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Persons with disabilities have been disproportionately affected by the events of recent years, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: UNDP Honduras

By Ulrika Modéer and Jose Viera
NEW YORK, Jul 10 2023 (IPS)

This year marks halfway towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an ambitious agenda which set out to transform our world.

We have always known that the goals cannot be realized without the inclusion of persons with disabilities. From poverty to inequality, climate to health the promise to leave no-one behind is the bedrock of the SDG call to action.

Unfortunately, the midway indicators should give us all cause for concern. The UN Secretary-General recently announced that progress on 50 percent is weak and insufficient and we have stalled or gone into reverse on more than 30 percent of the goals.

And what can this lack of SDG progress tell us about disability inclusion?

Worryingly, very little. While the SDGs include persons with disabilities, this does not fully extend into the monitoring. Only seven out of 169 targets specifically address disability inclusion and only 10 of their 231 indicators explicitly require disability data disaggregation.

However even without specific SDG data, the extent of progress must be called into question when we see that, in 2023, the 1.3 billion people worldwide who experience significant disability, still face a range of barriers to inclusion.

While specific actions to progress disability inclusion undoubtedly need reinvigorating, it is also important to remember that we are living in unprecedented, testing times.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the largest cost of living crisis this generation has ever seen, climate change and increasing conflicts are placing pressure on communities all over the world at a ferocity and speed which we have rarely seen before.

And while everyone may be affected by these interconnected crises, they are not affected equally. The most vulnerable always bear the greatest burden and persons with disabilities have been disproportionately affected by the events of recent years.

Yet despite these challenges, across the world, disability inclusion has been gathering greater momentum. Even in the most challenging of crisis settings, such as the war in Ukraine, we have seen that early assessments such as the one UNDP carried out – looking at how to improve the accessibility of information and notifications in crises, and the specific difficulties persons with disabilities face during evacuations – have brought together persons with disabilities, civil society and government partners to help bring about change.

These joint efforts also give recognition to the importance of not only taking into account the needs of persons with disabilities as beneficiaries of aid, but also their engagement as key actors in humanitarian response planning.

An increased understanding of intersectionality and recognition of the multiple factors which affect people’s lived experience is also taking hold, and it is awe-inspiring to see the extent to which organizations of persons with disabilities are driving forward this change.

But it is time for global and country level policy commitments to catch up. At a global level monitoring of the SDGs must include greater involvement of organizations of persons with disabilities, and this should be matched with investment for these groups, to ensure capacity building programmes around the SDGs can scale up.

Without this, the disability community and underrepresented groups will continue to struggle to take part in national SDG plans.

The collection of disability-specific SDG data is also a priority. Persons with disabilities are often excluded from participating in data collection processes, leading to an under-representation of their perspectives.

Data collection mechanisms designed by and with persons with disabilities and their respective organizations, including disaggregated data on disability types, age and gender, are vital yet currently missing.

At a national level, we must fast track implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which sets out to promote, protect and ensure the human rights of persons with disabilities.

Significant progress has been made since 2008, when the convention came into force, but more must be done to develop policies and legislative frameworks in close consultation with persons with disabilities and their respective organizations, and to couple this with strong political will and the necessary resources.

UNDP and the International Disability Alliance (IDA) are working together with global partners to advance this work, recognizing that it is a prerequisite to achieving the SDGs.

But much more remains to be done. Because we cannot truly claim progress when in large parts of the world, persons with disabilities are still unable to equally and meaningfully participate in the world around them.

When they remain unheard and unseen in programmes designed to meet their needs, and when systemic barriers to their full inclusion and participation in society still exist.

This year offers an important moment for reflection, to take stock of what has been achieved but also – critically – to course correct. Persons with disabilities are some of the most marginalized and excluded in the world.

Righting this wrong is one of the ways that we can get the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda back on track. This is not a task for one group or one country. It will require cooperation across the board, political will and perhaps most importantly – real collaboration with persons with disabilities and their representative organizations – recognizing that they are the ones who stand to benefit or lose the most from the progress being made.

Ulrika Modeer is UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy, UNDP; Jose Viera is Advocacy Director, International Disability Alliance.

SOURCE: UNDP

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Experts continue to debate where insurance belongs in climate financing. Credit: Peter Richards/IPS

By Jamie Cummings
CHAPEL HILL, NC, USA, Jul 7 2023 (IPS)

Small Island Developing States (or SIDS) have been talking about loss and damage in an insurance context since the creation of the UNFCCC. The original 1990s outline of the UNFCCC included the proposal for an international insurance fund that would compensate low-lying countries for losses from rising sea levels in the future, however, this fund was never adopted in the final text.

The 2023 Climate Conference COP27 in Sharm put loss and damage clearly on the political agenda with the agreement to set up a Transitional Committee to seek to establish a fund for Loss and Damage and to look at other ways to help countries and people address disasters.

Today the conversations around insurance in regard to loss and damage have shifted. Some argue that insurance comes up short when addressing loss and damage. For example, one idea of an insurance fund would require all parties, including those from the Global South, who have contributed the least to global emissions, to buy in and share the risk burden.

Prevention is critical but fails to address the question of losses and damages which have already occurred. If vulnerable communities are faced with climate disasters, they must have community resilience (i.e., resources), which can be secured through accessible insurance

This idea negates the historical responsibility of the Global North as leading polluters. Experts continue to debate where insurance belongs in climate financing and this article intends to highlight some critical thinkers in the space.

Paul Hudson, a lecturer of Environmental Economics at the University of York and frequent contributor to the International Science Council, contends that insurance can still be a useful tool for addressing natural hazards and climate impacts if its function in the private or public sector is previously determined.

“In order for society to have a great degree of adaptive capacity we still need to work out what is the actual role we expect insurance to achieve,” Hudson said.

According to Hudson, the ideas of insurance in the public and private sectors are in contention. In discussions around insurance, people often use the language of private responsibility in relation to a compensation fund but what may be more necessary is for people to simply have an accessible and affordable means of compensation, which is the role of a public good.

An additional fear is that countries fall back on the private insurance sector too often when they have yet to provide the funding for adaptation and mitigation, which puts the commitment to losses and damages in question. Still, perhaps there is a role for the private and public insurance sector despite its shortcomings.

Experts are considering ways to integrate both private and public solutions so the most vulnerable populations are protected from climate-induced losses and damages.

Raghuveer Vinukollu, Senior Vice President and Climate Resilience and Solutions Lead at Munich Reinsurance America, Inc., argues that an integrated approach could provide a sustainable and affordable solution to the question of insurance. Vinukollu supports a bottom-up and top-down process to address resiliency.

Resilience from both angles aims to mitigate the protection gap caused by high costs. Such a model underscores the importance of community resilience as well as risk prevention, promoting the whole of society’s safety from risk rather than the few who can afford a premium.

