Africa

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Daniel Amartey admits Ghana were determined to prevent Uruguay from reaching the World Cup knockout stages if the Black Stars could not qualify.

Cameroon boss Rigobert Song was left with some regrets following their World Cup exit despite beating five-time winners Brazil.

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Otto Addo resigns as Ghana boss following their World Cup group-stage elimination.

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Luis Suarez's heroics for Uruguay are in vain as victory over Ghana is not enough to send them through, with both sides knocked out of the World Cup

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President Cyril Ramaphosa's career hangs in the balance over allegations he covered up a theft at his farm.

Tunisia forward Wahbi Khazri announces his retirement from international football following their exit from the World Cup in Qatar.

South Africa's ruling party meets to decide whether to sack the president over corruption allegations.

Children working and travelling on India’s vast rail network need to be educated about the perils of trafficking. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
Karnataka, India, Dec 2 2022 (IPS)

Deeepti Rani (13) lives with her mother in a dilapidated dwelling near a railway track in India’s southern state of Karnataka. The mother-daughter duo sells paperbacks on trains for a living.

Four months ago, a man in his mid-fifties visited them. Masquerading as a businessman hailing from India’s capital, Delhi, he first expressed dismay over the family’s dismal conditions. Then he offered help.  The man asked Deepti if she wanted to accompany him to Delhi, where he could find her a decent job as a sales clerk or a housemaid. He also told Deepti’s mother that if allowed to go to Delhi, her daughter would be able to earn no less than 15 to 20 000 rupees a month—about 200-300 USD.

The money, Deepti’s mother, reasoned, would be enough to lift the family out of abject poverty and deprivation, enough to plan Deepti’s wedding and bid farewell to the arduous job of selling paperbacks on moving trains.

On the scheduled day, when the man was about to take Deepti, a labourer whose family lives adjacent to her hut informed the police about the possible case of trafficking. The labourer had become suspicious after observing the agent’s frequent visits to the mother-daughter.

When police reached the spot and detained the agent, it was discovered during questioning that he was planning to sell the little girl to a brothel in Delhi.

Ramesh, a 14-year-old boy from the same state, shared a similar predicament. He narrates how a man, probably in his late 40s, offered his parents a handsome sum of money so that he could be adopted and taken good care of.

“My parents, who work as labourers, readily agreed. I was set to go with a man – who we had met a few days before. I was told that I would get a good education, a good life, and loving parents. I wondered how an unknown man could offer us such things at such a fast pace. I told my parents that I smelled something suspicious,” Ramesh recalls.

The next day, as the man arrived to take the boy, the locals, including Ramesh’s parents, questioned him.  “We called the government helpline number, and the team arrived after some 20 minutes. When interrogated, the man spilt the beans. He was about to sell the boy in some Middle East country and get a huge sum for himself. We could have lost our child forever,” says Ramesh’s father.

According to government data, every eight minutes, a child vanishes in India.

As many as 11,000 of the 44,000 youngsters reported missing each year are still missing. In many cases, children and their low-income parents who are promised “greener pastures” in urban houses of the wealthy wind up being grossly underpaid, mistreated, and occasionally sexually molested.

Human trafficking is forbidden in India as a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution, but it is nonetheless an organised crime. Human trafficking is a covert crime that is typically not reported to the police, and experts believe that it requires significant policy changes to stop it and help victims recover.

Activists and members associated with the Belgaum Diocesan Social Service Society (BDSSS) run various child protection programs for children from poor backgrounds.

One such program is ‘Childline 1098 Collab’. A dedicated helpline has been established to help out children in need. The helpline number is widely circulated across the city so that if anyone comes across any violation of child rights, they can dial the number.

A rescue team will be dispatched and provide immediate help to the victim.

Fr Peter Asheervadappa, the director of a social service called Belgaum Diocesan Social Service Society, provides emergency relief and rescue services for children at high risk. Children and other citizens can dial toll-free 1098, and the team reaches within 60 minutes to rescue the children.

