Africa

Even as they face their own challenges abroad, Zimbabweans living overseas say they can not consider heading back home to face the economic challenges - especially now with hyperinflation. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
DORDRECHT, NETHERLANDS, Jul 5 2023 (IPS)

They have high-paying jobs, a high standard of living, and almost everything they need, but for Zimbabweans abroad, all that glitters is not gold.

Twenty-eight-year-old Gift Gonye, based in Germany, is one such Zimbabwean, and he is apparently not satisfied with his life abroad.

Homesickness is one disease that has hit Zimbabweans like Gonye, but despite this, they are afraid to wade back into the suffering in the southern African nation.

“On my behalf and the behalf of other Zimbabweans in the diaspora, yes, we miss home, but even then, there is nothing we can do about it because there is suffering back home. We can’t go back home to face poverty,” Gonye told IPS.

“You just find yourself with no choice except to endure the challenges here in the diaspora in order to survive.”

Based on the latest figures from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstats) in the 2022 national housing and population, less than one million Zimbabweans have left the country since 2012, looking for greener pastures abroad.

Records from Zimstats have indicated that 908,914 left the southern African country in the last decade, with South Africa, Botswana and the United Kingdom being the preferred destinations for Zimbabweans.

South Africa has accounted for 773,246, Botswana 74,928, Britain 23,166 and the USA 8,565.

Gonye and several other Zimbabweans that have fled from the economic hardships in their African country have had to endure some difficulties in their stay abroad.

“The life we live here is expensive. We pay high taxes. The tough life back home in Zimbabwe complicates our lives in the diaspora, for we have to support the people back home because people there look forward to our help, and this results in us here in the diaspora not investing in terms of our future and for ourselves at old age,” Gonye said, referring to a system often referred to as “black tax” where wealthier and more successful people are expected to assist their families.

While many Zimbabweans back home have high regard for diaspora nations, many like Gonye see otherwise, thanks to the daily pressure migrants endure to survive.

“I want to let people back home know we have no social life here. It’s not easy living here. The money we earn is enough for rent and food and other basics, and it ends there. It is hard for us in the diaspora,” said Gonye.

“If you see someone sending you some bit of money back in Zimbabwe—some 30 dollars or seventy dollars, that person would have endured saving that amount.”

As a result, Zimbabweans abroad live under pressure from their kith and kin back home and meet their needs as well.

Despite official government figures about people that have relocated overseas, about 4 to 5 million Zimbabweans are said to be abroad, largely forced abroad by a fractured national economy since 2000 when authorities seized white-owned commercial farms.

Ellen Mazorodze, based in Australia, as elections loom in Zimbabwe on August 23 this year, migrants like herself would like to have a chance to change things in their country. However, only those residents living in the country can vote, and she encouraged them to vote.

“If you want to choose a person to represent you, go and vote. Your vote will be counted. It will help you to have a person fulfilling your wishes get in office,” Mazorodze told IPS.

Privilege Kandira (30), living in Norway, says: “Diaspora life is a mixture of both good and bad.”

“On one side, I can testify that I have enjoyed the opportunity of coming to a better life here in the diaspora, but on the other side, let me hasten to say that I have met lots of challenges, amongst which is racial discrimination,” he told IPS.

Kandira is not alone in battling racial discrimination.

In the UK, many Zimbabweans, like 29-year-old Tariro Muungani, a professional social worker, have had to face racial discrimination.

“I will give an example of where I live here in England. It’s a place where there are few black people. When you walk the streets, white people look at you curiously. When you board a bus, for instance, and sit next to a white person, they may drift away from you because they don’t want to be in contact with you, which makes living in such areas painful,” she (Muungani) told IPS.

Like Gonye in Germany, Muungani said, “Zimbabweans back home look at us in the diaspora as people who have made it in life and think we have no problems, and they look forward to us with trust that diaspora people can help them.”

Muungani said most people back in her home country do not believe people abroad can sometimes lack money.

Yet other Zimbabweans overseas say they miss the social unity back in their country as they fight to earn a better living abroad.

“What comes to mind is the togetherness we had back home, the spirit of neighbourliness, which is not there here. Nobody really cares for the next person. Children live just anyhow with no strangers bothering to discipline them, unlike what happens back home culturally,” Sophia Tekwane, a Zimbabwean woman based in Sweden, told IPS.

But Tekwane also said with the suffering in Zimbabwe, many like herself have no choice except to endure being abroad.

“The suffering in Zimbabwe makes things tough for all of us in the diaspora because it forces us to work even harder to support the loved ones back home.”

“You end up having no choice. Sometimes you end up sacrificing – starving yourself to support the people back home. You end up working abnormally long hours,” added Tekwane.

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Five human rights defenders receive a Front Line Defenders Award in Dublin in May 2023. Credit: Conor McCabe

By Olive Moore
DUBLIN, Ireland, Jul 5 2023 (IPS)

In recent years, the global landscape for human rights defenders (HRDs) has become more difficult and complex, with both new and heightened challenges. With hundreds of defenders killed every year, the scale and magnitude of threats faced by HRDs is unprecedented.

And our response to this is severely lacking. Authoritarian and repressive forces are ever more emboldened by a permissive international environment, which fails to protect HRDs and hold aggressors to account.

Civic space restrictions, conflict and crises, climate crisis, technological threats, rising authoritarianism and anti-gender policies all significantly affect the work, safety and well-being of HRDs.

But thankfully, there is a flipside to this grim panorama. I recently had the privilege of spending some time with five HRDs who are among those leading the charge against these sobering trends. Courageously, they are stepping up to these challenges, to fight for their space, to champion collective rights and to stand for a better, more just world.

