Africa

Sudan-born businessman Sir Mohammed Ibrahim has spoken to the BBC about the war in the country.

Kenyans are trying to fathom why more than 100 people may have starved to death in an isolated camp.

A doctor talks to a TB survivor at a clinic in Manilla, Philippines. Credit: Getty Images for TB Alliance

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 2 2023 (IPS)

While there is no established causal relationship between climate change and tuberculosis (TB), studies have begun to highlight the potential impact its effects could have on the spread of the disease.

Undernutrition, HIV/AIDS, overcrowding, poverty, and diabetes have all been identified as TB risk factors that are worsened by climate change. Worryingly, many countries with high burdens of TB, including, for instance, drought-hit Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kenya, and Peru, have suffered from the kind of extreme weather associated with a heating planet.

But despite vying with COVID-19 for the grim distinction of the world’s deadliest infectious disease, claiming 1.6 million lives in 2021, TB is not often talked about in connection with climate change, with the link often overlooked by policymakers.

TB experts say this must change as the climate crisis accelerates.

“The effects of climate change, such as its impact on migration, for instance, are getting attention. What we want to see is for that attention to also get drawn to its effects on TB,” Maria Beumont, Chief Medical Officer at TB Alliance, a global nonprofit organisation developing TB drugs, told IPS.

In recent years, disease experts and climatologists have sounded increasingly dire warnings about the potential impact of the climate crisis on the spread of lethal diseases.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of the health impacts of global heating, including an increase in the incidence of infectious diseases. Meanwhile, other research has shown how changes in climate have aggravated the risks of hundreds of infectious diseases worldwide.

But much of the discussion around that has focused on how higher temperatures and increased incidence of flooding and drought could drive more vector, food and water-borne diseases with diseases.

What has often been overlooked in these conversations, say Beumont and others, is how the effects of the climate crisis could worsen what is de facto a global TB pandemic.

Part of this is because of the nature of those effects in relation to TB.

“The potential impact of climate change [on TB] is more indirect than with some other infectious diseases,” Dr Mohammed Yassin, Senior Disease Advisor, TB, at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, told IPS.

TB experts point to how more frequent and more devastating natural disasters linked to climate change, or simply places on the planet becoming too hot to be habitable, are leading to mass displacement, which can create ideal conditions for TB to spread.

“Mass displacement can lead to overcrowding and poor living conditions of those displaced. If some of those people already have symptoms of TB, there is a higher chance of it spreading. There would also be people living under stress, and facing malnutrition, which are factors adding to the potential for TB to spread,” said Yassin.

Displacement also raises issues with access to healthcare for the displaced, which can negatively affect the management of treatment for those with TB because patients need to take treatment daily. Interruption of treatment can leave them infectious for longer and at risk of developing drug-resistant TB, which in turn is much more difficult and expensive to treat.

But displacement would also impact the treatment of those with other conditions, such as HIV and AIDS and diabetes, which weaken immune systems and leave people more susceptible to TB.

Meanwhile, displaced people are likely to find themselves living in crowded areas where, in the absence of adequate screening and diagnostic procedures, TB could spread.

But displacement is far from the only problem. Both extreme droughts and flooding can impact food security, devastating crops and killing livestock and leading to malnutrition and undernutrition—known risk factors for TB.

The impact of extreme weather on health, particularly TB, is already being seen in some parts of the world.

Somalia is in the grip of severe drought following five consecutive failed rainy seasons—something which the UN has said has not been seen for four decades—with five million people facing acute food shortages and nearly two million children at risk of malnutrition, according to the UN.

TB is a major cause of death in Somalia, and late last year, with TB services largely non-existent in settlements for displaced persons, the Global Fund committed USD 1.9 million for food support for thousands of TB patients and outreach activities in settlements. Officials at the time emphasised the importance of such action to help reach the most vulnerable and stop TB from spreading.

Meanwhile, the devastating floods in Pakistan last year, which affected an estimated 33 million people, not only brought an immediate threat of diseases such as malaria and dengue but interrupted vital vaccination programmes, including TB.

“The impact of flooding on TB is usually seen sometime later, but it, of course, has an immediate impact in disrupting treatment which can lead to problems such as drug-resistant TB,” said Yassin.

TB experts are calling for governments and leaders within the TB community itself to begin paying more attention to the issue and start thinking about current TB programs and where changes need to be made to deal with these potential impacts.

Some groups, like TB Alliance, are looking to mitigate some of these impacts through treatment developments. The group recently developed a new TB treatment regimen, BPaL, with a much shorter treatment length and fewer of the sometimes very toxic side effects of previous regimens.

An oral-only regimen involving only a few pills a day, it has been widely praised by patients and experts for the relative ease with which it can be taken, notably in Ukraine, where it has recently been rolled out programmatically and used among the many millions displaced there because of the Russian invasion.