“The cases handled are of varied nature: Sexual abuse, physical abuse, child labour, marriages, and any other abuse that affects children’s well-being,” Asheervadappa told IPS.

He adds that India’s railway network, one of the largest in the world, is made up of 7,321 stations, 123,542 kilometres of track, and 9,143 daily trains, carrying over 23 million people.

“The vast network, crucial to the country’s survival, is frequently used for trafficking children. For this reason, our organisation, and others like it, have argued that key train stops require specialised programs and attention. Such transit hubs serve as important outreach locations for finding and helping children when they are most in need,” he said.

But not only have the trafficking cases emerged at these locations. There are child marriages, too, that concern the activists.

Rashmi, a 13-year-old, was nearly sold to a middle-aged businessman from a nearby city.  In return, the wealthy man would take good care of the poverty-stricken family and attend to their daily needs. All they had to do was to give them their daughter.  They agreed. “Everyone wants a good life, but that doesn’t mean you barter your child’s life for that greed. It is immoral, unethical, and illegal,” says an activist Abhinav Prasad* associated with the Child Protection Program.

He says many people in India are on the lookout for child brides. They often galvanise their efforts in slums and areas where poor people live. It is there that they find people in need, and they take advantage of their desperation for money.

While Rashmi was about to tie the nuptial knot with a man almost four times her age (50), some neighbours called the child rescue group and informed them. The team rushed to the spot and called in the police to stop the ceremony from happening.

“Child marriages are rampant in India, but we must do our bit. It is by virtue of these small efforts that we can stop the menace from spreading its dreadful wings and consuming our children,” said Prasad.

*Not his real name.
IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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ECW Director Yasmine Sherif Statement on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Dec 2 2022 (IPS-Partners)

ECW works together with governments, UN agencies, civil society and the private sector for an inclusive world where all children with disabilities are able to go to school in safe and accessible learning environments. We work together for an inclusive world where the complex challenges of today offer up the transformative solutions of tomorrow.

Yasmine Sherif

As we mark the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we must not forget the power of education in overcoming challenges.

Worldwide, there are nearly 240 million children with disabilities. These children are 49% more likely to have never attended school. In armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters, it’s even worse. Living with a disability increases a child’s risk of discrimination, abuse and other denials of a child’s human rights.

In support of the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy and our global efforts to act now for children with disabilities, Education Cannot Wait works to ensure that at least 10% of our beneficiaries are children with disabilities across our portfolio.

In places like South Sudan, Syria, Ecuador, Ethiopia and beyond, we are working with our strategic partners to improve inclusion, provide specialized services for children with disabilities, and leave no child behind.

The ECW Acceleration Facility is supporting important initiatives that improve access to learning, create inclusive learning policies, and enhance learning outcomes for children with disabilities.

Education Cannot Wait’s High-Level Financing Conference will take place in Geneva on 16-17 February 2023. World leaders will have a chance to make firm commitments to reach the world’s most vulnerable children – especially those left furthest, including children with disabilities – with the safety, power and hope that only an education can provide.

For far too long, our global humanitarian response mechanisms have failed to meet the necessary requirements that guarantee access to education and a meaningful learning experience for girls and boys with disabilities. We must address these inequities today. We must work together today for a more inclusive world for the generations of tomorrow.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

ECW Director Yasmine Sherif Statement on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities

By Jens Orback
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Dec 2 2022 (IPS)

As 2022 draws to a close, we are confronted with an unprecedented collision of global risks, interacting and reinforcing each other in dangerous new ways.

The impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are still rippling outwards, colliding and combining like waves on a sea. The heightened threat of nuclear conflict, the global energy crisis, the rising cost of food, deepening poverty and inequality: these consequences are interacting with the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of climate change.

This confluence of global risks has led to unwelcome new terms entering the dictionary, such as ‘polycrisis’ and ‘multicrisis.’