Again, prevention is critical but fails to address the question of losses and damages which have already occurred. If vulnerable communities are faced with climate disasters, they must have community resilience (i.e., resources), which can be secured through accessible insurance.

Waterfront Alliance is a company that strives to build community resilience in part through education. Joseph Sutkowi, the group’s Chief Waterfront Design Officer, explains that it is critical to standardize aspects of design and make such knowledge accessible.

In this way, architects and engineers from around the world can create infrastructure built for the community and will be resilient in the face of natural disasters. Additionally, spreading awareness about flood risk–or other climate hazards–can in turn raise awareness around purchasing insurance that could be critical to forming communities that can recover from disasters.

The crucial piece of this argument on the implementation of insurance mechanisms is that they must not exclude the most vulnerable groups, including low-income communities. Here, Mathieu Verougstraete, Lead on Disaster Risk Reduction Financing and Infrastructure Resilience for UNDRR, suggests countries from the Global North have a role to play.

Verougstraete asserts that international cooperation would allow donor countries to step in and provide a mechanism to ensure that insurance remains affordable and still provides the protection the vulnerable countries need.

Brandon Mathews works directly with these vulnerable nations to meet their needs. Mathews is the head of the Vulnerable 20 (V20) Sustainable Insurance Facility within the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The facility funds insurance for micro, small, and medium enterprises which are the “cornerstone of economies.”

Aligning with vulnerable groups means giving them ownership. Oda Henriksen, Climate Risk Manager for Food Security as a Financing Advisor at United Nations World Food Program (UN WFP), has highlighted ownership as a key finding based on case studies in Belize and Nicaragua with insurance programs.

UN WFP argues that local government and private sector contributions, as well as consumer empowerment, are essential for a sustainable approach to insurance in disaster risk reduction.

Held on June 1st the Insurance Development Forum signed an agreement to advance the Global Resilience Index with the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) to “help countries, financial institutions and investors, map and quantify their current and future climate and disaster risks and demonstrate the benefits of investing in resilience.”

With Loss and Damage now near the center of the political preparations for the upcoming Climate Summit COP28 in Dubai in December then a menu of approaches will be explored. Within this menu perhaps there is a role for the insurance sector (in either a private or public sector capacity) if done the right way.

A strong insurance system should examine all of the stipulations raised by experts in the field. The system must also be continuously revised to meet the evolving demands of vulnerable climate communities. With livelihoods at risk, potential solutions must be critiqued and considered from all angles.

Jamie Cummings is part of a Belmont Forum-funded grant, Re-Energize Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience for Sustainable Development. She was the climate change focal point for the recent UNFCCC Bonn Climate Conference for the Sendai Stakeholder Engagement Mechanism. With additional support from Rene Marker-Katz and Cameron Mcbroom-Fitterer, Associate Researchers with Re-Energize DR3.

 

A view of the Canoas Wind Farm, owned by Neoenergia, the Brazilian subsidiary of Spain's Iberdrola. Several wind farms with hundreds of turbines have already been built in the mountains of the Seridó mountain range, which vertically cross the state of Paraíba, in the Northeast region of Brazil, and are continuing to expand. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
SANTA LUZIA, Brazil , Jul 7 2023 (IPS)

“Anxiety, insomnia and depression have become widespread. We don’t sleep well, I wake up three, four times a night,” complained Brazilian farmer Roselma de Melo Oliveira, 35, who has lived 160 meters from a wind turbine for eight years.

Her story illustrates the ordeal of at least 80 families who decided to hire a lawyer to demand compensation from the company that owns the Ventos de Santa Brigida wind farm complex in Caetés, a municipality of 28,000 inhabitants in the state of Pernambuco, in the Northeast region of Brazil."We are not against wind energy, but against the way these large projects are implemented, without studying or avoiding their impacts." -- Roselma de Melo Oliveira

Dozens of other families affected by the proximity of the wind towers have not joined the legal action, largely because they fear losing the rental income from part of their land where one or more wind turbines have been erected.

The company pays them about 290 dollars for each wind tower, which represents 1.5 percent of the electricity generated and sold, according to Oliveira. Those who were not offered or did not accept the lease are left with the damage and no profits.

Built in 2015 by the national company Casa dos Ventos and sold the following year to the British corporation Cubico Sustainable Investments, the set of seven wind farms, consisting of 107 wind turbines 80 meters high, has a total installed capacity of 182 megawatts, enough to supply 350,000 homes.

The wind energy boom has intensified in recent years in Brazil’s Northeast region, which accounts for more than 80 percent of the wind electricity generated in the whole country.

 

Severino Olegario, a small farmer impoverished by a plague that destroyed the local cotton crop, took advantage of the arrival of the wind towers on his family’s mountainous land to become the owner of an open-air restaurant, now a tourist attraction in the municipality of Santa Luzia, in the Northeastern Brazilian state of Paraíba. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

 

Wind power boom

This expansion will be accelerated by plans to produce green hydrogen, which requires a large amount of renewable energy for electrolysis, the technology of choice. The region’s enormous wind and solar potential, in addition to its relative proximity to Europe, the great consumer market of green hydrogen, puts the Northeast in a strong position as a supplier of the so-called fuel of the future.

As a result, large energy projects are proliferating in the region, which is mostly semiarid and almost always sunny. The giant parks have triggered local resistance, due to the social and environmental impacts, which are felt more intensely in the Northeast, where small rural properties are the norm.

Brazil currently has 191,702 megawatts of installed capacity, including 53.3 percent hydroelectric, 13.2 percent wind and 4.4 percent solar. The goal is for wind, solar and biomass to contribute 23 percent of the total by 2030, with the Northeast as the epicenter of the production of renewable sources.

“We are not against wind energy, but against the way these large projects are implemented, without studying or avoiding their impacts,” Oliveira said. Renewable sources are not always clean and sustainable, say activists, especially movements led by women in the Northeast.

“Because they are considered low-impact, wind and solar farms obtain permits for implementation and operation more quickly and at a low cost, without in-depth studies,” said José Aderivaldo, a sociologist and secondary school teacher in Santa Luzia, a municipality of 15,000 inhabitants in the semiarid zone of the Northeastern state of Paraíba.

 

The Neoenergia company’s Renewable Complex; in the background can be seen a small part of the solar panels and the wind farm. The synergy between the daytime sunshine and nighttime winds generates enough electricity for 1.3 million homes in the Northeast region of Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

 

“But solar energy has a greater impact, it is more invasive. A wind farm has little impact on livestock, which do lose a lot of space to solar, more extensive in terms of the land it occupies,” he told IPS.

His field of observation is the Neoenergía company’s Renewable Complex, a project that combines wind power, with 136 wind turbines in the Chafariz complex in the mountains, and 228,000 photovoltaic panels in the Luzia Park on the plains. The former generates more electricity at night, the latter during the day.

