Africa

Women line up to receive beneficiary cards to buy fortified flour to prevent malnutrition in Kongoussi, Burkina Faso. April 2023. Credit: WFP/Cheick Omar Bandaogo

By Kirsten Stade
ST PAUL, Minnesota, USA, May 25 2023 (IPS)

A new study estimates that global heating will push billions of people outside the comfortable range of temperature and weather in which we have evolved.

While coverage of the study notes that rapid emissions cuts could greatly reduce the number of people forced to live amid unprecedented extremes, it fails to mention the obvious: that reducing our population would have the same effect.

Not long ago, the idea that human population growth drives both human suffering and environmental decline was considered common sense. That changed in the 1990s in the wake of several egregious population control programs, ranging from China’s one-child policy to forced sterilizations in China, India, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.

Today, the mere mention of population growth in connection with environmental protection or human well-being gets demonized as “neo-Malthusian” or “eugenicist” – notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of efforts to lower fertility, whether to alleviate poverty or to reduce pressure on resources, have been rights-based and voluntary.

What is most troubling about this mischaracterization is that it deflects attention from the enormous violations of reproductive rights that occur in the name of increasing reproduction.

Pronatalism — the social pressures, religious doctrine, and government policies designed to induce people to have more children – has long been the most prevalent form of reproductive coercion.

Impressed upon people by family members, religious leaders, and politicians pursuing racist, nationalist, military, and/or economic agendas, pronatalism shows up through abortion bans and alarmist messaging that promotes childbirth for certain ethnic groups. The common thread is treating people as reproductive vessels for external agendas.

Over 218 million women worldwide who want to avoid pregnancy have an unmet need for contraception. This troubling reality is the result of both simple unavailability of contraceptives, and of deep-seated pronatalist attitudes–often held by husbands and other family members- that make it impossible for women to use them.

When women are expected to produce large families regardless of their own wants, pronatalism not only denies their reproductive autonomy; it also worsens poverty and damages the environment. A new study by the Swedish Research Council debunks the stubborn misconception that population growth has a negligible effect on climate change since it’s concentrated in low-consumption countries.

In fact, the study finds, population growth is the biggest driver of carbon emissions and is canceling out emissions reductions made through renewables and efficiency. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), population growth is one of the “strongest drivers of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the last decade.”

Population growth and resultant agricultural expansion drive water scarcity, soil depletion, deforestation, land degradation, and damage to ecosystems that humans depend on. The connection between population growth and environmental impacts is clear, yet frequently denied, and this denial has real consequences.

Since addressing population growth fell out of favor in the 1990s, international funding for family planning declined 35 percent and falls far short of meeting global need.

Population denialism is reminiscent of climate denialism in its disregard for science and its failure to acknowledge the suffering of millions. Population deniers invoke Malthus and Margaret Sanger to invalidate population concerns by associating them with infamous sources, while ignoring unimpeachable ones like the IPCC.

While Malthus’ doomism and Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb failed to foresee new agricultural technologies that averted the famine and population crash they predicted, population denialists make the opposite mistake.

They adhere to a cornucopian faith that technology will magically solve our problems, and assume that new low-carbon energy sources and unproven interventions like carbon capture will fix everything.

They won’t.

In fact green tech raises serious environmental and social problems of its own. Solar and wind energy and the infrastructure for transmitting the power they generate requires far more land area than fossil fuel plants, with consequences for wildlife and its habitat. Lithium-ion batteries in electric cars and e-bikes use cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by low-wage workers subjected to toxic dumping and en masse displacement.

Population deniers are rightly concerned with equitable development of the world’s impoverished regions, but development will mean more emissions, more water use, more habitat destruction.

If current trends continue, the global middle class is projected to reach 5 billion by 2030. To enable all people to attain a reasonable standard of living without further straining natural systems, we must make access to family planning for all people a matter of urgent international concern.

The good news is that doing so reaps rewards not only for the planet but for human well-being. In every culture where fertility rates have declined, even staggering government investment in pronatalist incentives is insufficient to compel women to go back to the high birth rates they have left behind – an indication that women have a latent wish for low fertility.

This suggests that the path forward lies in acknowledging both the human and environmental toll of high birth rates and resultant population growth, and giving women the universal, free access to contraceptives and abortion care that will enable them to realize their reproductive wishes.

Kirsten Stade is a conservation biologist and communications manager of the NGO Population Balance

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Whoever wins Sunday's Turkish presidential run-off cannot ignore the country's growing ties with Africa.

Kenyan caddy Virginia Karemi Njeri says she was 'desperate' when she took up a career in golf but the sport has turned her life around.

Founder of Wagner private mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin (here pictured with fighters), claims that Bakhmut is now in Moscow’s control. However his claims are disputed by Ukraine.

By Fawzia Moodley
JOHANNESBURG, May 24 2023 (IPS)

The Wagner Group, a shadowy mercenary group that has been operating for many years in African countries such as Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic, and other mainly Francophone countries, has again been thrust into the limelight due to its involvement in the Ukraine war on behalf of Russia.

Wagner is believed to have a presence in 18 countries in Africa – and its influence goes far beyond security matters.