The five HRDs were visiting Dublin as the recipients of an annual award Front Line Defenders has been presenting to HRDs from all over the world since 2005. The recipients, from each of the major world regions, are among those most at risk for their peaceful work in defense of human rights.

In all cases, they demonstrate a steadfast commitment to the communities they support and represent. They offer inspiration for our times, and give us all reason to continue to care, to stand together in solidarity and to speak out and act.

I would like to highlight some of their invaluable contributions to the greater good.

Our Africa winner, Olivier Ndoole Bahemuke, is a leader among environmental and land defenders in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and one of the most trusted advocates on behalf of communities impacted by land grabs, trafficking, and illegal resource extraction activities.

Known in North Kivu province as the “Green lawyer,” he is an ardent defender of the rights of communities and the environment in Virunga National Park and areas around Goma. He has faced death threats, been beaten to the point of hospitalisation and faced ongoing persecution for this work.

Our Americas winner, Segundo Ordóñez, an Afro-descendant human rights defender from Ecuador, is one of the most visible faces and the community representative in the two legal proceedings brought against the multinational company Furukawa Plantaciones C. A. and the State of Ecuador. The cases have focused on how workers on abacá (Manila hemp) plantations suffer labour exploitation as they farm the raw materials in conditions of modern slavery.

From Asia and the Pacific, Jeany ‘Rose’ Hayahay is a woman human rights defender based in Mindanao, the Philippines. Since 2019, she has been the spokesperson of the Save Our Schools Network (SOS Network), a coalition of child-focused NGOs, church-based groups and other stakeholders advocating for children’s right to education in Mindanao, particularly in the context of militarisation and attacks on schools.

Rose is consistently red-tagged and monitored as a leader, facing reprisals and threats, both directly and indirectly. She is at high risk of being killed, arrested or imprisoned yet continues to lead at the forefront with determination and courage.

Our Europe and Central Asia winner, Digital Security Lab Ukraine, represented by their executive director Vita Volodovska is a team of specialists in the field of digital security and internet freedom.

Amid the dangers of Russia’s full-scale invasion of their country, they help Ukrainian journalists, human rights defenders and public activists solve problems with digital security, as well as promote the realisation of human rights on the internet by influencing government policy in the field of digital rights.

And, last but not least, our Middle East and North Africa winner, Hala Ahed, from Jordan is one of the few women human rights lawyers in her country, who has worked with a number of human rights and feminist organisations to defend women’s rights, workers’ rights, and the freedoms of opinion, expression and peaceful assembly in Jordan.

Despite her vital work and advocacy, Hala has endured various forms of intimidation and harassment, including facing threats and being summoned multiple times by the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate.

These five HRDs are remarkable agents of positive change – representing our best chance to withstand, counter and find solutions to the significant challenges we face today.

However, they all face tremendous personal risk because of their human rights work – with ongoing threats to their security, well-being and reputations and the safety of their families. As we met with diplomats, dignitaries and like-minded organisations in Dublin and Brussels, our Award winners told us about the cost to them and their families and communities, and the huge personal sacrifice they make.

In some cases, they literally put their lives on the line to continue with their crucial work in defense of human rights; in others, they have been labelled “terrorists”; organisations they support have been criminalised; or their family members have faced threats and abduction.

It is a fate that is reflective of our wider work to protect human rights defenders – in 2022, Front Line Defenders supported 2,675 HRDs and 404 organisations at risk in over 140 countries – including in some very challenging contexts of armed conflict and crises.

One part of the Front Line Defenders Award is about recognition for and solidarity with these defenders, for whom the limelight brings a level of international attention and protection. This is important, but this is only only part of what HRDs require for their protection, and for their human rights work to thrive. They also need concerted political action.

That is why, as Front Line Defenders, we will continue to work directly with HRDs to advocate with governments, international institutions and corporations, to ensure that the crucial work HRDs do to advance human rights and justice is valued and that as individuals they are respected and protected.

Olive Moore is Interim Director of Front Line Defenders

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Cecilia Menjivar, a tortilla maker in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, takes a break from cooking corn in a pot that is one meter high and 50 centimeters in diameter, heated by a wood stove. Many women in urban and rural areas run these small businesses, aware of the damage to their health caused by the smoke, but the economic situation forces them to use firewood, which is much cheaper than liquefied gas. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN LUIS LA HERRADURA, El Salvador , Jul 4 2023 (IPS)

Using a few dry sticks as fuel, Margarita Ramos of El Salvador lit the fire in her wood stove and set about frying two fish, occasionally fanning the flame, aware that the smoke she inhaled could affect her health.

“I know that the smoke can damage my lungs, because that’s what I’ve heard on the news, but what can I do?” Ramos told IPS, standing next to her stove in the courtyard of her home in El Zapote, a village of 51 families in the coastal municipality of San Luis La Herradura, in the southern Salvadoran department of La Paz.

Firewood, the fuel of the poor

“I cook with firewood out of necessity, because I don’t always have a job or money to buy gas,” added Ramos, 44, referring to liquefied gas, a petroleum derivative used for cooking in 90.6 percent of Salvadoran homes, according to official data."I know that the smoke can damage my lungs, because that's what I've heard on the news, but what can I do?" -- Margarita Ramos

This is the situation faced by many women in El Salvador and other parts of the world, especially in the countryside, where dire economic conditions as well as ingrained habits and traditions lead families to cook with firewood, with negative repercussions on their health.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2019 approximately 18 percent of global deaths were due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 23 percent to acute respiratory infections.

Ambient pollution, including wood smoke, plays a decisive role in respiratory diseases, especially among rural women, who do the cooking in line with the roles of patriarchal culture.

