Africa

Five African fighters are heading home from the Women's Boxing World Championships with medals after the event in Turkey.

BBC Africa's Jameisha Prescod breaks down what we know about this rare disease.

“The good news is that human decisions are the largest contributors to disaster risk, so we have the power to substantially reduce the threats posed to humanity, and especially the most vulnerable among us” Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 20 2022 (IPS)

It is often said that a pessimistic person is an optimistic but well-informed person. Here, a good number of people may believe that human wit and inventiveness are capable of facing both the current and the looming disasters, like the impact of climate change, for instance.

Others, instead, may think that such human ingenuity will once more address the symptoms rather than the causes provoking them. Thus, they would be right to want to be informed and aware of the root causes of such disasters in order to push for eradicating them.

“By deliberately ignoring risk and failing to integrate it in decision making, the world is effectively bankrolling its own destruction. Critical sectors, from government to development and financial services, must urgently rethink how they perceive and address disaster risk”

Anyway, and regardless of people’s level of optimism or informed-optimism, the big problem may fall on the shoulders of ruling politicians, those who are so heavily influenced by big business that they act as mere decision-announcers rather than makers.

Likewise, the other international specialised bodies and the world’s scientific communities, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) reminds that human activity and behaviour is contributing to an increasing number of disasters across the world, putting millions of lives and every social and economic gain in danger.

 

The risks of optimism and underestimation

Its Global Assessment Report specifically blames these disasters on “a broken perception of risk based on optimism, underestimation and invincibility,” which leads to policy, finance and development decisions that exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and put people in danger.

“The world needs to do more to incorporate disaster risk in how we live, build and invest, which is setting humanity on a spiral of self-destruction,” said Amina J. Mohammed, United Nations Deputy Secretary General, who presented the report Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2022.

 

Stop ignoring the risk… deliberately

“Disasters can be prevented, but only if countries invest the time and resources to understand and reduce their risks,” said Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of UNDRR.

“By deliberately ignoring risk and failing to integrate it in decision making, the world is effectively bankrolling its own destruction. Critical sectors, from government to development and financial services, must urgently rethink how they perceive and address disaster risk.”

 

More disasters to come

Meanwhile, the scale and intensity of disasters are increasing, with more people killed or affected by disasters in the last five years than in the previous five, and the number of disaster events is projected to reach 560 a year – or 1.5 disasters a day – by 2030.

Adding to the long term impacts of disasters is the lack of insurance to aid in recovery efforts to build back better. Since 1980, just 40% of disaster-related losses were insured while insurance coverage rates in developing countries were often below 10%, and sometimes close to zero, the report said.

 

Reforming national budgets

A growing area of risk is around more extreme weather events as a result of climate change, recalls the group of experts from around the world who drafted the report as a reflection of the various areas of expertise required to understand and reduce complex risks.

In it, they called for reforming national budget planning to consider risk and uncertainty, while also reconfiguring legal and financial systems to incentivise risk reduction.

“The good news is that human decisions are the largest contributors to disaster risk, so we have the power to substantially reduce the threats posed to humanity, and especially the most vulnerable among us.”

 

Deaf ears

Such reiterated calls for reframing countries’ national budgets to address the priority areas, including disaster prevention and risk reduction, have been shockingly falling in deaf ears.

How else to explain that in 2021, the world military expenditure passed 2 trillion US dollars for the first time, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which has also informed that global nuclear arsenals grow as states continue to modernise, thus sharply increasing the dangers of an unimaginable number of victims of the most devastating death machinery?.

 

There is always enough money to fund destruction

Also, how to passively hear that a number of European countries have just doubled their military budgets amidst a looming economic and social crisis impacting their citizens?

And how else to explain that the world’s politicians continue to subsidise fossil fuel with six trillion dollars in just one year, being fully aware that such fuels harvest the lives of millions of humans?

 

The unwanted to be seen war on Nature

“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal. The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth,” said António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, in his forward to the recent report “Making Peace with Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies.”

 

Too many empty promises

Meanwhile, none of the agreed global goals for the protection of life on Earth and for halting the degradation of land and oceans has been fully met.

For instance, by deliberately ignoring the growing risks, three-quarters of the land and two thirds of the oceans are now impacted by human activities.

And one million of the world’s estimated 8 million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction, while many of the ecosystem services essential for human well-being are eroding.

Also, how do you understand that nearly 1 billion people worldwide live in extreme poverty and are disproportionately affected by stoppable and preventable land degradation, which threatens their shelter, food, water and income?

 

As India grows and develops, its economic production and energy consumption will increase. | Picture courtesy: Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

By R R Rashmi
NEW DELHI, May 20 2022 (IPS)

The recent IPCC report that came out in the month of March 2022 says that, by the end of the century, the temperature rise is likely to be 2 to 3.7 degrees if global emissions, as they stand today, are not curtailed. In fact, according to the report, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions need to come down by 45 percent globally (compared with 2005) by the end of 2030.

And current trends show that the reduction is falling quite short, as the total impact of all the nationally determined contributions put together is still not more than 11 percent. So, there is a vast gap between what we need to be doing and where we are currently.

 

First, let us understand the global context

The urgency of curtailing emissions is not lost on the political class. However, what continues to be a fraught matter is the share of responsibility that different countries are willing to accept when it comes to minimising their CO2 emissions.

Developed nations, which have contributed the most to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and have the resources and capability to curtail emissions, are unwilling to take on the greater share of this responsibility going forward. Most developing nations feel that this is unfair, given that they have contributed less (or minimally) to the problem and are still being forced to contribute equally

Developed nations, which have contributed the most to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and have the resources and capability to curtail emissions, are unwilling to take on the greater share of this responsibility going forward.

Most developing nations feel that this is unfair, given that they have contributed less (or minimally) to the problem and are still being forced to contribute equally. Moreover, fast-growing economies like Brazil, China, and India have ever-expanding energy needs, considering the stage of development they are at.

Their reliance on fossil fuels at this time will naturally be higher. The fundamental problem remains one of apportioning the responsibility or ownership of future efforts, as the available carbon space in the atmosphere needs to be vacated (by developed nations) for those who need it (many countries in the Global South), but that is not happening.

Against the backdrop of this global competition for capturing carbon space, at the COP 26 summit in Glasgow last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India will achieve net-zero status by 2070.

The focus for India will now be on increasing the share of renewable energy in energy production and generation both in relative terms and absolute volume so as to eventually phase down consumption of coal and fossil fuels taking place in the economy across various sectors, and improving the carbon sink.

 

Increasing the uptake of renewable energy in India

There will likely be a large degree of government mobilisation towards solar and wind energy as well as biomass. Each of these has a role to play in India’s energy transition. However, given our climate, solar will receive the largest push.

The prime minister has announced that, by 2030, India will create 500 gigawatts of solar capacity. Currently, the national peak demand for electricity is around 203 gigawatts, whereas we have a capacity of around 400 gigawatts, including the renewables already in place.

So, by creating 500 gigawatts of solar electricity capacity, we should be able to meet a large share of our electricity demand even as it continues to increase. The prime minister wanted this to be in the range of 50 percent, meaning 50 percent of the electricity needs would be met from renewables by 2030. But, in actual fact, this may need a still higher quantum of renewables electricity capacity to be created.

The difficulty is that the efficiency of renewables is low, which is why the actual uptake of solar energy in the energy system is not more than 10 percent. In other words, we are only able to use approximately 10 percent of the electricity capacity that is created with renewables.