“What we are focusing on is trying to find solutions to make treatment safer and shorter, which would overcome some of the negative effects of climate change related to TB, for instance, displacement, as there would be less chance of treatment interruption with shorter treatment,” said Beumont.

A doctor studies x-rays of a TB survivor at a clinic in Kyiv, Ukraine. Credit: Getty Images for TB Alliance

Yassin said that investment in health systems, especially in low-income countries which have some of the world’s highest TB burdens and where healthcare is already under-resourced, is also crucial.

“We learnt from Covid that health systems can’t cope with a pandemic, and TB is actually a pandemic. It is very important for countries to think about strengthening their health systems and making them more resilient. There needs to be investment now to prepare the systems for a pandemic, including climate change-driven TB,” said Yassin.

“There was a collapse of some healthcare systems during Covid, and because of that, all resources in some countries went to dealing with that, and TB was forgotten, and the TB burden of those countries rose. We need to invest now, not wait for another pandemic. We need more resources,” he added.

Meanwhile, others say that alongside these measures, individual, non-climate-specific interventions could help.

Dr Krishnan Rajendran of the ICMR-National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT) in India, which has the highest burden of TB in the world according to the World Health Organisation, told IPS that lessons learnt from the Covid pandemic could be used to reduce TB spread.

“National and local authorities could take preventive measures, such as at least encouraging people to wear masks in seasons where TB incidence is high,” he said.

Whatever efforts are made to deal with the impact of climate change on the disease, they need to be made soon, said Yassin.

“We shouldn’t wait for climate change impacts [to fuel the spread of TB] before we act—we should do something now and deal with TB to prevent more deaths and disabilities,” he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By External Source
May 2 2023 (IPS-Partners)

 

World Press Freedom Day was inaugurated by the United Nations in 1993.

The 3rd of May will mark its 30th anniversary with the theme of:

“Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of expression as a driver for all other human rights”.

The impetus to establish such a day came out of Africa with the Windhoek Declaration of 1991.

Political optimism gripped much of the continent as apartheid unraveled in South Africa.

Namibia shook off colonial rule and Ethiopia’s murderous dictator resigned.

In the decade that followed, independent journalism blossomed globally.

But after the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s, regression began anew.

The Swedish-based V-Dem Institute, which monitors political freedoms globally, says the gains of the past 35 years have been wiped out.

It estimates that 72% of the world’s population – 5.7 billion people – now live in autocracies.

“The decline is most dramatic in the Asia-Pacific region, which is back to levels last recorded in 1978,” it says in its 2023 Democracy Report.

U.S. watchdog Freedom House suggests Global freedom declined for the 17th consecutive year.

85% of the world’s population experienced a decline in press freedom in just the last 5 years.

Mis- and disinformation has contributed to years of declining trust in media worldwide.

News services have been blocked online, journalists illegally spied on, and media sites hacked.

The limits of the U.N. mechanisms to keep journalists safe were clearly on display after the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

But there is still a lot the U.N. can do with its existing authority and structure.

Supportive member states need to invest in strengthening UNESCO’s plan on journalist safety.

They also need to do and say more against those states that ignore or violate human rights.

The key to opening freedom of expression is to move beyond the day itself, and to demand it day after day after day.

 

 

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Credit: UNESCO
 
2023 year marks the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day. The UN says three decades have passed since it was proclaimed in 1993, in which “we have seen substantial progress towards achieving a free press and freedom of expression around the world.”
 
The proliferation of independent media in many countries and the rise of digital technologies have enabled the free flow of information. However, media freedom, safety of journalists and freedom of expression are increasingly under attack, which impacts the fulfillment of other human rights, according to the UN.

By Khadija Patel
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, May 2 2023 (IPS)

There’s a now familiar groan every time the lights go out in South Africa. Due to a critical shortage of electricity, the national power utility institutes a daily regimen of scheduled power cuts.

Some areas in large cities experience up to ten hours of blackouts per day. The damage to businesses and a general sense of safety and security is yet to be properly calculated.

But it has also had profound implications for how community radio stations can continue broadcasting through the darkness. Most community radio stations have simply gone silent. Bush Radio, the country’s oldest community radio station, found itself off air for several hours per day.

In the townships of Cape Town’s sprawling Cape Flats district, Bush Radio has a special relationship of solidarity and belonging with the communities it serves.

Through its talk shows, training programmes and social engagement campaigns, it acts as a sounding board for communities who often struggle to find representation and recognition beyond daily reports of gang violence.

Khadija Patel. Credit:: Syracuse University

Amidst all the other challenges facing the radio station, like ageing equipment and dwindling sources of funding, broadcasting through the dark is the latest setback. It is a typical story. The challenges news media face may be different from place to place, but they are rapidly compounding everywhere.

And they have an impact on more than whether Bush Radio can remain on air. What is at stake is the avenues available for their audience to communicate with each other, to take part in decisions that affect their lives, and to celebrate their own cultures.