Back in 2004 the WHO warned that about 1.6 million people were dying annually from charcoal and wood smoke used in cooking stoves in many developing countries.

In El Salvador, 29,365 cases of acute respiratory infections per 100,000 inhabitants were reported in 2022, well above the 19,000 reported in 2021. Pneumonia reached 365 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the same period, and the case fatality rate stood at 13.6 percent, up from 11.4 percent the previous year.

Ana Margarita Ramos fries two fish for dinner on a wood stove in El Zapote, a coastal village located in the municipality of San Luis La Herradura, in the Salvadoran department of La Paz. Due to economic difficulties she frequently has to cook with firewood, and she fears that she might get asthma from exposure to the smoke. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Ramos showed IPS the gas stove she has inside her house, with a cylinder that lasts approximately 40 days.

But when the gas runs out and she can’t afford to refill the cylinder, she has to cook with her wood stove. In her courtyard she has a table in a makeshift shed, where she keeps the wood and a metal structure that holds her pots and pans.

Official figures indicate that 5.9 percent of households in this Central American country use firewood for cooking.

However, in rural areas the proportion rises to 12.9 percent, while 84.4 percent cook with gas and the rest use electricity and other systems.

Ramos, 44, has no steady job and as a single mother, scrambles to provide for the needs of her two children.

Twice a week she cleans upscale apartments at a resort near her home, in Los Blancos, a well-known beach on El Salvador’s Pacific coast, also in La Paz. When she does well she cleans two a day, earning 24 dollars.

Sometimes she also washes other families’ clothes.

“Right now I have run out of gas, I have to use firewood,” she said. A cylinder of liquefied gas costs between 12 and 14 dollars.

She generally collects firewood on the banks of the estuary, from the branches of mangrove trees, since hers and other poor families live in a shantytown located between the Pacific Ocean and the Jaltepeque estuary, one of the country’s main wetlands.

Poverty affects 26.6 percent of the population at the national level in this small Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, according to official figures. But in rural areas the proportion rises to 29.6 percent, and of these, 10.8 percent live in extreme poverty.

At her house in the coastal village of El Zapote, Ana Margarita Ramos luckily has a yard where she has set up her wood stove, thus reducing her exposure to smoke, in a country like El Salvador where many women suffer from respiratory diseases due to the effects of cooking with firewood. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Cutting costs with firewood

Meanwhile in San Salvador, the country’s capital, Cecilia Menjívar runs her small tortilla-making business partly by using firewood, which she collects from tree branches around the Los Héroes community where she lives.

She also uses wood left over from construction sites and sometimes buys it as well, at a cost of one dollar for about three “rajas” or axe-cut tree branches.

Tortillas are round flat bread made from corn dough, which are baked on metal plates generally heated with the flame from liquefied gas.

But Menjívar does not use gas to cook the 68 kg of corn she uses daily to run her business, as she can’t afford it.

“That’s why we prefer firewood. We don’t like it, first of all because of the damage to our health, and also because our clothes are impregnated with the smell of smoke and the walls of the house too, they look dirty,” Menjívar, 58, told IPS.

“We do it to save on the cost, which would be very high, and we wouldn’t make any profit,” she added, while behind her the 68 kg of corn for the day rattled in a boiling pot, black from the wood smoke.

Tortillas are part of the staple diet of the Salvadoran population. Most households cook their food on gas stoves, but they don’t make their own tortillas, because it is a complex and time-consuming process.

That is why so many women, like Menjívar, go into the tortilla business to meet the high level of demand, cooking the corn on wood stoves, usually located in the open air in their courtyards.

But during the May to November rainy season, they cook the corn inside the house, in a back room.

Because of the amount of corn and the size of the pot, the improvised wood stove made of wood and a metal structure has to be set on the floor.

The tortilla business has shrunk, she added, due to the increase in the cost of corn, which climbed from 15 dollars per quintal (45 kg) to 32 dollars.

“With this business we earn enough to buy our food and other basic things, but not for other expenses,” she said.

One of Ana Margarita Ramos’ two sons, in El Zapote, a coastal settlement in southern El Salvador, stands near the firewood that is always on hand in case they can’t afford to buy liquefied gas. About 13 percent of rural Salvadoran households cook with firewood, which poses serious health risks. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Chronic bronchitis and pneumonia

Menjívar said that she fell ill with pneumonia in 2022, and she did not rule out that the cause could have been precisely the smoke she has been inhaling for decades, although she pointed out that the doctors who treated her did not inquire about it.

“Since I was a little girl I have been exposed to smoke, because my mother also used to make tortillas using firewood,” she said. “When she couldn’t find dry branches, my mom would burn anything: old shoes, old clothes or paper.”

When she got pneumonia, she had to stop working for three months, and she had to leave the business in the hands of her teenage daughter.

Burning firewood releases toxic gases and polluting particles that end up causing ailments that in medical terminology are grouped together as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonologist Carmen Elena Choto told IPS. These gases include carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.

“We also see other harmful particles, there may even be hydrocarbons, because they not only burn wood, but also dry cow dung, corncobs, paper, anything to make the fire,” said the expert.

Damage to the bronchi, or chronic bronchitis, and to the alveoli in the lungs, or pulmonary emphysema, are some of the diseases associated with exposure to smoke, including tobacco smoke, she added.

“Due to the burning of biomass (firewood and other products), the most frequent disease is chronic bronchitis,” said Choto, and older women are the main victims.

People with bronchitis have a constant cough “or wheezing or shortness of breath because there is obstruction due to mucus plugs in the airway,” she said.

Patients, she added, feel tired and suffer from dyspnea or shortness of breath from low oxygen levels, which in severe cases requires hospital care.

