Africa

Amadou Bamba one of five coaches and officials sanctioned after an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse.

Africa's top scorer at World Cups calls time on his career after a record 51 goals in 109 games for Ghana.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 21 2023 (IPS)

When the 193-member General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development back in September 2015., it was aimed at transforming the world into an idealistic state of peace and economic prosperity.

But eight years later, most of the world’s low-income countries (LICs) have been struggling to achieve even a single goal, including the two key targets: the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.

In a new report released June 21, the United Nations has singled out some of the key achievers—the top five, among the world’s high-income countries (HICs), which are led by Finland, and followed by Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Austria.

European countries continue to lead in the SDG Index – holding the top 10 spots -– and are on track to achieve more targets than any other region, with Denmark, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, and the Slovak Republic as the top five countries that have achieved or are on track to achieving the largest number of SDG targets this year.

By contrast, Lebanon, Yemen, Papua New Guinea, Venezuela, and Myanmar have the largest number of SDG targets moving in the wrong direction

The findings are listed in the 2023 Sustainable Development Report (SDR) and Index, which ranks the performance of all 193 UN Member States on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is produced by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

There is a risk that the gap in SDG outcomes between HICs and the LICs will be larger in 2030 than when the goals were universally agreed upon in 2015, warns the report

• Based on the current pace of progress since 2015, none of the goals will be achieved by 2030, and on average, less than 20% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved.
• Government effort and commitment to the SDGs is too low, and notably, LICs and LMICs (low middle income countries) obtained a higher average score than HICs on political and institutional leadership for the SDGs.
• Among the G20 countries, average scores range from more than 75 percent in Indonesia to less than 40 percent in the Russian Federation and the United States.
• Argentina, Barbados, Chile, Germany, Jamaica, and Seychelles obtained the highest score on a new pilot index for their efforts to promote multilateralism, yet no country obtains a perfect score.

The report includes the first pilot index of multilateralism that captures the overarching dimensions of support for multilateralism and comparisons of countries, including countries’ efforts to promote and preserve peace, percentage of UN treaties ratified, international solidarity and financing, membership in select UN organizations, and the use of unilateral coercive measures among other indicators.

Argentina, Barbados, Chile, Germany, Jamaica, and Seychelles obtained the highest score for their efforts to promote multilateralism, yet no country obtains a perfect score.

The report was released just ahead of the June 22-23 International Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

As the UN nears the mid-point of the SDGs and ahead of the Paris Summit, the report provides timely insights on the chronic shortfalls of SDG financing to developing and emerging economies and offers six priorities for reform of the Global Financial Architecture.

The report also features a new pilot Index that gauges countries’ support for multilateralism and a new Index to track government efforts and commitments to the SDGs.

Despite the grim news, the report demonstrates that while the world is off track at the mid-point of the SDGs, now is the time for countries to double down on SDG progress by endorsing deep reform of the global financial architecture and implementing the SDG Stimulus to close the significant financing gap facing developing and emerging countries.

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, President of the SDSN and a lead author of the report, says half way to 2030, the SDGs are seriously off track – with the poor and highly vulnerable countries suffering the most.

“The international community should step up at this month’s Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris, and at the key upcoming multilateral meetings, including the G20 meeting in New Delhi, the SDG Summit New York in September, and COP28 in Dubai, to scale-up international financial flows based on SDG needs”.

“It would be unconscionable for the world to miss this opportunity, especially for the richest countries to evade their responsibilities. The SDGs remain fundamental for the future we want.”

Providing a critical analysis of the new report, Jens Martens, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum Europe, based in Bonn, told IPS the SDSN report brings no surprises.

That the world is not on track to achieve the SDGs was already noted by the Global Sustainable Development Report 2023, the UN Secretary-General’s SDG Midterm Report, and many other civil society Spotlight Reports before.

However, the message that the SDSN Report conveys with the SDG Index is absolutely misleading, he pointed out.

“It suggests that the Western industrialized countries at the top of the ranking are on the right development path. But this is only because it ignores the negative externalities of their consumption and production patterns and their economic and financial policies. For good reasons, SDSN has therefore also developed a Spillover Index, but this merely complements the SDG Index,” he noted.

The emphasis on the SDG Index, with its positive ranking of Western industrialized countries, sends the wrong political message, said Martens.

“To reduce growing global inequalities, governments in the UN must address the structural causes of these inequalities”.

First and foremost, he argued, this requires fundamental reforms in the global financial architecture. The SDG Summit 2023, the Summit of the Future 2024, and the Fourth FfD Conference 2025 provide pivotal opportunities to initiate these reforms, he declared.

Chee Yoke Ling, Executive Director, Third World Network, Malaysia, told IPS the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda with its 17 SDGs has fallen victim to the failure of means of implementation – new and additional financing as well as appropriate technology transfer to developing countries.

“We see the same fate for the climate and biodiversity treaties”.

At the same time, she said, the barriers in the external environment have worsened. “So, we see alarming debt burdens because the international financial architecture remains stacked against developing countries, while public funds and governments are pushed to take on a “de-risking” role to shore up private creditors”.

Look beyond, she said, the buzz of the World Bank’s Evolutionary Roadmap and the Macron New Global Financing Pact and “we see a fundamentally similar and even stronger set of policies and measures to maintain the status quo and further subject countries to financing sources beyond public control.

Meanwhile middle-income countries and even LDCs are faced with private creditors who refuse to do their part in debt reduction, and G7 governments do not want to rein them in either.