This week, as the United Nations celebrates World Press Freedom Day – also 30 years old – it’s time to get serious about stopping what’s been labelled a media extinction event.

Until June 2020, I was the editor of the Mail & Guardian newspaper in South Africa. I’d hoped to restore the start-up rigour of one of Africa’s most cherished independent news institutions.

However, my experience of trying to run a newsroom, to keep public interest journalism alive in the face of broken business model, revealed the grave structural crisis facing news media today.

Advertising revenue was already in free fall as so much of it had migrated to the social media platforms, but it was the pandemic that sent us over the edge.

We were forced to issue an urgent appeal to our readers to keep the paper afloat and while this allowed us to meet our most pressing commitments at the time, it did not resolve the deeper problem of quickly finding a consistent revenue stream that would allow the institution to be relevant in new ways.

My experience is replicated across Africa – and beyond. Media outlets are trying to innovate but cannot do so quickly enough to defy the harsh economic headwinds.

Independent journalism faces an existential economic crisis: traditional business models have broken down; new ones will take time to emerge. Economic levers are being used to silence critical voices, and private and political interests are capturing economically weak media.

So, what do we do?

In this moment of profound crisis, we must assert the value of news media. This is a moment for the world to come together to recognise that something drastic must be done to ensure independent journalism is supported as a public good.

So, when so much of the discourse around news media is steeped in despair – for good reason – working on the founding team of International Fund for Public Interest Media, as Journalist-in-Residence, has been energising.

Launching today [May 2] at the UN’s World Press Freedom Day conference, the International Fund is the first multilateral body dedicated to helping independent media in low and middle-income countries to weather the storm.

Bush Radio is one of its pilot grantees. It will use its small grant to supplement salaries and update its computer systems. It has also used its grant to purchase a generator to power the studio during blackouts.

So far, the International Fund has received support from world leaders such as Presidents Biden and Macron, with pledges from over a dozen governments and corporate entities, raising US$50m.

But its ambition is to emulate the success of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria or the GAVI Alliance, bodies which transformed the level of treatments and vaccines available to fight deadly disease. In the coming years we want to raise $500m, a sum more commensurate with the scale of the problem facing media today.

A free, independent media is what underpins freedom of expression, human rights and all our development goals. Its decline will have a profound impact on democracy – for the fewer stories journalists are able to get to, the less we understand what is happening around us, the more we lose of our understanding of each other.

Khadija Patel is Journalist-in-Residence, International Fund for Public Interest Media, and Chairperson of the International Press Institute.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A rainwater harvesting system was installed in the home of Marlene Carballo, in the town of Jocote Dulce in eastern El Salvador, in the Central American Dry Corridor, in November 2022. The system, with pipes and gutters running from the roof to a polyethylene bag, will start operating in May of this year, at the beginning of Central America’s rainy season. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
CHINAMECA, El Salvador, May 2 2023 (IPS)

“This is a very difficult place to live, because of the lack of water,” said Salvadoran farmer Marlene Carballo, as she cooked corn tortillas for lunch for her family, on a scorching day.

Carballo, 23, lives in the Jocote Dulce canton, a remote rural settlement in the municipality of Chinameca, in the eastern Salvadoran department of San Miguel, a region located in what is known as the Central American Dry Corridor."The husbands go to work in the fields, and as women we stay at home, trying to manage the water supply; only we know if there is enough for bathing or cooking.” -- Santa Gumersinda Crespo

Acute water crisis

This municipality is one of the 144 in the country that is located in the Dry Corridor, which covers 35 percent of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people and where over 73 percent of the rural population lives in poverty and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Food security is particularly threatened because the rains are not always constant, which creates major difficulties for agriculture.

“My grandfather has a water tank, and when he has enough, he gives us water, but when he doesn’t, we’re in trouble,” said the young woman.

When that happens, they have to buy water, which is not only the case in these remote rural Salvadoran areas, but in the rest of the Central American region where water is scarce, as is almost always the case in the Dry Corridor, which stretches north to south across parts of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

When IPS visited several villages in the Jocote Dulce canton in late April, the acute water shortage was evident, since all homes had one or more plastic tanks to store water and many were empty.

 

A rainwater harvesting system was installed in the home of Marlene Carballo, in the town of Jocote Dulce in eastern El Salvador, in the Central American Dry Corridor, in November 2022. The system, with pipes and gutters running from the roof to a polyethylene bag, will start operating in May of this year, at the beginning of Central America’s rainy season. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

Women in the forefront of the struggle for water

The persistent water shortage has led rural women in Central America to organize in recent years in community associations to promote projects that help alleviate the scarcity.

In the villages of Jocote Dulce, rainwater harvesting projects, reforestation and the creation of small poultry farms have the support of local and international organizations and financing from European countries.