Julian Rademeyer of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime told DW.com, “Wagner itself has developed over time as an organization that’s gone from being a purely private military contracting entity into a multiplicity of business alliances and relations and a network of companies. Some of them are front companies across the countries in which they operate on the African continent.”

He sees the Wagner Group as primarily a Kremlin military tool to boost Russia’s economic and military influence in Africa.

Rademeyer’s colleague and lead author of a study titled Russia’s military, mercenary and criminal engagement in Africa, Julia Stanyard, told IPS, “The Wagner Group is unique as an organization in the breadth, scale, and boldness of its activities. However, our study also shows that Wagner did not emerge in a vacuum: The group’s activities and characteristics reflect broader trends in the evolution of Russia’s oligarchs and organized crime groups, their respective relationships with the Russian state, and their activities in Africa.”

“The group comprises a network of political influence operations and economic entities such as mining companies.

“It appears to target unstable governments embroiled in civil wars and forms alliances with the ruling elite and offers them military support and weapons.”

This is exactly what happened in the CAR, where the government has been fighting multiple rebel forces since December 2020. A beleaguered President Faustin-Archange Touadéra reached out to Russia shortly after taking power in 2016.

“He received Russian military instructors and weapons, and Wagner mercenaries soon followed,” says CIVICUS, a global alliance promoting civic action.

In return, Wagner receives economic and mining concessions. According to the New York Times, the group has been involved in mining operations in the CAR, where it has secured contracts to mine gold and diamonds.

Stanyard says: “The group comprises a network of political influence operations and economic entities such as mining companies.”

While the governments and sections of their population have welcomed the group, Wagner’s been accused of gross human rights abuses, with local communities reporting forced labour and sexual violence.

Human Rights Watch says it has collected compelling evidence that Russian fighters have committed grave abuses against civilians in the CAR with complete impunity since 2019. The HRW interviewed 40 people between February 2019 and November 2021 about abuses by men speaking Russian.

Stanyard’s research substantiates the allegations of abuse: “Wagner Group has been accused of using whatever means necessary to achieve its aims, including criminal activity.”

Russia officially does not recognize mercenaries, but Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch, has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Significantly, on Sunday, May 21, Putin reportedly congratulated the Wagner mercenary force for helping in what he called the “liberation” of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Reuters quoted Putin from a statement on the Kremlin’s website, saying: “The Head of State congratulated Wagner’s assault groups, as well as all members of the units of the Russian Armed Forces who provided them with the necessary support and cover on their flanks, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk (Bakhmut).”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, said Bakhmut had not been occupied by Moscow.

Wagner’s activities go beyond promoting the military and economic interests of the Kremlin.

Stanyard says the group is also involved in promoting Russian propaganda and interests by “targeting the social media profiles of Kremlin critics — spamming them with pro-Putin and pro-war comments.”

Britain, in particular, has expressed concern that among the targets are “senior UK ministers’ social media accounts, alongside other world leaders.”

“The operation has suspected links to Prigozhin,” she says, quoting a UK report exposing the misinformation campaign by Russia.

The Wagner Group’s involvement in Africa has raised concerns about the role of private military contractors in the continent’s conflicts. While some African governments have welcomed its presence, others are concerned about the lack of oversight and accountability.

In 2019, the African Union adopted the African Standby Force Concept of Operations, which seeks to strengthen the capacity of African states to respond to crises and reduce their reliance on external actors. However, the implementation has been slow, and there are concerns that the Wagner Group and other mercenary groups will continue to operate with impunity.

CIVICUS warns that Wagner’s involvement is “contributing to the closing of civic space. In the CAR, with his position bolstered, Touadéra has further repressed dissenting voices. Humanitarian workers and independent journalists are among those subjected to violence and intimidation by Wagner forces.”

Likewise, in Mali, French media outlets have been banned and “the junta banned the activities of civil society organizations that receive French support, at a stroke hindering civil society’s ability to help people in humanitarian need due to the conflict and monitor human rights abuses.”

The issue of private military contractors in Africa is not limited to the Wagner Group. Other companies, such as Academi (formerly known as Blackwater), a private firm hired by the U.S. that became synonymous with civilian killings in the Iraq war, have been involved in conflicts in the continent, often with little oversight or accountability.

Dyck Advisory Group (DAG) was also involved in Mozambique in areas where the country is trying to deal with the Islamist insurgency. DAG claimed to have worked closely with the government to keep the insurgency at bay before the Southern African Development Community (SADC) sent deployments to Cabo Delgado province. Wagner was reportedly also involved in the conflict but left after experiencing a number of losses.

The use of private military contractors has raised questions about the role of states and the responsibility of corporations in conflicts, as well as the need for greater transparency and accountability.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Manou Gounou, a volunteer trainer for food security, stands with a moringa plant at Gbegourou Epicenter in Benin in 2021. The moringa plant is highly nutritious and The Hunger Project is a strong advocate for its use in communities throughout Africa.

By Elodie Iko
PORTO-NOVO, Benin, May 24 2023 (IPS)

This upcoming weekend, on May 28, we are commemorating World Hunger Day. The day serves as a reminder that more than 800 million people around the world are living with hunger and malnutrition. That number is staggering, but there is hope.