Menjívar began to feel these symptoms after spending years making tortillas.

“I felt very tired, I suffered from hot flashes, I was short of breath, I felt like I was having a hard time breathing,” she said.

After she was diagnosed with pneumonia, Menjívar stopped working for three months.

“That’s why I try to stay farther away from the smoke now,” she said. “But the smoke spreads through the house.”

For her part, Ramos, in her coastal village, has put her stove in the yard outdoors, to reduce exposure to smoke. She worries that she could suffer from asthma, like her sister.

A resident of the coastal hamlet of El Salamar, in the municipality of San Luis La Herradura in southern El Salvador, cooks pasta for lasagna on an ecological stove called a “rocket”, which is much more efficient in producing heat and emits less smoke. This kind of stove has been used for decades in rural communities in the country, with good results in alleviating the health risks posed by wood stoves. But they have not become widespread, due to a lack of government investment and campaigns to encourage their use. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Eco-stoves, an alternative

One possible answer to reduce exposure to smoke, especially in rural areas, is the spread of eco-stoves, which due to their combustion mechanism are more efficient in producing energy and release less smoke.

These stoves have been around for decades in developing countries, including El Salvador, but they have not yet become widespread enough to make a difference, at least in this country.

There are socio-cultural aspects that hinder the expansion of the stoves and lead to the continued use of wood-burning stoves, environmentalist Ricardo Navarro, of the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technology, a local affiliate of the international organization Friends of the Earth, told IPS.

For example, he mentioned the practice by small farmers of placing corn or beans on bamboo or wooden platforms on top of wood stoves, so that the smoke prevents insects from eating the food.

“The problem is that sometimes we approach the issue as an energy or health problem, without considering these socio-cultural aspects,” Navarro said.

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By Arun Agrawal, Lucas Garibaldi, and Karen O'Brien
BONN, Germany, Jul 4 2023 (IPS)

To most people, ‘transformative change’ is an abstract academic catchphrase. But transformative change is far more than that. It is the foundational response necessary to address the global crisis of biodiversity loss that threatens the wellbeing of every person in every community – and every species in every region.

Species of plants and animals around the world are going extinct at a rate at least tens to hundreds of times greater than the average over the past 10 million years. A million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction. Seventy five percent of our global land surface and 66% of the ocean area has been significantly altered by human activity. Rapid increases in greenhouse gas emissions, consumption patterns and an extraordinary concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small minority are profoundly damaging nature’s contributions to people. They threaten the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. We are on the path towards a disastrous future.

But altering course to achieve a sustainable, just, and prosperous world is possible. Getting to such a world requires different choices. It requires transformative change. There is broad scientific consensus that justice and equity are integrally connected with sustainability. This means that halting and reversing biodiversity loss will not be accomplished by small, slow, incremental changes. Deep, structural, and rapid changes, are necessary and possible. They will entail both individual and collective action. They will span behavioural, social, cultural, economic, institutional, technical and technological dimensions.

To succeed, transformative change must begin now. Shifts towards greater justice, equity and sustainability require clear evidence on how transformative change comes about – especially how it can lead to a fairer distribution of resources, capacities and benefits for socially, economically and politically disadvantaged and marginalised groups. This knowledge exists. Evidence and strategies that translate knowledge about transformations into actions for transformations are needed. The transformative change assessment aims to pinpoint the necessary evidence and strategies.

Representatives of the 139 member States of IPBES, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, tasked the world’s leading experts to undertake a thematic assessment of transformative change over more than four years. The aim is to better understand and identify the specific elements of human society that can be leveraged to bring about transformative change for the conservation, restoration, and wise use of biodiversity, taking into account broader social and economic goals in the context of sustainable development.

The transformative change assessment process is now well advanced. Due to be considered by IPBES member States in 2024, and published thereafter, the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment Report will provide the knowledge and policy options to help governments, decision-makers, organisations and even individuals to better understand and act to address the drivers of change that link biodiversity loss with social, economic, political and cultural dimensions.

The report will highlight specific actionable options to meet the targets of the newly adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The assessment draws on more than 10,000 sources – including scientific publications, government data, as well as vital indigenous and local knowledge. It explores diverse case studies of historical transformations and examines quantitative evidence on past and ongoing transformations. It investigates the likely trajectories of change into the future and how to turn away from the catastrophic path on which we are currently marching. This evidence will allow the assessment and its audiences to pinpoint the drivers and consequences of transformations, avoid potential pitfalls to ensure nature-positive changes, and propel the planet towards sustainability and wellbeing.

Transformative change is not only an environmental issue. It is also a social, economic and justice issue. Creating an equitable world that recognizes the fundamental interdependence of human well-being and the health of the natural world is simultaneously about creating a world that is sustainable, resilient and prosperous for all people and all nature.

About the Authors:

Dr. Arun Agrawal is a professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, USA.

Dr. Lucas Garibaldi is a professor at the Universidad Nacional de Rio Negro and a researcher for the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina.

Dr. Karen O’Brien is a professor at the University of Oslo, Norway.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writers are Co-Chairs of the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment

Simita Devi, whose daughter spent days in hospital recently suffering from typhoid caused by contaminated water, collects clean water brought to the surface by a solar pump. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
Champad, India, Jul 4 2023 (IPS)

Simita Devi spent over ten days in a government-run hospital a year ago anxiously watching her critically ill nine-year-old daughter, Gudiya, who was diagnosed with typhoid.

Gudiya was so sick she even went into a coma for a day. Medical staff attending to the child said she contracted the disease from drinking contaminated water.