In some cases, depending on the project and the country, rainwater harvesting is designed only for domestic tasks at home, while in others it includes irrigation of family gardens or providing water for livestock such as cows and chickens.

In other parts of the country and the rest of Central America, institutions such as FAO have developed water collection systems that in some cases have a filtering mechanism, which makes it potable.

In El Salvador, FAO has been behind the installation of 1,373 of these systems.

Carballo said she and her family are looking forward to the start of the May to November rainy season, to see their new rainwater harvesting system work for the first time.

Through gutters and pipes, the rainwater will run from the roof to a huge polyethylene bag in the yard, which serves as a catchment tank.

 

Gumersinda Crespo (R) and her daughter Marcela stand next to the kitchen of their house in the Jocote Dulce canton in eastern El Salvador, an area with a chronic water crisis because it is located in the Central American Dry Corridor, where the shortage of rainfall makes life complicated. Almost every household in this remote location has various plastic containers and tanks to capture rain. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

“When the bag fills up, we’ll be so happy because we’ll have plenty of water,” she said, as she cooked corn tortillas in her “comal”, a clay or metal cylinder used to cook this staple of the Central American diet.

Women suffer the brunt

The harsh burden of water scarcity falls disproportionately on rural women, as national and international reports have shown.

In this sexist society, women are expected to stay at home, in charge of the domestic chores, which include securing water for the family.

“The husbands go to work in the fields, and as women we stay at home, trying to manage the water supply; only we know if there is enough for bathing or cooking,” Santa Gumersinda Crespo told IPS.

Crespo, 48, was feeding her cow and goat in her backyard when IPS visited her. In the yard there was a black plastic-covered tank where the family collects water during the rainy season.

“Without water we are nothing,” Crespo said. “In the past, we used to go to the water hole. It was really hard, sometimes we left at 7:00 at night and came back at 1:00 in the morning,” she said.

 

Marta Moreira is one of the community leaders who has worked the hardest to ensure that in Jocote Dulce, a remote rural settlement in eastern El Salvador, programs are helping supply water and strengthen food security. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

In Guatemala, Gloria Díaz also says it is women who bear the brunt of water scarcity in rural families.

“We are the ones who used to go out to look for water and who faced mistreatment and violence when we tried to fill our jugs in the rivers or springs,” Díaz told IPS by telephone from the Sector Plan del Jocote in the Maraxcó Community, in the southeastern Guatemalan municipality and department of Chiquimula.

In that area of ​​the Dry Corridor, water is the most precious asset.

“It’s been difficult, because drinking water is brought to us from 28 kilometers away and we can only fill our containers for two hours a month,” she said.

Almost all of the homes in the villages located around Chinameca, in the Salvadoran department of San Miguel, have several water storage tanks, given the scarcity of water in that area, which forms part of the Central American Dry Corridor. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

Projects that bring relief and hope

Climate forecasts are not at all hopeful for the remainder of 2023.

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate phenomenon is likely to occur, which would bring droughts and loss of crops, as it has before.

“When the weather is good, we sow and harvest, and when it is not, we plant less, to see how winter (the rainy season) will shape up; we don’t plant everything or we would lose it all,” Salvadoran farmer Marta Moreira, also from Jocote Dulce, told IPS.

Most people in these rural regions depend on subsistence farming, especially corn and beans.

Moreira added that last year her family, made up of herself, her husband and their son, lost most of the corn and bean harvest due to the weather.

In Central America climate change has led to longer than usual periods of drought and to excessive rainfall.

 

A farmer gets ready to fill a jug at one of the water taps located in the Jocote Dulce canton, in the eastern Salvadoran department of San Miguel, where water is always scarce. The community taps are padlocked, so that only people with permission can use them. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

In October 2022, Tropical Storm Julia destroyed 8,000 hectares of corn and bean crops in El Salvador, causing losses of around 17 million dollars.

Given this history of climatic effects, rural families and groups, led mostly by women, have received the support of national and international organizations to carry out projects to alleviate these impacts.

For example, around 100 families from the Jocote Dulce canton benefited in 2010 from a water project financially supported by Luxembourg, to install a dozen community water taps.

Programs for the construction of catchment tanks have also been carried out there, such as the one that supplies water to Crespo’s family.

In addition to using the water for household chores, the family gives it to their cow, which provides them with milk every day, and Crespo also makes cheese.

The water collected in the pond “lasts us for almost five months, but if we use it more, only about three or four months,” she said, as she brought more fodder to the family cow.

If she has any milk left over, she sells a couple of liters, she said, bringing in income that is hard to come by in this remote area reached by steep dirt tracks that are dusty in summer and muddy in the rainy season.

Other families benefited from home poultry farm and fruit tree planting programs.

Drinking water is provided by the community taps, but the water crisis makes it difficult to supply everyone in this rural settlement.