World Hunger Day also celebrates the fact that hunger can end. We can create sustainable food systems, to ensure that everyone has access to nutritious and affordable food, both now and in the future.

I see it every day in my role as the Country Director of The Hunger Project-Benin.
So, what does it take? In my experience, the single greatest change that a community can make to end hunger and improve nutrition is a shift in mindset around gender equality.

In Benin, in West Africa, the government has put in place many policies to improve access to drinking water and sanitation, improve healthcare and increase access to nutritious food.

Yet high child mortality and morbidity rates reveal the existence of important underlying factors that catalyze malnutrition, but are generally minimized in policymaking. One of these factors is gender inequality.

When looking at the distribution of resources and responsibilities in the household, particularly between men and women, the negative influence of gender inequality on household nutrition becomes quite evident.

In our patriarchal society, men are seen as the heads of households. They have the social responsibility of making resources available to the household to provide meals. It is expected that women then use these resources to ensure household nutrition.

In today’s world, where the price of food and agriculture inputs has skyrocketed, feeding a family is becoming challenging for many. It is often falling to women to find extra sources of income to guarantee their family has food, though many face barriers like a lack of education, lack of resources and little time due to household tasks, like childcare, fetching water, and tending to livestock.

Though she may be the one closing the gap and ensuring the family has food on the table, in the service of the meal, both in quantity and in quality, priority is given to men. Women usually ensure that others have eaten first.

They then eat what is left, which often does not meet their daily nutritional needs, particularly for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. Undernutrition and hidden hunger have specific consequences for the health and safety of women and girls, as they increase the risk of life-threatening complications during pregnancy and childbirth, weaken their immunity to infections, and reduce their learning potential. This is how malnutrition becomes multi-generational.

These are the challenges we face in our work to end hunger. They are deeply entrenched societal norms but they can change.

At The Hunger Project, we work with women and men, girls and boys to identify these mindsets and shift them. A proven way to overcome many systematic barriers to a woman’s success has been increased participation by women in local, regional and national legislation as empowered change agents.

So, we work with women to take on leadership roles in the community and raise their voices in public settings to demand change and accountability. Over 38,600 women and 28,000 men in 22 communities in Benin have undergone training in Women’s Empowerment.

Over 3,000 community leaders (about 50/50 women to men) have been trained to conduct THP’s Women’s Empowerment workshops in their communities, guaranteeing that the work to shift mindsets can continue even after The Hunger Project leaves a community.

We also facilitate women’s entrepreneurship and literacy courses, so that women have the agency and confidence to start and manage a business. Since 2008, over 32,500 women have gone through THP training on income generation in Benin. Through these trainings, women are able to increase their incomes to purchase nutritious foods for themselves and their families.

We are working with these local leaders to re-envision the local food system to make it work for the millions of women living with chronic hunger and malnutrition, so that they can break the cycle of malnutrition among women and girls.

This includes working with communities to plant diverse household gardens with nutritious staple foods, investments in infrastructure to process these foods adequately to preserve their nutritional value, and strong local distribution channels that ensure availability of nutritious foods throughout the year.

Women are key to ending hunger and breaking the cycle of malnutrition. To do so, they need an enabling environment around them and a belief in themselves that they can create a future for themselves and their families.

Elodie Iko became the Country Manager for The Hunger Project-Benin, in 2022. She has over 15 years of professional experience in the field of development and management of projects and human resources, with a specific focus on gender and women’s empowerment. Elodie joins the team having worked for Plan International Benin as a Gender and Inclusion Advisor. Prior to that, Elodie worked for The Hunger Project-Benin from 2013 to 2020, first as a gender program officer, then adding inclusive finance, the coordination of the ‘’Her Choice’’ program against child marriage and ”leadership and governance in the epicenters of THP-Benin” program to her responsibilities. Her creativity and collaboration on these and other projects have worked to improve the status and position of women/girls, and thereby, strengthen gender inclusion and equality across Benin.

Founded in 1977, The Hunger Project is a global non-profit organization whose mission is to end hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, community-led, women-centered strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the globe. The Hunger Project is active in 23 countries, with global headquarters based in New York City.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Ezequiel Heffes
NEW YORK, May 23 2023 (IPS)

In 2021 alone, almost 24,000 grave violations of children’s rights in war were documented by the United Nations – these included killing and maiming, sexual violence, use and recruitment, and abductions. Schools and hospitals were destroyed, and humanitarian relief was denied on arbitrary grounds, depriving children of vital services. More children now live in conflict zones than in the past two decades.

One critical tool created to address violations against children in war is the UN Secretary-General’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict, in which he includes States and armed groups responsible for such violations in his “list of shame.” Myanmar government forces, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) in Colombia, and Al-Shabaab in Somalia, to name a few, are currently included in this list.

Some parties responsible for harming children are not included in the list, while others are listed for only some of the violations they have committed. Some have even been removed from the list before they have fully complied with children’s safeguards

The list helps protect children and ensures accountability by identifying warring parties and securing commitments to prevent violations through the adoption of UN action plans. It creates tangible, positive changes for children affected by war. Importantly, the listing is based on verified data collected by a global monitoring mechanism.