Trade protectionism is also rearing its head. The roll-out of the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism has raised alarms. In the name of a green transition for Europe, this new carbon border tax CBAM will directly impact Sub-Saharan Africa that relies heavily on exports of fossil fuels, minerals and metals that are carbon intensive, she pointed out.

Studies show that African countries will be highly exposed to the CBAM since 26% of continental trade was with the EU, while only 2.2% of the EU’s trade was with Africa.

The CBAM could reduce Africa to EU exports by up to 5.7%, based on current carbon prices. This may have the effect of reducing Africa’s GDP by about $16 billion at 2021 levels.

“Without clean technologies being shared with Africa, the EU’s new tax penalizes those countries that are already under increasing debt burden”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Many migrants leave from Tunisia by boat to reach Europe, but the consequences can be tragic.

Former Liverpool forward Sadio Mane scores twice as Senegal beat Brazil in a friendly in Lisbon, Portugal.

Cameroon and Inter Milan striker Ajara Nchout on her work using football to combat the impact of Islamist insurgents.

Officials investigate if a local ownership dispute had a role in the killing of nearly 40 students.

With one-fifth of farming households dependent on palm oil production, policy considerations that look after the environment, lives, and livelihoods were essential.

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jun 20 2023 (IPS)

Oil palm has brought significant benefits and prosperity to Liberia. The export of crude palm oil is a major source of foreign exchange earnings for the government. The palm oil crop covers more than 1 million hectares, hundreds of thousands are employed in the palm oil sector, and at least 21 percent of the farming households produce palm oil.

Opportunities for the country’s palm oil and other palm products in the international markets are considerable—creating a temptation to prioritize development over environmental concerns.

In 2020, policymakers in the Inter-Ministerial Commission on Palm Oil Concessions in Liberia faced a significant challenge: developing a policy path that pursued quick short-term profits and faced long-term negative consequences to the environment, lives, and livelihoods—or a beneficial approach for people and planet.

Forests Belong to Humanity

“When decisions are too short-term, narrow, and short-sighted, we do not take into account the long-term impact of our action. We need to recognize that some goods are common goods or public goods, such as forests. They do not belong to one person or one company; they belong to humanity as a whole,” says Francisco Alpizar, Wageningen University and Research.

This was the case for Liberia’s palm oil sector, whose key stakeholders include government, the private sector, NGOs, business associations, smallholder associations, and households that directly or indirectly rely on it as their lifeline.

“From an economic perspective, the prices of goods and commodities should reflect the true cost to societies, not just the immediate cost of producing them but also the environmental impact the production of those goods and services carries for societies,” Alpizar says.

The Liberian National Oil Palm Strategy and Action Plan (NOPSAP) was facilitated by the Global Environment Facility-funded Good Growth Partnership. Here policymakers in Liberia decided to use the Targeted Analysis Scenario (TSA) to design a mutually beneficial policy path for communities, sectoral government agencies, and palm oil concessionaires.

Targeted Analysis Scenario Benefits All

As they developed the National Oil Palm Strategy and Action Plan (NOPSAP) facilitated by the Global Environment Facility-funded Good Growth Partnership, policymakers in Liberia decided to use the Targeted Analysis Scenario (TSA) to design a mutually beneficial policy path for communities, sectoral government agencies, and palm oil concessionaires.

UNDP developed the TSA to respond to the growing demand from decision-makers and stakeholders for more policy-relevant sustainable development analysis to support national SDG implementation facing diverse policy, management, and investment choices.

As an innovative analytical approach, the TSA captures and presents the value of ecosystem services within decision-making to help make the business case for sustainable policy and investment choices. By doing so, the TSA allows policymakers to calculate these costs and make decisions that harmonize with the environment.

In Liberia, policymakers needed economic data that compared the outcomes of continuing with conventional palm production with the results of taking a different route to make sound, informed decisions leading to sustainable palm concessions.

At the time, the situation in the West African country was characterized by contradictory forest management and concessions policies. The Commission had to balance the eagerness of communities and smallholder producers to engage in palm oil concessions because they brought employment and socioeconomic benefits and concerns in the global market about the environmental risks of palm oil production.

UNDP’s TSA provided an answer, enabling the Commission in Liberia to include all the relevant social, environmental, and economic impacts. TSA offered a systematic approach covering all aspects of the sector.

The TSA improves the decision-making process by capturing and presenting the value of ecosystem services and sectoral production to make policy decision-making more holistic. The tool applies to any sector, scenario, context, or country.

“TSA can, for instance, be applied for decision-making at the national level, when taking a national perspective, regional, company or even household level. For each and every one of those decisions, we need a careful analysis of what the current situation looks like and how it will look in the future and, what would be the alternative situation,” Alpizar explains.

Business-as-Usual Versus Sustainable Ecosystem Management

One is considered a business-as-usual scenario, and the other a sustainable ecosystem management scenario.

“When you compare one against the other, with a long-term perspective and focusing on the relevant indicators for the decision makers or the things that the decision maker cares for, then you can provide a better picture of the decision that is in front of us, and that is what targeted scenario analysis is.”

He says targeted scenario construction of business-as-usual versus sustainable ecosystem management outcomes is presented to the decision maker. When this is done, in principle, the decision maker will have a powerful decision-making tool to make informed decisions based on evidence.

“If we put ourselves in the feet of a decision maker, that is, for example, deciding whether to implement a series of policies to make the agricultural sector more sustainable, the business-as-usual scenario means you continue with the current practices. A sustainable ecosystem management scenario would be one in which you change a series of practices or actions, and with that, in principle, you achieve a different outcome,” Alpizar explains.