In total, they cover 8,700 hectares in Santa Luzia and three other neighboring municipalities and can generate up to 620.4 megawatts, most of it – 471.2 megawatts – coming from the wind in the mountains. They can supply electricity to 1.3 million housing units and avoid the emission of 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide gas, according to the company, a subsidiary of Spain’s Iberdrola.

One of the impacts was a reduction in the local capacity for the production of cheap protein from livestock farming adapted for centuries to the local ecosystem, in addition to extracting rocks for the construction of wind towers and damaging local roads with trucks for their transport, lamented João Telésforo, an engineer and retired professor from the public Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte.

“Neoenergía carried out all the socio-environmental impact studies rigorously in accordance with the country’s current legislation and global best practices. The distance between the homes and the wind turbines is in compliance with the law,” the company responded to IPS in writing, in response to questions about criticism of its activities.

 

Marizelda Duarte da Silva, vice-president of the Esperança Rural Workers Union, is one of the leaders of the women’s resistance to the installation of wind farms in the mountains of the Borborema Plateau, coveted for its strong, regular winds, in the state of Paraíba, in Brazil’s Northeast region. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

 

“In addition, it only leases the land, without purchasing it, which means people stay in their homes and in the countryside, and owners receive payments according to the contracts, with transparency, contributing to income distribution and local quality of life,” it added.

 

Local complaints

But Pedro Olegario, 73, laments that the remuneration has declined, explained by the company as a result of a drop in the energy generated. “The wind is still blowing the same,” he protested.

His wife, Maria José Gomes, 57, complains about the noise, even though the nearest wind turbine is about 500 meters away from their house. “Sometimes I can only fall asleep in the wee hours of the morning with the window tightly closed,” she said.

The couple lives on their share of a 265-hectare property, inherited and divided between the widow and 17 children of the previous owner, on one of the mountains of the Seridó range, part of Santa Luzia.

The 18 family members split the income from four wind towers installed on their land.

 

Not everyone is unhappy

On the other hand, Pedro’s brother Severino Olegario, 50, has a positive view of the Canoas Wind Farm, which also belongs to Neoenergia. The 2019 construction made it possible for him to open a restaurant to feed 40 technicians of the company who installed the mechanical components.

 

On the horizon can be seen one of the hills of the Borborema Plateua, whose occupation by wind turbines faces resistance from the Women’s Movement, which began holding annual marches for agroecology and in defense of the land in 2010. Nearly 5,000 women mobilized this year in opposition to wind farms in the Northeast region of Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

 

“I sleep despite the noise and the remuneration is low because we had to divide it among a very large family,” he said. He also improved the road, which brings tourists to his restaurant on Sundays, after the construction work ended, and slowed the local exodus of people from the region.

About 1,000 families used to live in the three communities up in the mountains, due to the high level of production of cotton. But the cotton boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis) plague in the 1990s destroyed the crop and the value of the land.

“Today there are less than a hundred families left,” said Severino, who continues to grow some of the food that he uses to serve meals at his restaurant.

His perspective differs from the picture described by Oliveira to IPS by telephone from her rural community, Sobradinho, in Caetés, the result of a wind farm authorized before the government’s Brazilian Environmental Institute issued new rules in 2014.

 

The state government’s wind map points out mountain ranges favorable for wind energy. In red are the areas of greatest potential. The longest is the Seridó mountain range, to the west, already covered by dozens of wind farms. About 100 kilometers to the east, the second largest area, Borborema, has a women’s movement that aims to keep it free of wind farms. CREDIT: Government of Paraíba

 

Damage and unfavorable contracts

“There are cases of allergies that we believe are caused by the dust from the wind turbine blades, which also contaminates the water we drink, as it falls on our roofs where we collect rainwater in tanks,” Oliveira complained.

The alternative would be to buy water from tanker trucks which “costs 300 reais (62 dollars ) – too expensive for a family with two children who only harvest beans and corn once a year,” she explained, adding that growing vegetables and medicinal herbs is impossible because of the polluted water.

In addition to the audible sound, vibrations, infrasound (considered inaudible), shadow flicker (the effect of rotating turbine blades causing varying brightness levels and blocking the sun’s rays) and microparticles cause symptoms of “wind turbine syndrome,” according to Wanessa Gomes, a professor at the public University of Pernambuco, who is researching the subject with colleagues from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil’s leading academic public health institution.

Local families have also been living in fear since a blade broke and fell with a loud bang. Many take medication for sleep and mental illness, according to Oliveira, whose testimony aims to alert other communities to the risks posed by wind energy enterprises.

On Mar. 16, she took her complaints to the Women’s March for Life and Agroecology, organized by the Polo de Borborema in Montadas, a municipality of 5,800 people, about 280 kilometers north of Caetés.

The Polo is a group of rural workers’ unions in 13 municipalities in the Borborema highlands in the state of Paraíba, whose windy mountains are coveted by companies.

The women’s movement, with the support of the non-governmental Consultancy and Services for Alternative Agriculture Projects, mobilized 5,000 women this year, in its fourteenth edition, the second one focused on opposition to wind farms.

“Our struggle is to prevent these parks from being installed here. If many families refuse to sign the contracts with the companies, there will be no parks,” Marizelda Duarte da Silva, 50, vice-president of the Rural Workers Union of Esperança, a municipality of 31,000 inhabitants in the center of Borborema territory, told IPS.

“The contracts are draconian, up to 49 years and renewable by unilateral decision of the company,” said Claudionor Vital Pereira, a lawyer for the Polo union. “They demand unjustifiable confidentiality, charge fines for withdrawing and make variable payments for the lease depending on the amount and prices of energy generated, imposing on the lessor a risk that should only be assumed by the company.”

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Aerial view of the town of Soufriere in the south of Saint Lucia. Sea level rise is threatening coastal areas of small island developing states (SIDS) in the Caribbean. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
SOUFRIERE, SAINT LUCIA, Jul 7 2023 (IPS)

The World Meteorological Organization says adaptation efforts and the switch to renewable energy must increase for regions like Latin America and the Caribbean to face the challenges of a changing climate.

The United Nations Weather Agency released its State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2022 report this week.

It states that storms, rainfall and flooding in some areas, along with severe drought in others, resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses and placed a ‘significant’ burden on human lives and wellbeing throughout the reporting period.

It adds that North and South Atlantic sea levels rose at a higher rate than the global average – threatening coastal areas of several Latin American countries and small island developing states (SIDS) in the Caribbean.

While the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season recorded 14 named storms, a near-average number, nine of those cyclones affected land areas, with Fiona and Ian becoming major hurricanes. Hurricane Fiona led to 22 deaths and caused an estimated US$2.5 billion in damage across Puerto Rico, making it the third costliest hurricane on record there. Hurricane Ian drenched Jamaica with 1,500 mm of rainfall that impacted local communities before striking Cuba as a category 3 storm which destroyed over 20,000 hectares of land for food production.

According to the report, temperatures have increased by an average of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade over the past 30 years, which represents the highest spike since records began.