 

Yamilet Henríquez, 35, shows the reservoir set up outside her home in eastern El Salvador. Water is increasingly scarce in this area of ​​the ecoregion known as the Central American Dry Corridor, and things could become more complicated if the forecasts are right about the looming arrival of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which will bring droughts and damage to crops. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

Only 80 percent of rural households in El Salvador have access to piped water, according to official figures.

“The water runs for only three days, then for two days the pipes dry up, and that’s how things go, over and over,” said Moreira, who also has a small tank, whose water is not drinkable.

When the rains fail and the reserves run out, families have to buy water from people who bring it in barrels in their pick-up trucks, from Chinameca, about 30 minutes away by car. Each barrel, which costs them about three dollars, contains some 100 liters of water.

The same is true in the Sector Plan del Jocote in Chiquimula, Guatemala, where Díaz lives, and in neighboring communities. “People who can afford it buy it and those who can’t, don’t,” she said.

Díaz added that families in the area are happy with the rainwater harvesting programs, which make it possible for them to irrigate the collectively farmed gardens, and produce vegetables that are important to their diet.

They also sell their produce to nearby schools.

“We grow vegetables and sell them to the school, that has helped us a lot,” she said.

There are 19 water harvesting systems, each with a capacity of 17,000 liters of water, which is enough to irrigate the gardens for two months. They also have a community tank.

These programs, which have been promoted by FAO and other organizations, with the support of the Guatemalan government, have benefited 5,416 families in 80 settlements in two Guatemalan departments.

However, access to potable drinking water remains a serious problem for the more than eight rural settlements in the Sector Plan del Jocote and the 28,714 families that live there.

Related Articles

• El Salvador Still Lacks Policies to Bolster Food Security
• Salvadoran Farmers Learn Agricultural Practices to Adapt to Climate Change
• Rainwater Harvesting Improves Lives in El Salvador

By OFI Communications
May 1 2023 (IPS)

The Ocean Frontier Institute has a new call for Seed Fund project applications.

This call will accept applications from Dalhousie University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, the University of Prince Edward Island, Université de Québec à Rimouski, Université Laval, the University of New Brunswick, and the University of Victoria. The deadline for applying is June 30, 2023, at 11:59pm (Atlantic Time).

The Ocean Frontier Institute Seed Fund supports ocean-related projects that offer high potential for innovation success but need small amounts of funding to help them move forward — and grow.

For this 8th round, OFI is partnering with Invest Nova Scotia, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Genome Atlantic, and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.

Apply now!

‍For More Information
Prospective Seed Fund Applicants are invited to join a virtual SURGE Workshop on June 15, 2023, to learn more about this opportunity. Register to attend the workshop here.

Sudanese citizens say they can't escape because their passports are inside closed European embassies.

Hisham Abdel Aziz had been arrested at Cairo airport in 2019 while on his way to visit family.

Credit: Shutterstock
 
On World Press Freedom Day 2023, UNESCO will organize a special anniversary event at UN headquarters in New York, marking the 30 years since the UN General Assembly’s decision proclaiming an international day for press freedom.

This anniversary edition of World Press Freedom Day will include a full day of activities at the UN Headquarters on 2nd May. Partners from the media, academia, and civil society are invited to organize events in New York and around the world centered on this year’s theme.

By Audrey Azoulay
PARIS, May 1 2023 (IPS)

Freedom of the press is the cornerstone of democratic society. Without a debate of ideas, without verified facts, without diversity of perspectives, democracy is a shadow of itself; and World Press Freedom Day was established to remind us of this.

For the international community, it is first and foremost a question of combating the impunity that still surrounds crimes of which journalists are victims, with nearly nine out of ten murders of journalists going unpunished.

This, for instance, is the objective of the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the issue of Impunity, which UNESCO has been leading for ten years. It is also about ensuring that independent media can continue to exist.

With the digital revolution, the information landscape and its modes of production and distribution have been radically disrupted, jeopardizing the viability of independent professional media.

To ensure that information remains a common good in the digital age, our Member States, through the Windhoek +30 Declaration of 2021, have undertaken to support independent journalism, ensure greater transparency of online platforms, and develop media and information literacy.

We will not be able to do this without the actors who now have significant control over access to information: the digital platforms. This is why UNESCO held the “Internet for Trust” conference in February, as an essential step towards the development of principles to regulate digital platforms.

This is a fundamental issue, because it involves both protecting freedom of expression and fighting disinformation and hate speech. Thirty years after the first World Press Freedom Day, we can see how far we have come and how far we still have to go.

So, let this Day be an opportunity to renew our commitment, within international organizations, to defending journalists and, through them, press freedom.

Footnote: As the UN Organization responsible for defending and promoting freedom of expression, media independence and pluralism, UNESCO leads the organization of World Press Freedom Day each year.

This year’s celebration will be particularly special: the international community will mark the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of the Day by the United Nations General Assembly.