After being discharged, Devi’s main worry was to get safe drinking water for her ailing daughter.

She was advised not to consume water from village wells or untested sources like river streams or springs.

Hailing from Champad, a tribal village in India’s Jharkhand state, Devi works as a daily wage labourer alongside her husband. With a limited income, Devi couldn’t afford packaged drinking water for her daughter.

She then decided to boil the water using firewood to make it safe to drink. But to get the firewood, she had to trek the treacherous terrains of the nearby forests – a long, difficult work and the fear of wild animals loomed.

It was not Devi alone impacted by contaminated water, it was making many people in her village ill, and there was nothing the inhabitants could do about it.

According to government records, 80% of India’s rural drinking water comes from underground sources. One-third of India’s 600 districts do not have safe drinking water because fluoride, iron, salinity, and arsenic concentrations exceed tolerance levels. India’s water quality is poor, ranking at 120 of 122 nations.

The solar panels on the water tower have meant clean waters for the villagers of Champad, a tribal village in India’s Jharkhand. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

Experts believe that the source of these heavy metals is industrial waste being dumped untreated into water systems and nitrates which surface due to excessive and prolonged use of fertilizers. The government estimates that every year, over one lakh (100,000) people die of waterborne diseases in the country.

Champad, a village inhabited by a tribal community, has 105 households per the 2011 census. Until 2022, the community depended on only two tube wells as their source of drinking water. However, these tube wells often experienced malfunctions, leaving the villagers with no choice but to fetch water from a nearby river or pond. Consequently, there has been a rise in waterborne diseases, particularly affecting the health of women and children. The need to travel long distances for safe drinking water has increased women’s workload, increasing their workload.

Perturbed by the threat of waterborne diseases, the village locals congregated earlier this year to try to find a solution. They at first visited the local politicians for help. Then they headed towards government offices. “Nothing happened—absolutely nothing. We were virtually left high and dry. Except for God, no one is there to help us. At times, we were told to wait, and at times, we were told that government funding wasn’t available. But we were slowly dying. Our children are suffering in front of our own eyes,” Ram Singh, a local villager at Champad, told IPS.

Earlier this year, a team from a non-governmental agency working to uplift rural areas in India visited the village to assess the villagers’ hardships.

The agency then mooted the idea of a solar water tower in the village. The villagers were made aware of the process involved in the tower’s construction and that government approval for the facility was needed.

The village representatives were taken on board, and a proposal was submitted to the water department of the district.

“Government liked the idea, and it was readily approved. The entire village worked together to make the project a success story,” says a member of the humanitarian agency who wished to remain anonymous.

The towers were equipped with solar panels, enabling them to operate sustainably and with minimal environmental impact. The selection of sites for the towers was a collaborative effort involving the village communities. The first solar water tower was constructed in February 2023, while work on the other two towers is still ongoing. As a result, 45 families now directly benefit from the convenience of having clean drinking water channelled to their homes through pipelines. The water provided is of good quality and considered safe, in contrast to the open well water that was previously relied upon. This development has significantly alleviated the burden on women, who no longer have to travel long distances to fetch water from various sources.

The impact of this intervention was significant. The community’s health improved, and they were no longer at risk of waterborne illnesses. The women and children, who were often responsible for collecting water from distant sources, could now spend their time on other activities. The community’s overall quality of life improved, and they could focus on their livelihoods and education.

For Simita Devi, the facility is no less than a major solace in her life. She excitedly uses this water for drinking and thanks God for such an endeavour.

“Safe water means life for us. The solar tower has become a messiah for poor villagers like us. We will cherish the moments for life when we find its water coming to our homes,” Devi told IPS.

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By Palitha Kohona
BEIJING, Jul 4 2023 (IPS)

There is little doubt that human activity is accelerating climate change. Our activities are causing global warming and potentially disastrous climate change.

The vast majority of scientists agree. The IPCC has overwhelmingly endorsed this view. Many among civil society also agree.

Given this substantial consensus, we need to take action to contain climate change.
We need to take urgent action to limit human activity that results in global warming and climate change.

We have agreed on the need to contain global warming to 1.5c.

So, what is the problem?

While there is broad agreement on the need to contain global warming for the sake of humanity, for the sake of future generations, and on what needs to be done, little of what needs to be done is being done.

At this stage it may be prudent to review what has been broadly agreed on what needs to be done and what remains to be done and why some things have not been done.

We may have to get involved in a discussion on why human beings are reluctant to give up what they have achieved from the prosperity resulting from industrialisation.

Industrialisation resulted in unbelievable creature comforts, especially in developed countries. Now we are talking about reducing, perhaps even eliminating, some of those creature comforts.

This observation applies even to the late comers to prosperity. Some of whom are in our part of the world. This is where the problem lies.

Over the last three centuries some countries industrialised by using fossil fuels and by decimating their forests.

But the prosperity that resulted did not begin to seep down to the lowest levels until the last century. But it did seep down. Somewhat late in the day.

I must say that I will not get in to the blame game and pile up blame on certain countries, especially the countries that led the industrial revolution, which led the industrialization race, for being responsible for our ills in the first place.

Even in these countries, the vast majority of the poor began to enjoy the benefits of industrialisation only in the last century or so. They will be the ones who will require the most convincing and who will find it difficult to give up their recently acquired prosperity.

Now we need to talk about what can be done. We need this discussion to be intensified multilaterally and domestically.

First our awareness raising needs to be more comprehensive. It’s not only governments that need convincing. Ordinary people need convincing too. Ordinary people across the globe.

The ones who are dreaming of their first refrigerator. The first air conditioner. They need to accept the need for something to be done.

