives across Africa during the next five years, must aim at implementing climate mitigation and adaptation projects at a scope, continental scale and rate that surpasses the frequency of recent environmental disasters.

Before the onset of these WMO’s predictions, those most responsible for climate change saw and mostly ignored as distant problems, the starvation in Ethiopia, catastrophic drought in Kenya and cyclone in Zimbabwe that affected millions, killed thousands and, since 2021, displaced some 1.5 million searching for food and water in Somalia.

But such a short-sighted understanding of cascading impacts resulting from extreme weather and environmental conditions induced by a changed global climate will only worsen the situation. Further, beyond five years, social outcomes across Africa would, in the long-term, represent persistent social pressures, including from those with the courage to maintain a moral sting on the conscience of politicians in developed countries.

A most certain of those is the changing demography of Africa, as ‘more than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa.’ In sub-Saharan Africa, the population is projected to grow from 258 million in 1984 to over 1.6 bn in the next seven years. It would be a natural outcome that these lives will relentlessly escape barren farmlands and flood communities that no longer sustain their lives for those in Europe and elsewhere.

Reports of thousands of lives lost at sea should signal to politicians that risks faced by those seeking refuge by crossing the Mediterranean Sea, using over-crowded and rickety boats, are not sufficient deterrence to outweigh their perceptions of protection in developed countries that are comparably more adapted to climate change impacts and with mitigation solutions.

Another reason for urgent changes to addressing climate change is that assistance to developing countries to aid humanitarian disasters are constrained by inflation in developed economies, the political climate in donor countries and unforeseen developments, such as the recent Covid19 pandemic.

And so, within the next five years, the resulting environmental disasters from a world warmed to 1.5 degrees, coupled with national economic pressures in developed countries such as inflation, which reduces foreign aid, inconsistent national policy-making from short-term political cycles and misplaced national priorities on overseas development assistance (ODA) – such that saw Somalia ranked tenth on a list of top-ten recipients of gross ODA between 2020 and 2021, during the same period the country was experiencing a profound humanitarian crisis – will contribute to creating a global humanitarian catastrophe perhaps not seen since the end of the Second World War.

The need for large-scale transformations

Unlike Western Europe, which was rebuilt on the Marshall Plan, a similar plan may be unnecessary for Africa, had developed countries honoured promises on climate change assistance. But climate finance promises to honour yet more broken promises have not stopped African countries’ from increasing their resilience and reducing the continent’s high vulnerability to climate change impacts.

They continue to play by UNFCCC rules and have deposited plans, including plans to implement plans, to mitigate and adapt to climate change. But as the UNFCCC has found, virtually all National Determined Contributions, from some 100 countries, ‘need international support for technology development and transfer to implement.’

Since as many countries have been waiting for decades for such support, it is reasonable to suspect the finance needed will not arrive in less than five years. And so, national efforts to protect lives across Africa have largely come to nought, while emissions outside the continent continue to rise, while ironically, the premature death of ‘King Coal’ still makes headline news in the foreign press.

Keeping that failure in mind, if the Paris Agreement could still be lauded as the greatest achievement on climate change, then the accord’s approach to implementing its solutions is its weakest. Whether it’s implementing mitigation and adaptation projects or transferring technologies from developed to developing countries, the inflated role and relevance of money to realise these solutions reduce the accord’s potential from a practical instrument to a simple conceptual document.

Its finance framework contributes to gestate and birth a marketplace of climate finance funds, greenwashing scams and initiatives informed by neoclassical free-market logic that, as yet, have failed to reduce global emissions. But where the framework should matter most – to stimulate climate finance flows to developing countries – remains an unmet need.

Yet, Africa’s persistent high vulnerability to climate change impacts isn’t for lack of climate finance, but one of access to money. One has only to observe that Africa has historically been at the bottom rung of recipients of public and private sector finance, such as foreign direct investments and overseas development assistance.

Climate finance, which must freely flow to fund renewable energy and climate-resilient projects, has followed suit. Until 2050, the continent would need, yearly, $240 bn to implement climate mitigation and adaptation measures, but received $15.7 bn in loans in 2020. It is more critical now than ever to understand that private financial markets are unsuitable for solving public problems.