It will serve as an occasion to take stock of the global gains for press freedom secured by UNESCO and its partners in the past decades, as well as underline the new risks faced in the digital age.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A farmer from a women-run vegetable cooperative grows cabbages in Sierra Leone. Credit: FAO/Sebastian Liste

By Danielle Nierenberg and Emily Payne
BALTIMORE, Maryland / DENVER, Colorado, May 1 2023 (IPS)

Studies consistently show that women have lower rates of agricultural productivity compared to men in the region, but it’s not because they’re less efficient farmers.

Women in sub-Saharan Africa often lead food storage, handling, stocking, processing, and marketing in addition to other household tasks and childcare. Yet they severely lack the resources they need to produce food.

A 2019 United Nations policy brief reports that giving women equal access to agricultural inputs is critical to closing this gender gap in productivity while also raising crop production.

And last year, the 17th Tanzania Economic Update showed that bridging the gap could lift about 80,000 Tanzanians out of poverty every year and boost annual gross domestic product growth by 0.86 percent.

This makes a clear economic case for investing in women, but public policies frequently overlook gender-specific needs and equality issues. Instead, organizations across the region have been stepping up to help break down the barriers that have traditionally held sub-Saharan African women back.

The West and Central Africa Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF), Africa’s largest sub-regional research organization, runs a database of gender-sensitive technologies, ones that are low-cost and labor-saving for women across the region.

It also developed a series of initiatives to provide training in seed production, distribution, storage, and planting techniques for women. These programs are specifically designed with women’s needs and preferences in mind, such as prioritizing drought resistance or early maturity in crops.

This is an important shift. While we’re seeing an increasing number of exciting technologies and innovations tackling the food systems’ biggest challenges, unless these technologies are gender-sensitive—meaning they address the unique needs and challenges faced by women farmers—they will not be effective.

But empowering women means more than just facilitating access to technologies. Women must also be supported to lead the discoveries, inventions, and research of the future.

The West Africa Agriculture Productivity Program (WAAPP), a sub-regional initiative launched by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) with the financial support of the World Bank and collaboration with CORAF, has specifically targeted initiatives for women farmers as well as women researchers.

Since 2008, 3 out of every 10 researchers trained under the WAAPP have been women.

And in just the past few years, more exciting networks are emerging to support women leading agriculture: In 2019, the African Women in Agribusiness Network launched to promote women’s leadership in African agribusiness. In 2020, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) launched the Women in Agribusiness Investment Network to help bridge the gender financing gap.

And in 2021, the African Women in Seed program was created to support women’s participation in the seed sector through training, mentorship, and networking opportunities for women seed entrepreneurs.

Empowering women in the food system is not simply a matter of social justice and equality; sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford to leave women behind.

Nearly a third of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is undernourished. Meanwhile, it’s one of the fastest-growing populations in the world, expected to double by 2050 and dramatically increase demand.

Women are the backbone of communities and the food system at large in sub-Saharan Africa, and the region’s future economic development and environmental sustainability depend on them. While women are now playing a more active role in the food system, we need more women in leadership at all levels.

Rwanda’s female-led parliament, one of the highest proportions of women parliamentarians in the world, has been instrumental in not only advancing women’s rights but promoting economic development and improving governance. We need more of this.

With the resources, recognition, and support they need and deserve, women will lead the region to a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient future.

Sub-Saharan Africa can achieve the transformation it so critically needs, but only if we support women in the food system now.

Danielle Nierenberg is President, Food Tank; Emily Payne is Food Tank researcher.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Credit: UNESCO Attribution 3.0 IGO
 
Celebrated every 3rd of May, this year’s theme for World Press Freedom Day will be “Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of Expression as a Driver for all other Human Rights.”  

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 1 2023 (IPS)

The United Nations has consistently been a vociferous advocate of freedom of the press – and, most importantly, the right of journalists to report without fear of reprisals.

But regrettably, the UN is also one of most opaque institutions where transparency is never the norm.

Journalists, rarely if ever, were able to get any on-the-record comments or reactions from ambassadors, diplomats and senior UN officials because most of them follow the advice given to Brits during war-time censorship in the UK: “Be like Dad, Keep Mum”.

As Winston Churchill once remarked: “Diplomacy is the art of telling people ‘to go to hell’ in such a way that they ask for directions.”

But as a general rule, most ambassadors and diplomats did not tell us either to go to hell or heaven– but avoided all comments on politically-sensitive issues with the standard non-excuse: ”Sorry, we have to get clearance from our capital”.

But that “clearance” from their respective foreign ministries never came. Still, it was hard to beat a response from a tight-lipped Asian diplomat who told me: “No comment” – and as an after-thought, added: “And Don’t Quote Me on That”.

And most senior UN officials, on the other hand, never had even the basic courtesy or etiquette to respond to phone calls or email messages even with an acknowledgment. The lines of communications were mostly dead.