Even if we include the generation from nuclear or large hydro power in the small renewables, the share of renewable energy in the total electricity generation is still at about 21–22 percent, as compared to 78 percent with coal, oil, and gas.

So the question before us, as we try to make an energy transition, is: How do we enhance the uptake of renewables in the electricity system and how do we stabilise the grid? And where will the funding come from?

Even if India is able to produce intermittent renewable energy at a low variable cost, there are other systemic fixed costs that need to be factored in. These include the need for meeting the baseload in the grid (that is, the minimum level of electricity demand over 24 hours), transmitting the energy, transporting it across different states and regions, and, in the case of solar, making it available when the sun is not shining.

All of these require considerable investment in infrastructure and systems. And today our domestic financial system alone is not capable of mobilising finance at this scale.

So, the primary problem in making this energy transition is twofold. First, India needs to create technology for energy storage, which can meet the baseload in the grid and stabilise it when solar or wind energy is not available.

And, second, we need to mobilise the finance at a scale that can help us create a capacity of 500 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030, and more as we go along. Every single gigawatt of renewable energy is going to cost approximately INR 6 crore. And not only in terms of financial cost, this kind of investment in renewables requires a lot of land as well.

So, the question is: Can we really mobilise these funds and resources at this scale and overcome the technology hump of renewable energy storage?

There is another challenge that lies ahead. Certain industrial sectors in the economy—for instance, petrochemicals, steel, and cement—are extremely inflexible in terms of the kind of technology and energy that they need.

So, even if we are able to reduce the emissions intensity of our GDP by improving energy efficiency and the proportion of renewable energy in our energy system, it is not going to be enough. As India grows and develops, its economic production and energy consumption will increase.

And, for these sectors, replacing carbon will not be possible without the availability of alternative fuels, which are necessary for certain industrial production and processes. Such fuels are necessary for transport and cement and steel production, which are likely to grow by three times.

Therefore, to make the transition, we need heavy investment in alternate low-carbon fuels such as hydrogen and natural gas. We also require tech innovation at scale to bring down the cost of these fuels and enable the production of steel and cement at an affordable and competitive rate.

In summary, India’s mitigation efforts must revolve largely around mobilising funds and investing in tech innovation at scale.

 

What India needs to focus on when it comes to adaptation

Enhancing climate resilience is going to be critical for a country like ours. Given that many states face unique kinds of climate threats, each of them must have a climate resilience strategy, so that the productivity of the economic system does not get compromised in the process of addressing climate change.

While we focus on making changes to our energy system, we need to take simultaneous measures to ensure that agricultural productivity remains stable, water does not become scarce, coastal communities are not threatened by the rise in sea level, and so on.

One way to do this is by increasing the capacities of the communities to address climate change. Managing water resources is going to be the key to adaptation efforts, given that close to 80 percent of the water in India is consumed in agriculture.

At the same time, we need to insulate communities from climate disasters like floods, droughts, cyclones, and extreme heatwaves, which requires investment in infrastructure, for instance, roads and telecom structures.

Here, the challenge is that there are very few entities coming forward to make the kind of investments we need. In the case of mitigation efforts, there are business models that can generate returns for the investors. But, in the case of adaptation and resilient infrastructure, there are no financial returns, and it is only the government budget or public resources that we have to fall back on.

 

There is reason to be hopeful

While the task ahead of us entails massive systemic changes that may seem daunting, we should not lose hope.

The intensity of global discussions has permeated into national strategies, such as India’s. The successful execution of our strategies depends on political commitment, which already exists at the national and state level. State MPs and MLAs are now thinking and talking about climate change—this was not the case 10 years ago.

What we need now is for state climate action plans (many of which exist) to incorporate a framework for mobilising investments and measuring benefits and outcomes. Once this is done, it’s only a matter of time before a climate lens is fully integrated into our development policies too.

Corporate India has also woken up to their contributions to worsening climate change, and are beginning to shift their priorities accordingly. Many industry majors such as the Tatas, Mahindra & Mahindra, Wipro, Shell India, and Dalmia have announced net-zero targets by 2040 or 2050.

The SEBI has mandated 1,000 top companies listed on the stock exchange to follow a mandatory framework of business sustainability and responsibility reporting and make disclosures on some of the key environmental parameters. This is a step in the right direction, and once we develop a robust disclosure system that includes penalties and rewards for actions taken, we will begin to see a lot more movement in this area.

When it comes to citizens, there are a few things that can be done. The first is to build our own awareness, and that of those around us, when it comes to climate change impacts. We must integrate the environmental consciousness into our education system.

Doing this can help build community action against policies and actions that have adverse consequences for the environment. This is difficult but not impossible to do, given that young people today are much more environmentally conscious than the previous generations.

The second course, of action, is to develop a deeper understanding of our own resource efficiency—how much we are consuming, recycling, or restoring. Earlier we would talk about three Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle); now there are six Rs (Rethink, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair).

We need to move towards a circular economy, which will require participation from all citizens as well as industry. India has a head start here, given that traditionally we have had a culture of recycling and reusing. Industry needs to move in this direction too and follow the norms for extended producers’ responsibility. Improving resource efficiency, even in our own homes, will go a long way in making a difference to how climate change progresses in the coming years.

Rajani Ranjan Rashmi is a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Global Environmental Research, TERI, where he works on climate change, mitigation and adaptation strategies, carbon markets, and related issues

 

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

Two boys collect fresh bread for their families at a bakery rehabilitated by WFP in Aleppo. Credit: WFP/Jessica Lawson. May 2022.
 
Syria remains one of the World Food Programme’s biggest emergencies, and the numbers are staggering. A quarter of all refugees in the world are Syrian and they have sought safety in 130 countries. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has made a political solution in Syria even more unlikely. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation is deteriorating dramatically.

By Sinan Hatahet
ISTANBUL, May 20 2022 (IPS)

Moscow’s decision to intervene militarily in Syria in 2015 effectively preserved the Assad regime in Damascus. Russian air power and intelligence support, along with Iranian-backed militias on the ground, allowed the regime to beat the opposition and brutally reassert its control over much of Syria.

Since March 2020, the conflict seems to be entering a new period of stalemate with the delineation of three distinctive territories with static frontlines.

Yet this latest de-escalation phase is inherently volatile and has persisted chiefly thanks to the Russian-Turkish fragile entente in north-western Syria and the US interim but still ongoing presence in north-eastern Syria.

Ultimately, Assad’s endgame is to regain control of all the Syrian territory, and he has shown no signs of commitment toward negotiating a peaceful epilogue to the conflict.

Assad believes he has time on his side. In the West and in the region, there is lagging support for regime change in Damascus and adopting an alternative framework for a gradual transition towards ‘peace’.

Even Assad’s opponents seem to have pragmatically abandoned their initial objective of toppling the regime and are primarily seeking to preserve a form of autonomy instead. Nevertheless, without an agreement with Damascus all forms of autonomous governance in Syria are vulnerable and dependent on temporary arrangements among the foreign backers of the different ‘authorities’ on the ground.

Sinan Hatahet

Assad’s backers

Assad’s capacity to reclaim undivided authority over Syria depends on the continuous support of his allies, but so does his survival. The precarious state of Syria’s economy, US and EU sanctions, and severely damaged infrastructure constantly threaten the state’s integrity and capacity to maintain its institutions. To prevent a structural collapse of the Syrian state, both Russia and Iran are playing pivotal roles.