Economic power has historically been centralised in developed countries and climate change impacts will not honour this historic disparity.

Decarbonising African economies implies societal, sectoral and infrastructural transformations at a scale unknown to human history. Yet, knowledge and technologies exist today to make this transformation a reality. But this evidently provides no assurance for their use, mainly because of the insistence that such transformation should be accomplished on the basis of neoclassical market logic.

Aside from such reasoning reflecting a certain measure of cognitive dissonance, it also suggests a wilful and callous condemnation of vulnerable lives to more death and unnecessary suffering. A practical and perhaps only option now is to consider implementing climate solutions outside the free economic market.

The second is to socialise these solutions. This henceforth should mean that decisions on how to provide electricity to hundreds of millions who’ve been living in perpetual darkness at sunset for generations, provide drought-resistant crops to those in barren farmlands and supply early warning systems to prevent deaths from extreme weather, must no longer be informed by neoclassical economic dictates. By orienting climate solutions towards social goals, human societies may minimally survive in a world warmed up to 1.5 degrees.

Michael Davies-Venn is a public policy analyst and communication expert. He works on global environmental governance with focus on climate mitigation and climate adaptation measures between developing and developed regions. He is Junior Fellow at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

Source: International Politics and Society, published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A selection of the best photos from across Africa and beyond this week.

An eyewitness tells the BBC he saw dozens of bodies being dumped from a truck by a paramilitary group.

The small nation of Eritrea is on the verge of breaking through in elite cycling - and Biniam Girmay is at the centre of it.

Ons Jabeur produces a superb comeback to beat Aryna Sabalenka and set up a Wimbledon women's singles final against Marketa Vondrousova.

Analysts are concerned about pre-election violence and intimidation ahead of next month's Zimbabwean poll. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Jul 13 2023 (IPS)

Zimbabwe holds general elections next month amid growing human rights and press freedom concerns in what analysts say could mar conditions for undisputed poll results.

Lawyers representing opposition political activists have not been spared assaults from police and suspected ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu PF) party supporters as economic conditions worsen.

In January, Kudzayi Kadzere, a human rights lawyer, was beaten up by police and his arm broken after being dispatched to a local police station in the capital city, Harare, to represent arrested opposition political party supporters. The police accused him of being a “criminal nuisance.”

Early this month, the country’s security forces allegedly attacked Obey Shava, a human rights lawyer who has represented several opposition Citizens for Coalition for Change (CCC) officials and other human rights abuse victims. Unknown assailants broke his legs.

However, the country’s main political opposition led by Nelson Chamisa, the CCC, was quick to point fingers at ruling party activists and the country’s secret police for Shava’s attack. The CCC has routinely been tipped to win successive elections without success.

These incidents have been met with widespread condemnation on the eve of what is seen as crucial elections slated for 23 August, with the British parliament discussing and raising concerns early this month about what is seen as deteriorating human rights conditions in Zimbabwe ahead of the polls.

“What we are seeing in this election cycle is lawfare or the weaponisation of the law,” said Ringisai Chikohomero, a senior analyst at the  Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, South Africa.

“This has led to a lot of prosecution and persecution, and what this has done is to create an atmosphere of fear that you can be locked up for a long time without actually going to trial,” Chikohomero told IPS.

These comments come when human rights organisations say almost a hundred political prisoners are incarcerated, with former opposition legislator Job Sikhala having spent more than a year behind bars and accused of obstruction of justice.

Amnesty International has condemned Sikhala’s long detention, with Flavia Mwangovya, Deputy Director for East and Southern Africa, Amnesty International saying in a May statement  that “there is a worrying restriction of civic space underway in Zimbabwe with growing attempts to persecute anyone who dares to freely express themselves.”

The developments come amid escalating economic hardships, with President Emmerson Mnangagwa accusing the business sector of deliberately sabotaging the economy to stoke anti-government sentiment.

While Mnangagwa has used the campaign trail and radio jingles to denounce violence and appeal for peaceful elections, human rights defenders have questioned the continuing human rights abuses despite its condemnation from the highest office in the land.

“The challenge about the pre-election conditions is that can it be proven that there have been systematic human rights violations,” said Piers Pogue, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

“Though international observers from the EU are coming, it is quite clear that six weeks before elections doesn’t constitute long-term observation,” Pogue told IPS.

