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Adequate maternal care during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period is essential to curbing the high maternal mortality rates in Latin America, which stopped falling due to women's health care problems during the COVID pandemic. CREDIT: Government of Tigre / Argentina

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 27 2022 (IPS)

Brazil had the dubious distinction of champion of maternal mortality in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a 77 percent increase in such deaths between 2019 and 2021.

A total of 1,575 women died in childbirth or in the following six weeks in the year prior to the pandemic in Latin America’s largest and most populous country, with a population of 214 million. Two years later the total had climbed to 2,787, according to preliminary data from the Health Ministry’s Mortality Information System.

In Mexico, the second-most populated country in the region, with 129 million inhabitants, the increase was 49 percent, to 1,036 maternal deaths in 2021. And in Peru, a country of 33 million people, the total rose by 63 percent to 493 maternal deaths.

In Colombia, recent data are not available. But authorities acknowledge that in 2021 COVID-19 became the leading cause of maternal deaths, as it was in Mexico.

Brazil is the extreme example of multiple mistakes and of stubborn denialism that led to many avoidable deaths, particularly of pregnant women, according to experts and women’s rights activists on the occasion of the International Day of Action for Women’s Health, celebrated May 28.

In Latin America maternal mortality remains a major problem.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional office of the World Health Organization (WHO), states that “maternal mortality is unacceptably high” and that they are “mostly preventable” deaths, which especially affect pregnant women in rural areas.

These levels, the agency adds, will delay reaching target 3.1 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030.

A woman takes part in a care program for pregnant women in a low-income area of the northern state of Pará, Brazil. PAHO warned that the disruption of health services caused by COVID drove up maternal mortality rates in Latin America and the Caribbean. CREDIT: UNFPA

Something smells rotten

“Inadequate prenatal and obstetric care,” largely due to inadequate medical training in these areas, is the cause of the tragedy in Brazil, said physician and epidemiologist Daphne Rattner, a professor at the University of Brasilia and president of the Network for the Humanization of Childbirth.

“Hypertensive syndrome is the main cause of death in Brazil, while in the world it is hemorrhage. In other words, there is some failure in a simple diagnosis like hypertension and in managing it during pregnancy and childbirth,” she said in an interview with IPS from Brasilia.

Of the 38,919 maternal deaths between 1996 and 2018 in Brazil, 8,186 were due to hypertension and 5,160 to hemorrhage, according to a Health Ministry report. These are direct obstetric causes, which accounted for just over two-thirds of the deaths. The rest had indirect causes, pre-existing conditions that complicate childbirth, such as diabetes, cancer or heart disease.

An excess of cesarean sections is another factor in mortality. It is “an epidemic” of 1.6 million operations per year, the Health Ministry acknowledges. This is equivalent to about 56 percent of the total number of deliveries. The proportion reaches 85 percent in private hospitals and stands at 40 percent in public services, well above the 10 percent rate recommended by the WHO.

“They don’t practice obstetrics, they practice surgery, they don’t know how to provide clinical care, and the result is more maternal deaths,” Rattner lamented.

And the pandemic made the situation more tragic.

Black women protest to demand respect for their rights in Brazil. Black women are the greatest victims of maternal mortality caused by COVID-19 in the country. They account for almost twice the number of deaths of white mothers, according to a study by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, the leading national health research institution. CREDIT: Fernando Frazão / Agência Brasil

The stork doesn’t come anymore

Brazil missed the target of reducing maternal mortality by 75 percent by 2015, from 1990 levels, but it was moving in that direction. The maternal mortality ratio (MMR) per 100,000 live births in the country fell from 143 to 60, a 58 percent drop.

The Stork Network, a government strategy adopted in 2011 to improve assistance to pregnant women and the infrastructure of maternity hospitals, humanize childbirth, ensure family planning and better care for children, helped bring the MMR down.

But COVID-19 and the government’s response to it caused a setback of at least two decades in Brazil’s maternal mortality rate.

Coronavirus killed more than 2,000 pregnant and postpartum women in the last two years and there are at least 383 other deaths from severe acute respiratory syndrome that may have been caused by COVID-19, according to the Feminist Health Network, an activist movement that has been fighting for sexual and reproductive rights since 1991.