Iran provides oil, gas, and funds, while Russia provides security and diplomacy to accelerate Assad’s regional and international rehabilitation, which is synonymous with investments and financial aid. Thus, it is safe to assume that Syria is particularly exposed to the Ukraine war’s fallout as Russia is expected to divert its attention and resources away from the region.

A distracted Russia in Ukraine has several implications on Syria’s current state of affairs – but to varying degrees. Militarily and security-wise, even though Turkey or the US could exploit Russian weaknesses in Syria to challenge the status quo, it is highly doubtful as it would demand further commitment to Syria, and currently there does not seem to be an appetite to engage more.

Geopolitically, the Ukrainian conflict may lead to structural changes in neighbouring security complexes and further strengthen Turkey and Iran as regional powers. Still, the extent of its impact on Syria is also limited. Instead, it is primarily worsening economic and humanitarian conditions from which Syrians are likely to suffer.

Syria’s rising food insecurity

Although Moscow does not back Damascus financially, and Russian exports represent only 3.7 per cent of Syrian imports, the latter depends on critical Russian produces such as wheat and fodder.

Wheat is essential for food security, given the centrality of bread in Syrians’ diets. Syria’s annual need is estimated at around 4.3 million tonnes; in 2021, Syria imported 1.2 million tons and produced only 1.05 million tons resulting in long-hours lines for bread In regime-held areas, and unprecedented hikes in prices.

The deterioration of Syrian food security is not a product of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Still, it is expected to worsen as access to Russian food products is currently interrupted.

Moreover, alternative food supplies are not easy to find as imports from most countries are compromised by sanctions and the lack of Syrian foreign currency reserves to finance such transactions.

For the time being, Damascus seems to rely on India to compensate for the loss of Russian wheat and fodder. Still, in the long run, the sustainability of such a route is questionable, especially given the increasing costs of supply chains and the growing global inflation rates.

The economic effects of the war in Ukraine have already been felt across Syria. Various products related to wheat and flour production have already seen rapid surges in market prices. The impact is not only felt in regime-held territories but also in north-western and north-eastern Syria, which previously did not suffer from a lack of access to international markets.

The prices of basic imported commodities have also risen. Access to adjacent markets also became more difficult as several countries, including Turkey, started imposing bans on exporting grains, cooking oil, and other agricultural commodities to Syria.

The availability problem

The rise in prices has also impacted humanitarian aid. In March, the national average cost of the World Food Programme’s standard food basket increased by 24 per cent over one month. Similarly, the health sector has been affected. Medical facilities in opposition-held areas rely entirely on international funding to provide essential services and medication.

In addition to the disruption in supply chains and increased costs, allocated funds for the sector dropped by more than 40 per cent in the last ten months, resulting in the closure of hospitals and vital services.

Finally, the Russian-Western diplomatic confrontation and the lack of a political venue for de-escalation would potentially threaten the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Syria. The UNSC’s unanimous adoption of resolution 2585 in June 2021 to renew cross-border aid delivery for another 12 months was the result of a US-Russian dialogue that seems improbable as the Ukraine conflict rages on.

The interruption of cross-border aid delivery would demand a quick and effective response to bring relief to the two million civilians and IDPs in need in Idlib and northern Aleppo.

Fundamentally, the Ukrainian conflict will not trigger a paradigm shift in the Syrian conflict. It will instead entrench the status quo, further complicate negotiations over a political transition, and worsen the humanitarian conditions in the country.

The international community believes that food security in Syria is an affordability issue, which justifies the maintenance of sanctions as a lever against Assad. Nevertheless, the most recent dynamics show an increasing availability problem.

To prevent a looming food security catastrophe, humanitarian and donor countries should ensure the continuous flow of humanitarian assistance to Syria, as they should maintain their efforts to compartmentalise aid delivery from political and securities issues.

The Assad regime has shown no signs of relinquishing any of its ‘sovereign rights’ in delivering aid in Syria. However, similar to 2014, desperate times call for desperate measures, and Damascus could be coarse into accepting a new model. But more than ever, Syria needs a different approach to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid.

Sinan Hatahet is a Senior Associate Fellow at Al Sharq Forum and advises a number of think tanks on Syria. Previously, he headed the media office of the Syrian National Coalition.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

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The controversial deal to send migrants from the UK to Rwanda is good news for its hospitality business.

Delegates at the Youth Forum at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa, demanded that all forums in the future include their participation. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Lyse Comins
Durban, May 20 2022 (IPS)

Ashley has vast work experience. She has laboured by the sweat of her brow in the blistering sun on the streets of Guatemala, in the open fields on farmlands and indoors, toiling for long hours to the hum of a sewing machine.

Her work resume might be impressive to some – street trader, farmworker and tailor – but she, like 160 million children around the world, is trapped in child labour, working desperately to support her impoverished family and provide for her education.

“For most working children, it is very hard for us to express ourselves. All working children have different necessities, and most of their parents cannot supply these: clothing, health, and education. The root cause of child labour is poverty because it makes us as working children get out of our houses to risk our lives to be able to help our family,” she said.

“Working children are not done with formal education. They have not finished primary education because their families do not have financial resources. We need to go out and financially sustain ourselves economically. In other cases, third parties abuse them,” Ashely told delegates at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

“In my country and also the whole of Latin America, you will see every day how children are posted in parks, by the traffic lights, doing any kind of work in bad conditions.”

Ashley took time out from her work to share her story and join a small band of teenage peers and child labour survivors to make history, representing the children of 10 countries from across the globe at the conference, which runs in Durban, South Africa until Friday 20 May.

Like Ashley, across the globe in India, Amar Lala was born into a poor family and worked as a child labourer before being rescued by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, a social reformer who has tirelessly campaigned against child labour and advocated for the universal right to education.

“I used to work in the stone quarry breaking stones every day and putting those stones into pots. We used to get hurt every day but had no chance to get to hospital to get treatment. I had no idea, and even my family had no idea what education was. I was the luckiest boy to get helped when the Nobel Laureate saw me and rescued me. I got the opportunity to study and decided to become a lawyer to stand for other children who are like me. Today, I can proudly say I am a lawyer standing in court, every single day fighting for children who have been exploited and are in child labour and bondage,” Lala said.

Nothing about us, without us, was a clear message at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa. These delegates were among those who drew up their own call to action at the conference. Credit: Lyse Comins/IPS

Children affected by child labour, like Ashley, Kabwe from Kenya, Mary Ann from South Africa and survivors like Lala, now 25, shared their stories before a group of children stood in unison to deliver the Children’s Call to Action, at the first global conference, ever, to include a platform for the voices of children impacted by child labour. The conference hosted more than 60 children and young people from different parts of the world, representing Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Organisers withheld the children’s full names to protect their identities and personal safety.

Representatives from the International Labour Organization, including Thomas Wissing of the Technical Advisory Cluster, chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Mikiko Otami, SA Minister of Employment and Labour, Thulas Nxesi and other high profile international government, business and civil society leaders were present during the session, either physically or virtually.

In their call-to-action statement, which captures the expectations of children who attended the conference, they noted that the conference was being held at a “critical moment” when the world is seeing an increase in child labour, especially on the African continent, where 92,2 million children are entrapped, some 80% working in the agricultural sector.