Despite the fact that the listing mechanism has improved the protection of children in various conflicts, civil society organizations and UN Member States have raised concerns about the process for determining which perpetrators are included by the Secretary-General in his Annual Report.

They have noted that any politicization of the decision-making process to list parties threatens to undermine its credibility, weakening the mechanism’s legitimacy as a tool for ensuring accountability, promoting compliance, and preventing future harm to children. These concerns are due to inconsistencies between the data on violations included in the Report’s narrative section and the parties listed in its annexes.

Specifically, some parties responsible for harming children are not included in the list, while others are listed for only some of the violations they have committed. Some have even been removed from the list before they have fully complied with children’s safeguards. In a 2021 report, an eminent group of international experts on children’s rights identified “dozens of cases where multiple and egregious violations did not lead to listing or where listing decisions reflected unexplained inconsistences.”

Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict emphasizes the salience of evidence-based and consistent listing decisions. Protecting children from being harmed in war should never be subject to political considerations. It is crucial to address the abovementioned concerns and ensure that the listing mechanism remains an effective tool for protecting children.

The UN Secretary-General must publish a complete list of perpetrators that accurately reflects verified data on violations. It is time to uphold existing protection frameworks and promote accountability for violations against children’s rights irrespective of who the perpetrators are.

 

Dr. Ezequiel Heffes is the Director of Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict

Young children and infants are particularly sensitive to the harmful effects of lead. Current statistics suggest that approximately one in three children worldwide have elevated blood lead levels. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Ahmed Rachid El-Khattabi and Aaron Salzburg
CHAPEL HILL, NC, US, May 23 2023 (IPS)

At the UN Water Conference in March 2023, the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina (UNC) along with several key partners, including UNICEF, Water Aid, the World Health Organization, and the governments of Ghana, Uganda, and South Africa, among others, organized a session centered around the elimination of lead in drinking water across the globe.

During the session, the various institutional partners articulated a vision of eliminating lead from all drinking water supplies by 2040. This vision, dubbed the “Global Pledge to Protect Drinking Water from Lead” (Lead-Free Water Pledge, for short), begins by outlining concrete steps for phasing out lead-leaching materials for new drinking water systems by 2030.

As long as lead is present in drinking water, we as a society are condemning millions (if not billions) of people to futures of health issues and reduced earning potentials in the decades to come. The vision articulated by the Lead-Free Water Pledge is one of many necessary steps that we as a global society must take to ensure access to safe drinking water to people around the world

The pledge’s two-pronged approach recognizes the complexity of eliminating lead from drinking water systems. On the one hand, lead is a problem in existing systems. On the other hand, many new drinking water systems are being constructed as much of the Global South develops and urbanizes; these new systems are being constructed with parts or components that contain and leach lead into the water.

As evidenced by efforts to address lead in drinking water in the United States, the first step of identifying areas affected by lead contamination is both financially and technically onerous. Because mitigation is more expensive than prevention, ensuring that new water systems are constructed in accordance to standards the prevent the leaching of lead is low-hanging fruit in the broader effort to eliminate lead from drinking water.

 

Lead in Drinking Water is a Global Concern

Globally, exposure to lead is responsible for a significant burden of disease, accounting for an estimated 0.9 million deaths per year and 30% of developmental disability from unknown origins. Young children and infants are particularly sensitive to the harmful effects of lead. Current statistics suggest that approximately one in three children worldwide have elevated blood lead levels.

Lead is seldom, if ever, found to be naturally occurring in bodies of water, such as rivers or lakes. Lead is also rarely present in water leaving water treatment plants. Yet, lead in drinking water is a global concern.

Lead in drinking water constitutes a significant portion of a person’s exposure to lead in countries around the world. In the US, lead in drinking water is a significant issue that affects households in almost every state. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that drinking water can account for at least 20% of a person’s total exposure to lead; this estimate can increase up to 60% for infants who mostly consume mixed formula. A 2021 study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill examining water supplies in sub-Saharan found that nearly 80% of drinking water systems were contaminated with lead. Of these systems, approximately 9% of drinking water samples across several countries had lead concentrations that exceeded the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline value of 10 parts per billion (ppb).

Lead contamination of drinking water supplies is entirely preventable: lead finds its way into drinking water from lead-containing plumbing materials used throughout drinking water systems. Notably, lead can leach into water from lead-based solder used to join pipes, lead-containing brass or chrome-plated brass faucets and fixtures, and the wearing-away of old lead service lines.

 

Regulations around Lead in Drinking Water are Insufficient

There is no safe level of exposure to lead. Even low levels of exposure can be harmful to human health and can cause damage to the central and peripheral nervous system, cognitive impairments, stunt growth, and impair the formation and function of blood cells, among other harmful effects.

Many countries around the world have regulations in place to reduce or limit the amount of lead in drinking water. The European Union, China, and Japan, for instance, all have statutory limits of 10 ppb; Canada and Australia have published guidelines recommending limits of 5 and 10 ppb, respectively. In the US, the EPA set the maximum contaminant level for lead at 15 ppb.