He gives an example of producing pineapples under a business-as-usual scenario with an impact on surrounding lands, agrochemicals, deforestation, land use change, competing diseases, or diseases that spread to the surrounding area, which might be viable but over a short period of time. The alternative scenario is to create and implement a more long-term, sustainable approach.

“Through UNDP’s application of TSA methodology, you can carefully construct the two scenarios by first asking this question: As the decision maker, what do you really care about? Is it employment, taxes, production, or reducing social unrest? Based on the answer, the analyst can construct a targeted scenario,” Alpizar says.

Returning to Liberia, the TSA was able to show that Smallholder Production (SPO) scenario and environmental sustainability were in the best interests of the concessionaire and the Liberian economy – with substantially greater benefits compared with the business-as-usual scenario (USD 333 million versus USD 188 million over 20 years).

When these results were discussed with the multistakeholder National Oil Palm Platform of Liberia, it was accepted and paved the way toward sustainable palm oil development in Liberia.

Across the world, TSAs have been conducted to assess the economic value of ecosystem services for various strategic economic sectors such as hydropower, agriculture, and tourism under the business-as-usual and sustainable ecosystem management scenarios to create a sustainable development path where humanity is in harmony with the environment.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A 100-year-old football club in Tunisia has folded after migration to Europe cost AS Ghardimaou more than 30 of its best players.

Irene Grace says human rights defenders hiding in Kenya fear harassment and intimidation due to a decline in civic rights. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jun 20 2023 (IPS)

While leaving one’s country and becoming a refugee is a last resort, it is a decision that many, like Steve Kitsa, have had to make. As conflict becomes increasingly protracted in many African countries, many others will take this step.

“In a matter of life and death, I fled the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) five years ago and left my elderly mother behind. One day we were seated in a group of young men, chatting and enjoying the morning sun, when a lone gunman in uniform approached us and started firing away unprovoked. Such incidences had become too common in the eastern region, and some of my friends were killed,” Kitsa tells IPS.

Kenya hosts one of the largest refugee populations in Africa. Kitsa is one of more than 520,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers. But human rights defender Irene Grace, who fled Uganda two years ago, says the number is much higher because borders are porous.

Nevertheless, official records show that about 287,000 refugees come from Somalia, 142,000 from South Sudan, 50,000 from DRC, and 32,000 from Ethiopia; many live in Dadaab and Kakuma camps.

Others, like Kitsa, have found their way into the urban centers of Nairobi, Kisumu, Mombasa, and Eldoret. Outdated statistics from 2017 indicate that more than 67,267 refugees live in Nairobi.

“There is a lot of exploitation because we need the locals to survive. Along the highways, you will find many young men hawking peanuts. You can tell they are from DRC because of the kind of Swahili they speak. They sell these peanuts under the hot sun, all day, every day, in exchange for a plate of food and somewhere to sleep as the profits go to the host. Most of us are desperate to go to France,” he explains.

Irene Grace fled Uganda for promoting the rights of the LGBTQI community as the country clamped down on their rights. As the government-endorsed crackdown against the community intensified, so did threats against her life.

“The issue of human rights defenders in exile is one aspect of the refugee situation that is hardly ever talked about. The risk is very high because you are under an alias in a foreign country, and if murdered, you are likely to remain unidentified for a long time, and it might take years to connect the dots. The question of who bears the duty of protection for us remains unanswered,” Grace says.

Her fears and concerns reflect the 2022 report findings by the global civil society alliance, CIVICUS, and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), highlighting the decline in civil rights in Kenya. According to the report, the government was using excessive force to quieten dissent.

Kenya was placed on the CIVICUS Monitor’s human rights ‘Watchlist’ in June 2022. The Watchlist highlights countries with a recent and steady decline in civic freedoms, including the rights of free speech and peaceful assembly.

Kenya was rated Obstructed by the CIVICUS Monitor. There are 42 countries in the world with this rating. The rating is typically given to countries where power holders heavily contest civic space and impose a combination of legal and practical constraints on the full enjoyment of fundamental rights.

In 2021, Front Line Defenders released a report accusing the governments of Uganda and Kenya of giving the South Sudanese National Security Service (NSS) intelligence agency the freedom to target refugee human rights workers who fled the country.

“It is very difficult to continue with activism in such a hostile environment, on top of the many other challenges confronting us, such as a lack of documentation and access to services. Some of us left our families behind, exposed and unprotected. Over the eight years, I have lived in Kenya, I have received many threatening calls from South Sudan, but I know the information of my whereabouts came from within this country,” Deng G, an activist from South Sudan, tells IPS.

“Our situation worsens when local activists are targeted. In exile, you must connect with local networks to survive and continue with your activism. I am aware of activists in Kenya currently being held without trial for protesting against the high cost of living.”

KHRC continues to express concerns over the misuse of laws to undermine peaceful protest and recently responded with speed when five activists from the Social Justice Center, a Nairobi-based grassroots group, were arrested during a peaceful protest against the controversial Finance Bill 2023.

A pre-independence Public Order Act requires activists to notify authorities of protests at least three days in advance. Police have mistakenly understood the provision as a requirement for protests to be approved or denied, using it as an excuse to deem protests ‘unpermitted.’ Even though the right to peaceful assembly is guaranteed in Kenya’s constitution, it is continually undermined, says CIVICUS and KHRC.

Irene Grace says ongoing hostilities have derailed efforts to promote the safety and security of LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees in the Kakuma Refugee Camp complex in northwestern Kenya whose lives are at risk. She says they are experiencing discrimination, and physical and sexual violence, among other forms of human rights violations.