In summary, the children said they were asking for:

• Social protection and the provision of safe spaces for children during emergencies. Governments should make budgetary allocations to support and enrich children’s development, especially in poor, marginalised communities. Initiatives should be formulated, inclusive of children’s voices, to ensure that children’s rights and well-being are not violated or relegated to the background in emergencies. All states should adhere to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 and nationally adopted policies and laws on protecting the child.
• Apportionment/ allocation of budget. Richer countries should provide development assistance to poorer countries, especially in emergencies. For example, the provision of safe spaces for shelters that can be used to empower children and their parents/caregivers on matters of child labour. Governments should commit to initiatives that enhance the appropriation of finances to maximise their use towards support for access to social protection, free quality public education, health care for all children and free sanitary towels to ensure full school attendance. Stakeholders must be empowered to demand accountability and transparency from governments at all times. Corruption and the misappropriation of funds will disallow the opportunities for free access to quality public education for all and diminish children’s abilities to pursue their dreams of becoming meaningful members of society.
• Ensure the democratic representation of children and young people in the making and implementation of key decisions that affect them the most at all times. Organisations such as student unions, child-based groups and civil society organisations must engage with children to find solutions.

“We children and young people of the world…are saying ‘no to child labour’. We are asking governments and all other actors to respect and consider our voices to eradicate child labour by 2025. We hope that this conference does not become one of just words, but of actions,” the children said.

Commenting on the children’s involvement in the conference, Otami said they had helped provide a clear understanding of what the world was fighting for and the need for the holistic implementation of children’s rights.

“Hearing the voice of the children is very important. We talk about evidence-based research – what the children are experiencing and thinking is part of the evidence,” she said.

Wissing said children’s participation had been discussed at previous conferences, but the South African government had decided that it was ready to give children a platform to speak to the world’s policymakers.

“Children’s rights are not something you can negotiate according to local conditions or problems. These are aspirations that need to be put into action. You look at these conventions (on the rights of the child and the eradication of child labour), but if you don’t implement them, we will be discussing the same thing in 50 years. We want to eliminate child labour,” Wissing said.

He said the ILO was working with trade unions to lobby businesses for decent wages and working conditions for parents so that their children could go to school

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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

A mountainous landscape in the area of the headwaters of the Velhas River, where "barraginhas", the Portuguese name for holes dug like lunar craters in the hills and slopes, prevent erosion by swallowing a large amount of soil that sediments the upper reaches of the river, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
BELO HORIZONTE/ITABIRITO, Brazil , May 19 2022 (IPS)

The southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais owes its name to the main economic activity throughout its history: mining – of gold since the 17th century and later iron ore, which took on an industrial scale with massive exports in the 20th century.

The so-called Iron Quadrangle, a mountainous area of some 7,000 square kilometers in the center of the state, concentrates the state’s minerals and mining activity, long questioned by environmentalists, who have been impotent in the face of the industry’s economic clout.

But the threat of water shortages in Greater Belo Horizonte, population six million, along with two horrific mining accidents, reduced the disparity of forces between the two sides. Now environmentalists can refer to actual statistics and events, not just ecological arguments.

Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state, experienced an unprecedented water crisis in 2014 and 2015, during a drought that affected the entire southeast of Brazil.

“For the first time we experienced shortages here that only the semi-arid north of the state was familiar with,” said Marcelo da Fonseca, general director of the Mining Institute of Water Management (Igam).

On Jan. 25, 2019, a tailings dam broke in Brumadinho, 35 kilometers from Belo Horizonte as the crow flies. The tragedy killed 270 people and toxic sludge contaminated more than 300 kilometers of the Paraopeba River, which provided 15 percent of the water for the Greater Belo Horizonte region (known as RMBH), whose supply has not yet recovered.

On Nov. 5, 2015, a similar accident had claimed 19 lives in Mariana, 75 kilometers from Belo Horizonte, and silted up more than 600 kilometers of the Doce River on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. (The river, whose waters run eastward, do not supply the RMBH.)

Two years of drought, in 2014 and 2015, frightened the population of Greater Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. For the first time the threat of water shortages was felt, said the director general of the Minas Gerais Water Management Institute, Marcelo da Fonseca. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Mining hazards

Minas Gerais has more than 700 mining tailings dams. The latest data from the State Environmental Foundation (Feam) show 33 in different degrees of emergency, four of which are at level three – high risk and mandatory evacuation of endangered residents – and nine at level 2 – recommended evacuation.

“We are hostages of the mining companies, they occupy the territory and make other economies unviable,” said Camila Alterthum, one of the founders and coordinators of the Cresce Institute and an activist with the Fechos, Eu Cuido movement, promoted by the Rio de las Velhas Watershed Committee.

Fechos is the name of an Ecological Station, a 603-hectare integral conservation area belonging to the municipality of Nova Lima, but bordering Belo Horizonte.

“There are mountains here that recharge the Cauê aquifer, which supplies more than 200,000 inhabitants of southern Belo Horizonte and a neighborhood in Nova Lima,” an adjoining municipality, said Alterthum, who lives in Vale do Sol, a neighborhood adjacent to Fechos.

Activist Camila Alterthum is opposed to mining, which she says is a permanent threat to the destruction of nature and water sources. She is fighting to expand the Fechos Ecological Station, whose forests contribute to the water supply for more than 200,000 inhabitants of Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Her movement presented to the Minas Gerais state legislature a bill to expand Fechos by 222 hectares, to provide more water and preserve local biodiversity.

But Vale, Brazil’s largest mining company, aims to expand its two local mines in that area.

In order to acquire the land, it is offering double the number of hectares for conservation, a counterproposal rejected by the movement because it would not meet the environmental objectives and most of it is an area that the company must preserve by law anyway.

A fiercer battle was unleashed by the decision of the Minas Gerais government’s State Environmental Policy Council, which has a majority of business and government representatives, to approve on Apr. 30 a project by the Taquaril company to extract iron ore from the Curral mountain range.

Forestry engineer Julio Carvalho, of the Itabirito municipal government, stands next to a “barraginha” on a private rural property, whose owners joined the municipal effort to contain soil loss and river sedimentation in this area of southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

This mountain range is the most prominent landscape feature of Belo Horizonte, in addition to being important in terms of water and environmental aspects for the capital, although it is located on its border, on the side of the municipality of Nova Lima. The mining threat triggered a huge outcry from environmentalists, artists and society in general.

Droughts and erosion

There are other threats to the RMBH’s water supply. “We are very close to the springs, so we depend on the rains that fall here,” Fonseca told IPS at Igam headquarters in Belo Horizonte.

Two consecutive years of drought have seriously jeopardized the water supply.

Two basins supply the six million inhabitants of the 34 municipalities making up Greater Belo Horizonte.

The Velhas River accounts for 49 percent of the water supply and the Paraopeba River for 51 percent, according to Sergio Neves, superintendent of the Metropolitan Business Unit of the Minas Gerais Sanitation Company (Copasa), which serves most of the state.

The Paraopeba River stopped supplying water after the 2019 accident, but its basin has two important reservoirs in the tributaries. The one on the Manso River, for example, supplies 34 percent of the RMBH.

The phenomenon of “voçorocas” (gullies) is repeated in several parts of Itabirito and Ouro Preto, the municipalities where the Velhas river basin originates, in southeastern Brazil. The soil is vulnerable to erosion and measures to mitigate the damage are finally beginning to proliferate in a region dominated by iron ore mining. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The Velhas River only has a small hydroelectric power plant reservoir, with a capacity of 9.28 megawatts, but it is generating only four megawatts. It is run-of-river, that is, it does not store enough water to regulate the flow or compensate for low water levels.