Except for the US, however, none of the existing national-level regulations have goals place to eliminate lead from drinking water. In 2022, the EPA issued the Revised Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) setting the maximum contaminant level goal for lead in drinking water at zero. As part of the revised LCR, water systems have to create lead service line inventories to better identify areas where they may possible lead in drinking water. Creating this inventory, however, is proving to be financial and technologically onerous for many water systems because it requires both a significant financial investment and having access to staff with technical expertise in GIS or data modeling.

 

Delivering on the Pledge

The Lead-Free Water Pledge is not the first global initiative to reduce exposure to lead. Notably, one of the most successful public health initiatives over the previous century has been to remove the use of lead in gasoline. For context, lead was commonly used as an additive in gasoline since the 1920s when it was discovered that the addition of lead reduced engine knock allowing engines to run more smoothly.

Though the harmful health effects of lead were almost immediately apparent, it took close to a century for global action to gather any meaningful momentum to eliminate its use. As of 2021, all but one country has banned the use of lead as an additive in fuels because of concerted efforts by the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles and other like-minded organizations.

As illustrated by the effort to remove lead from gasoline, delivering on the pledge to remove lead from drinking water by 2040 will require non-trivial amounts of effort. First, countries must sign on to the pledge and take it on as a priority. So far, three African countries—Ghana, Uganda, and South Africa—have made firm commitments to eliminating lead from drinking water by 2040. Though the United States’ policies are fully consistent with the Lead-Free Water Pledge, it has yet to commit.

Second, there must also be a commitment mechanism in place to ensure countries that sign on to the pledge take meaningful actions towards eliminating lead in drinking water. National governments will have to set up systems to ensure new treatment plants follow international standards, support the training and certification of professionals to oversee the construction of safe drinking water systems, ensure affordable access to fittings and other plumbing materials that meet standards for lead in drinking water, among other commitments.

The dual problem of both gathering momentum and implementing a commitment mechanism to ensure progress is not unique to the Lead-Free Water Pledge: the UN Water Conference in 2023 culminated in over 200 similar sorts of commitments, pledges, or agreements.

Given that the next UN Water Conference of the sort that took place in March 2023 wouldn’t take place until 2030 (at the earliest), the need for spaces that decision-makers and researchers from different parts of the world working on particular issues, such as the elimination of lead from drinking water, can use to come together to flesh out details, report on progress, and hold each other accountable is paramount.

A logical step in the right direction would be to take advantage of all the current meetings to create the space for meaningful discussions and actions around lead. To that end, the UNC Water & Health conference is ideally suited to serve as a space to follow-up on the Lead-Free Water Pledge and other commitments made at the UN Water Conference. The yearly conference hosted by the Water Institute each fall is already a gathering place for experts on water sanitation & hygiene in both developing and developed countries.

As long as lead is present in drinking water, we as a society are condemning millions (if not billions) of people to futures of health issues and reduced earning potentials in the decades to come. The vision articulated by the Lead-Free Water Pledge is one of many necessary steps that we as a global society must take to ensure access to safe drinking water to people around the world. We are grateful for the commitments made by Ghana, Uganda, and South Africa and are proud that Africa is taking the lead in tackling such a fundamental issue to ensure a more water secure future.

 

Dr. El-Khattabi is the Associate Director for Research and Data at the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Salzberg serves as the Director of the Water Institute and the Don and Jennifer Holzworth Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering in the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Yellowfin tuna diving.

By Grantly Galland
WASHINGTON DC, May 23 2023 (IPS)

Global fisheries are worth more than US$140 billion each year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. But this hefty sum does not capture the true value of fish to ocean health, and to the food security and cultures of communities around the world.

Unfortunately, many important populations were allowed to be overfished for decades by the same regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) charged with their conservation and sustainable use, and in some regions, this continues.

At the same time, the demand for fish continues to grow— from consumers of high-end bluefin tuna sushi to coastal communities who depend on seafood as their primary source of protein. So, RFMOs and governments must do more to ensure sustainable fishing and long-term ocean health.

More than 20 years ago, the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA) entered into force as the only global, binding instrument holding governments accountable for managing the shared fish stocks of the high seas.

Under the agreement, fish should be managed sustainably and consistent with the best available science. Governments that are party to this treaty—and to RFMOs—are supposed to follow its management obligations, and work towards greater sustainability of the transboundary species, including tunas and sharks, vital to the ocean and economies.

Five of those RFMOs focus specifically on tuna management, one each in the Atlantic, eastern Pacific, western and central Pacific, Indian, and Southern oceans. They operate autonomously and, although there is some overlap among their constituent members, each sets its own rules for tuna fishing in its waters.

This makes UNFSA critical to successful management of tuna fisheries. And because the tuna RFMOs manage some of the world’s most iconic species, they often set the tone for how other similar bodies operate.

All of this is pertinent now because UNFSA member governments are meeting in New York May 22-26 to evaluate whether RFMOs are performing consistent with their commitments. A similar review was conducted in 2016, and although management has improved over time, some areas require more work, especially when it comes to ending overfishing and considering the health and biodiversity of the entire ecosystem.