The way the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro acted “was a maternal genocide, not just a disaster,” said Vania Nequer Soares, a nurse with a PhD in public health who is a member of the Feminist Health Network.

The government’s denialism and its response to the pandemic aggravated mortality in general, which already exceeds 666,000 deaths, as well as maternal mortality. Health authorities took more than a year to recognize that pregnant women were a high-risk group for COVID-19, made it difficult for them to receive intensive care and delayed their vaccination, Soares said.

To make matters worse, they decided to dismantle the Stork Network, whose public policies had promising results, and adopted new rules of “obstetric violence” included in the brand new Maternal and Child Care Network (Rami), which concentrates all power in doctors and hospitals, to the detriment of other actors and dialogue, she told IPS by telephone from Lisbon.

Miriam Toaquiza, a teenage mother, and her newborn daughter, Jennifer, are photographed at a hospital in Ecuador. Latin America is second in the world in teen pregnancy, one of the causes of the high maternal mortality rates in the region. CREDIT: Gonzalo Ortiz/IPS

Undernotification and negligence

But the numbers of maternal deaths are probably higher. Brazil was slow to begin using COVID-19 diagnostic tests and did not test widely. And because clinical identification of the new disease was doubtful, many mothers probably died without the correct diagnosis, especially in the first year of the pandemic, Rattner argued.

A study published this month in the scientific journal The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, with accounts from the families of 25 pregnant women who died of COVID-19, revealed three practices that condemned many women to death on the verge of childbirth.

First, doctors refused to hospitalize or better examine those who complained, for example, of difficulty breathing. They attributed it to late pregnancy and delayed a diagnosis that could have saved at least one life.

In other cases, health centers turned away pregnant women because they were dedicated to the COVID-19 emergency, arguing that they could not accept pregnant women because of the risk of infecting them. And in maternity wards, pregnant women were turned away because of the risk that they could bring in coronavirus and affect other women.

Finally, pregnant women who managed to be accepted in hospitals were denied intensive care, under the argument of protecting the baby’s life. In other words, the choice was made to save the child, to the detriment of the mothers, without consulting the families.

This was confirmed by the fact that all 25 pregnant women died, but 19 babies survived. Four families told the health professionals that they wanted the mother to be saved, even arguing that she could have other children in the future, but this proved to be in vain.

The study by three researchers from the Anis Institute of Bioethics, Human Rights and Gender, based in Brasilia, corroborates the complaint of the Feminist Health Network that 20 percent of the pregnant and postpartum women did not have access to intensive care and 32.3 percent were not put on ventilators.

Women must be given protagonism, so that “they can take ownership of the process of motherhood, including childbirth,” said Ligia Cardieri, a sociologist who is executive coordinator of the Feminist Health Network.

Fewer mechanical interventions, a reduction of c-sections that increase risks, including anesthetics, and greater involvement of nurses and other maternal health actors are other recommendations to avoid so many maternal deaths, she told IPS from Curitiba, capital of the southern state of Paraná.

In other Latin American countries, pregnant women with COVID-19 suffered a similar lack of attention and problems.

Nearly a third of them were not given intensive care or respiratory support during the pandemic, revealed a study of 447 pregnant women from eight countries, including five from South America, two from Central America and one from the Caribbean, according to PAHO data.

The study, published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, is from PAHO’s Latin American Center for Perinatology/Women’s Health and Reproductive Health (CLAP/WR).

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We must silence the guns. All countries must work together to curb rising food and energy prices that have been spurred on by the war in Ukraine, making sure that essential goods are delivered to those most in need first, not those most willing to pay the higher price. Credit: Bigstock

By Rebeca Grynspan
GENEVA, May 27 2022 (IPS)

Climate change, COVID-19, the war in Ukraine – these crises threaten to derail development for 1.7 billion of the world’s most vulnerable people. The international community must take swift, coordinated action now to put the SDGs back on track.

In just two short years, a double whammy of external shocks has knocked global development off track and mired the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda in uncertainty. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, developing countries were left exceptionally vulnerable and exposed – a situation which the war in Ukraine has now tuned into a “perfect storm” of cascading crises. The consequences are worrying, not just for developing countries themselves, but also for the success of sustainable development globally.