In addition, sedimentation has greatly reduced its storage capacity since it began to operate in 1907. The soil upstream is vulnerable to erosion and has been affected by urban and agricultural expansion, local roads and various types of mining, not only of iron ore, which aggravate the sedimentation of the rivers, said Fonseca.

Decentralized solutions

The municipal government of Itabirito, which shares the headwaters of the Velhas basin with Ouro Preto, the gold capital in the 18th century, is promoting several actions mentioned by Fonseca to mitigate erosion and feed the aquifers that sustain the flow of the rivers.

Businessman and environmentalist Ronaldo Guerra stands on his farm where he promotes ecotourism and exhibits his proposal for a succession of small dams as a mechanism for storing water on the surface and in the water table, strengthening the forests and the hydrographic basin in a mining region of southeastern Brazil where there is growing concern about the water supply. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

It is intriguing to see craters in some rural properties in Itabirito, especially on hills or gently sloping land.

They are “barraginhas”, explained Julio Carvalho, a forestry engineer and employee of the Municipal Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development. They are micro-dams, holes dug to slow down the runoff of rainwater that causes erosion.

This system prevents a large part of the sediment from flowing into the rivers, as well as the phenomenon of “voçorocas” (gullies, in Portuguese), products of intense erosion that abound in several parts of Itabirito and Ouro Preto, municipalities where the first tributaries of the Velhas are born.

As these are generally private lands, the municipal government obtains financing to evaluate the properties, design the interventions and put them out to bid, in agreement with the committees that oversee the watersheds, Carvalho told IPS.

The municipality of Itabirito is the “water tank” of Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. The municipal government is promoting programs aimed at revitalizing the watershed that supplies nearly half of the six million inhabitants of Greater Belo Horizonte, explains Frederico Leite, environmental secretary of the municipality, which depends on mining activity. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

For country roads, which generate a great deal of erosion in the undulating topography, “dry boxes” are used, as well as small holes in the banks to retain the torrents or at least curb their speed, he said.

Other “mechanical land use and conservation practices” include recovering water sources through reforestation and fencing to prevent animals from invading water sources and trampling the surrounding areas.

Itabirito is also seeking to dredge the river of the same name, which crosses the city, to reduce sedimentation, which was aggravated by flooding in January, when the water level in the river rose unusually high.

Environmental education, a program of payments for environmental services and the expansion of conservation areas, in the city as well, are the plans implemented by Felipe Leite, secretary of environment and sustainable development of Itabirito since 2019.

“We want to create a culture of environmental preservation,” partly because “Itabirito is the water tank of Belo Horizonte,” he told IPS.

The municipal government chose to cooperate with the mining industry, especially with the Ferro Puro company, which decided to pave a road and reforest it with flowers as part of a tourism project.

In São Bartolomeu, a town in the municipality of Ouro Preto, Ronald Guerra, an ecotourism entrepreneur, proposes a succession of small dams and reservoirs as a way of retaining water, feeding the water table and preventing erosion.

On his 120-hectare farm, half of which is recognized as a Private Natural Heritage Reserve –a private initiative conservation effort – he has 13 small dams and raises fish for his restaurant and sport fishing.

The son of a doctor from Belo Horizonte, he opted for rural life and agroecology from a young age. He was secretary of environment of Ouro Preto and today he is an activist in several watershed committees, non-governmental organizations and efforts for the promotion of local culture.

Orlando Pirates aim to brush aside their poor domestic form and become the first South African side to win the Confederation Cup when they face RS Berkane.

A Nigerian judge grants Nnamdi Kanu dispensation to watch the climax of his favourite team's season.

Tuberculosis has killed 1,5 million people in 2020 - mostly in African and Asian countries - while two million people died of COVID-19 worldwide during the same period. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Angelique Luabeya Kany Kany
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, May 19 2022 (IPS)

It is time to treat the scourge of Tuberculosis scourge with the same urgency as we did the COVID-19 pandemic.

As we emerge from the devastating toll of the pandemic on people’s lives and on global economies, we must wake up to face the staggering toll of 1.5 million Tuberculosis deaths and 10 million new infections recorded in 2020. And these deaths were mostly in African and Asian countries.

These deaths were largely invisible as we fought COVID-19. Even as countries lift COVID-19 restrictions due to declining numbers, we know that Tuberculosis continues to spread.

Access to Tuberculosis care was also hampered by the pandemic restrictions and COVID-19 prioritization on diagnostic and care at healthcare facilities. The World Health Organization (WHO) goal is to reduce new TB cases by 90% and TB deaths by 95% by 2035. We have 13 years left to reach that milestone.

Unfortunately, most people at risk of Tuberculosis are from low- and middle-income countries who will not afford costly vaccines or drugs. The incentive for these big pharma companies to invest in Tuberculosis vaccine development is low.

The harsh reality is that we still don’t have a protective vaccine, and drug resistant TB cases are rising. While research is ongoing, a critical factor hampering progress is the lack of funding. The only TB vaccine available, Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) developed 1920, has limited efficacy.

The relatively quick availability of several vaccines, treatment, and diagnosis for COVID-19 illustrates how billions of dollars in funding can speed up vaccine development against a new deadly disease. For example, the funding available for COVID-19 vaccine development is estimated at 107 billions of dollars while only 0.117 billions available for Tuberculosis.

Yet Tuberculosis has killed 1,5 million people in 2020 – mostly in African and Asian countries – while two million people died of COVID-19 worldwide during the same period. To date, there are 109 vaccine candidates for COVID-19 and only 14 for TB. As noted, we only have one Tuberculosis vaccine while there are 18 vaccines available for COVID 19 .

Tuberculosis research needs at least US$15-billion to have a chance to reach the 2035 target. At the moment, researchers have access to only half of this amount.

Why is funding for a deadly and centuries old disease lacking?

One can argue that Tuberculosis research is too expensive. We have several phases for testing any new drugs or vaccines in clinical trials. Before testing in humans, new drugs and vaccines are tested in animals for adequate safety and immune response. Then there are at least four phases of testing in clinical trials. The next cost implication is that there are several strains of the Tuberculosis bacteria which increases testing costs.

Tuberculosis is a chronic disease with slow progression from infection to disease. Measuring vaccine efficacy requires resources, time and a large sample size of people participating in these studies. These steps increase complexity and cost for Tuberculosis vaccine development. But these costs are small compared to what we spend on COVID-19 research.

Could the reluctance in funding stem from the fact that the Tuberculosis burden falls largely on poor countries in the global South? Tuberculosis is not a pandemic, so the global urge to find a vaccine or drugs is different.

Pharmaceutical companies usually invest in drugs and vaccines from which they can earn profits. Rich countries therefore have other health priorities. Whereas rich countries were impacted by COVID-19, Tuberculosis is largely managed there.

Unfortunately, most people at risk of Tuberculosis are from low- and middle-income countries who will not afford costly vaccines or drugs. The incentive for these big pharma companies to invest in Tuberculosis vaccine development is low.

In the 2016 report of “The catalytic framework to end AIDS, TB and eliminate Malaria in Africa by 2030”, the African union (AU) itself noted that “funding for research and innovation is not prioritized in AU members, intra Africa cooperation lags behind and partnerships are still largely drawn outside Africa”. While external funding is critical, African countries should reinforce and rethink strategies to accelerate Tuberculosis vaccine and drugs development.