“Many of the extreme events were influenced by the long-running La Niña but also bore the hallmark of human-induced climate change. The newly arrived El Niño will turn up the heat and bring with it more extreme weather,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

The second most disaster-prone region in the world, Latin America and the Caribbean must now bolster climate change adaptation and mitigation measures, particularly in agriculture, food security and energy. This is also where Early Warning Systems (EWS) come in.

“There are major gaps in the weather and climate observing networks, especially in the least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing States (SIDS); these gaps represent an obstacle to effective climate monitoring, especially at the regional and national scales, and to the provision of early warnings and adequate climate services. Early warnings are fundamental for anticipating and reducing the impacts of extreme events,” Taalas said in the foreword to the 2022 report.

The WMO is leading the United Nations Early Warnings for All initiative and its Executive Action Plan launched by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres during the World Leaders Summit at the 2022 Climate Change Conference, COP27. The Action Plan aims to protect everyone on earth with early warning systems within five years.

“Only half of our members have proper early warning services in place,” said Taalas. “In order to more efficiently adapt to the consequences of climate change and the resulting increase in the intensity and frequency of many extreme weather and climate events, the Latin American and Caribbean population must be made more aware of climate-related risks, and early warning systems in the region must employ improved multidisciplinary mechanisms.”

According to the report, multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEWS) with the ability to warn of one or more hazards increase the efficiency and consistency of warnings through coordinated and compatible mechanisms. It adds that the Latin America and Caribbean Region experiences considerable early warning challenges. For example, in South America, only 60% of people are covered by these systems.

Over 15 research organizations and 60 scientists contributed to the 2022 report. They are calling for widespread education campaigns on the deadly risks of climate-related disasters and to reinforce public perceptions of the need to react to natural hazard alerts and warnings issued by national institutions.

“The ultimate goal is to ensure that responsibilities, roles and behaviours are well described and made known to everyone involved in the identification and analysis of risks related to weather, water and climate extremes and the early warning providers and recipients.”

This is the WMO’s third annual report, and its release coincided with the hottest day on earth.

With the confirmation that extreme weather and climate shocks are becoming more acute in Latin America and the Caribbean, coupled with global warming and sea level rise, the organization says multi-hazard early warning systems are needed to improve anticipatory action.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

The World Meteorological Organization launched its State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean report this week. Amid above average sea-level rise, drought and global warming, the new publication is calling for ramped up adaptation action to save lives and livelihoods.

Credit: UNICEF/Aleksey Filippov
 
“The war in Ukraine has created a humanitarian and human rights catastrophe, traumatized a generation of children, and accelerated the global food and energy crises,” said Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, addressing the UN Security Council. June 2023

By Roland Bathon
BERLIN, Jul 7 2023 (IPS)

The Wagner uprising – despite its short duration – has demonstrated the vulnerability of Putin’s power system.

In the past, the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin seemed like a dark, mysterious figure somewhere from the depths of the Kremlin’s web of secrets. This also has to do with the fact that he did those ‘jobs’ for the Russian government that took place in a semi-official grey area — such as mercenary assignments in Syria or Africa, or even before that the operation of the Petersburg troll factory with a network of fake media and disinformation machinery.

As his mercenary army PMC Wagner – to which he only openly professed his allegiance at a very late stage – gained considerable combat experience in more and more wars, his personal military power continued to grow. The Wagner fighters, in fact, are his personal soldiers.

This was to become evident in the recent military uprising led by Prigozhin, as the soldiers immediately occupied the large city of Rostov on his orders, advanced on Moscow and simply ignored orders from the Russian authorities to arrest Prigozhin.

As Wagner is the largest Russian-based mercenary formation – according to the British Ministry of Defence, it grew to up to 50,000 soldiers in January – Prigozhin became a real power factor in Russia.

Roland Bathon

Military versus political power

In the purely political sphere, however, Prigozhin was by no means as powerful of a factor to the extent as it was repeatedly interpreted abroad on the basis of his mysterious aura. The pool of media under his control was much smaller than that of ‘businessmen from Putin’s immediate entourage’, Russian journalist and Kremlin expert Andrey Pertsev noted in an analysis after the start of the war. In polls on the most important Russian politicians, his name never appeared in the results, and his earlier calls for a general mobilisation were met with zero sympathy from the Russians.

For Putin, the interactions with Prigozhin never had any special status until his open revolt. According to the Russian political scientist Tatyana Stanovaya, the oligarch was never close enough to the head of state to entrust him with an important political office. Prigozhin’s tasks always remained informal — he used the niches that official state organs could not or would not fill. Thus, he was never integrated into the front row of Russian politics.

Yet, it was precisely this lack of integration that led to the emergence of a dual structure which turned out to be dangerous for the overall structure of Russian power. Prigozhin increasingly staged himself as a counter-elite – even though he himself came from this social class – and progressively engaged in power struggles with the official military hierarchy around the Russian Ministry of Defence. This also succeeded because officially, he always remained a ‘private citizen’ without an office in the top political ranks.

The military leadership countered by wanting to subordinate all volunteer units such as Wagner back to its own command through contractual structures. Prigozhin refused. But here, too, his political isolation and weakness within the Russian apparatus became apparent.

All other leaders of such units, such as Chechen strongman Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov, bowed to the order. Putin himself put his foot down in favour of his Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, who was repeatedly criticised by Prigozhin, and described the contract closures as necessary.

The uprising

Hope was fading away for Prigozhin, a fact that could also become dangerous for him as a person. And so, it came to his uprising – a surprise for all observers. After harsh criticism of the entire war conduct in Ukraine, he mobilised his mercenaries, captured the headquarters of the Russian Southern Forces in Rostov in a coup d’état and sent an advance detachment of Wagner fighters on their way to Moscow – an open military uprising.

Yet, here, too, the great discrepancy between Prigozhin’s military and political influence became immediately apparent. His soldiers quickly advanced up to 200 kilometres on Moscow, destroying initial resistance from government troops on the way, for example, by shooting three helicopters and an aeroplane out of the sky.

His mercenaries followed his orders unconditionally, refused to arrest Prigozhin as ordered by the domestic intelligence service FSB and secured power in Rostov with a massive military presence.

But Prigozhin’s lack of political influence was equally evident. One after another, regional governors declared their loyalty to Putin, and Kadyrov even provided troops to push Wagner PMC out of Rostov.

No one from the presidential administration voiced criticism of the leadership – instead, they united behind the Kremlin. Prigozhin acted militarily quickly and thus gained situational advantages over the sluggish state apparatus. But it was clear that a prolonged armed conflict would consolidate the shaken apparatus and – in case his uprising failed – Prigozhin would face a quick death or a long imprisonment.

The fact that the Kremlin did not take the chance and commissioned Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko to mediate was again due to military uncertainties. For no one knew to what extent war-weary Russian army units would actually fight their mercenary compatriots or perhaps would even partially defect.