In the face of such complex challenges, it’s easy to feel helpless and paralyzed. And yet, if this year has shown us anything, it’s that we need an urgent upgrade of our systems of cooperation to tackle them.

It starts with making sure we have the right knowledge. Climate scientist Johan Rockström, a board member of our foundation, has written powerfully on the need for an international consortium of scientists to provide shared insights on the emerging interactions between risks.

At the Global Challenges Foundation, we’ve just released our annual review of global catastrophic risks, risks that threaten the survival of more than ten per cent of humanity. This year’s report shows how, more than ever, our systems and structures for preventing and managing these risks are both outdated and inadequate.

Whether it’s climate change, environmental breakdown, nuclear conflict, pandemics or artificial intelligence, we have a systemic problem with processing and acting on the complex challenges that lie in the intersections.

Of course, there is no one magic solution, given the multilateral system that we inhabit. However, there are many existing proposals to improve the mechanics of global governance that could be immediately fast tracked.

For example, there are several important proposals in the United Nations Secretary-General’s 2021 report, Our Common Agenda. These include the idea for an Emergency Platform that would be triggered by a major crisis such as the use of a nuclear weapon and coordinate the global response.

The report also proposes reviving the UN’s Trusteeship Council, inactive for many years, as a multi-stakeholder body to tackle emerging challenges and to act to preserve the global commons on behalf of future generations.

The failure of the COP27 climate talks in Egypt to agree strong measures to curb fossil fuel production has demonstrated how intergovernmental negotiations are not producing rapid enough action on climate change.

On top of this, the global energy crisis has led to some countries slowing or shelving their green agendas, in a year of extreme temperatures and climate-related crises.

We urgently need to find alternative ways of collaborating to prevent catastrophic climate change. One key proposal is a carbon tax – administered at both global and national levels – with the proceeds going to the communities who are most affected.

The International Monetary Fund concluded that, of all the various recognised strategies to reduce fossil fuel emissions, implementing a carbon tax would be the most powerful and efficient.

Of course, this may not be the easiest ‘sell’ politically during a cost-of-living crisis but evidence from countries like Canada shows that it can be done gradually and sensitively.

The spread of COVID-19 around the world since 2020 has highlighted the linkages between environmental destruction and pandemics. COVID-19 is unlikely to be the last pandemic that humanity faces.

As renowned epidemiologist and public health expert Professor David Heymann writes in his pandemics chapter in our report, as well as tackling the root causes of new pathogens coming into contact with humans, we need to upgrade the international frameworks that govern how countries report on new disease outbreaks.

This means enacting a stronger enforcement mechanism to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations, and a Pandemic Treaty.

When it comes to nuclear risk, looming ever larger over Ukraine, it’s now more likely than ever that nuclear weapons will be used in either military actions, miscalculation or by accident than at any time since the beginning of the nuclear age.

The international community must treat all threats to use nuclear weapons very seriously. Even ‘small’ or ‘tactical’ weapons can cause terrible damage and their use would undermine the nuclear taboo in place since their use at the end of the Second World War.

Nuclear expert, and contributor to our report, Kennette Benedict says there is still much more we can do to prevent a nuclear disaster. IAEA Director General Raffael Grossi and his colleagues are doing heroic work to prevent nuclear plant disasters in Ukraine.

The international community must continue to support the agency and provide more funding for IAEA’s work. Explicit protection of nuclear plants in violent conflicts and war should be codified in international law.

Only with a clear understanding of each of the greatest risks facing humanity can we move forward to rethink how we could better manage them. And only with new kinds of global cooperation can we deal with today’s complex web of interlocking and reinforcing global risks to ensure a habitable, safe and peaceful future.

As we say goodbye to this year of global risks, this should be top of our ‘to do’ list for 2023.

Jens Orback is Executive Director of The Global Challenges Foundation

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Ghana face Uruguay in the Qatar World Cup, bringing back memories of their controversial meeting in the 2010 quarter-finals.

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