“I am unable to travel there to determine how we can mobilize and improve their safety, working hand in hand with grassroots activists in Kenya. There are corrupt security officers, and once they discover you are hiding in the country, you become a target. They want you to pay them to turn a blind eye as you go on with your activities,” she says.

Kitsa says the issue of bribes is a most pressing challenge for many refugees seeking to integrate with the locals.

“They usually threaten to send you to the refugee camps despite having refugee documentation allowing you to live among the locals. They can create many problems for you.”

Against this backdrop, Irene Grace says activism is being suppressed from multiple angles, and human rights activists, local and those operating from exile, must now go back to the drawing board to find safer, impactful ways to speak truth to power and take the powers that be head-on.
IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

Home Away From Home is the theme of World Refugee Day 2023. However, for many, including human rights activists who have fled their homes, a decline in civil rights in their host countries means their lives are often endangered and their activism curtailed.

By Tanja Sejersen, Nicola Richards & Victoria Fan
BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 20 2023 (IPS)

Each year, the births of 64 million children under the age of five and deaths of 8.4 million people are invisible to governments in Asia and the Pacific. Most countries in the region are yet to achieve universal civil registration, leaving many people without a legal identity and, as a result, invisible to the State.

These people often face challenges in accessing basic services, such as education and healthcare, in securing employment and social benefits, and in protecting their human rights. In addition, deficient civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems lead to significant gaps and lags in up-to-date population and health data, crucial for designing and monitoring effective public policies and allocating resources.

Recognizing its importance, countries reached agreement on the Asia Pacific CRVS Decade in 2014 and set out a vision to achieve universal civil registration in the region by 2024. An applied CRVS research agenda was launched to help meet this this challenge.

Applied research on CRVS helps to generate and disseminate evidence on what strategies work, and what doesn’t, as well as how governments and partners can improve systems to better deliver on commitments to get everyone in the picture.

By documenting experiences in communities, countries and regions, the potential benefits of successful interventions and innovations can be replicated and possible shortcomings addressed.

Given the importance of applied research for improving CRVS, ESCAP organised the first ever Asia-Pacific CRVS Research Forum on 3-4 April 2023. With more than 30 speakers representing 15 countries, 24 research papers and almost 400 registered participants, the forum revealed many interesting facets of CRVS while opening eyes to the multitude of initiatives to ensure better and more inclusive systems across the region.

Many presentations emphasized how different initiatives are making real-life impacts on individuals and communities. There was a clear emphasis on community engagement, equity and ‘reaching the hardest to reach’, such as integrating gender-equity in CRVS legal reviews, addressing barriers to civil registration for hard-to-reach populations in Pakistan and gender disparities in premature mortality in the Philippines.

On-the-ground innovations were on display: a first-of-its-kind CRVS survey in Nepal that worked with both service providers and communities to understand barriers and enablers to registration; evidence from Fiji on the clear effectiveness of incentives on birth registration completeness; and the development of customized mortality audit and inquest systems in Thailand and Sri Lanka to improve the quality of cause of death data.

Much more work is needed to drive CRVS systems forward in the face of increasing challenges, with research playing a key role. In particular, the forum identified a stronger focus on building inclusive and resilient CRVS systems, including in conflict and humanitarian settings where there is both an acute need for civil registration along with increased difficulties in providing services.

As countries around the world adjust to competing government priorities during times of economic and social challenges, there is a critical need to maintain momentum on strengthening CRVS systems as the basis for realising human rights and ensuring access to basic social services including health and education.

Further, CRVS systems are essential for generating timely mortality data whose importance for pandemic preparedness and response has been recently emphasized. As demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, research is central to ensure continued innovation and improvement, and to provide opportunities to reflect and learn.

We hope in the future to develop this work further to embed and develop critical applied research capacity within countries and at the implementation level – to ensure we can really get everyone in the picture.

Tanja Sejersen is a Statistician; Nicola Richards is Consultant, ESCAP; Victoria Fan is Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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O'Brian Robinson (R) sits with two friends at the beach. He is a trans man, coordinator of Negritudes Trans HN, a group that fights for the rights of the trans community in Honduras, including those of the black Garífuna population living mainly on the Atlantic coast, in the north of the country. CREDIT: Courtesy of Negritudes Trans HN

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Jun 20 2023 (IPS)

There is still a long way to go before the LGBTI population in Central America stops being discriminated against and begins to make progress in gaining recognition of their full rights, including the possibility of changing their name to match their gender identity, in the case of trans people.

“The issue of the rights of LGBTI people is extremely precarious. There is no recognition of our rights, obviously including the identity of trans people in our country,” O’Brian Robinson, general coordinator of Negritudes Trans Honduras, told IPS from Tegucigalpa."The non-recognition of our identity also affects us in all social spheres, in the areas of ​​employability, healthcare and schooling; people are forced to live on the fringes of society.” -- O’Brian Robinson

In the heavily conservative Central American countries, public policies with a strong moralistic bias predominate on issues such as the right to abortion or the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) population.

That is the reason for the strong institutional resistance to the passage of a gender identity law recognizing the rights of this community, without discrimination. In none of the six countries in the region – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama – has such legislation been enacted.

The vast majority of the LGBTI population experiences marginalization and social rejection that in many cases leads to physical violence and even murder – phenomena that are not exclusive to this region.

A June 2022 Amnesty International report stated that El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Honduras are among the countries in the Americas with “high levels of hate crimes, hate speech, and marginalization, as well as murders and persecution of LGBTI activists.”