After all, the Wagner fighters were able to move into Rostov without any significant resistance, and no one knew how many military officers shared Prigozhin’s anti-establishment populism. The quick end of the revolt also superficially brought back to the Russian hinterland a central element of Putin’s rule: stability.

As a result, both sides in the conflict came to a surprisingly quick agreement. Prigozhin was able to leave for Belarus with Putin’s guarantee of free passage, his entourage obtained immunity from prosecution and retreated to the rear of the Donbass combat zone. An uncertainty remains for the oligarch in that he could still be ‘secretly’ killed.

‘This is the style of the current government’ notes historian Nikolai Svanidze. The FSB also seems to be investigating Prigozhin. But all of this is still better than the almost certain death that would have awaited him and many of his men if the uprising had continued.

For the Kremlin, this action meant damage control, even if the image of being a guarantor of security and stability in Russia was tarnished. Prigozhin thus achieved more than he could have hoped for – if only because he escaped abroad unharmed.

The uprising will leave a lasting mark on the Putin system. Prigozhin and his Wagner army were his personal project, notes Maxim Trudolyubov, editor-in-chief of the exiled Russian newspaper Meduza.

In his view, Putin also used Prigozhin in the war against Ukraine to humiliate those generals who had been unsuccessful in his personal campaign. Now, the ‘PMC uprising’ – despite its short duration – shows the vulnerability of Putin’s power system.

Roland Bathon is a freelance journalist. He writes mainly about Russia and Eastern Europe.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS), 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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Credit: John Wessels/AFP via Getty Image

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jul 7 2023 (IPS)

People went to the polls in Sierra Leone on 24 June to pick a president, parliament and municipal representatives. Results were quickly announced and the president sworn in for a second term. But a cloud of doubt lingers.

Runner-up cries foul

The presidential race offered a repeat of the previous vote in 2018, when Julius Madaa Bio beat Samura Kamara in a closely fought runoff, 51.8 per cent to 48.2 per cent. But despite the economy being in worse shape than five years ago – something that might be expected to cost the incumbent support – this time round Bio’s lead was bigger. He took 56.2 per cent to Kamara’s 41.2 per cent in the first round, narrowly clearing the 55 per cent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

Kamara and his party, the All People’s Congress (APC), immediately cried foul and demanded a rerun, saying there were ‘glaring irregularities’. While observers from the African Union and Economic Community of West African States declared the elections free and fair, others expressed concerns. European Union observers pointed to ‘statistical inconsistencies’ in the presidential election results. These include very high turnout in some districts and a very low number of invalid votes. In addition, seals were reportedly broken on some ballot boxes before votes were counted.

National Election Watch, a coalition of over 400 domestic and international civil society organisations (CSOs), has also reported concerns. It deployed 6,000 observers, covering every polling station, and used a sampling technique to estimate the results – a method that closely matched the final tallies at the last three elections. But this time its results disagreed on all the key figures: levels of support for the two main candidates, turnout and the amount of invalid votes. Based on its analysis, neither candidate was expected to clear the 55 per cent hurdle.

For transparency, domestic and international observers are calling on the electoral commission to publish detailed results with data disaggregated by polling station. The commission has said it will do so but it will take some time.

The shadow of violence

Bio has already been sworn in for his second term. His party, the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), has also been declared the clear winner of parliamentary elections, taking 60 per cent of seats.

The two sides however seem set to continue at loggerheads. The APC has said it won’t take part in government at any level, including parliament and municipal councils, while state officials have said that comments from civil society and foreign governments could inflame tensions and Bio has accused governments that have expressed concern of political interference.

Over all this lurks the shadow of violence. The scars of the country’s 1991 to 2002 civil war, when tens of thousands were killed, still run deep, and any outbreak of violence sparks fears of escalation. On election day, violence was seen at a small number of polling stations. During the campaign, APC supporters complained of attacks in the south and east regions, where SLPP backing is strongest, while SLLP members also reported violence by opposition followers.

A few days before the election, violence broke out outside the APC’s headquarters in Freetown, with one person reported dead as a result of a shooting, which the APC blamed on the police. A post-election meeting at the same venue saw police surround the building and use firearms and teargas. Nurse and APC volunteer Hawa Dumbaya died after being shot in the head.

Clearly the concern shouldn’t only be about public violence – it must also be about police violence. People don’t need to look back as far as the civil war to see the danger. Last year protests sparked by soaring food inflation turned deadly, and by the time calm had returned, over 20 protesters and bystanders and six police officers had been killed. In response to protest vandalism and property damage, the police were alleged to have used live ammunition.

Troublingly, Bio responded to these protests by claiming they were acts of terrorism with the intent of overthrowing the government. He blamed the APC, since protests took place in regions where the party has most support. The government set up a committee to investigate the violence, but its report followed the government’s line.

While the scale of the 2022 violence was unprecedented in peacetime Sierra Leone, this wasn’t the first instance of the authorities responding to protests with excessive force. Meanwhile no one in the police has been held to account. It isn’t encouraging if fresh protests now result.

Transparency urgently needed

Polls always put Bio ahead, and the distribution of regional and ethnic loyalties favours him. Bio also forged alliances with some parties that had previously ran against him, incentivised by changes to the electoral system that made it harder for smaller parties to enter parliament. National Election Watch’s figures still suggest Bio was ahead of Kamara – just not by enough to avoid the runoff.

The fact that Bio didn’t clear the runoff hurdle by much is the crux of the matter, because relatively small numbers of inaccuracies could have made the difference between whether or not a second vote and continued campaigning took place.

The crucial question is what this now means for trust in democracy. If suspicions aren’t dispelled by the publication of detailed and disaggregated data and allegations aren’t fully investigated, they will thrive and take hold, even should they turn out not to be true. That can only be a setback for democracy. Sierra Leone’s people have shown consistently high levels of electoral turnout and continue to favour democracy above any other regime. But in any country, trust in democracy can be fragile and, once lost, hard to restore.

In this period of uncertainty, both sides have a responsibility to refrain from inflammatory language and actions. The government must allow peaceful protests and ensure the police don’t respond with excessive force. There’s no way forward that involves violence, whatever the source.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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Kenyan cheese factory employees were reportedly made to undress after a pad was put in the wrong bin.

Senegal's Kalidou Koulibaly and Edouard Mendy are the latest stars to move to Saudi Arabia but Africans already have a proud record of scoring success in the country.

Experts encourage parents to vaccinate their children against typhoid to ensure that the child has access to clean drinking water. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Jul 6 2023 (IPS)

The first thing you notice about eight-month-old Manahil Zeeshan is how tiny she looks on the adult-size hospital bed at the government-run Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology (SICHN) in Korangi, a neighbourhood in Karachi.

Her right foot is taped with a cannula, and she whimpers incessantly. “I have been in and out of the hospital for the last seven days,” said Uzma Mohammad, Zeeshan’s mom, with worry lines on her forehead. “High fever that refused to come down, severe cough for days and breathlessness,” were some of the symptoms Mohammad described. She was convinced someone had “put a spell” on her daughter.