But they also need an alternative. What do we give them as an alternative to the refrigerator that they are dreaming of. Certainly not softly uttered words of consolation.

We need to provide an alternative that works on a renewable power source. An alternative that does not aggravate the current situation globally.

We have the commitments from Paris and before. We need to invest heavily in alternative and reliable power sources. We know what needs to be done. We know more or less how to do it. Now we need the resources, the funding.

Many countries in the South are endowed with alternative energy sources. Wind, solar, hydro, etc. But lack the resources to exploit them. They will have no alternative but to stay with cheap fossil fuel-based energy.

We need a global multilateral funding agency to allocate funds for renewable power generation. Call it a green Bank if you will. Existing funding agencies may not fully meet the bill.

Such an entity will be funded by a variety of entities. States, charities, legacies, individuals depositing their reserves, etc. But its mandate will be to provide funding for green development.

Such an agency must operate in a transparent reliable manner. But we have the experience. There are other related funding needs. A dedicated and well resources Bank is likely to address our needs.

The transition to electric vehicles is a clear priority. China has recognised the need to transition to EVs as a key to reducing GHG emissions. China today is the leader in EV manufacture. China has also achieved amazing success with desert reclamation.

Ambassador Dr Palitha Kohona is the former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN and currently Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China.

This article contains excerpts from an address to the World Peace Forum, 2023, Tsinghua University, Beijing

IPS UN Bureau

 

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While cooking on one side of her wooden tin-roofed house, Mercedes Marcahuachi describes her long day's work to meet the needs of her household and of the soup kitchen where she serves 150 daily rations at the low price of 80 cents of a dollar, in one of the settlements of Ventanilla, a "dormitory town" of Lima, the Peruvian capital. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

By Mariela Jara
CALLAO, Peru, Jul 3 2023 (IPS)

At five in the morning, when fog covers the streets and the cold pinches hard, Mercedes Marcahuachi is already on her feet ready to go to work in Pachacútec, the most populated area of the municipality of Ventanilla, in the province of Callao, known for being home to Peru’s largest seaport.

“If I don’t get up that early, I don’t have enough time to get everything done,” the 55-year-old woman tells IPS as she shows us the area of her home where she runs a soup kitchen that she opened in 2020 to help feed her community during the COVID pandemic and that she continues to run due to the stiffening of the country’s economic crisis."When we came here in 2000 there was no water or sewage, life was very difficult. My children were young, my women neighbors and I helped each other to get ahead. Now we are doing better luckily, but I can't use the transportation to get to the market; I can't afford the ticket, so I save by walking and on the way back I take the bus because I can't carry everything, it's too heavy." -- Julia Quispe

Emerging as a special low-income housing project in the late 1980s, it was not until 2000 that the population of Pachacútec began to explode when around 7,000 families in extreme poverty who had occupied privately-owned land on the south side of Lima were transferred here by the then government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).

The impoverished neighborhood is mainly inhabited by people from other parts of the country who have come to the capital seeking opportunities. Covering 531 hectares of sandy land, it is home to some 180,000 people, about half of the more than 390,000 people in the district of Ventanilla, and 15 percent of the population of Callao, estimated at 1.2 million in 2022.

Marcahuachi arrived here at the age of 22 with the dream of a roof of her own. She had left her family home in Yurimaguas, in the Amazon rainforest region of Loreto, to work and become independent. And she hasn’t stopped working since.

She now has her own home, made of wood, and every piece of wall, ceiling and floor is the result of her hard work. She has two rooms for herself and her 18-year-old son, a bathroom, a living room and a kitchen.

“I’m a single mother, I’ve worked hard to achieve what we have. Now I would like to be able to save up so that my son can apply to the police force, he can have a job and with that we will make ends meet,” she says.

Marcahuachi worked for years as a saleswoman in a clothing store in downtown Lima, adjacent to Callao, and then in Ventanilla until she retired. Three years ago, she created the Emmanuel Soup Kitchen, for which the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion provides her with non-perishable food.

Pachacútec, a poor settlement in the port municipality of Ventanilla, has 180,000 inhabitants from different regions of the country and districts of Lima, the Peruvian capital. The conditions of poverty and precariousness increase caregiving work, typically associated with women due to gender stereotypes. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

The community soup kitchen operates at one end of the courtyard that surrounds her house and offers 150 daily food rations at the subsidized price of three soles (80 cents of a dollar), which she uses to buy vegetables, meat and other products used in the meals.

Marcahuachi feels good that she can help the poorest families in her community. “I don’t earn a penny from what I do, but I am happy to support my people,” she says.

Her daily routine includes running her own home as well as ensuring the 150 daily food rations in the Emmanuel settlement where she lives, one of 143 neighborhoods in Pachacútec.

Various studies, including the World Bank’s “Rising Strong: Peru Poverty and Equity Assessment”, have found that poverty in Peru is mostly urban, contrary to most Latin American countries, a trend that began in 2013 and was accentuated by the pandemic.

By 2022, although the national economy had rallied, the quality of employment and household income had declined.

Mercedes Marcahuachi is a resident of Pachacútec, a large area in the province of Callao on Peru’s central coast characterized by poverty and inequality. During the pandemic she set up a soup kitchen in her home, to feed the poorest local residents in her neighborhood, which is called Emmanuel. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

In Pachacútec, in the extreme north of Callao, the hardship is felt on a daily basis.

Only the two main streets are paved, while the countless steep lanes lined with homes are stony or sandy. Cleaning is constant, as dust seeps through the cracks in the wooden walls and corrugated tin-sheet roofs.

In addition, food and other basic goods stores are far away, so it is necessary to take public transportation there and back, which makes daily life more expensive and complicated.