Already, police have banned or placed stringent conditions for opposition political rallies, such as outlawing the chanting of slogans, further setting the stage for possible confrontations and running battles with party supporters as has happened in past elections.

However, analysts say there is a need for the country to move from continued disputed poll outcomes, and one of the recommendations is to have long-term observer teams from such groups as the African Union and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

“Ideally, the AU and SADC should have deployed longer-term observer teams. We have seen in the past that only long-term missions manage to get to grips with election conditions. Differences between long and short-term observer missions expose the contradictions of how electoral conditions are assessed,” Pigou said.

Zimbabwe’s elections have for years hogged regional and international headlines after successive controversial victories by the founding Zanu (PF) party amid decades-old worsening economic conditions; with eleven presidential candidates in next month’s general election, the stage could be set for yet another contentious poll outcome.

Meanwhile, as election day approaches, the Zimbabwe Catholic  Bishops Conference has added its voice to concerns about the pre-election conditions, appealing to voters to exercise their democratic right to vote.

“Do not be intimidated, coerced or manipulated to vote against your will. Please refuse to be used in violent attacks against your fellow brothers and sisters,” the Catholic bishops said on 9 July.

The clerics also appealed to the country’s security services, long accused of doing the ruling party’s bidding, to maintain law and order without taking sides.

“To members of the security sector, we appeal to you to work to maintain peace and justice and let all the perpetrators of political violence be held accountable,” the bishops said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi
THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Jul 13 2023 (IPS)

On the night of 17 July 1998, the outcome of the Diplomatic Conference convened to create the International Criminal Court was still uncertain. Hundreds of state representatives and civil society organizations assembled in the FAO headquarters in Rome, holding their breath in anticipation.

Finally, after midnight, euphoric delegations could applaud the outcome of the vote: 120 states in favour, 7 against and 21 abstentions. A long-standing dream was to become reality: the creation of a permanent criminal court to investigate and try perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The crime of aggression was also included, but only in a programmatic way pending agreement about its definition and the conditions under which the Court could exercise jurisdiction. These questions were only resolved 12 years later in the first review conference held in Kampala, Uganda in 2010.

In the 25 years that followed the adoption of the Statute, successive judges and prosecutors contributed to operationalizing this Court, simultaneously desired and feared by different actors of the international community. States and civil society expected much of this unparalleled institution and its potential to impact positively on conflict resolution.

The creation of an international court with jurisdiction over international crimes was not in and of itself something new. The International Criminal Court followed the steps of the post-war Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, as well as those created by the United Nations Security Council 50 years later for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi

However, the establishment of the first permanent international criminal jurisdiction, represented a key paradigm shift. Contrary to special tribunals, the International Criminal Court was not created to exercise jurisdiction solely in predetermined situations but to decide for itself, fully independently, where to investigate and who to prosecute. The ability to select situations in the world where to intervene gave it powers never previously granted to any other court.

To counterbalance this ambitious mandate, the Court was conceived as a complementary institution of last resort, with the power to act only in those cases of inaction or lack of genuine action by national systems.

Furthermore, despite its global vocation, the International Criminal Court was not granted universal jurisdiction. Unless the United Nations Security Council requests the Court to act, the Court may only investigate and prosecute in situations in which the states in whose territories the crime are committed or the states of nationality of the perpetrators are parties to the Rome Statute.

In its 25 years of operations and within the parameters set by its constituent treaty, the Court has demonstrated its capacity to investigate and prosecute in multiple situations of extremely grave crimes in Africa, Asia, America and Europe. It has also demonstrated the possibility of involving the victims of those crimes in its proceedings and of repairing the harm suffered by hundreds of thousands of them, either directly and indirectly.

For the first time, the Rome Statute introduced elements of reparative justice which allow victims to participate in the proceedings to make observations and to request reparation. These elements were later incorporated by the legal frameworks of other international courts and today form an integral part of international criminal justice.

The Court has achieved significant accomplishments, but has also suffered difficulties in its functioning. Currently, the Assembly of States Parties is undertaking, together with the Court and civil society, a holistic review to strengthen of the Rome Statute system by accelerating proceedings and improving the performance, governance, and work culture of the Court.