The intensity of the “one-two punch” that the war in Ukraine has inflicted on developing economies following the COVID-19 crisis is only dwarfed by the complexity of the transmission channels by which the shock is propagating through commodity and financial markets

Before any shots were fired in Ukraine, the pandemic had left deep scars across the developing world. Since 2019, the number of people experiencing hunger has increased by 46 million in Africa, by around 57 million in Asia, and by about 14 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.

An additional 77 million people are now living in extreme poverty. School closures have led to losses of up to USD 17 trillion in lifetime earnings for this generation of students. Meanwhile, more than six million lives have been lost to the COVID-19 disease.

Following a robust though unequal economic recovery in 2021, marked by disrupted supply chains and multi-decade rises in inflation, the war in Ukraine caught the world economy off guard, roiling global markets for food, fertilizers, and fuels in which both Russia and Ukraine play an oversized role. This led to historic rises in commodity prices, and a general tightening of global financial conditions.

The intensity of the “one-two punch” that the war in Ukraine has inflicted on developing economies following the COVID-19 crisis is only dwarfed by the complexity of the transmission channels by which the shock is propagating through commodity and financial markets.

Rising commodity prices in energy, food, and fertilizers are leading to higher inflation rates. These are squeezing household budgets, especially in the poorest families who spend larger parts of their income on food and energy. Higher energy costs and lower spending is destroying demand while halting production. Already congested supply chains are being disrupted by sudden trade relocations due to sanctions, and a general scramble for commodities, increasing trade costs.

Higher inflation is inducing interest rates hikes, increasing the cost of debt. And all of this is impacting the most vulnerable people – women dealing with economic insecurity, children forced to leave school to work, the poor who were already hungry before the war started.

Many channels of exposure mean that billions of people around the world are exposed. The United Nations Global Crisis Response Group estimates that 107 developing economies are severely exposed to at least one dimension of these three channels of transmissions – rising food prices, rising energy prices, and tightening financial conditions. Some 1.7 billion people live in these countries, 553 million of whom are already poor and 215 million of whom are already malnourished.

And yet, even if just one channel of transmission is enough to set off a crisis, multiple and overlapping exposure is the rule, not the exception. Indeed, of these 107 countries, 69 are significantly or severely exposed to all three channels of transmission at once, bringing huge challenges to the 1.2 billion residents of those nations.

The firepower of the global economy to respond to crises of such a massive scale exists, as the developed economies’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates. While the decline in GDP globally during COVID-19 was more than twice that of the Great Recession of the late 2000s, the effects of the pandemic on the major economies quickly dissipated thanks to unprecedented stimulus efforts by the richest nations.

But it’s important to keep in mind that the developing economies do not possess the same scale of firepower. They have seen their debt burdens collectively swell during the COVID-19 crisis and now fear being pushed over the edge by the crisis induced by the war in Ukraine – a crisis not of their own making. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) finds that more than 60% of low-income developing countries are either currently experiencing or at risk of debt distress.

 

Laying a foundation for reform

The challenge facing our international financing architecture today is that it was built primarily to protect the global economy from crises at the individual country level. But faced with the “perfect storm” of cascading crises – including climate change, pandemics, and war – hitting so many developing countries at the same time, the system is limited in how it can offer a systemic, global response that supports all countries along all dimensions.

We must harness the strengths of that system today to lay a foundation for further reform tomorrow, one in which progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals is put back on track. A roadmap for improving the system is implicit in the ambitions of the SDGs, but to meet that transformative goal over the medium term we must first avoid throwing away our steady progress towards that objective so far, as happened with the pandemic. We must therefore use all tools available today to avoid the same from occurring as result of this war.

We must silence the guns. All countries must work together to curb rising food and energy prices that have been spurred on by the war in Ukraine, making sure that essential goods are delivered to those most in need first, not those most willing to pay the higher price.

We must pledge to keep trade moving and avoid export bans on critical commodities. We must make sure this year’s harvest is able to ship from the Black Sea, and that next year’s harvest has enough fertilizers to grow as needed, especially in small-holding farms. And we must work, in partnership with the private sector and civil society, on extending much-needed support to the most vulnerable populations in our countries.