When I complained to the media-savvy Shashi Tharoor, a former UN Under-Secretary-General, head of the one-time Department of Public Information (DPI) and a prolific author, he was explicit in his response when he said that every UN official – “from an Under-Secretary-General to a window-washer”—has the right to express an opinion in his or her area of expertise.

The US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which dates back to 1967, has provided the public and mostly the press in the United States the right to request access to records from any federal agency—and has been described as “the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government”.

As a result, some of the newspaper scoops and insider information in the US mainstream media have come following requests from American journalists under the FOIA.

But a longstanding proposal for a FOIA at the United Nations has failed to get off the ground due largely to the inaction by the 193-member General Assembly, the UN’s highest policy making body, resulting in the lack of transparency in the inner workings of the UN and its Secretariat.

So has the proposal for a UN Special Envoy to deal with safety of journalists—dead on arrival (DOA).

Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS: the UN is an institution that exercises public authority directly and indirectly with over 30,000 working in the Secretariat (plus the UN system worldwide).

“As such, it needs to be accountable not only to its member states but to citizens and the public at large.

Establishing a proper freedom of information procedure at the UN will be an important tool to enhance this, declared Bummel, co-author of “A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21st Century.”

Martin S. Edwards, Professor and Chair, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University in the US, told IPS: “I must admit I don’t know the legal angles here. This having been said, it’s pretty clear to me that the only way forward for the UN in an era of political division is greater transparency”

Greater efforts to “tell your story better” are not enough. You can’t advocate for “effective, accountable, and inclusive” institutions at the national level without it, within the UN system too. Things like access to information are an essential step in that direction, he added.

In the US, federal agencies are required to disclose any information requested under the FOIA unless it falls under one of nine exemptions which protect interests such as personal privacy, national security, and law enforcement.

In Australia, the legislation is known as Right2Know; in Bangladesh, the Right to Information (RTI) provides resources for those seeking to file a request with government agencies; in Japan, the Citizens’ Centre for Information Disclosure offers help to those interested in filing requests; in India, the Right to Information: a Citizen Gateway is the portal for RTI; Canada’s Access to Information Act came into force in 1983 and Kenya’s Access to Information Act was adopted in August 2016, according to the Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD).

And Sweden’s Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 has been described as the “oldest in the world.”

While FOIA covers access to federal government agency records, the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) guarantees access to state and local government records. All 50 states in the US also have freedom of information laws that govern access to these documents, though the provisions of the state laws vary considerably.

The Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is mandated to oversee press freedom, defines Freedom of Information (FOI) as the right to access information held by public bodies.

According to UNESCO, the FOI is an integral part of the fundamental right of freedom of expression, as recognized by Resolution 59 of the UN General Assembly adopted in 1946, as well as by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which states that the fundamental right of freedom of expression encompasses the freedom to “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.

FOI has also been enshrined as a “freedom of expression” in other major international instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and the American Convention on Human Rights (1969).

In an interview with IPS back in 2017, Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General who headed the one-time Department of Public Information (DPI), said the right to information is an integral part of U.N. principles.

But providing that right—even the basic information available in the public domain– has been stymied both by member states and the UN bureaucracy, he added.

He pointed out that the need to “inform the peoples” is implicitly indicated in the UN Charter.

But implementing it was “a basic issue I had experienced throughout my work, with both certain government officials– including those publicly claiming open channels– and many senior U.N. Secretariat colleagues”.

Those who believed “Information is Power” were very hesitant, to what they perceived was sharing their authority with a wider public, said Sanbar who served under five different UN Secretaries-General.

“It was most evident that when I launched the now uncontested website www.un.org, a number of powerful Under-Secretaries-General (USGs) and Permanent Representatives cautioned me against “telling everyone what was happening” (in the UN system) and refused to authorize any funds.”

“I had to raise a team of DPI volunteers in my office, operating from within the existing budget, to go ahead and eventually offer computers loaned from an outside source, to certain delegations to realize it was more convenient for them to access news releases than having to send one of their staffers daily to the building to collect material from the third floor.“

Eventually, everyone joined in, and the site became one of the ten best official sites worldwide.

“We had a similar difficulty in prodding for International World Press Freedom Day through the General Assembly. It seems that even those with the best of intentions– since delegates represent official governments that view free press with cautious monitoring– are usually weary of opening a potentially vulnerable issue,” said Sanbar, author of the book “Inside the U.N. in a Leaderless World’.

This article contains excerpts from a 2021 book on the United Nations—largely a collection of political anecdotes– titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That,” available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Sierra Leonean Tyson Conteh investigates if his girlfriend died after having her genitals mutilated.

The BBC's chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet reports from Port Sudan as thousands flee.

Video shows burning chunks of the large building's facade falling to the ground.