 

As in other regions of the world, the LGBTI community in Central America has been marginalized and is the victim of frequent human rights violations, including murders and other hate crimes. One of the chief demands is the approval of laws that allow transgender people to legally change their name so it matches their gender identity and expression. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

 

The right name

Regarding the fight for a name that matches an individual’s gender identity and expression, Robinson pointed out that daily aspects such as carrying out bank transactions, undergoing a medical consultation or enrolling in an academic course are difficult for a trans person in Honduras.

And this is especially true if the legal name on their document is the one they no longer use, which is generally the case due to the obstacles they face in obtaining an ID that reflects their transgender identity.

“The non-recognition of our identity also affects us in all social spheres, in the areas of ​​employability, healthcare and schooling; people are forced to live on the fringes of society,” added the 29-year-old activist.

These daily tasks can be carried out, but often after facing ridicule, contempt, and arguments with civil servants who do not understand that State institutions are there to serve everyone, without distinction.

In Honduras, it is forbidden to change your name, according to article 61 of the National Registry of Persons Law, with only three exceptions: that it is unpronounceable, that it is the name of some object, or that it violates decency and good customs.

This third category makes it impossible for a trans person to change their name.

According to the Amnesty International report, the concept of transgender encompasses people who identify as such and also includes transsexuals, transvestites, gender queer or “any other gender identity that does not meet social and cultural expectations regarding it.”

Robinson added that LGBTI, and specifically trans, organizations have been pushing for changes in the legal regulations since 2010 in order to pass a law that brings visibility to and protects people with anything other than a heterosexual gender expression and sexual identity.

In 2021 they also promoted a reform of the registration law, which would open the door to a legal name-change process for trans people.

More than 4,000 signatures were collected in support of the proposed bill. But it was rejected by the authorities, who alleged that only 200 of the signatures were real and the rest were false, which Robinson said was untrue and a “ridiculous” argument.

In Guatemala and El Salvador, trans people can change their names, but that is because the legal regulations allow anyone to do so if they wish and can afford to.

“The Civil Code in Guatemala has always allowed everyone to change their name, but from a heterosexual perspective,” Galilea Monroy, director of the Multicultural Network of Trans Women of Guatemala, told IPS.

Monroy, a trans woman, said that through this mechanism around 500 people from that community have been able to change their names, with financial support from international organizations.

But a name change costs around 600 dollars in Guatemala and about 4,000 dollars in El Salvador.

Monroy also pointed out that the name change does not include modifying the “sex” in the personal identity document, and in her case, her ID continues to say she is a “man”. The same is true in El Salvador.

 

Galilea Monroy is the executive director of the Multicultural Network of Trans Women of Guatemala, which pushes for respect for the rights of trans people in a nation where, like the rest of Central America, it is difficult to work for changes on behalf of LGBTI people, and where hate crimes against this community are frequent. CREDIT: Courtesy of the Multicultural Network of Trans Women of Guatemala

 

A region of hatred and death

In El Salvador, transgender activist Karla Avelar, with the support of several Salvadoran human rights organizations, filed a lawsuit against the government on Jan. 31 for not providing a legal mechanism allowing her name to match her gender identity on her ID.

The case came to light on May 17, during a conference in San Salvador in which the organizations and Avelar participated by means of videoconference.

In February 2022, the Constitutional Chamber, a five-judge court that is part of the Salvadoran Supreme Court, ruled that the legislature had one year to pass a law that would allow trans people to change not only their names but the gender on their ID.

But parliament, which since 2021 has been controlled by Nuevas Ideas, the party of President Nayib Bukele, failed to meet the deadline.

Avelar also held the government responsible in her lawsuit for failing to investigate or prosecute those responsible for the violence against her and her mother, which forced them to seek asylum in a European country in 2017.

In addition, the lawsuit mentions the forced displacement that she and her mother suffered because they had to flee the violence, including gang violence.

“El Salvador has a history of violence and discrimination against the LGBTI community that mainly affects transgender people,” Avelar said in an online call from the conference held in San Salvador by the organizations backing her case.

The violence suffered by Avelar, 45, included an attempt on her life in 1992.

In a March 2021 ruling on the case of Vicky Hernández, a Honduran trans activist murdered in June 2009, allegedly by agents of the State, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered a series of reparations for the LGBTI community to be fulfilled by Honduras in the area of human rights.

Among the provisions to be complied with, the Inter-American Court included the “right to recognition of legal personality, to personal liberty, to private life, to freedom of expression, to their name and to equality and non-discrimination,” as included in several articles of the American Convention on Human Rights, known as the San José Pact.

This international treaty, in force since 1978, makes Inter-American Court rulings final and binding on the States parties, which currently number 23 as some countries have pulled out. But Honduras has not complied with the requirements in the ruling.

 

Trans women, the most prone to violence

Transgender women are the most prone to suffering attacks, whether verbal or physical, the Amnesty International report says, because due to the lack of job opportunities they tend to engage in sex work on the streets, unlike trans men.

This was corroborated by the Guatemalan activist, Monroy, who pointed out that around 90 percent of trans women engage in sex work and are thus victims of all kinds of abuse and attacks.

“Most of us trans women have to do sex work because we don’t have social coverage or basic rights such as access to education, work, decent justice, not to mention a pension,” Monroy stressed.

She added that around 90 percent of transgender women engage in sex work on the streets of Guatemala, and the rest work in trades such as hairdressing, or are in the informal sector.

To this must be added the transphobic attitudes that prevail among the population of Central American countries.

“Discrimination is latent in social spaces, in parks, in restaurants, in nightclubs, and in many cases they reserve the right of admission when they identify you as being part of the LGBTI community, and much more so if you are trans,” Monroy said.