This means using all available facilities at the IMF and the World Bank, including the new IMF Resilience and Sustainability Trust, and the existing small island developing states IDA Facility, but also to seriously undertake a multilateral conversation around debt sustainability before it is too late.

The only way to weather the “perfect storm” is together. The international community has the means to cushion the blow and prevent great human suffering, unacceptable increases in inequalities and the world tipping into an era of social and political unrest. The solutions and the resources are there. We now need the political will to reach them. I know it is not easy. But the world is waiting. And time is running out.

First published by SDG Action, an initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Excerpt:

Rebeca Grynspan is Secretary-General of UNCTAD

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Child labour survivor Selimatha Dziedzorm Salifu (right) and her rescuer Andrews Tagoe (left), deputy general secretary of the General Agricultural Workers’ Union of TUC, who met her on a fishing beach in Ghana. Credit: Lyse Comins/IPS

By Lyse Comins
DURBAN, May 27 2022 (IPS)

Selimatha Dziedzorm Salifu was just seven years old when she went to work for the first time to support her family.

Born in the fishing village, Kpando-Torkor, in Ghana, Salifu, was forced to go out and work in the local fishing industry when her father Seidu died, leaving her mother, Mary, with six children to feed, clothe and shelter. The industry is well documented for child slavery and trafficking.

“When my daddy passed, I was drawn into child labour because mommy did not have something to take care of my siblings. She started travelling to the islands (on lake Volta) in a canoe to buy fish, and sometimes I helped her do that, and I helped other fishmongers who were in the same business,” Salifu, now 25, told IPS in an exclusive interview. “I helped them get the fish ready for market, cutting and cleaning it, for a fee.” She spoke to us on the sidelines of the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

“I would wake up at 4 am and be there. We were a lot of children in the village so I had to get there early so I could get a customer. The boys would go out fishing, they didn’t go to school, and some were ill-treated on the lake. They would get pushed inside the water to rescue the nets (when they got tangled). I found that when I would go to school, I was so exhausted, I would sleep in class, and my teachers would ask me why,” Salifu said.

Her pay was just one or two Ghanaian cedis which could buy ‘kenke’ (similar to sourdough) and a little rice. Other children were often paid with just one small fish for their day’s labour handling Tilapia fish, mudfish and electric fish, Salifu said.

Despite her arduous plight of juggling work and school to survive, Salifu had a dream: One day, she would be a teacher and help children like herself.

“Sometimes getting food on the table was very difficult, and purchasing a school uniform was very difficult. I almost dropped out of school, but the God I serve saved me. I had a vision to want to be a childcare practitioner, to have my own institution to support children on the street just like myself,” Salifu said. “And then one day, I happened to meet this man at the river shore by my village, on the bank, going about my daily routine. I narrated my story to him, and he said he was going to talk to his team and they would help me.”

That man was Andrews Tagoe, deputy general secretary of the General Agricultural Workers’ Union of TUC. He is also a regional coordinator for Africa of the Global March Against Child Labour.

Tagoe had been working in the village, advocating against child labour, speaking to parents and educating them about the importance of sending their children to school rather than to work.

“I met the parents in the village and the fishermen and was talking about decent work and the fishing process and normal union issues,” Tagoe said.

He said most parents wanted their children to become lawyers and doctors, yet they were out on the beach working during school hours.

“So, I got up and went and looked at the beach during school time at around 10 am and found the beach full of children involved in activities, carrying fish, and I looked to the left, and there were classrooms and teachers without children,” Tagoe said.

Tagoe then made it his mission to reach out to the working children, like Salifu and began meeting with them and chatting about their lives, hopes and dreams.

“The parents also said that we didn’t know the unions work with child labour. So, let’s see what we can do to start a child labour free zone. There has been an enormous reduction in child labour, and more kids are now going to school,” he said.

“Since 2000 to date, the union has helped more than 4500 children in the whole of the agricultural sector, from rice, cocoa and palm oil to lake fishing,” Tagoe said.

A report by NORC at the University of Chicago has claimed that there are almost 1,6 million children involved in child labour in the cocoa industry alone in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

NORC conducted surveys with children aged between 15 and 17 between 2008 and 2019, showing cocoa production rose by 62%.