By Farhana Haque Rahman
TORONTO, Canada, Apr 30 2023 (IPS)

Peak oil was first up, followed by peak gas, gold and others, as if the world was draining natural resources like toilet roll panic buying in a lockdown supermarket. But should we now be worried about Peak Press?

Farhana Haque Rahman

Shifting and even intangible is it possible that we are already sliding downhill, and that moment of peak media freedom is disappearing in the rear-view mirror?

World Press Freedom Day, child of the UN General Assembly, marks its 30th birthday on May 3 – still relatively young, but definitely showing signs of wear and tear.

Measuring the state of its vital organs is not an exact science. The Paris-based non-profit media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) compiles an annual and thorough medical bulletin, and the latest check-up, country-by-country, makes for mostly alarming reading.

There are common denominators in all the ailments afflicting press freedom around the world, but with each region or continent seeming to specialise in certain characteristics.

Asia is particularly worrying, with the common theme of muscle-flexing autocrats vying for absolute control of information and exercising what RSF calls a dramatic deterioration of press freedom. Post-coup Myanmar and China are the world’s biggest jailers of journalists. Afghanistan back under the Taliban is brutally repressive. North Korea brings up the rear of the rankings, again.

Hong Kong, under China’s imposition of the draconian national security law, fell 68 places in the RSF league table. Vietnam and Singapore also tightened their grip on the media.

Anuradha Bhasin, executive editor of The Kashmir Times recently wrote in The New York Times that his newspaper “may not survive Mr. Modi. His repressive media policies are destroying Kashmiri journalism, intimidating media outlets into serving as government mouthpieces and creating an information vacuum in our region of about 13 million people.”

This year Pakistan was placed at 157 among 180 countries on RSF’s World Press Freedom Index list. The country has been ruled by the military for more than half of it’s 75 years of independence since 1947. In a report last year, along with a list of global leaders who suppressed opposing voices, RSF named former Prime Minister Imran Khan as one of the “predators of press freedom”.

Repression is dressed up in legislation as seen in Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act, passed in 2018 and applied to journalists, activists and others.Two days after a journalist with Prothom Alo was detained, the UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk called on Bangladesh to suspend application of the DSA immediately.

Where Asia can be ruthless and draconian, it is lawlessness and societal fragmentation that make parts of Latin America the most dangerous place for journalists. Mexico and Haiti lead the way. At least 67 journalists and media workers were killed in 2022, an increase of almost 50 percent on 2021, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Research published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that 30 to 42 media workers were killed in Latin America in the line of duty.

Rocío Gallegos, a journalist and co-founder of La Verdad Juárez, an investigative journalism outlet in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, was quoted as saying the situation is desperate and complex, not just due to growing conditions for violence, but because there is “less and less support from society towards journalists and journalism.”

Courageous reporters like Gallegos and the underground citizen journalists covering Myanmar’s horrific civil war inspire us, and lend hope to the survival of the ideals of a free press.

But it is in the West, the cradle of a free media, that we can feel most cynicism over the frightening erosion of media credibility led by its very own moguls and conglomerates.

The wanton and deliberate peddling of conspiracy theories over the 2020 US election results by Fox News (among others) was laid bare by the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox settled out of court for $787 million in damages. Its lies were not trivial as we know. Five people died as a result of the January 2021 storming of the US Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters.

Democracies need truth-telling media to flourish, and it was telling that much of the media coverage focused instead on 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch and his family succession machinations.

Fox News was – and quite possibly will remain — the ultimate mainstream player in the theatre of performance media, where facts don’t get in the way of a good conspiracy.

The recent demise of BuzzFeed News and its Pulitzer-prize winning department can also be seen as marking the end of an era. The suggestion by its founder, Jonah Peretti, that there may not be a sustainable business model for high-quality online news should be ringing alarm bells everywhere.

To add to this potentially toxic mix, where social media platforms become a blurry cauldron of conspiracy theories and state-sponsored disinformation, we now have to contend with the new disruptive age of ChatGPT.

The polarisation of the press in the West and its weaponisation in superpower conflicts are highly damaging trends. Russia’s arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and China’s detention of Taiwan publisher Li Yanhe are the most recent examples. A possible Biden-Trump rematch in the 2024 US elections, and the dangerous deterioration in Sino-US relations threaten to exacerbate both polarisation and weaponisation of the media.

As for Peak Oil – the world may have passed that point already, and economists are debating whether 2019 was when overall fossil fuel demand reached its zenith. There are many reasons for this historic shift, not least that the alternatives, such as renewable energy, are becoming cheaper.

But what is the substitute for a free and healthy press – the lifeblood of free and healthy societies? The alternatives are clearly on view all around us and they don’t look good.

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service and Executive Director IPS Noram; she served as the elected Director General of IPS from 2015-2019. A journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/world-press-freedom-day-2023

IPS UN Bureau

 

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