Since 2016, the share of highly migratory stocks that are overfished increased from 36% to 40%, making it all the more urgent for governments to act quickly.

UNFSA calls on RFMOs to be precautionary in how they regulate fishing, although that guidance is not always followed. There are several examples of extensive overfishing of target species, such as bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; yellowfin tuna in the Indian Ocean; and mako, oceanic whitetip sharks and other species that are caught unintentionally.

Although the RFMOs that manage these fisheries have stopped the overfishing in some cases, in others they have not. But there are signs of progress. Over the past decade, a new precautionary management approach known as harvest strategies has gained traction among RFMOs.

These strategies (or management procedures) are science-based rules that automatically adjust catch limits based on several factors, such as population status. If widely implemented, they should end overfishing and prevent it from threatening these populations again.

Harvest strategies have already been successful, particularly in the Southern and Atlantic oceans, where they’ve been adopted for several species, including bluefin tuna and cod, fish stocks for which precautionary management has historically been difficult, or even controversial.

While this progress is important, UNFSA members are still falling short in an area they have agreed is critically important: taking an ecosystem approach to management. For generations, fisheries managers focused on individual fish stocks—adopting catch limits and other measures with little thought to the broader ecosystem.

Science shows that maintaining ecosystem health is critical to sustainable fishing. Yet, to date, RFMOs largely have not consistently assessed or addressed the wider impacts of fishing on ecosystems, including predator-prey relationships, habitat for target and non-target species, and other factors.

Instead, most action has been limited to reducing the impact of bycatch on individual shark species. Better data collection and sharing, and more monitoring of fishing activities, could help integrate stronger ecosystem considerations into management. The more RFMOs can build the whole ecosystem into their decisions, the better it will be for their fisheries.

For example, in the western and central Pacific, the $10 billion skipjack tuna fishery is an enormous economic driver for island nations that are threatened by climate change. But the harvest strategy in place there is nonbinding and unimplemented.

For a fishery facing changes in stock distribution due to warming waters, as well as increased market pressures, delayed action on implementation—and a lack of an ecosystem approach—may make matters worse.

At this week’s UNFSA meeting, RFMOs should be commended for the work they have done in the seven years since the last review. Good progress has been made, including improvements to compliance efforts, and monitoring and enforcement to fight illegal fishing.

But many of the legal obligations of the treaty remain unfulfilled. As such, sustainability is still out of reach for some critically important stocks, and almost no ecosystem-based protections are in place.

As governments convene this week, they should look to the lessons of the past—when poor decision-making threatened the future of some fisheries—and seize the opportunity to modernize management and adhere to the promises they have made on conservation. The biodiversity in the world’s ocean shouldn’t have to wait another seven years for action.

Grantly Galland leads policy work related to regional fisheries management organizations for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ international fisheries project.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A female robot in an interactive session with UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 23 2023 (IPS)

When the UN displayed a female robot back in February 2019, it was a peek into the future: a fast-paced, cutting-edge digital technology where humans may one day be replaced with machines and robots.

However, a joke circulating in the UN delegate’s lounge at that time was the possibility, perhaps in a distant future, of a robot– a female robot– as the UN Secretary-General in a world body which has been dominated by nine secretaries-general, all male, over the last 78 years.

Will it take a robot to break that unholy tradition?

At a joint meeting of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and its Economic and Social Committee, the robot named Sophia had an interactive session with Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed.

But with the incredible advances on CHATGPT chatbot– the AI search engine is now capable of producing texts, articles, pitches, follow-ups, emails, speeches and even an entire book.

If the UN goes fully tech-savvy, will AI chatbot help produce the annual report of the Secretary-General, plus reports and press releases from UN committees and UN agencies?

But the inherent dangers and flaws in AI chat bot include disinformation, distortions, lies, and hate speech—not necessarily in that order. Worse still, the search engine cannot distinguish between fact and fiction.

Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

Testifying before US Congress on May 16, Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI urged legislators to regulate AI.

Ian Richards, former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, (CCISUA) told IPS: “ AI is good at regurgitating what it finds on the internet and which has been put there by someone, whether accurate or not. It basically reproduces existing patterns.”

“However, our work has two parts,” he pointed out.

The interesting, high-value-added part involves talking to people on the ground in remote areas, gathering stories, eliminating biases and creating data from sources that are offline or unreliable. This is something AI would find difficult to do, he added.

The less interesting, low value-added part involves creating tables and charts, running repetitive calculations and formatting documents, he noted.

“If AI can take over some of the latter and give us more time to focus on the former, staff will be both more productive and happier”, said Richards, a development economist at the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

“But let’s not get too caught up in the hype. And any staff member who relies too much on AI to produce original content will be quickly caught out,” he declared.

Last week the New York Times quoted Gary Marcus, emeritus professor of psychology and neural science at New York University (NYU) calling for an international institution to help govern AI’s development and use.

“I am not one of those long-term riskers who think the entire planet is going to be taken over by robots. But I am worried about what bad actors can do with these things because there is no control over them,” he warned.

Perhaps a future new UN agency on AI?

Meanwhile, some of the technological innovations currently being experimented at the UN include machine-learning, e-translations (involving the UN’s six official languages where machines have been taking over from humans) and robotics.