However, the report acknowledged that the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana had implemented education reforms, such as free education and compulsory attendance to fight child labour. This led to children’s school attendance from agricultural households increasing from 58 to 80 percent in Côte d’Ivoire and 89 to 96 percent in Ghana.

Salifu said Tagoe’s team – she fondly refers to him as “daddy’ – assisted her in remaining in school to follow her dream.

“I thought my prayers had been answered. They came to take responsibility for my school (work), purchasing my textbooks, and I was able to write basic education exams,” Salifu said.

She went to school in the mornings and continued working afternoons to support her family.

Salifu completed her Basic Education Certificate and then worked for six months buying fish and selling it in nearby towns to raise money for Senior High School.

“Again, GAWU supported me by paying for some of my fees. I finished senior high at the age of 19 in 2016. I’ve always dreamed of being the greatest teacher in the world and owning my own institution, and working with children,” Salifu said.

Her dream was partially realised when she got a job working at a local school before moving to Accra, where she studied at a Montessori teacher’s training institution. She obtained her National Diploma in Montessori Training and took up a position at Tender Sprout International School in Accra.

“Where I am working, the children come from good homes and are even dropped off at school. But I want to go back to my community and help my brothers and sisters in the village and nearby communities and islands to help liberate them from child labour,” Salifu said.

“I still want to build on my dream to help the orphans and get the children back home. My mom is very aged now too, so I need to support my other siblings and my mother at home. There is no money at home, so they look up to me. I need to go back to university to get a degree in early childhood education.”

“God has saved me now because some mates my age ended up dropping out, and some had teenage pregnancies and STDs. I am very, very lucky,” Salifu said.

Salifu hopes telling her story will be a voice to help those still trapped in child labour escape.

“I think our voices should be heard here so we can go back and launch a project with our brothers and sisters so we can help them. That is my motive for being here. The dream must be achieved,” Salifu said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

This is one of a series of stories IPS published about the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

 

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Women attend an event on solutions for implementing gender-responsive climate action at the United Nations in 2019. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown.

By Juliet Morrison
Toronto, May 27 2022 (IPS)

While the climate crisis affects virtually every aspect of life, its impacts are not felt equally.

A person’s vulnerability to climate change varies depending on their position in society, such as socioeconomic status, dependence on natural resources, and capacity to respond to natural hazards. Since different genders often experience different social standings, gender has emerged as a key element to consider for effective climate planning and adaptation.

Angie Dazé, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion lead at the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD), says social norms linked to gender in their communities and households influence people’s different roles.

“Gender influences how people experience the impacts of climate change, and it also influences their capacity to respond,” Dazé told IPS in an interview. “Because people play different roles, they’re differently impacted by the same effects of climate change.”

While climate change experiences are context-specific and varied, a growing body of research suggests that women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The higher poverty level and lower socioeconomic power make recovery from natural disasters more difficult for women. UN figures also show that women and girls make up 80 percent of those displaced by climate change.

“Gender inequalities create barriers that can exacerbate people’s vulnerability to climate change. And this most often affects women and girls,” Dazé said.

Because social groups experience climate change differently, gender has become more central to the United Nations (UN) climate process and the international discourse around climate action.

Target 13.b of the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on climate action recognizes the gender-environment nexus. It states that focusing on women is key for increasing climate change planning and management capacity.

Key frameworks encouraging the integration of gender considerations for climate action, such as the enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender and its Gender Action Plan, have also been established at recent UN Climate Change Conferences. Agreed upon at COP 25 in 2019, these frameworks promote gender mainstreaming for the parties and the integration of gender considerations throughout the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) work and processes.

Still, gender representation remains limited in climate decision-making spaces, and considerations of gender in national policy are inconsistent.

Despite men being just over half of the registered government delegates at UNFCCC plenary meetings from May to June 2021, according to a UNFCCC analysis, they spoke for 74 percent of the time. Attendance at COP gender-related events is also low.

On the national level, only 15 percent of environmental ministries are headed by women, and only a third of national energy frameworks contain considerations of gender. A study from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) of 89 nationally determined contributions revealed that nearly a quarter have no references to gender.

Pointing to the harm of gender-blind approaches to climate policy, Christina Kwauk, a gender, education, and climate change specialist, told IPS, “the policies that we create could have unintended consequences that perpetuate structures of discrimination or inequality, or gender norms and harmful gender-based practices.