As we roll out COVID-19 vaccines and ARVs are made available to HIV patients, we must renew our efforts to do the same with Tuberculosis. Tuberculosis carries a high cost of infection, treatment and death. It is the biggest killer for HIV patients.

African and Asian countries should invest in seeking a vaccine and drug development because they have the heaviest burden. In addition, they must strengthen weak health systems and bolster efforts to identify and adequately treat Tuberculosis cases to stop transmissions.

HIV and COVID-19 pandemics have shown that money can be released when human kind is threatened. The rapid spread of SARS-CoV2 illustrates the fact that the modern world is a global village.

The world should wake up to the rise of microbial resistance that includes Tuberculosis Drug resistant Tuberculosis is a real threat to humanity.

We should not wait for a COVID-like crisis to act. We need to harness the partnerships from this pandemic to prevent another. A world without Tuberculosis feels like a dream. An efficient vaccine can make it come true.

Dr Angelique Luabeya Kany Kany is the Chief research officer at the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative, University of Cape Town. Dr Luabeya is the Principal investigator of several novel TB vaccines clinical trials, two COVID 19 vaccine trials and diagnostics studies. She is a WHO-TDR Clinical research and development fellow.

 

The Children in Freedom School in Kenya is teaching its students to love their identity as Africans.

Gabon captain and Barcelona striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang retires from international football ahead of 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying.

Amar Lai, a former child labourer, is now a human rights lawyer and a trustee of the 100 Million Campaign. He was saved from child labour by Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi who identified him while running an education campaign in the area where he worked alongside his parents in a quarry. Credit: Lucky Agbovar/IPS

By Fawzia Moodley
Durban, May 19 2022 (IPS)

Amar Lai’s first memories are working alongside his parents and siblings in a quarry, breaking rocks. He was aged four.

Now chatting to Lai, a confident 25-year-old human rights lawyer, it is hard to believe he was once a child labourer.

But when you hear his story, it is easy to understand why this man saved by the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, which rescues bonded children, has dedicated his life to the same cause.

Lai was interviewed on the sidelines of the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban until May 20, 2022. The conference has seen five days of intense discussion on how to end child labour, including exposés of hazardous working conditions the children find themselves in.

At the tender age of four, Lai was forced to work in a quarry in Rajasthan, India.  His family were destitute, so they had to work for a pittance to put food on the table. They lived in a hut.

“We used to work from morning to night, and sometimes the whole night. My family was not allowed to miss a single day of work because it meant they would not be paid, which meant no lunch or dinner.

His father, Lai recalls, was paid a “small amount of money, and that’s how we survived”.

It was back-breaking work, especially for the little ones – and dangerous.

“You had to hold a machine to break the mine, and sometimes the stones would fall down. My brother and sister were often injured because when breaking the stone, you needed to use your hands, you got cut, anything could happen.”

Going to the doctor was out of the question, so they had to make do with home remedies.

Lai said they lived very far from the city, and they knew nothing about schools nor life beyond their little isolated world.

Then something happened that changed Lai’s life: “In 2001, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi was running an education march, and moving through (the area) where we were, and they identified that my family and I were working there.”

Satyarthi convinced Lai’s parents that their children shouldn’t be working but in school – and although this was greeted initially with scepticism, he and two of his brothers eventually moved to Satyarthi’s rehabilitation centre for children rescued from child labour. The centre provides education and technical skills to the kids.

“I passed my senior high school, and then I started to think about what I should do in the future. I met many children there who were just like me or worse off. I realised that I was so lucky to get an opportunity to study, unlike millions of other child labourers.”

So, Lai decided to become a lawyer to help children like himself.

“I could fight for them in court, stand in the court to change the system, policies and regulations. I could challenge the government.”

In 2018 Lai got his law degree.

“Today, I am fighting for children who are sexually abused or are in child labour, trafficked and exploited. I am leading their cases every single day in court.”

He works for the Kailash Foundation, which provides free legal services to vulnerable children.

Lai is also a trustee of the 100 Million Campaign.

“This is a campaign started by Kailash. The idea is that we 100 million youth leaders who are educated, who understand and are privileged to have an education, need to stand up for those who are still in child labour and being exploited.”

On the foundation’s impact on his life, Lai says: “I cannot believe what the foundation did for me. I just picture myself in a house that was dark, and I couldn’t see anything and then in 2001, I came out of the house, and there were a lot of lights.

“And because of the lights, I can give some light to another child’s life. I feel I am the voice of those millions of children that are not at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour.”

Lai says he lives by Satyarthi’s rule: “You don’t need to do a lot, just do your bit”.

“If every single person can do their bit, then one day there will be no child labour in the world, and every child will get an education.”

Lai, a delegate at the conference in Durban, South Africa, which is trying to find ways to reach the UN’s goal of ending child labour by 2025, believes it’s an important platform.

“It’s very necessary because the leaders, the decision-makers, sometimes forget, sometimes neglect what they promised. They need to be reminded. And also, because the conference has given voice to children’s voices.”

He is convinced that their plea will be heard.

“I think the voice, the power we have, what we have faced we can represent, and I believe that it will make an impact because what happened to us is happening to 164 million children around the world.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

This is one of a series of stories that IPS will publish during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

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Excerpt:

“It’s very necessary because the leaders, the decision-makers, sometimes forget, sometimes neglect what they promised. They need to be reminded. And also, because the conference has given voice to children’s voices.” - Former child labourer, Amar Lai, on why the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour is important.

Food insecurity is affecting millions of people in Burkina Faso. Credit: UNICEF/Vincent Treameau

By Danny Bradlow and Magalie Masamba
PRETORIA, South Africa, May 19 2022 (IPS)

The COVID pandemic has had a profoundly negative impact on Africa’s sovereign debt situation. Currently, 22 countries are either in debt distress or at high risk of debt distress.

This means that African governments are struggling to pay the debts that they incurred on behalf of their states. For example, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are already in debt distress. Others at high risk include Malawi, Zambia and Comoros.

This situation is likely to be exacerbated by the war between Russia and Ukraine. The conflict is causing commodity prices, particularly food and gasoline, to rise. It is also disrupting the supply chains of critical goods like fertilisers.

The ability of countries to manage their debt is complicated by the changing composition of the debt. They now owe more money to a broader range of creditors.

In 2020, sub-Saharan Africa had a total external debt stock of US$702.4 billion, compared to US$380.9 billion in 2012. The amount owed to official creditors, including multilateral lenders, governments and government agencies, increased from about US$119 billion to US$258 billion.

Danny Bradlow

In the past, official creditors of African countries were primarily the rich Western states and multilateral institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This group has now expanded to include China, India, Turkey and multilateral institutions like the African Export-Import Bank and the New Development Bank.

In addition, the amount of bonds issued by African states on international markets has tripled in the last 10 years. These bonds are held by a broad range of investors such as insurance companies, pension funds, hedge funds, investment banks and individuals.

In our new book we address the challenges that these changes have created for sovereign debt management for the 16 countries in the Southern Africa Development Community.

We hope the book will stimulate debate among academics, activists, policymakers and practitioners on how Southern Africa Development Community should manage its debt. Five recommendations emerge from the contribution. These include the need for enhanced debt transparency and an approach to debt management that takes into account a host of factors beyond just finance.

The landscape

The book contains a series of essays initially presented in several virtual workshops held in 2020. The participants sought to understand the debt challenges facing countries in the Southern Africa Development Community. They also offered policy-oriented recommendations for dealing with them.