She added: “It’s horrible when they tell you: ‘there is no service here’, or there is, but they tell you ‘sit there in the corner where nobody will look at you’.”

She said that far from promoting laws in favor of gender identity, in Guatemala 20 lawmakers “who are totally religious are pushing for approval of Law 5940, which does not recognize gender identity and in which they want to implement the famous conversion therapies.”

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Woman and child walk through flood waters in east Jakarta, Indonesia. Climate change impacts are becoming more severe, and there is concern that vulnerable developing countries will not receive the assistance required to mitigate risks. Credit: Kompas/Hendra A Setyawan / World Meteorological Organization

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Jun 19 2023 (IPS)

Vulnerable countries, banking on robust climate negotiations, want an inclusive funding package to help them with the devastating impacts of climate change.

The poor progress at the 2023 Bonn Climate Change Conference, known as the 58th session of the Subsidiary Bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has dampened hopes for successful climate negotiations at COP 28.

SB58, which closed in Bonn, Germany, last week, was marked by wide disagreements, including the adoption of the agenda. The session ended without concrete outcomes on an array of key issues, such as the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund, the mitigation work programme, the global stock take (GST), and the global goal on adaptation (GGA).

Yamide Dagnet, Director for Climate Justice at Open Society Foundations. Credit: TJ Kirkpatrick, Open Society Foundations

“Even when we do not like the pace that the negotiations have gone, we have to find a way to a solution sooner than later; human existence is at stake,” Yamide Dagnet, Climate Justice Director at Open Society Foundations (OSF), told IPS.

The foundation has been supporting the climate change community in pushing for solutions.

“We need to see more efforts to make the whole society more resilient.”

She said having a financial package for investment and development aligned with the Paris Agreement was crucial.

Dagnet said there was an urgent need to support building resilient communities because climate change impacts are becoming more frequent and severe, destroying lives and livelihoods, particularly in vulnerable countries. Furthermore, the extreme weather events have also destroyed communities and cultures and damaged property.

“We need to work hard, sweat, and speed the pace of negotiations on our ability to find common ground and avoid a zero-sum game,” said Dagnet, a former climate change negotiator. She underscored that the Bonn meetings matter because they are laying the ground for discussions at COP28 and highlighting areas of cooperation and division.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its recent report, has called for accelerated action to adapt to climate change while cutting greenhouse gas emissions, warning of a huge gap in actions currently underway and what is needed to deal with the increasing risks.

Developed countries have called for the inclusion of adaptation in the GST.

Ephraim Mwepya Shitima, Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) developing countries’ commitment to mitigating climate change, should be recognized. He called for an additional message in the GST to acknowledge this “strong demonstration of commitment by vulnerable countries in the face of inadequate international support.”

Vulnerable countries want mitigation and adaptation to be included in a negotiated package at COP28, Dagnet said, noting that the G7 should fulfill their promise to provide adaptation finance.

“The financing of the Loss and Damage is part of the financing package that is needed. But we need to focus on everything, including mitigation and adaptation for vulnerable countries; otherwise, COP 28 will not achieve anything,” she said, highlighting that countries must develop more ambitious climate plans.

The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, agreed to keep the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

However, scientists have warned that the world is off target in emission reduction, and the influential UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has indicated that going beyond the 1.5°C threshold risks unleashing severe climate change impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves and rainfall.

The agreement also recognized that developed countries should take the lead in providing financial assistance to poor and vulnerable countries while encouraging voluntary contributions by other Parties.

Zimbabwean farmer Lindiwe Ncube gestures in an empty field in Bubi District in Matabeleland North province, where she harvested a only few bags of maize during a period of drought. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“Climate justice is to be fought for. This is a process, and if we are to make progress in the operationalization of a fund created at COP 27, we need to get clarity on how we can bring in money to that fund, and such money should not be increasing debt for vulnerable countries,” she noted.

Climate finance is a nagging issue for vulnerable countries already suffering the impacts of climate change. They need to adapt and mitigate against climate change by shifting to cleaner energy and making food systems resilient to the impacts of droughts, high temperatures, and floods.

Developed countries, wary of liability, have not delivered the finance they pledged to help vulnerable countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change. The $100 billion a year financing pledged 20 years ago has not been delivered, and prospects are dim that it will. The envisaged Loss and Damage Fund—if COP28 operationalizes it—will help vulnerable countries cope with climate-induced disasters.

Dagnet says there is a need for innovative financing for loss and damage, such as tapping blended finance, philanthropy, taxes, and levies on some economic sectors, such as fossil fuels and aviation.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently proposed that rich governments tax fossil fuel companies’ windfall profits. The Marshall Islands have also proposed levies on shipping through the International Maritime Organization. At the same time, other ideas for funding adaptation have included levying a small fee on international flights—which contribute to climate-heating emissions—and a global tax on financial market transactions, which the new fund could distribute.

While COP 27 prioritized the establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund, COP 28 is not about cherry-picking an issue to progress on, Dagnet argues, suggesting that the state of the Paris Agreement is key in climate negotiations.

“We need to deliver on all pillars of the Paris Agreement and demonstrate progress,” she said. “We are far from the Paris Agreement goals. The push for energy efficiency targets is really good, but at the same time, we cannot have the message that we will continue business as usual with fossil fuels.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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These human tragedies are playing out at Europe's land and sea borders on a daily basis. The first quarter of this year marked the deadliest in the central Mediterranean in six years, say humanitarian organisations in a joint statement. Credit: UN News Centre

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 19 2023 (IPS)

Make no mistake: European States are complicit in the death of thousands and thousands of human beings on their shores, land borders and at home. The massive drowning of hundreds of migrants close to Greece shores on 14 June is just a new chapter in Europe’s long series of continued violations of all international human rights laws.