But these are unavoidable responsibilities for women, who because of their stereotypical gender roles are in charge of care work: cleaning, washing, grocery shopping, cooking, and caring for children and adults with disabilities or the elderly.

This is the case of Julia Quispe, who at the age of 72 is responsible for a number of tasks, such as cooking every day for her family, which includes her husband, her daughter who works, and her four grandchildren who go to school.

Julia Quispe, 72, continues to care for and feed her family, including making the long trip to the market to shop and feed her husband, daughter and grandchildren. She does so at the cost of her own poor health. But this resident of Pachacútec, a poor area near Lima, the Peruvian capital, responds that she has “never worked”, when asked. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

She tells IPS that she has uterine prolapse, that she is not feeling well, but that she has stopped going to the hospital because for one reason or another they don’t actually provide her with the solution she needs.

Despite her health problems, she does the shopping every day at the market, as well as the cooking and cleaning, and she takes care of her grandchildren and her husband, who because of a fall, suffers from a back injury that makes it difficult for him to move around.

“When we came here in 2000 there was no water or sewage, life was very difficult,” she says. “My children were young, my women neighbors and I helped each other to get ahead. Now we are doing better luckily, but I can’t use the transportation to get to the market; I can’t afford the ticket, so I save by walking and on the way back I take the bus because I can’t carry everything, it’s too heavy.”

But when it comes to talking about herself, Quispe says she never worked, that she has only dedicated herself to her home, replicating the view of a large part of society that does not value the role of women in the family: feeding, cleaning the house, raising children and grandchildren, providing a healthy environment, which includes tasks to improve the neighborhood for the entire community.

Moreover, in conditions of poverty and precariousness, such as those of Pachacútec, these tasks are a strenuous responsibility at the expense of their own well-being.

The steep streets of Pachacútec are sandy or stony, which means there is constant dust in the homes, and women have to spend more hours cleaning in this densely populated settlement of Ventanilla, a coastal municipality neighboring Lima. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Recognizing women’s care work

“Poor urban women have come from other regions and have invested much of their time and work in building their own homes, caring for their children and weaving community, a sense of neighborhood. They have less access to education, they earn low wages and have no social coverage or breaks, so they are also time poor,” Rosa Guillén, a sociologist with the non-governmental Gender and Economics Group, tells IPS.

“For years, they have taken care of their families, their communities, they do productive work, but it is a very slow and difficult process for them to pull out of poverty because of   inequalities associated with their gender,” she says.

She adds that “even so, they plan their families, they invest the little they earn in educating their children, fixing up their homes, buying sheets and mattresses; they are always thinking about saving up money for the children to study during school vacations.”

From the focus of the approach of feminist economics, she argues that it is necessary for governments to value the importance of the work involved in caregiving, in taking care of people, families, communities and the environment for the progress of society and to face climate change, investing in education, health, good jobs and real possibilities for retirement.

“Living here makes you feel like crying but what would that get me, I just have to get over it,” Ormecinda Mestanza, a resident of Pachacútec since 2004, tells IPS. She commutes daily to the Peruvian capital of Lima to work and earn a living, in trips that take between two and three hours. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Ormecinda Mestanza, 57, has lived in Pachacútec for nine years. She bought the land she lives on but does not have the title deed; a constant source of worry, because besides having to work every day just to get by, she has to fit in the time to follow up on the paperwork to keep her property.

“It makes you want to cry, but I have to get over it, because this little that you see is all I have and therefore is the most precious thing to me,” she tells IPS inside her wooden shack with a corrugated tin roof.

Everything is clean and tidy, but she knows that this won’t last long because of the amount of dust that will soon cover her floor and her belongings, which she will just have to clean over again.

She works in Lima, as a cleaner in a home and as a kitchen helper in a restaurant, on alternate days. She gets to her jobs by taking two or three public transportation buses and subway trains, and it takes her two to three hours to get there, depending on the traffic.

“I get up at five in the morning to get ready and have breakfast and I get to work late and they scold me. ‘Why do you come so far to work?’ they ask me, but it’s because the daily pay in Pachacútec is very low, 30 or 40 soles (10 to 12 dollars a day) and that’s not enough for me,” she says.

Wood and corrugated tin roofing are the materials used in most of the houses in Pachacútec, an area in the north of the province of Callao, adjacent to the capital of Lima, as is the case of the home of Ormecinda Mestanza, who constantly worries that when it rains her house will be flooded by leaks in her roof. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

She managed to buy the land with the help of relatives. After working for a family as a domestic for 30 years, her employers moved abroad and she discovered that they had lied to her for decades, claiming to be making the payments towards her retirement pension. “I never thought I would get to this age in these conditions, but I don’t want to bother my son, who has his own worries,” she says.

According to official figures, in Peru, a country of 33 million inhabitants, 70 percent of people living in poverty were in urban areas in 2022.

And among the parts of the country with a poverty rate above 40 percent is Callao, a small, densely populated territory that is a province but has a special legal status on the central coast, bordered to the north and east by Lima, of which it forms part of its periphery.

The municipality of Ventanilla is known as a “dormitory town” because a large part of the population works in Lima or in the provincial capital, also called Callao. Because of the distance to their jobs, residents spend up to five or six hours a day commuting to and from work, so they basically only sleep in their homes on workdays, and very few hours at that.

Guillén says it is necessary to bring visibility to the workload of women and the fact that it is not valued, especially in poor outlying urban areas like Callao.

“We need a long-term policy immediately that guarantees equal education for girls and boys, and gives a boost to vocations, without gender distinctions, that are typically associated with women because they are focused on care,” says the expert.