Magalie Masamba

The book includes contributions from a multi-disciplinary group of international experts as well as African researchers. In their contributions they discuss the complexities of debt management and restructuring – generally and in the Southern Africa Development Community member states.

They pay attention to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the debt situation but also recognise that it is only one factor contributing to the difficult debt situation in the region. Thus, they also focus on the broader domestic and international factors that are shaping debt management in the region.

In an effort to chart a way forward, the contributing authors addressed the following four themes:

• The impact of structural changes in the global economy on the Southern Africa Development Community debt landscape. An example is the increasing importance of finance in the global economy.
• The challenges of sovereign debt management and restructuring in the region;
• The implications of the lack of transparency on the accumulation and use of sovereign debt;
• Options for incorporating human rights and social considerations into sovereign debt renegotiations and restructuring.

Contributors make five key recommendations:

The first concerns debt transparency. The recommendation is that countries in the region should adopt comprehensive debt data disclosure requirements and state borrowing procedures that are transparent and participatory. The aim would be to facilitate holding relevant decision makers accountable.

Debt transparency is the cornerstone of reforming debt management. Sovereign debtors should follow well publicised, predictable and binding legal procedures in incurring new financial obligations. In addition, they should disclose the amount and contractual terms of their loans. This should include any arrangements for enhancing the security of the loan.

An example is resource-backed loans. In these loans repayment is either made in natural resources or is guaranteed by the revenues generated by the sale of the natural resource.

Sovereign debtors should disclose this information to their creditors, the multilateral financial institutions of which they are member states. They should also make the information publicly available through national platforms.

Good governance. This involves strengthening national debt management policies to deal with issues of governance.

Transparency on its own won’t ensure responsible borrowing. Debt management frameworks and practices should conform to all the principles of good governance. The list includes transparency, participation, accountability, reasoned decision-making and effective institutional arrangements.

Legal predictability. This involves strengthening contractual provisions in debt contracts.
Debt is a contractual relationship. It is therefore important – for debtors and creditors – to enter into contracts that are as comprehensive as possible. This means contracts should fairly allocate risks between the parties.

This would include, for example, accommodating who is better able and more willing to accept the risks. In addition, contracts should provide the parties with clear answers to issues that could arise between them.

This would require policymakers providing guidance to their debt managers on the terms and conditions they can accept in contractual negotiations.

Comparability of treatment during restructuring. This means that, when needed, all creditors should participate on comparable terms in any sovereign debt restructuring. Southern Africa Development Community sovereign debtors can improve creditor confidence by offering all creditors comparable treatment. This would give them comfort that any relief they provided would benefit the debtor rather than other creditors.

This should facilitate the debtor’s efforts to reach agreement with all its creditors.

A comprehensive approach. Sovereign debt is not just a financial issue. It has implications for the social, political, economic, cultural and environmental situation in the debtor country. It requires a comprehensive approach to debt restructuring that incorporates all relevant stakeholders.

This includes citizens of the debtor states, multilateral creditors, bilateral creditors, and private creditors such as bondholders, institutional investors of various sorts and commercial banks.
It also requires that all necessary issues are addressed. These range from financial sustainability to the social, human rights and environmental impacts of the restructuring.

The sovereign debtor and its creditors must therefore seek to effectively engage with each of these actors and with all of these issues.

These recommendations show that there is a need for more innovative approaches to sovereign debt. One possible approach is the DOVE (Debts of Vulnerable Economies) Fund. It will use funds raised from all the stakeholders in sovereign debt to buy the bonds of African debtors in distress and commit to only agree to a debt restructuring that complies with a set of published principles based on international standards that support a comprehensive approach to the debt restructuring.

Source: The Conversation which was founded in Melbourne, Australia in 2011 and now operates as a global network of sites with dedicated teams working in Australia, the US, the UK, France, Africa, Indonesia, Spain and Canada.
https://theconversation.com/debt-distress-in-africa-biggest-problems-and-ways-forward-182716

Danny Bradlow SARCHI Chair is funded by the National Research Foundation. He received funding from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) for this book project. Magalie Masamba receives funding from Danny Bradlow’s SARCHI Chair and Oxfam South Africa. Magalie is a co-editor and co-author in this book project funded by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A month on after a zinc mine was flooded in Burkina Faso, relatives of those trapped refuse to give up.

A picture exhibited at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour is taken from the book ‘Through their eyes – Visions of forced labour’. This picture was created by Gargalo Vasco Portugal who won an award for his depiction of child labour. Credit: ILO and RHSF, 2021.

By Lyse Comins
DURBAN, May 18 2022 (IPS)

Technology used to trace the origin and price of consumer goods to ensure farmers earn fair profits could easily be adapted as a tool to fight child labour Fair Trade living wage and income lead Isa Miralles told delegates at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour.

Miralles told a panel discussion that brought together civil society organisations to highlight their crucial role in reaching SDG 8.7 to eliminate child labour and that the organisation’s technological tool could help to raise transparency and accountability regarding child labour practices. The six-day conference takes place in Durban, South Africa, until Friday, 20 May.

The conference aimed at putting the world back on track to meet the 2025 deadline for ending child labour was opened on Sunday by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Two Nobel laureates appealed for resources to end the scourge.

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi said he “refused to believe that the world is so poor that we cannot protect the children”. During the week high-level delegations have been looking at research, finance and innovation to ensure that children are protected from the practice.

Willy Buloso, Regional Coordinator for Africa of ECPAT International, who leads the organisation’s advocacy work against the sexual exploitation of children in the tourism and travel sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, also highlighted how his organisation’s successes could be adopted to assist in the fight against child labour.

Miralles explained how Fairtrade’s tech-centric approach to using a software tool to trace products throughout the food supply chain, such as farm sources of cocoa and fresh produce in Africa as well as spices in Indonesia, to retail level in the Northern Hemisphere, could also be used to bring transparency to the source of labour used to produced goods. The organisation co-created the tool to guide businesses to support a living wage for food producers and change the way farm trading occurs.

Child labour in Africa is a major challenge as most of the world’s 160 million children entrapped in child labour live on the continent. About 80% of the 92,2 million children trapped in child labour in Africa work in the agricultural sector, usually with their families. The practice is rife in the cocoa sector in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

Fairtrade’s traceability tool could help to create transparency and accountability around this pressing problem, Miralles said.

“We are using the technology to unlock the value of the supply chain for the people at the start of it. We provide the software to trace every action in the supply chain, log in every buyer, trace products from producer to consumer, monitor quality, and whether goods are made by women and whether they are carbon neutral. We are creating a digital passport of our products,”  Miralles said.

“I can request proof a farmer was paid a certain price, and then the buyer can load up the information of the farmer and the price paid. This mechanism is relevant because it can also work to show whether a product is child labour free. We can pass this on through the whole supply chain and create intelligence,” she said.

She said consumers could log into a website, scan a product’s bar code, and find out more about its sourcing, and the tool’s intelligence could also be shared with courts in Europe, where necessary.

“We are bringing this to the consumer, and obviously, it is quite novel,” Miralles said.

She said consumers did not necessarily have to pay a higher price for Fairtrade products. There was leverage in the supply chain to ensure farmers obtained fair prices and that most profits were not made by wealthy Northern Hemisphere retailers.

Buloso, who is working to stamp out the child sex trade that accompanies tourism and travel on the continent, said it was “a great idea” for civil society organisations, not focused on fighting child labour to share insights.