So far, 10 worldwide known humanitarian organisations have strongly reacted, in a joint denunciation statement, asking the European Union (EU) to ‘end rights violations at Europe’s borders.’

In their Joint NGO statement: The EU must not be complicit, launched on 16 June, organisations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, OXFAM and Save the Children, among others, warned that once again, dozens of lives have been lost at Europe’s borders “due to the EU’s failure to allow people seeking protection to reach Europe safely.”

Hundreds are missing and presumed dead after the latest tragedy close to the Greek coast, with reports that amongst the dead are many women and children who were held below the deck of this overcrowded fishing vessel.

 

European States were “informed”

“The authorities of several Member States were informed[1] of the vessel in distress multiple hours before it capsized, and a Frontex aircraft was also present at the scene.” [2].

Organisations have advocated relentlessly with the European Commission, Member States and European policy makers to adopt measures to end human rights abuses and senseless deaths at EU borders. Instead, some EU states have drastically reduced search and rescue (SAR) capacity at sea, and restricted civil society SAR operations, which means that prompt and effective assistance cannot be provided to migrants in distress, in blatant disregard of international SAR obligations

These human tragedies are playing out at Europe’s land and sea borders on a daily basis. The first quarter of this year marked the deadliest [3] in the central Mediterranean in six years, adds the statement which was also signed by Danish Refugee Council, HIAS Europe, International Rescue Committee, Missing Children Europe, and SOS Children’s Villages International.

The joint humanitarian organisation statement goes on reporting that human rights watchdogs[4], civil society organisations, the United Nations[5] and countless investigative journalists as well as major media outlets[6] have documented the human rights violations, pushbacks[7] and systematic failures to engage in search and rescue that have now become the EU’s de facto migration management policy.

 

Europe urged to end rights abuse, senseless deaths

Hundreds of reports and evidence submissions have been published, including those based directly on witness and survivor testimonies.

Organisations have advocated relentlessly with the European Commission, Member States and European policy makers to adopt measures to end human rights abuses and senseless deaths at EU borders, it adds.

“Instead, some EU states have drastically reduced search and rescue (SAR) capacity at sea, and restricted[8] civil society SAR operations[9], which means that prompt and effective assistance cannot be provided to migrants in distress, in blatant disregard of international SAR obligations.”

 

More pushbacks and more deaths

Furthermore, on 8 June European Union’s Member States agreed on a reform of the European asylum and migration system, which is built on deterrence and systematic detention at EU borders, that will most probably incentivise more pushbacks, and deaths at sea, while the border monitoring mechanisms established so far are neither independent nor effective[10].

“This will only push people fleeing war and violence into even more dangerous routes and cause more unnecessary deaths. Meanwhile, EU Member States continue to rely on untransparent deals worth billions with third countries, in an attempt to rid themselves of their asylum responsibilities.”

In their joint statement, the human rights watchdogs urge a full investigation into these deaths, specifically into the role of EU Member States as well as the involvement of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, which supports the management of the EU’s external borders and the fight against cross-border crime.

 

An ‘open graveyard’ at Europe’s borders

“We urge the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, to finally take a clear stand on the open graveyard at Europe’s land and sea borders, and to hold Member States accountable.”

“We call for a European asylum system that guarantees people the right to seek protection in full respect of their rights. The EU should abandon the narrative of blaming shipwrecks on smugglers and stop seeing solutions solely in the dismantling of criminal networks.”

 

“A recipe for more abuse at EU borders”

Analysing the new reform of the European asylum and migration system, Human Rights Watch‘s Judith Sunderland on 9 June warned that EU migration reforms deal will increase suffering at borders.

“European governments pave the way for further abuse,” reported Sunderland, Human Rights Watch’s Associate Director, Europe and Central Asia Division.

A June 8 agreement among European Union countries on asylum procedures and migration management is “a recipe for more abuse at EU borders,” she warned.

Interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg endorsed policies that “will entrench rights violations, including expedited procedures without sufficient safeguards, increased use of detention, and unsafe returns.”

The deal creates an expedited “border procedure” for anyone applying for asylum following an irregular entry or disembarkation after a rescue at sea, she adds.

The procedure would be mandatory for asylum seekers coming from countries whose nationals have a less than 20 percent rate of being granted some form of protection and anyone authorities say withheld or used false information, Sunderland further reports.

 

Asylum seekers likely to be “locked up”

“In practice, many if not most people will be channelled into these sub-standard accelerated procedures with fewer safeguards, such as legal aid, than the normal procedure.”

People are also likely to be “locked up” during the procedure, which could take up to six months, with few exemptions for people with vulnerabilities, families, or children.

According to the human rights defender, imposing this procedure in conjunction with detention or detention-like conditions is directly linked to the twin interests of many EU countries in preventing people travelling further into Europe from countries of first entry and in deporting people as swiftly as possible.

The agreement would allow each country to determine what constitutes a “safe third country” where people can be returned, based on a vague concept of “connection” to that country. This could lead to people being sent to countries they have merely transited or where they have a family member but have themselves never been, and where their basic rights cannot be guaranteed.”

 

Want to further abuse human rights, just pay a fine!

“EU countries have rejected a mandatory relocation scheme, instead aiming to allow countries who won’t take asylum seekers to pay into a common fund that would be used to finance unspecified projects in non-EU countries, presumably focused on preventing migration.”