This review also seeks to strengthen cooperation by states and to design suitable strategies to increase political support and protect the institution and everyone who collaborate with it against threats and attacks.

Today, the Rome Statute has 123 state parties. This is a significant number that comprises two thirds of states in the international community. However, it is still insufficient to achieve the Court’s global aspirations.

Broadening the universality of the Court is of crucial importance. Today the world needs more justice than ever. The atrocities of the twentieth century that led to the creation of the Court have not ceased and there is a growing erosion of multilateralism and the rule of law.

Despite current circumstances, there is cause for hope. The international community has redoubled its demand for justice and multiplied the initiatives to make it a reality. The establishment of the Court reaffirmed the obligation to investigate and prosecute and contributed to consolidate the concept that justice is an indispensable component of sustainable peace.

In addition to proceedings by the International Criminal Court and other international tribunals, more states are willing to exercise universal jurisdiction over international crimes. New mechanisms are being created to ensure the collection and preservation of evidence that may assist these international or national efforts.

We are seeing the emergence of a global justice system, or a justice “eco-system”, within which international and national courts have a role to play – sometimes a central role, sometimes a complementary or supporting one.

In July 1998, the Court was an idea yet to be realized. Twenty-five years after its creation, the hope is that more states will join this historical effort to maximize its potential to impart justice in our tumultuous world.

Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi is President of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute; Former Judge and former President of the International Criminal Court.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Sofía Quispe, the president of Ecorecicladoras de La Paz, finds a good haul of paper and cardboard in a municipal dumpster at the end of Avenida 6 de Agosto in La Paz, in a nighttime job that the southern hemisphere winter makes more challenging. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS

By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Jul 12 2023 (IPS)

They haul many kilos of recyclable materials on their backs but receive little in return. These Bolivian women who help clean up the environment from dawn to dusk are fighting for recognition of their work and social and labor rights.

The inhabitants of La Paz, Bolivia’s political center, walk hurriedly and almost oblivious to the women of different ages silently opening heavy lids of municipal garbage dumpsters that are taller than the women themselves."This sector isn't noticed by society, especially because we work with waste, that is, with what society throws away; this work is 'devalued'." -- Bárbara Giavarini

They use a homemade tool, a kind of hook with a long wooden handle, to dig through the unsorted waste, trying to avoid getting cut by broken glass, and in search of plastic containers, paper, cardboard or aluminum cans.

People walk by on the avenues and squares without looking at them, and sometimes actively avoiding them. The recyclers feel this indifference and even rejection, but they overcome it with the courage gained over years and generations, convincing themselves that they have a dignified vocation.

“People call us dirty pigs (cochinas), they humiliate us and we can never respond,” says Rosario Ramos, a 16-year-old who accompanies her mother, Valeriana Chacolla, 58, sorting through the trash for recyclable waste.

A study by the United Nations Joint Program on self-employed women workers in the country describes them generally as being “of indigenous origin, adults with primary school education. Seventy percent of them are also involved in activities related to commerce, while 16 percent work in the manufacturing industry.”

Of a population of 12.2 million projected by the National Institute of Statistics for the year 2022, 5.9 million are women. La Paz is home to 1.53 million people.

Of the total population of this Andean country, 41 percent defined themselves as indigenous in the last census, while according to the latest official data available, 26 percent of urban dwellers live in moderate poverty and 7.2 percent in extreme poverty, including most of the informal recyclers.

 

One of the groups of women of the Ecorecicladoras de La Paz association gather next to a municipal dumpster in a corner of Plaza Avaroa in Bolivia’s political capital, after finishing their nightly collection of reusable materials. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS

 

On this southern hemisphere wintertime July night in La Paz, the group of women are virtually invisible as they gather around the dumpsters located in a corner of the Plaza Avaroa, in the area of Sopocachi, where residential and public office buildings are interspersed with banks, supermarkets and other businesses.

It’s a good place for picking through the waste in the dumpsters, and the women find paper, newspapers, plastic and aluminum containers. Although the volume of waste is large, each one of the garbage pickers manages to collect no more than one or two kg on one of the days that IPS accompanied different groups of the women in their work.