“Current policies or solutions or actions could exacerbate time poverty for women or exclude access to women. Maybe women might not have as much access to these different solutions because of existing gender norms.”

Kwauk credits the progress toward gender mainstreaming as significant but believes it has not reached the pace needed to see a significant impact.

Current gender-responsive climate policies, Kwauk explained, “are all pointing in the right direction. But the underlying systems of inequality and the underlying structures of inequality remain. And as long as those issues are still there, the policy, the discourse, these are good moves in the right direction, but they’re not enough. They’re not changing actual lived experiences […] the social norms, and the social barriers to participation.”

As an eco-feminist and climate change activist working on land access for women, Adenike Oladosu is familiar with the intersections of gender and the environment. In an interview with IPS, she stressed the need for countries to integrate gender throughout various sectors better and—pointing to her home country of Nigeria—the need for governments to legalize and implement their gender action plan throughout all sectors.

Oladosu believes that this action is paramount to improving the representation of women in global fora.

“When we see that gender is important in different sectors, it improves the representation of women in conferences because we are able to execute every action we take in a gender-sensitive manner,” Oladosu said. “It all has to start from individual countries, trying to improve gender sensitivity in their barriers, or trying to integrate gender-sensitive approaches in their various sectors.”

Empowering women can also help create new solutions to mitigate the climate crisis. Drawing upon her advocacy work, Oladosu emphasized that tapping into women’s indigenous knowledge as caretakers of the land and facilitating land access for women leads to new solutions for mitigating the climate crisis.

UN data shows that when women are provided with the same resources as men, they can increase agricultural yields by 20-30%, reducing hunger.

Overall, gender is key to consider—and women are paramount to involve—for a just and equitable fight against climate change.

“Women make up half of the population of the world,” Oladosu said. “So, if you take them away or leave them behind in solving the defining issue of our time, it definitely is going to affect the solutions that are brought up, or by now, we would have achieved climate justice.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Community members in Sowripalayam, outside Coimbatore, receive a meal from No Food Waste, a GFN-supported food bank in India. Credit: The Global Food Banking Network/Narayana Swamy Subbaraman

By Lisa Moon
CHICAGO, USA, May 27 2022 (IPS)

For months, the specter of a global hunger crisis has been looming. The war in Ukraine is a compounding factor, blocking key value chains for food and fertilizer just as the world reckons with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global hunger.

Add the pervasive effects of climate change to the mix, and the result is what the United Nations is calling a “perfect storm” that risks one-fifth of the global population – as many as 1.7 billion people – falling into poverty and hunger.

This number feels so large that it is almost inconceivable, never mind possible to accept. And of course, the mounting global food crisis will not affect everyone equally.

Recent feedback from food bank leaders all over the world already echoes the reality ahead. Because food banks, especially across emerging and developing markets, are the first (or sometimes only) port-of-call for those facing hunger, they offer a window into understanding the full extent of the coming food crisis: an early warning system of the strains on our food systems.

Daily wage workers stand in line to receive a meal prepared by No Food Waste, a GFN-supported food bank in India. Credit: No Food Waste

The Global Food Banking Network works with member food banks in 44 countries, and many of them in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are already reporting that higher food prices are contributing to an increase in demand for emergency food assistance.

For example, a partner food bank in Ecuador, Banco de Alimentos Quito, has reported a 50 percent increase in demand for services, while another partner, India Food Banking Network, has warned the number of people requesting food has doubled recently.

If more is not done – and done quickly – these numbers will be just the tip of the iceberg. Tragically, as while demand at many food banks is increasing, supplies donated to food banks are often diminishing.

These food banks in Ecuador and India—and others across the Network—are reporting decreases in product donations of up to 50 percent. Banco de Alimentos Quito and Banco de Alimentos Honduras, both of which regularly recover fresh produce directly from farmers to distribute to people facing hunger, are flagging that planting schedules have been thrown off because farmers cannot get key inputs.

In short, less produce is available to donate because of the rise in need and smaller, less reliable yields.