He said the problem of child sexual exploitation did not involve mainly wealthy tourists from the North travelling to Cape Town and Zanzibar, as many assumed, but rather local people engaging in exploitation.

“The state of exploitation of children in prostitution is mostly by perpetrators who are based here in Africa in our countries. Perpetrators are among us,” he said.

Buloso added that 30% of child sex exploitation victims were boys.

“Something we can transfer from our work in (advocating against) sex exploitation of children, to the fight against child labour, is the code of conduct we developed to provide tourism businesses with tools to work together to fight sex exploitation,” Buloso said.

Buloso said the code of conduct, which included six criteria, could be used by organisations fighting against child labour.

The code of conduct criteria included:

• Establish an internal tourism and travel business policy against the sexual exploitation of children.
• Businesses must educate and train their employees on preventing and reporting cases of sexual exploitation of children.
• Businesses must include a zero-tolerance clause in contracts with stakeholders and clients.
• Businesses must provide tourists with information about the sexual exploitation of children.
• All tourism and travel industry stakeholders must be supported and provided with key information about the problem.
• Businesses must report annually on how they uphold the code of conduct.

Augustina Perez, Child Rights Senior Associate at the Bank Information Centre, which partners with civil society to spotlight risks and improve the transparency, accountability, and sustainability of development finance, said the World Bank had been proactive in addressing child labour.

“We have a project in the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). We know most child labour is in agriculture, and we know that together with Ghana, the country produces 60% of the cocoa in the world,” she said.

“The government (Ivory Coast) is a little resistant to putting child labour on the agenda, but the World Bank has been very proactive and has invited BIC to join a working group. We are trying to raise all the red flags and everything crucial to the Ivory Coast like taking (checking) IDs and addressing the root causes of child labour,” she said.

She said her organisation had presented the problem to the US government.

Ghana deputy minister of employment and labour relations, Bright Wireko-Brobby, speaking during an interview with IPS on the sidelines of the conference, said his government was committed to eradicating child labour. Ghana was the first country to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 and then adopted it into its national laws.

“In Ghana, mostly the child labour issue can be found in the cocoa-growing areas and also pockets in the fishing and mining industry and the area of trade and commerce,” Wireko-Brobby said.

However, he said his government disputed a report by NORC at the University of Chicago which claimed that there were almost 1,6 million children involved in child labour in the cocoa industry in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

NORC conducted surveys with children aged between 15 and 17 between 2008 and 2019 and revealed that cocoa production had increased by 62% in both countries. 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 and that school attendance of children from agricultural households rose from 58 to 80 percent in Côte d’Ivoire and 89 to 96 percent in Ghana.

Wireko-Brobby said his country had made gains in the fight against child labour.

“In recent times, we have ensured that every child should be in school. We have provided meals, lunch and breakfast for every child in Ghana. We challenged that commissioned study because we did not believe that despite our interventions, child labour would go higher. We are now domesticating some of the indicators,” he said.

He said his government would welcome an intervention like Fairtrade’s tool to ensure cocoa production is child labour free.

“There is a focus on private sector interventions in the cocoa industry where they are trying to make sure that there is not a point in the supply chain where they can trace child labour. The collaboration between the private sector and the government is strong, and we try to bring it into the mainstream. Every child must be able to enjoy their childhood,” Wireko-Brobby said.

This is one of a series of stories that IPS will publish during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Global gas flaring increased to 144 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2021 from 142 bcm in 2020. It is estimated that each cubic metre of associated gas flared results in about 2.8 kilograms of CO2-equivalent emissions. Credit: public domain

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 18 2022 (IPS)

While the attention of mostly Western media and politicians is quasi exclusively hoarded up by the proxy war in Ukraine and its consequences on the energy sector, the world’s big oil business continues to burn Planet Earth with its underreported though highly polluting, wasteful practice of gas flaring.

This is anything but a minor issue: in fact, as much as 144 billion cubic metres of gas was flared at upstream oil and gas facilities in just one year-2021. Such an amount caused the emission of 400 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, according to the World Bank.

Ten countries account for three-quarters of gas flaring. Out of these ten, seven oil producing countries –Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Venezuela, Algeria, and Nigeria — have remained the top seven consistently over the last ten years, according to a World Bank report

Flaring is “a monumental waste of a valuable natural resource” that should either be used for productive purposes, such as generating power, or conserved.

 

Enough to power the whole sub-Saharan Africa…

For instance, the amount of gas that is currently flared each year – about 144 billion cubic metres – could power the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank explains.

 

… And to generate 65% of Europe’s domestic power

However, the world still flared enough gas to generate approximately 1,800 Terawatt hours (TWh) of energy, almost two-thirds of the European Union’s net domestic electricity generation.

 

But, what is gas flaring?

Gas flaring is the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction. The practice has persisted from the beginning of oil production over 160 years ago and takes place due to a range of issues, from market and economic constraints, to a lack of appropriate regulation and political will, explains the World Bank.

Its Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership (GGFR) report estimates that global gas flaring increased to 144 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2021 from 142 bcm in 2020.

“Gas flaring contributes to climate change and impacts the environment through emission of CO2, black carbon and other pollutants. It is estimated that each cubic metre of associated gas flared results in about 2.8 kilograms of CO2-equivalent emissions.”

 

Ten countries account for 75% of gas flaring

In its May 2022 report, the World Bank also specifies that just ten countries account for three-quarters of gas flaring.

Out of these ten, seven oil producing countries –Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Venezuela, Algeria, and Nigeria — have remained the top seven consistently over the last ten years.

Ending flaring and methane emissions is key to the energy transition, nevertheless the global progress to reduce it has stalled over the last decade, further underscoring the urgency to accelerate the decarbonisation of the world’s economies.

 

Subsidising climate disastres

In spite of the scientifically evidenced fact that oil, gas and carbon industry is one of the major contributors to global warming, politicians continue to subsidise the fossil fuels business with shocking amounts of taxpayers money.

In fact, in a 2021 study: Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right: A Global and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports that globally, fossil fuel subsidies were 5.9 trillion US dollars in 2020 or about 6.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And that such subsidies are expected to rise to 7.4 percent of GDP in 2025.

In the case of the United States, the government provides a heavy public subsidy to petroleum companies, with major tax breaks at virtually every stage of oil exploration and extraction, including the costs of oil field leases and drilling equipment.

 

The grim picture

The profit-making fossil fuels sector appears not to care about the real dangers of growing climate emergencies.

Such emergencies are already here. For instance, there is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

There is a 93% likelihood of at least one year between 2022-2026 becoming the warmest on record and dislodging 2016 from the top ranking.

The chance of the five-year average for 2022-2026 being higher than the last five years (2017-2021) is also 93%, according to the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, produced by the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the WMO lead centre for such predictions.

 

Not just a random statistic

The chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5°C has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero. For the years between 2017 and 2021, there was a 10% chance of exceedance. That probability has increased to nearly 50% for the 2022-2026 period, the WMO on 9 May 2022 reported.

“This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – that we are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic.

“It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.

 

The looming dangers

“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise. And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and our weather will become more extreme. Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us.”

 

More bla, bla, bla?

The 2015 Paris Agreement sets long-term goals to guide all nations to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 °C while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 °C.

Meanwhile, under heavy pressures by big business, politicians continue to pour empty promises, fixing new never-to-be-met commitments, cackling in world sumits and international big gatherings. What for?