The doctors, however, suspected she had typhoid.

Salmonella Typhi bacteria cause typhoid fever, and Salmonella Paratyphi bacteria cause paratyphoid fever. According to the US-based public health agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with a fever that can be as high as 103 to 104°F (39 to 40°C), the sick person can have weakness, stomach pain, headache, diarrhoea or constipation, cough, and loss of appetite. Some people have a rash of flat, rose-coloured spots.  Internal bleeding and death can occur but are rare. It affects between 11 and 20 million people each year, leading to 128,000 to 161,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The highest fatality rates are reported in children under four years of age.

While Zeeshan’s blood culture report had yet to come to ascertain the cause of her sickness, she needed urgent medical care, said Dr Shabita Bai, who had admitted her.

“We could not wait for five days for the blood culture report as she was not doing well. And because she had already been given an antibiotic (a medicine used to kill bacteria) from outside, our chances of finding if the baby had typhoid for sure were slim, and we had to rely on the history,” justified Bai.

Decisions had to be made. Based on her condition, symptoms, and clinical diagnosis, the baby was given Ceftriaxone, an intravenous antibiotic, but she showed no improvement. The doctors then administered the stronger Meropeneme intravenously, a last-resort antibiotic.

Manahil Zeeshan’s foot has a drip in an effort to bring her temperature down and fight suspected typhoid. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

Battling the Superbug

But even if she had typhoid, the bacteria in her body had taken on the form of a superbug — the extensively drug-resistant (XDR) typhoid and the current antimicrobials had become ineffective, said paediatrician Dr Jamal Raza, the executive director of the SICHN.

According to a Lancet study published in 2022, multidrug-resistant (MDR) typhoid has been seen in Pakistan, while typhoid bacteria resistant to the widely-used antibiotic azithromycin have been found in Bangladesh, Nepal and India. “Our analysis revealed a declining trend of MDR typhoid in south Asia, except for Pakistan, where XDR S Typhi emerged in 2016 and rapidly replaced less-resistant strains,” stated the study, which researchers claim is the largest ever examination of the S.Typhi bacterium.

The reason why antibiotics are losing their punch against some types of bacteria, said Raza, was the “indiscriminate use of antibiotics” that health practitioners prescribe to provide immediate relief. Another big problem was self-medication by people. “I know people often use an old prescription by a doctor to get the same medicine if they feel they have the same symptoms, thinking they do not need to visit the doctor.”

But he pointed out viruses, which are also small germs like bacteria, are causing bacteria-like infections, like a cold or the flu.

“Taking an antibiotic for the latter does not treat the disease; it only leads to antibiotic resistance,” said Raza.

A study conducted by researchers from three medical institutions, namely, the Aga Khan University (AKU) in Karachi, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in Rawalpindi, and the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Center (SKH) in Lahore in 2018, found indiscriminate use of antibiotics to be causing new drug-resistant “superbugs.”

It found a high prevalence of multidrug and fluoroquinolone resistance for both S.Typhi and S. Paratyphi strains of typhoid bacteria. From 20% in 1992, the resistance was found to have increased to around 50% in 2015. The stubborn bacteria were resistant to antibiotics like ampicillin, chloramphenicol (and co-trimoxazole), as well as fluoroquinolone (ciprofloxacin and/or ofloxacin).

“The situation is quite grim,” said Dr Mashal Khan, chairperson of the government-run paediatric medicine department at Karachi’s National Institute of Child Health, referring to the increase in the number of children developing resistance to typhoid drugs. His worry is not that the bacteria has spread; his concern is the bacteria has mutated and become resistant to the drug.

“We’re running out of new antibiotics to treat bacterial infections; Meropeneme is the last one, and a very expensive one too,” he said resignedly, adding: “Although the development of newer antibiotics is the need of the day, I must emphasise the rational use of the ones being used is more urgent.”

Developing new drugs is challenging, and antibiotics more so, as the science is tricky.

“Antibiotics are not the most lucrative drugs to develop for pharmaceuticals as their utility is limited in the future due to the bacteria developing the ability to resist them,” said Infectious Diseases specialist and epidemiologist Dr Faisal Mahmood at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi. “A lot of money goes into developing new drugs, and since most of the funding is from the global north, they prefer to work on infections which concern them directly. Typhoid is unfortunately endemic in the low and middle-income countries in the South, which have poorer water quality and have warmer, more humid climates.”

And that is why the only sure-shot way of reducing the disease burden of typhoid is to vaccinate the children.

In 2019, Pakistan became the first country to get the World Health Organization (WHO)-recommended single-dose typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) injected intramuscularly, added to its routine immunisation (RI) regime. This is given to babies at nine months, alongside measles-rubella vaccinations, without impacting either vaccine.

“Childhood vaccination complemented with clean drinking water and improved hygiene practices is the much more cost-effective way of eradicating typhoid than pumping antibiotics in a child,” said Raza. Meropenem costs as much as Rs. 30,000 (USD 105) for a 10-day course, and if hospitalisation is included, it can go up to Rs 100,000 ($349), said the doctor. Being in a government hospital, Zeeshan is treated free of cost.

Eight-month-old Manahil Zeeshan is treated for typhoid at the government-run Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology (SICHN) in Korangi, a neighbourhood in Karachi. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

Typhoid Vaccine Launch Hits a Snag as Covid-19 Surfaces

The 2019 TCV campaign was first launched in the two cities of Sindh – Karachi and Hyderabad (children up to 15 years of age were also given a shot), which reported the highest number of typhoid cases among children. There was a pause when Covid-19 hit the world. But by 2022, TCV had been launched across Pakistan, and 35.5 million children were vaccinated, after which it was added to the government-run Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) programme.

“Many parents do not know that the TCV is a more effective vaccine but only available at government vaccination centres, and not at private clinics and hospitals as Gavi has only given it to the government of Pakistan,” said paediatrician Dr D.S. Akram.

“There is another typhoid vaccine available in the private sector (typhoid polysaccharide vaccine), but it can only be given to children over two years of age, and it needs boosters every three years. My advice to parents is to vaccinate their kids against typhoid bacteria at nine months,” she said.

But it is still a drop in the ocean, and the fight against typhoid and other childhood diseases continues. The WHO places Pakistan among the ten countries that account for almost two-thirds of the world’s unimmunised children.

When Covid-19 hit the country’s already crumbling health system, it also brought the country’s immunisation programme to a halt too. An estimated 1.5 million children across Pakistan missed out on basic vaccines from March to May 2020, according to Gavi.

For Pakistan, which already has low immunisation coverage (the percentage of fully immunised children aged 12-23 months is just 66%), it meant a further dip in coverage which led to an unprecedented rise in the number of zero-dose children (those that have not received any routine vaccine). Add to these were the almost 19,000 new births every day. But when the lockdown eased and vaccinators returned to work, there was less demand for vaccination, having been replaced by fear of the new virus.