The silence is broken on some occasions when salaried municipal cleaners show up and throw the women out of the place, because they also compete to obtain materials that they then sell to recyclers. This is a moment when it becomes especially clear that garbage has value.

That is one of several reasons that forced the informal garbage pickers to come together in an association called EcoRecicladoras de La Paz. “There is no work for us, and they only listen to us when we organize,” says María Martínez, 50, the recording secretary of the 45 members, who also include a few men.

In Bolivia, trash is not separated into reusable and non-reusable waste in homes or offices. This task is carried out by private recycling companies, who buy the raw materials from informal waste collectors such as EcoRecicladoras.

 

Leonor Colque Rodríguez, 78, wearily ends her night shift collecting recyclable waste in Sopocachi, an area in La Paz, Bolivia. She has been working for 40 years as a “grassroots recycler” and is the head of her household. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS

 

Martínez, with slightly graying hair, says she comes out every evening. “I was a domestic worker until I was 30 years old. When my daughter was born I couldn’t get a job. I collected plastic bottles, clothes and shoes and sold them to the factories, but the recycling companies who pay really low prices emerged,” she complains.

It takes about three months between the initial collection and the final sale of the recyclable materials. Martínez collects the materials, carries around seven kg on her back, walks about three kilometers and patiently stores them until she has enough to sell them to the wholesaler.

“One year I collected 200 kg of scrap metal and sold it for 150 bolivianos (about 20 dollars),” she recalls. The recycling companies want to buy by the ton, she explains, with a grin, because it is impossible for them to reach that volume.

She represents a second generation of garbage collectors. Her mother, Leonor Colque, is two years short of turning 80, and has been combing through garbage dumps and trash on the streets for 40 years. On her back she carries a cloth in which she hauls a number of pieces of paper and some plastic waste.

“They should stay in school because this job is not for young girls,” she recommends, sadly, because she could not achieve her goal of sending one of her daughters to a teacher training school.

At 58, Chacolla, like almost all women garbage pickers, is the head of her household. Her husband, a former public transport driver, lost his job due to health problems and occasionally works as a welder, door-maker or bricklayer.

When she goes out to sort through trash she is accompanied by her daughter, Rosario, who explains and expands on what her mother says, calling for a change in the public’s attitude towards them and respect for the work they do as dignified, emphasizing, as they all do, that they deal with recyclable waste, not garbage.

 

Vests like this one identify women “grassroots recyclers” in their work of sorting through waste in dumpsters installed by the municipal government of La Paz in different parts of the Bolivian city. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS

 

“I walk with the Lord in my heart, he always helps me,” says Angelica Yana, who at 63 years of age defies the dangers of the wee hours of the morning in the Achachicala area, on the outskirts of La Paz, five kilometers north of the city.

“Nothing has ever happened to me,” says Yana, who leaves her home at three in the morning to scrape up enough to support a son who offers fine finishing masonry services, and her sick husband.

At the age of 70, Alberta Caisana says that she was assaulted by municipal cleanup workers while she was scrounging for recyclable materials. She now carries a credential issued by the Environmental Prevention and Control Directorate of the Autonomous Municipal Government of La Paz, and wears a work vest donated by development aid agencies from the governments of Sweden and Switzerland.

She relies on her uniform and identification card as symbols of protection from the indifference of the people and aggression from local officials.

The mother of a daughter and the head of her household, Anahí Lovera, saw her wish to continue her university studies frustrated, and at the age of 32 she combines collecting plastic bottles with helping in different tasks in the construction of houses.

 

In the foreground, the secretary of Ecorecicladoras de La Paz, María Martínez (50), together with Carla Chávez (42) and her mother Leonarda Chávez (72) take a break from sorting through waste in the Sopocachi area of the Bolivian city of La Paz. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS

 

Others, they say, sell clothes and other recovered objects in street markets, such as the famous one in Villa 16 de Julio in the neighboring city of El Alto, where used and new objects are sold in an area covering two kilometers.

Lovera’s work appears to go smoothly, but she and her colleagues describe the moment of dealing with the buyers. They deliver an exact volume and weight of products and the buyers declare a lower weight in order to pay less.