She adds that if more equality is achieved, democracy and progress will be bolstered. “This way we will be able to take better care of ourselves as families, as society and as nature, which is our big house,” she remarks.

The United Nations General Assembly is convening a high-level meeting on Tuberculosis (TB) to get a political commitment for increased funding for programmes and research to end an old disease that today kills more people than AIDS and COVID. TB, an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, kills 1.5 million people annually, according to the […]

A young refugee girl, pictured in a temporary displacement camp in Kalak, Iraq, in June 2014. Thousands of people were forced to fled Iraq's second city of Mosul after it was overrun by ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) militants in 2014. Credit: Amnesty International

By Janine Morna
FLORIDA USA, Jul 3 2023 (IPS)

All my life was wasted, said Anwar*, as he told me recently about his traumatic experiences living under the Islamic State (IS) armed group in Northeast Syria.

Around 2018, when Anwar was 14 or 15 years old, his father, a member of IS, forced Anwar to train with the group as a young teenager. He even made Anwar watch as he inflicted brutal punishments on people who broke IS’ rules.

The suffering was intolerable. Anwar tried to run away from his father and flee IS-controlled territory on multiple occasions. “I hated everyone,” he said.

In 2011, as the early versions of IS began to re-emerge in Iraq, the UN was quick to document violations the armed group had committed against children. That year, the UN Secretary-General included the group in the organization’s annual report on children and armed conflict, in which perpetrators of grave violations are named and shamed. The UN is required to negotiate action plans with parties listed in the report as part of efforts to stop and prevent the violations from occurring in future.

While the annual report is a powerful tool that prompts action in many contexts, it has had little impact on groups like IS, which are unlikely to engage in dialogue with the UN.

Over the last 11 years, numerous parties listed in the annual report can be classified as ‘persistent perpetrators’ — armed groups and forces that have appeared in the report for more than five consecutive years, and have failed to respond to reports on the violations they have committed against children. IS has been listed in the report for the last 13 years.

The UN Security Council has previously focused on the issue of persistent perpetrators, including by passing a resolution and holding an open debate in 2012 where they emphasized the importance of addressing violations committed by these groups and forces. It has also made efforts to promote sanctions against recalcitrant parties.

A young refugee boy, pictured in a temporary displacement camp in Kalak, Iraq, in June 2014. Credit: Amnesty International

Despite these initiatives, the UN Security Council and its subsidiary, the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict (Working Group), could do much, much more to support meaningful accountability.

Domestic prosecutions of crimes against children

The Working Group, as the primary body carrying out the UN Security Council’s agenda on children and armed conflict, should strengthen its calls for the UN and its donors to help countries to develop and implement domestic legislation that criminalizes grave violations against children. It should also support national criminal justice systems to pursue accountability, in line with international fair trial standards.

Today, many prosecutions of non-state perpetrators of grave violations – like IS in Iraq and Syria, and Boko Haram in Nigeria – take place in domestic counterterrorism courts which, in many cases, fail to include crimes under international law, let alone crimes against children.

The Working Group must encourage the trial of individual members of these groups in national courts that are capable of adjudicating international crimes. Prosecutions could occur in the state where the crimes took place and, where relevant, in states that exercise universal jurisdiction – a legal principle whereby states can prosecute offenders of certain grave crimes irrespective of the location of the crime and the nationality of the perpetrator or victim.

When trials on crimes against children take place in counterterrorism courts, the relevant authorities must enable prosecutors and judges to draw on international law, provide sufficient resources to pursue the prosecutions, and ensure defendants can exercise their full fair trial rights.

In cases involving children associated with armed groups and forces, states should treat children who are accused of crimes during their association primarily as victims of violations of international law and not only as perpetrators, in accordance with international standards. Children should never be prosecuted for mere affiliation with an armed group or force.

Cooperating with the International Criminal Court and other international mechanisms

In situations where domestic legal systems are unable or unwilling to pursue prosecutions of crimes against children, the Working Group should explore opportunities to collaborate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other international justice mechanisms, such as the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) on Syria or the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar to achieve accountability.

This type of collaboration was envisioned when the Working Group first adopted a list of actions it could take in response to grave violations against children. Effective cooperation between international justice mechanisms is critical to achieve a measure of comprehensive justice.

The Working Group’s engagement with the ICC has historically been limited, but it is now time to further develop connections between the two bodies. The Office of the Prosecutor for the ICC has welcomed opportunities to “strengthen cooperation with relevant actors” and earlier this year launched a public consultation to renew its policy on children that “will build upon new approaches… [to] affect meaningful change”.

In the past, some Working Group members have considered indicating when parties have likely committed a war crime or other crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC. They have also explored the possibility of sharing their conclusions with the ICC, and arranging for the prosecutor of the ICC to share briefings with the Working Group.

Ten years ago, some members of the Working Group also considered, in the absence of a UN Security Council referral, inviting states that are party to the Rome Statute to refer situations to the ICC, in which armed groups or forces have committed grave violations against children. Unfortunately, deeply divided opinions about the ICC among Council members have, in the past, limited the adoption of these recommendations.

Children must be protected

On July 5, the UN Security Council will host its annual Open Debate on Children and Armed Conflict. The occasion offers all UN member states an opportunity to publicly commit to efforts to broaden and strengthen accountability for violations against children.

As a first step, member states should call for the UN Secretary General to, once again, identify persistent perpetrators in the annual reports on children and armed conflict, a practice that was stopped in 2017.

The Council has the power to take greater action in response to some of the world’s most egregious perpetrators of crimes against children. It is unacceptable that children like Anwar should have to wait so long for justice and accountability.

Janine Morna, is Thematics Researcher – Children, Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Programme

*Name changed to protect identity.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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