While Pakistan has yet to reach the optimal immunisation coverage of 90%, during Covid-19, Pakistan’s EPI received plaudits internationally for taking both vaccine coverage and the number of zero-dose children close to pre-pandemic levels in 2021. “What Pakistan achieved needs to be celebrated. In fact, Pakistan and Chad are used as examples internationally of how to get it right in an emergency,” said Huma Khawar, an immunisation and child health advocate working closely with EPI.

“Despite a year’s delay due to Covid-19, which was unforeseen, I think it is the best thing that the government has done for its country’s children,” said Khawar. She credited the RI programme that bounced back to the pre-pandemic level in 2021.

Clean water, Good Hygiene Key to Preventing typhoid

While immunisation can protect children from getting infected, clean drinking water and improved hygiene practices can reduce the risk of catching the disease to a great extent.

“Vaccines provide immunity when there is exposure to the bacteria,” agreed Dr Jai Das, assistant director at the Institute for Global Health and Development at the Aga Khan University and one of the co-authors of the 2018 report on typhoid, but emphasised the need for improved water and sanitation, a situation that continues to remain dismal and compromised in Pakistan.

The same study not only found a strong correlation between water and sanitation but to literacy levels as well. In addition, it stressed improving the country’s food safety protocols and implementing regulations.

While Mohammad believes that her daughter is under a curse, one reason could be that the unpasteurised cow’s milk she gives her daughter may not be properly boiled at home. “I was unable to breastfeed her,” she said. Further, she confessed to diluting it with unboiled tap water to make it last longer.

Doctors say giving Pakistani babies a lease of life is simple and costs nothing. “Exclusive breastfeeding up to at least six months of age (right now it is only 43%), attaining 90% coverage of RI across Pakistan and improving water and sanitation quality,” according to Dr Akram.

Bacteria Don’t Respect Geographic Borders

The XDR typhoid bacteria propagating in Pakistan has crossed borders and reached as far as the UK, Canada and the US. Earlier this year, a team of Pakistani and US researchers published their findings in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, stating that with numerous typhoid bacteria variants circulating in Pakistan have also been identified in Southeast Asia and Eastern and Southern Africa and have been introduced into the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States by travellers.

The Lancet study said strains from South Asia had spread 200 times to other countries since 1990. When these superbugs grow and spread, they can cause infections that are hard to treat. Sometimes they can even spread the resistance to other bacteria they meet.

The future looks frightening. While the need for improving water and sanitation cannot be overemphasised, along with the need for vaccinating children, newer and stronger antibiotics need to be developed and fast as typhoid may surface in deadlier ways than now since very few antibiotics remain effective against the bacteria.

Note: This story was supported by the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Internews

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

Childhood vaccination, complemented with clean drinking water and improved hygiene practices, are the key to eradication of typhoid XDR, not indiscriminate use of antibiotics, say Pakistan health experts.

APMDD and allies demonstrate on the streets in the Philippines. Credit: Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD)

By Bhumika Muchhala and María José Romero
NEW YORK / BRUSSELS, Jul 6 2023 (IPS)

One message that was repeated throughout last month’s summit on a so-called “New Global Financing Pact” was that developing countries urgently need mass financing to tackle the climate and biodiversity emergency. And there is not enough of it in public coffers.

Unfortunately, the false narrative that the only way to fill this gap is to ‘leverage’ more private finance also persisted. The resulting Paris Agenda for People and Planet stated: “meeting global challenges will depend on the scaling up of private capital flows.” This should be achieved in large part by revamping the role of multilateral development banks (MDBs).

Last December, the World Bank Group (WBG), the biggest MDB, launched its so-called “evolution” process, with the support of G7 governments. This set the institution to work on increasing its lending by deepening its reliance on the financial market.

The dogged reliance on private capital as saviour appears to be steeped in capitalist realism. It is believed to be implausible for the public sector to deliver the scale of financing needed to address the climate and development crisis.

Private capital, which can be leveraged using public money, securitised and reproduced is favoured as the pragmatic choice. However, while the financing gap to deliver on the sustainable development goals is very real, the neat narrative buttressing private capital obscures two empirical realities.

First is the absence of rich countries’ political will to deliver on agreed commitments, from the 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income in development aid made in 1970 to the US$100 billion per year climate financing agreed in 2009.

Second, the ongoing systemic wealth drain from developing to rich countries. Since 1982, developing countries as a whole have transferred an estimated US$4.2 trillion in interest payments to global north-based creditors, far outstripping aid flows and concessional lending during the same period.

Additionally, tax-related illicit financial flows cost countries hundreds of billions of dollars in lost tax income every year. Debt servicing is draining approximately 25 per cent of total government spending in developing countries as a whole, hijacking both climate and SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) financing.

The allure of private finance

Last month, in a new attempt to ‘leverage’ private capital, the WBG launched the Private Sector Investment Lab, a partnership with the private sector that aims to “rapidly scale solutions that address the barriers preventing private sector investment.”

Furthermore, it announced “an expanded toolkit for crisis preparedness, response, and recovery” that includes providing “new types of insurance” to backstop private sector projects. This follows a not-so-new pattern articulated in the WBG’s Evolution Roadmap draft published in April

While the WBG is set to expand its mandate to incorporate “sustainability” considerations, the approach is still rooted in a heady cocktail of de-risking instruments such as risk guarantees, blended finance and first-loss positions by governments, and in tweaking national regulatory frameworks to enable a business-friendly environment.

The goal is as singular as the solution: to make investment more profitable for the private sector. The (optimistic) rationale: ‘incentivising’ private capital will ‘crowd in’ economic growth and climate, biodiversity and development financing. This assumes that it is possible to equate commercial goals and the public interest, which is not always the case without creating financial barriers that undermine access to public services, such as user fees.

It also ignores that risks are transferred from private to public actors, further increasing debt vulnerabilities, and the developmental dilemma posed by prioritising private profits over distributive goals and state sovereignty.

In ongoing discussions about the Roadmap, it is yet to be seen if the WBG will incorporate sufficient provisions within its plans to ensure the recipient state’s right to regulate in the public interest for a rights-based economy that upholds distributive justice. That is, economic, climate and gender equity.

Solutions with legitimacy

The largest coalition of developing countries in the United Nations (known as the “Group of 77”), representing 134 nations, have been calling for reform of the international tax, debt and financial architecture for many years.

These calls, enshrined in resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, includes establishing a multilateral legal framework that would comprehensively address unsustainable and illegitimate debt, including through extensive debt restructuring and cancellation, and agreeing on a UN Tax Convention with equitable participation of developing countries to address tax abuse by multinational corporations and other illicit financial flows.

As was made clear last month in several developing countries’ calls, a reform agenda should not be limited to merely boosting MDBs’ coffers – via financial innovation techniques – but rather include governance reform that meaningfully augments the voice and vote of developing countries in macroeconomic decision-making, which is the litmus test for legitimate and democratic economic governance.