“This sector isn’t noticed by society, especially because we work with waste, that is, with what society throws away; this work is ‘devalued’,” Bárbara Giavarini, coordinator of Redcicla Bolivia-Reciclaje Inclusivo, told IPS.

One sign of the public’s recognition of the “grassroots recyclers,” as they call themselves, could be the direct, sorted delivery of the waste, which would facilitate the women’s work, she said.

Redcicla, a platform that promotes the integrated treatment of waste, has been helping since 2017 to organize them and bring visibility to their work, while fostering the delivery of waste from citizens to “grassroots recyclers” and working for the recognition of their work as dignified.

The president of Ecorecicladoras de La Paz, Sofía Quispe, supports the idea of getting help from local residents in sorting materials and delivering them to their affiliates, instead of throwing them into dumpsters where they are mixed with products that prevent subsequent recycling.

 

The president of the women’s group Ecorecicladoras de La Paz, Sofia Quispe, walks along the central Arce Avenue in this Bolivian city in search of dumpsters where local residents throw their waste. CREDIT: Franz Chávez / IPS

 

Quispe is a 42-year-old mother of three. Like most of her fellow recyclers, she walks about two kilometers on foot in search of dumpsters, dressed in the customary indigenous wide-brimmed hat and pollera or skirt.

On the night that IPS accompanied her, she did not find the dumpster that was usually on Avenida 6 de Agosto, probably because it had been removed and taken to another part of the city.

The impoverished garbage picker was once a skilled seamstress who worked in small family-owned factories in the Brazilian city of São Paulo. Upon her return due to an illness, she was unable to raise the money she needed to buy a machine and raw materials.

She was also discouraged by the lack of interest among local residents in buying garments made in Bolivia, as they preferred low-cost clothing smuggled into the country as contraband.

Leonarda Chávez, another 72-year-old head of household, who collects recyclable materials every day with her daughter Carla Chávez (42) and granddaughter Maya Muga Chávez (25), feels satisfied because she can see her dream come true.

This month, her granddaughter earned a diploma in Business Social Responsibility, with which she completed her university education, in addition to a degree in commercial engineering and business administration, in a country where higher studies do not always guarantee good jobs.

Among the darkness and the objects discarded by people, hope is also alive. Rosario Ramos took the lessons of hard work and created her own goal: “I will study advanced robotics and prosthetic assembly,” she says with a confidence that contrasts with the group’s sad stories.

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While India decreased its population without access to clean cooking fuels by about 30 percent from 2010 to 2020, Africa has seen an increase of more than 50 percent over the same period, driven by a rising number of poor, tepid government policies to address this issue, and overarching poverty challenges. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Alexandra Peek and Philippe Benoit
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 12 2023 (IPS)

An estimated 2.4 billion people currently lack access to clean cooking fuels, with the majority relying on biomass (firewood, charcoal, dung) to meet household cooking needs. This is only a slight decrease from 2017, when 2.5 billion people lacked access to clean cooking fuels.

Of those who continue to lack this access, the majority—923 million—live in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by 490 million in India. While India decreased its population without access by about 30 percent from 2010 to 2020, Africa has seen an increase of more than 50 percent over the same period, driven by a rising number of poor, tepid government policies to address this issue, and overarching poverty challenges.

These figures are likely to remain persistently high at about 2.2 billion over the next decade, roughly split between India and other parts of developing Asia on the one hand, and sub-Saharan Africa on the other.

It’s important to see these women and girls—potentially the largest segment of the energy labor force today and in the foreseeable future—as producers and workers. In understanding them as a formidable workforce of biomass producers, their knowledge and experience can inform ongoing efforts of electrification, clean cooking alternatives, gender rights, and overall poverty alleviation

Hidden behind these figures are the people who produce the biomass that powers most of this energy use: often it’s women and girls who are tasked with this labor. In this article, the authors discuss why it’s important to see these women and girls—potentially the largest segment of the energy labor force today and in the foreseeable future—as producers and workers.

In understanding them as a formidable workforce of biomass producers, their knowledge and experience can inform ongoing efforts of electrification, clean cooking alternatives, gender rights, and overall poverty alleviation. It is also equally important to recognize this workforce in order to improve its working conditions on the path to building a more inclusive energy workforce toward net zero emissions.