The United Nations says it has also been using unarmed and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, “helping to improve our situational awareness and to strengthen our ability to protect civilians”.

Among the technological innovations being introduced in the world body, and specifically in the UN’s E-conference services, is the use of eLUNa –Electronic Languages United Nations — “a machine translation interface specifically developed for the translation of UN documents.”

What distinguishes eLUNa from commercial CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) tools is that it was developed entirely by the United Nations and is specifically geared towards the needs and working methods of UN language professionals, says the UN.

Asked whether UN should have a role in the growing debate on AI, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters May 22: “I think this is an issue that the Secretary-General has expressed extreme worry about — the lack of regulation, the lack of safeguards, especially when it comes to autonomous weapons.”

“And I think he’s been very clear on that. It’s one of the things that keeps him up at night… we should be releasing soon our latest policy paper on the global digital compact”

Referring to AI and the social media, he said: “These are things that need to be dealt with, within what we love to refer as multi-stakeholder settings, because it is clear that in this regard, the power is not solely in the hands of governments. It is very much also in the private sector. And the UN has been and will continue to try to bring all these people to the table.”

Responding to questions whether Guterres plans to convene an international conference on AI, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said: “I don’t have a meeting to announce for now, but certainly, these are part of the concerns that the Secretary-General himself has been expressing — the idea that as artificial intelligence develops, it needs to be monitored carefully and the right regulations and standards need to be put in place to make sure that this type of technology is not open to abuse”.

Asked if there is any chance that the Secretary-General might consider convening an international conference on AI, Haq said: “That’s certainly something that can be considered. Obviously, if he believes that this would be a helpful step forward, that is what he will do. But again, I don’t have anything to announce at this point.’

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a UN staffer pointed out that the UN once tried out an AI system to generate transcripts for meetings.

But in one instance, it incorrectly cited an European Union (EU) delegate talking about “Russia’s legal invasion of Ukraine” and another delegate accusing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) of creating a conflict in Northern Ethiopia.

The moral of the story is that AI has to be closely monitored and double-checked because it can produce incorrect information and distort facts and figures.

At a White House May 4 meeting of executives from Google, Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, US President Joe Biden conveyed mixed feelings: “What your’re doing has enormous potential– and enormous danger”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A fresh seven-day truce is officially under way - though more hostilities have been reported in Khartoum and other cities.

Every year thousands of Nigerian graduates across the country take part in the National Youth Service Corps, a compulsory year-long scheme.

One of the rainwater harvesting systems installed in rural settlements in eastern El Salvador, in the Central American Dry Corridor. It is based on a system of pipes and gutters, which run from the rooftop to a polyethylene bag in a rectangular hole dug in the yard. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, May 22 2023 (IPS)

Chronic water shortages make life increasingly difficult for the more than 10.5 million people who live in the Central American Dry Corridor, an arid strip that covers 35 percent of that region.

In the Dry Corridor, the lack of water complicates not only basic hygiene and household activities like bathing, washing clothes or dishes, but also agriculture and food production.

“This is a very difficult place to live, due to the lack of water,” said Marlene Carballo, a 23-year-old Salvadoran farmer from the Jocote Dulce canton, a rural settlement in the Chinameca municipality, in the eastern El Salvador department of San Miguel.

The municipality is one of the 144 in the country that is located in the Dry Corridor, where more than 73 percent of the rural population lives in poverty and 7.1 million suffer from severe food insecurity, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

But poor rural settlements have not stood idly by.

The scarcity of water has prompted community leaders, especially women, who suffer the brunt of the shortage, to organize themselves in rural associations to promote water projects.

In the various villages in Jocote Dulce, rainwater harvesting projects, reforestation and support for the development of small poultry farms have arrived, with the backing of local and international organizations, and funding from European countries.

Rainwater harvesting is based on systems such as the one installed in Carballo’s house: when it rains, the water that falls on the roof runs through a pipe to a huge waterproof bag in the yard, which functions as a catchment tank that can hold up to 80,000 liters.

Other mechanisms also include plastic-lined rectangular-shaped holes dug in the ground.

The harvested water is used to irrigate family gardens, provide water to livestock used in food production such as cows, oxen and horses, and even for aquaculture.

Similar projects have been carried out in the rest of the Central American countries that form part of the Dry Corridor.

In Guatemala, for example, FAO and other organizations have benefited 5,416 families in 80 rural settlements in two departments of the country.

 

Exhuming Prince Alemayehu's body would disrupt the remains of others, Buckingham Palace says.

It is hoped that the plant will alleviate chronic fuel shortages in Africa's biggest oil producer.

Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait, speaks with a young Sudanese refugee in Borota during a field visit with UNHCR to the border regions of Chad with Sudan. Credit: ECW

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI & NEW YORK, May 22 2023 (IPS)

As unprecedentedly fierce armed battles play out on the streets of Khartoum, more than 600 people are dead, thousands injured, and over 1 million displaced.

The fighting, which broke out suddenly on April 15, 2023, between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and Sundanese Armed Forces, is Sudan’s third internal war – and has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis the region was already facing.