Furthermore, for many in civil society, for the WBG to “evolve” in a credible way it must also seek to independently evaluate the development impact of its policy prescriptions for developing countries over recent decades. Civil society organisations are stating this again in official feedback on the Evolution Roadmap submitted to the Bank this week.

The ways in which the mythology of the private financier is construed dangerously omits the concrete reforms for historical economic justice, and state sovereignty, that the global south are demanding. This disjuncture calls for a clear-eyed questioning of the allure of private finance. Here lies the difference between new forms of extraction as opposed to change towards redistributive justice.

https://www.eurodad.org/civil_society_calls_for_rethink_of_world_banks_evolution_roadmap

Bhumika Muchhala is Political Economist and Senior Advisor at Third World Network
and María José Romero is Policy and Advocacy Manager at the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Algerian journalist Maher Mezahi writes about the riots that swept through France.

The leak in a shanty town near Johannesburg is linked to illegal gold mining in the area.

Credit: Silvia Rodríguez/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jul 5 2023 (IPS)

When Guatemalans went to the polls on 25 June, distrust and disillusionment were rife. First place in the presidential contest was claimed by none of the candidates: it went to invalid votes, at 17 per cent. Many didn’t bother, resulting in an abstention rate over 40 per cent.

But an unexpected development brought some hope: Bernardo Arévalo, leader of the progressive Movimiento Semilla, made it to the runoff.

Arévalo’s promise to fight against systemic corruption and bring back the numerous justice operators – people such as judges, prosecutors and public defenders – currently in exile to help clean up institutions is causing great concern for those who profit from the current state of affairs. The fact that Arévalo could become Guatemala’s next president has made the election results an instant object of contention.

Corruption and democratic decline

Guatemalan electoral processes aren’t pristine, but that isn’t where the most serious problems lie. Civic freedoms are steadily deteriorating and state institutions have been weakened by predatory elites and coopted by organised crime. Transparency International finds evidence of strong influence by organised criminals over politics and politicians, with some criminals themselves in office.

No wonder Guatemalans have a low level of confidence in state institutions. In the latest Latinobarómetro report, the church was by far the most trusted institution, winning the trust of 71 per cent of people, followed at some distance by the armed forces and police. But only nine per cent of people trust political parties, and trust is also very low in Congress, electoral bodies and the judiciary.

At 25 per cent, satisfaction with the performance of democracy is extremely low – as is the number of people who think the country is ruled for the benefit of all rather than just elites.

The run-up to the vote

Those denouncing corruption, collusion, illegal private sector practices and human rights abuses have increasingly been subjected to smear campaigns, surveillance, harassment and criminalisation by state authorities. Many have been pushed into exile. Rising violence against journalists and human rights defenders, including killings – the latest being that of journalist Orlando Villanueva – recently led the CIVICUS Monitor to downgrade its civic space rating for Guatemala to the second-worst category, repressed.

Restrictions on civic freedoms increased in the run-up to elections, ranging from smear campaigns to criminalisation. On 14 June, José Rubén Zamora, head of the newspaper elPeriódico, which had exposed more than 200 corruption cases, was sentenced to six years in prison for alleged money laundering. Zamora had been subjected to harassment and intimidation for years and had survived an assassination attempt.

An observation mission carried out by Reporters Without Borders and others ahead of voting warned that the absence of basic press freedoms made it impossible to guarantee a legitimate electoral process.

The process was indeed marred by multiple irregularities, starting with the disqualification of several contenders, including Indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera and her running mate, Jordán Rodas Andrade, the only left-wing candidacy polls showed stood a fighting chance. The candidate who led opinion polls, conservative business leader and TikTok star Carlos Pineda, was also disqualified.

What happened on 25 June

With two dozen candidates competing in the presidential race, it was no surprise that none reached the 50 per cent threshold required to avoid a runoff. What was unexpected was Arévalo’s good performance.

The front-runner, Sandra Torres of National Unity of Hope, is a political insider, Guatemala’s first lady between 2008 and 2011. Now standing for the third time in a row, she received 16 per cent of the vote. If elected, she would become Guatemala’s first female president. But she’s by no means a champion of women’s rights: she’s a vocal anti-abortion activist and her running mate is an evangelical pastor.

Runner-up Arévalo is an unusual politician at the head of an unusual party. Originally an academic with social-democratic views, he’s currently a member of Congress, where he leads a five-member progressive caucus. His running mate, low-key feminist Karin Herrera, is a microbiology researcher and university professor.

Unlike many Guatemalan parties, Arévalo’s party wasn’t created as a vehicle for someone’s presidential ambitions or corrupt interests: it was the creature of a group of concerned people that grew out of mass anti-corruption protests that broke out in 2015. In 2019, its presidential candidate was disqualified. But it found its footing among middle class groups, young people and women, particularly in Guatemala City.

The aftermath

Opinion polls had placed Arévalo eighth or ninth among the many contenders, so his performance caught elites off guard.

There’s no guarantee he’ll win the run-off. He’d have to gain the votes of the many who abstained or cast blank and invalid votes. But the fact that Arévalo might win has galvanised those who currently profit from the corrupt status quo, and they’re trying to push him out of the race. A majority of pro-establishment parties, including Torres’s party, have submitted complaints demanding a recount. Their supporters converged outside the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), quickly pushing further and calling for a rerun.

While various incidents were recorded on election day – including instances of vote buying, mostly by parties linked to the ruling alliance – international and domestic observers alike concluded that the results were valid and the gap of more than 200,000 votes between Semilla and the next contender, the outgoing president’s party, was insurmountable.

Mirador Electoral, a civil society platform, denounced pressures on the TSE as an attempted ‘electoral coup’. The European Union’s observer mission and the Organization of American States have called for the will of voters to be respected. Arévalo condemned it all as an intimidatory manoeuvre and called for the TSE, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court to act quickly and responsibly.

Instead, the Constitutional Court ordered the TSE to suspend official certification of results until complaints are resolved. Some fear an attempt to annul the elections will come next.

Guatemala stands at a crossroads. On the eve of voting it seemed on the verge of autocracy. An unexpected result hinted at the possibility of a much brighter path – one that fills many with hope but scares those who see their wealth and power endangered. The coming days and weeks will witness an arm-wrestling match between the past and the future, with three potential outcomes.

In the worst-case scenario, the runoff continues to be delayed by legal appeals and the task of appointing a president ultimately falls to Congress. In the second-worst scenario, a vote-by-vote recount is conducted instead of a simple cross-check of tally sheets, fraud occurs along the way and the ruling party’s candidate takes Arévalo’s runoff spot. Either way, the past wins.

Only if the recount is properly conducted, the results are corroborated and the runoff is held on 20 August will the future have a fighting chance. The corrupt establishment may still beat Arévalo – but this decision belongs to no one but the citizens of Guatemala.

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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