While the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #7 (SDG 7) draws attention to the need to eliminate the use of non-clean cooking techniques that kill millions each year, the working conditions under which women toil today to produce biomass also merits greater attention.

As the World Bank reported recently, “across most of Sub-Saharan Africa and in parts of China, women are the primary fuel wood collectors,” which is also the case in areas of South Asia. This is time-consuming and physically demanding work that can involve “collecting and carrying loads of wood that weigh as much as 25-50 kilogrammes” and can “take up to 20 or more hours per week.”

 

Estimating the Size of this Workforce

Just how many women are working in this area? A preliminary estimate—based on data regarding the number of households relying on biomass for cooking and the rate of participation of women in this labor—puts the number at over 300 million. Overall, while there is reliable data on lack of access to clean cooking, reliance on biomass, and deforestation trends, there is a gap in knowledge about the (wo)man power it takes to produce biomass.

This gap may stem from the way issues around biomass are often discussed in the SDG 7 context. For example, data on the lack of access to clean cooking primarily informs solutions to shift cooking norms and electrification pathways and efforts to obviate the need for women to labor in producing biomass, while data on biomass reliance feeds into conservation and land use efforts.

Such efforts, however, tend to overlook women as an energy workforce, even though across sub-Saharan Africa, India, parts of China, and Latin America, women and young girls collect and make the biomass necessary to power their homes, including for heating.

Organizations focused on gender parity, such as SEforAll, come closer to recognizing the work of these women and girls, but they, too, frame their efforts in line with clean cooking initiatives rather than labor conditions or rights. For instance, research on the number of hours spent collecting firewood and preparing meals is used to discuss cultural and gender roles that lead to systemic disadvantages for women and girls.

A missing link in all of these narratives and frameworks is understanding the size and importance of this workforce and how it might inform different strategies.

 

Embracing a Worker-Producer Narrative

Calculating the number of women and girls in their capacity as biomass producers reframes the perception of them as passive consumers (i.e., cooks) to active self-producers of the household energy sector. This framework can bolster efforts mentioned above in the following ways:

 

First, it reframes biomass—from an issue singularly belonging to the clean cooking initiative— and places it more broadly in the context of workers’ rights. Despite numerous clean cooking campaigns, poor women and girls will continue to produce biomass for their families for the foreseeable future. As important as it is to make access to clean cooking technologies universally available, what can be done for those producing their own energy in the meantime?

For example, these could be solutions such as creating wood stalls in more accessible areas to reduce collection times, or developing more ergonomic harnesses for carrying the wood to reduce the physical burden of the work. In addition, can more income-generating opportunities be created to help reduce the poverty of these women and girls?

Second, it informs policies around building an inclusive energy workforce. Recognizing that there is already a female-run and -operated energy workforce across the developing world has implications for workforce policies governing the energy transition. For example, when it comes to the ability to tap into this existing labor force, does reskilling apply to this workforce as it does to coal miners?

Moreover, by focusing on improving the labor conditions of women and girl biomass producers, this framework intersects with SDG 5: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girl. Organizations such as the Clean Cooking Alliance that aim to “increase the role of women in the clean cooking sector” and collect data on the number of hours required for biomass production could benefit from such a framework.

Third, research that intentionally includes groups underserved and underrepresented in data can inform policies for a just energy transition. Capturing the number of women and girls producing biomass can lead to important discoveries for improving their lives while informing the energy transition. For instance, surveys and fieldwork to collect the amount of biomass producers could also be used to track energy consumption and production trends that inform electrification efforts.

Many biomass collectors live on the margins or in rural areas, and research geared toward their energy needs can inform, for example, decentralized renewable energy projects and help anticipate their consumption patterns.

This energy workforce comprises some of the poorest people in the world—women, girls, and people of color—and that may partly explain why their labor and working conditions have received relatively less attention.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and other research puts the world on a tight timeline for lowering emissions. Existing frameworks for achieving a clean energy transition can be strengthened through approaches that recognize and acknowledge the agency of biomass energy producers made up of millions of women and girls.

[First published by Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy on July 6, 2023.]

 

Alexandra Peek is a research associate with Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

Philippe Benoit is an adjunct senior research scholar with Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and is also research director for Global Infrastructure Analytics and Sustainability 2050.