More than 220,000 people have crossed the borders. Without a ceasefire, it will get even worse as a protracted crisis is in the making. UNHCR projects that this number could reach 860,000 as conflict escalates.

Education Cannot Wait’s Executive Director Yasmine Sherif came face-to-face with the effects of the brutal conflict during a recent high-level field mission with UNHCR, UNICEF, the Jesuit Refugee Service, and local partners to the border regions of Chad and Sudan, where they witnessed the impacts of the war. In these remote places, large numbers of incoming refugees – a majority of women and children – have settled in flimsy temporary homemade tents. Children are particularly vulnerable and urgently need the protection and support that emergency education interventions provide.

“What we saw is appalling, a heartbreaking dire situation growing very fast. In just two days, the number of refugees grew from 30,000 to 60,000, and 70 percent of them were school-age children. But I am encouraged by the commendable work that UNHCR is doing on the ground.”

The UN’s global fund for education responded with speed to the escalating Sudan refugee regional crisis by announcing a new 12-month USD 3 million First Emergency Response grant. Sherif says this is a catalytic fund to help UNHCR and its partners, in close coordination with Chad’s government, kickstart a holistic education program.

Before the new crisis erupted in Sudan and despite Chad being one of the poorest countries in the world, Chad was already hosting Africa’s fourth largest refugee population.

ECW’s Yasmine Sherif and Graham Lang walk with UNHCR partners through Borota, where thousands of new refugees, most of them women and children, have arrived after fleeing the conflict in Sudan. Credit: ECW

“Chad is second to last on the Human Development Index, only before South Sudan. The government of Chad is showing very progressive policies and generosity. They have very little resources, and yet they still receive refugees and provide them with much-needed security,” she observes.

Sherif lauded the government’s progressive policy on refugee inclusion within its national education system, stressing that it serves as a model example for the whole region. The new grant brings ECW’s total investments to support vulnerable children’s education in Chad to over USD 41 million. ECW and its partners have reached over 830,000 children in the country since 2017, focusing on refugee and internally displaced children, host communities, girls, children with disabilities, and other vulnerable children.

Funding is urgently needed and critical to implement the regional refugee response plan, which includes an estimated cost of USD 26.5 million for education. While Sudan shares borders with seven countries, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya, and South Sudan, nearly all of them are dealing with protracted crises or effects of years of a protracted crisis and require urgent funding to meet the needs of refugees.

“The refugees we met in eastern Chad are in a dire situation. They fled their homes with barely anything and are in very remote and hard-to-reach areas where infrastructures are scarce, and temperatures rise above 40 Celsius. Without emergency relief from international organizations such as UNHCR and UNICEF, it would be difficult for them to survive for long,” she explains.

Despite the government’s best efforts, Chad is dealing with multiple successive shocks, such as climate-induced disasters, large-scale internal displacement, and the Lake Chad and Central African refugee crises, which have eroded the delivery of basic services.

“ECW has made various investments in Chad, including a multiyear resilient program for vulnerable refugee and internally displaced children and their host communities, and other marginalized children in Chad, that has been going on for three years and will be renewed next year. We have also provided USD 2 million in response to the floods or climate-induced disasters affecting Chad,” Sherif says.

“We are now providing this catalytic USD 3 million funding to help UNCHR to provide immediate access to holistic education to the new cohort of refugees arriving from Sudan. ECW’s holistic support enhances school infrastructure and provides school feeding, quality learning materials, mental health, psycho-social services, teachers’ training, and inclusive education approaches. We hope this will inspire other donors and contributors to meet the remaining financing gap.”

Chad’s education performance indicators are among the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, with 56 percent of primary school-aged children out of school.

UNHCR and its partners in Chad require USD 8 million to implement the education component of the regional refugee response plan. EWC has provided about 40 percent of the budget; the international community should assist with the remaining 60 percent. Sherif hopes that additional support will also be forthcoming for UNICEF and partners to cater to the host communities, who also need support to access quality education.

Young girls in Borota look out from their makeshift shelters. Almost 70% of those who have fled the recent conflict in Sudan into Chad are school-aged children. Credit: ECW

Incoming refugees live in precarious conditions, lacking the most basic facilities, and need urgent assistance and empowerment. As conditions become increasingly dire, ECW funding will provide access to safe and protective learning environments for incoming refugee girls and boys and support the host communities.

The depth and magnitude of this conflict on children and adolescents are such that their learning and development will most certainly be impaired if immediate access to education is not provided. ECW support offers an opportunity for holistic education to mitigate the debilitating long-term effects of war on young minds.

Fleeing children and adolescents will need immediate psycho-social support and mental health care to cope with the stress, adversity, and trauma of the outbreak of violence and their perilous escape. They will need school meals, water, and sanitation.

“To the international community, we must act now. This is a moral issue; we must prioritize and show solidarity. Our support must be generous. The world cannot afford to lose an entire generation due to this senseless conflict,” Sherif stresses.

ECW and its strategic partners are committed to reaching 20 million crisis-impacted children and adolescents over the next four years. To this end, ECW seeks to mobilize a minimum of USD 1.5 billion from government donors, the private sector, and philanthropic foundations.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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