When the European Commission presented its proposal for a Migration Pact in September 2020, more than 70 organisations warned the proposal risked “exacerbating the focus on externalisation, deterrence, containment, and return.”

The remains of a shipwreck on a beach in western Libya. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
ROME, Jun 19 2023 (IPS)

A new catastrophe in the Mediterranean, this time off the coast of Greece. The number of drowned still to be determined — barely 100 survivors speak of more than 700 passengers on board— will be added to almost 30,000 lost at sea since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migrations.

Those are just the people that someone, family or friends, ever claimed. The actual figures are almost certainly much higher.

The long-awaited stability in Libya is key for the region and its people, including those in the northern Mediterranean. But the world continues to look the other way. After this new catastrophe at sea, we will only remember that an entire country, and its people, from a single line, so familiar now: “The boat had departed from Libya”

We read that the traffickers’ boat had left the coast of Libya bound for Italy. We rarely look deeper. Does anyone remember Libya other than as the port of departure after a new misfortune at sea?

Libya has always been a transit country from Africa to Europe. Today, however, we are talking about a scale of unfathomable magnitude, for a very simple reason. Libya has been in chaos for more than a decade, and by now the line dividing trafficking mafias, armed militias, and politicians has become almost invisible.

It might not have turned out this way. We all remember 2011, when a wave of protests against regimes entrenched for decades rocked the Middle East and North Africa. Once that unrest descended into conflict, Libya’s revolt became doubtless the most visible. The eight-month civil war monopolized TV channels and newspapers throughout the world.

The war seemed to end with the lynching of the country’s leader, Moammar Gaddafi, in October of that same year. Literally overnight, Libya disappeared from global attention, as focus shifted elsewhere. There was neither time nor international will to reflect on what had happened, and would come next.

It would prove a missed opportunity. Libya’s immediate future did not look bleak at the time. In 2012, after presidential elections in Tunisia and Egypt, Libya too elected a post-Ghaddafi democratic body, the first General Congress of the Nation, designed to replace the “umbrella” body opposition forces had created during the war, the National Transitional Council.

Elections brought hope to a society that had never been asked its opinion on anything. And at first, unlike what happened in neighboring countries, a self-dubbed “democratic” coalition of new political parties took hold, with political moderates prevailing over an emerging religious extremist wing.

But the euphoria only lasted until that summer. Sectarian attacks against Sufi Muslims took place, followed closely by the assassination of the US ambassador in Benghazi. Images of the burning American consulate anticipated the unraveling to come.

 

Migrants spotted aboard a sinking dinghy boat somewhere off the Libyan coast. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza / IPS

 

A new war broke out in 2014, but remained almost unreported and poorly understood outside Libya. The country split between two governments: one in Tripoli that had the backing of the UN, and another in Tobruk, in the east of the country, that had the backing of allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. Both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of Libya.

In the fall of 2015, emails leaked to the UK Guardian revealed that Bernardino León, the United Nations envoy for Libya charged with mediating the conflict, had maintained close links with the UAE, which backed Tobruk’s side in the war. Neutrality was assumed from the UN negotiatorbut this was seemingly not the case.

After “Leongate” forced the UN envoy’s resignation in November 2015, León would move to Dubai, where he was appointed director of the UAE’s Diplomatic Academy. International press remained largely silent on the scandal, and a promised UN investigation never saw the light of the day. Far from contributing to a rapprochement between Libya’s two warring sides, the UN process had led to the war dragging on, and the two sides to entrench.

In 2019, after five years of neither side gaining the upper hand, the Tobruk side, led by strongman Khalifa Haftar — a general who had helped bring Gaddafi to power, and was then later recruited by the CIA— launched a brutal offensive at Tripoli, receiving air and logistics cover from the United Arab Emirates.

The attack on Tripoli was fast and indiscriminate. Civilian targets were bombarded, provoking officials in London and Berlin to initially protest Hafter’s move as “an attack by someone who had not been attacked”. European governments debated calling for Haftar to reign in the onslaught.

Once again, European politics would come into play in Libya. EU parliamentary elections—held in May 2019— filled the Brussels parliament with politicians who were less concerned with the lost to average Libyans, and shared French President Emmanuel Macron’s more hawkish vision.

The French leader’s US counterpart, Donald Trump, also called France and Russia directly and told them he wanted neither Egypt nor the UAE, Haftar’s backers, as enemies. Washington would go on to support Haftar in Tobruk, though the rival Tripoli government had the backing of the UN.

All this would occur in a nation with enormous potential for prosperity. Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa, as well as reserves of underground water and promising mineral resources. It is very close to Europe geographically, boasting an enormous tourist potential and a network of ports that many governments would dream of.

With a population of barely six million, it would be easy for Libya to turn into a model of progress and well-being for the entire region. But the world’s decision-makers have other plans, it appears. In addition to the calls between Washington, Brussels and Moscow, governments in Ankara, Doha, Dubai, Cairo and Riyadh, among others, also know Libya’s strategic and financial value, and want their share. If they don’t get what they want there, each of them will make sure their rivals don’t either.

While global forces take the country’s fate out of Libyans’ own hands, thousands of Sudanese, Malians, Somalis, Nigeriens and others fleeing war and misery continue to pass through a mirage of a country. Those who survive the brutal desert journey fall in the hands of the deeply-rooted human trafficking networks, which operate unmolested amid Libya’s chaos.

The long-awaited stability in Libya is key for the region and its people, including those in the northern Mediterranean. But the world continues to look the other way. After this new catastrophe at sea, we will only remember that an entire country, and its people, from a single line, so familiar now: “The boat had departed from Libya.”