A volunteer organizes food donations in Banco de Alimentos Quito’s warehouse in Ecuador. Credit: The Global Food Banking Network/Ana María Buitron

With the recent World Economic Forum in Davos and the G7 Summit, there are already calls on governments and business leaders to invest more in hunger relief and food aid. This is a crucial first step, but investment will only be as effective as the implementation mechanisms in place to deliver them.

This is also where food banks can step in effectively and immediately. Because food banks address community food needs even in less precarious times, they are already well positioned to respond to crises by scaling up in times of scarcity and distributing food when conventional supply chains are undermined.

The COVID-19 pandemic is already a case in point, with global food banks serving 40 million people in 2020, a 132 percent increase from the prior year. And because food banks are community-based and community-led, they can understand and adapt to local needs quite quickly, acting as frontline responders when a crisis hits.

Responses to the global hunger crisis must include recognition for the critical role food banks play. They will step up and play a crucial role in meeting the sharp increase in demand for food relief in the coming months.

However, if the global community steps forward and supports the value of these assets further, food banks’ impact can become outsized. And an outsized response is exactly what this coming crisis will require.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By External Source
May 26 2022 (IPS)

When the Columbine High School massacre took place in 1999 it was seen as a watershed moment in the United States – the worst mass shooting at a school in the country’s history. Now, it ranks fourth.

The three school shootings to surpass its death toll of 13 – 12 students, one teacher – have all taken place within the last decade: 2012’s Sandy Hook Elementary attack, in which a gunman killed 26 children and school staff; the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which claimed the lives of 17 people; and now the Robb Elementary School assault in Uvalde, Texas, where on May 24, 2022, at least 19 children and two adults were murdered.

We are criminologists who study the life histories of public mass shooters in the U.S. As part of that research, we built a comprehensive database of mass public shootings using public data, with the shooters coded on over 200 different variables, including location and racial profile. For the purposes of our database, mass public shootings are defined as incidents in which four or more victims are murdered with at least one of those homicides taking place in a public location and with no connection to underlying criminal activity, such as gangs or drugs.

 

Our database shows that since 1966, when our database timeline begins, there have been 13 such shootings at schools across the U.S – the first in Stockton, California, in 1989.

Four of those shootings – including the one at Robb Elementary School – involved a killing at another location, always a family member at a residence. The most recent perpetrator shot his grandmother prior to going to the school in Uvalde.

The majority of mass school shootings were carried out by a lone gunman, with just two – Columbine and the 1998 shooting at Westside School in Jonesboro, Arkansas – carried out by two gunmen. In all, some 146 people were killed in the attacks and at least 182 victims injured.

The choice of “gunmen” to describe the perpetrators is accurate – all of the mass school shootings in our database were carried out by men or boys. And the average age of those involved in carrying out the attacks was 18.

This fits with the picture that has emerged of the shooter in the Robb Elementary School attack. He turned 18 just days ago and reportedly purchased two military-style weapons. It is believed that the shooter used one miltary-style weapon in the attack, authorities said May 25, 2022.

Police have yet to release key information on the shooter, including what motivated him to kill the children and adults at Robb Elementary School. The picture of the shooter that has emerged conforms to the profile we have built up from past perpetrators in some ways, but diverges in others.

We know that most school shooters have a connection to the school they target. Twelve of the 14 school shooters in our database prior to the most recent attack in Texas were either current or former students of the school. Any prior connection between the latest shooter and Robb Elementary School has not been released to the public.

Our research and dozens of interviews with incarcerated perpetrators of mass shootings suggests that for most perpetrators, the mass shooting event is intended to be a final act. The majority of school mass shooters die in the attack. Of the 15 mass school shooters in our database, just seven were apprehended. The rest died on the scene, nearly all by suicide – the lone exception being the Robb Elementary shooter, who was shot dead by police.

And school shooters tend to preempt their attacks by leaving posts, messages or videos warning of their intent.

Inspired by past school shooters, some perpetrators are seeking fame and notoriety. However, most school shooters are motivated by a generalized anger. Their path to violence involves self-hate and despair turned outward at the world, and our research finds they often communicate their intent to do harm in advance as a final, desperate cry for help. The key to stopping these tragedies is for society to be alert to these warning signs and act on them immediately.

James Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University and Jillian Peterson, Professor of Criminal Justice, Hamline University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.