Africa

A technician dressed to withstand the freezing temperatures holds a tray of seeds in the Seeds of the Future gene bank. The last phase of the process consists of storing the bags of classified seeds in a room with a temperature of -18 degrees Celsius, awaiting shipment to those interested in using them, from the headquarters of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Palmira, in southwestern Colombia. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
PALMIRA, Colombia , Mar 30 2022 (IPS)

As he points to a white shelf that holds bean seeds, Austrian biologist Peter Wenzl explains that one of them, obtained in Ecuador, provided a gene for the discovery that major seed protein arcelin offers resistance to the bean weevil.

The finding made it possible to develop varieties tolerant to this common pest and thus avoid substantial losses in one of the crops that feed humanity.

“Our aim is to do research, to understand the development of improved varieties. The seed bank is genetic insurance for the future,” said the biologist, who directs the germplasm bank of the Alliance of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and Biodiversity International.

They are two of the 15 scientific centers of the CGIAR, formerly the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a consortium of food research organizations promoting food security that is based in Montpellier, France.

The new gene bank, Seeds of the Future, was inaugurated on Mar. 16 with the presence of Colombian President Iván Duque, in an event that also announced a donation of 16 million dollars from the Bezos Earth Fund, created by the founder of U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon, Jeff Bezos.

The facility represents an architectural, environmental and technological leap forward from the previous bank operated by CIAT in the town of Palmira in the southwestern Colombian department of Valle del Cauca.

Founded in 1973, the former seed bank already stored the largest number of cassava (Manihot esculenta), bean and tropical forage seeds on the planet.

Seeds of the Future, the name of the new gene bank, seeks to safeguard global crop diversity and protect the future of food, as well as to study and understand genetic traits to discover more nutritious crops that are resistant to pests and to the effects of the climate crisis.

It also aims to share seeds, information and technology with partners and vulnerable farmers around the world.

The new seed bank, whose construction began in 2018 with an investment of 17 million dollars, has seed modules, a digital laboratory, a seed health laboratory and a laboratory for in vitro testing of cassava.

Of this total, the Alliance contributed 11 million dollars, the Colombian government provided three million dollars and several donors made up the rest. It employs some 60 people, while around 900 work at the center.

In addition, the new facility plans to deep freeze seeds by means of cryopreservation using liquid nitrogen, for long-term storage.

During a tour of the new seed bank by a small group of journalists, including IPS, Wenzl said that with the new facilities there will be more capacity for storage, research and new projects.

The new germplasm bank Seeds of the Future, inaugurated on Mar. 16 in Palmira, in the southwestern Colombian department of Valle del Cauca, has eco-technologies such as rainwater harvesting, a water recycling system and solar panels. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Faced with the effects of the climate emergency on agriculture, such as higher temperatures, intense droughts and the proliferation of pests, the work of the gene bank shows the importance of adaptation, such as safeguarding the best seeds, and the search for improved varieties.

In fact, in its report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to the climate crisis, released on Feb. 28, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) called for greater diversity in food production.

The IPCC’s demand arises from the fact that climate risks go beyond drought, since by the end of this century almost a third of the world’s crop fields will be unfit for production unless the world reduces polluting emissions.

Since its creation, the bank has distributed more than 500,000 samples from 141 countries to more than 160 nations.

It has done so on the basis of 37,938 bean varieties (46 species from 112 nations), 23,100 forage varieties (734 variants from 75 countries) and 6,600 cassava varieties (the largest number in the world, with more than 30 species from 28 countries).

The material belongs to the nations of origin, but the samples are freely available.

The gene bank also has wild varieties of five domesticated bean species and germplasm from 40 wild specimens. The cassava collection has 250 genotypes of wild species. More than a third of the tuber’s diversity comes from Colombia and almost a quarter from Brazil.

The operations at the new headquarters will strengthen the work with similar collections, such as the 100 gene banks operating in Mexico, 88 in Peru, 56 in Brazil, 47 in Argentina and 25 in Colombia.

The process of storing seeds with the embryos of future plants in the new facility in Palmira, in southwestern Colombia, begins with the analysis of their characteristics, as practiced by researcher Mercedes Parra at the Seeds of the Future gene bank. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Laborious process

When material arrives from a university, scientific center or grower group, researchers examine its characteristics to verify that it meets quality and biosafety requirements. They then inspect its genetic structure, in a first step to reveal properties that can lead to resistance to pests or drought or to better yields.

This information goes to the center’s database and to the digital laboratory equipment, which performs technological feats to collate, sift and correlate the information. The last step consists of vacuum storage in small bags at -18 degrees Celsius, in a process that takes three to four months.

The bank only collects single seeds, to make the effort of safeguarding the germplasm – of which it creates three backup copies – efficient.

It shares each one with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, another CGIAR partner located in central Mexico, epicenter of the so-called green revolution that increased food production in the developing world at the cost of polluting the soil with synthetic fertilizers.

It also sends another to the Global Seed Vault, the Noah’s Ark of future food built in 2008 and located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, and managed by the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center.

CIAT, with 400 hectares of land in the municipality of Palmira, near the city of Cali, Colombia’s third largest city in terms of population and economy, has 22 hectares planted with cassava, two with beans and another 10 with forage plants, to test techniques to improve these crops.

CIAT incorporates cutting-edge technology, such as the autonomous robot “Don Roberto”, in a collaboration with Mineral, a sustainable agriculture project of X, the innovation plant of the U.S. transnational Alphabet, parent company of Google. Don Roberto collects data on the status of beans and other seeds critical to global food security. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

In addition, the center has four other research sites on farms in the area to study crops and silvopastoral systems.

A seed holds ancestral secrets and is at the same time memory and inheritance, a reminder of what its family was and a potential announcement of what it can be.

The seed bank also contains a paradox, since the basis of its collection dates back to a time when anyone could appropriate a material and take it far from its place of origin.

But with the advent of biodiversity and species protection treaties in the 1990s, this flow, also intended to safeguard that same biological wealth, stopped.

Today, 20 species are the basis of the world’s food supply, due to the concentration and assimilation of previously more diverse diets. Historically, humankind has used 5,000 species, but another 369,000 could serve as food.

“Many of these materials have been lost in agriculture. In Valle del Cauca there are no longer bean or cassava crops, only sugarcane,” said Daniel Debouck, director emeritus of the germplasm bank.

Another view of the new state-of-the-art building that houses the Seeds of the Future gene bank in Palmira, in southwestern Colombia, at the headquarters of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), where the seeds of the world’s agricultural future are stored in times of uncertainty due to the climate crisis. CREDIT: Courtesy of Ciat-Biodiversity International Alliance

The data revolution in agriculture

One of CIAT’s innovations consists of the use of massive data and artificial intelligence, i.e. the use of computer codes to process the information.

“We work to avoid duplication of seeds and to interconnect the data to improve varieties. If the data yield important information on genes, they can be used for genome editing (cutting out harmful genes),” seed bank researcher Mónica Carvajal told IPS.

Of the total number of materials, 7,000 already have a complete digital sequence; in the case of beans, only 400. This year, the team is concentrating on the series of the entire collection of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) and the tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius), native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico and more resistant to dry climates than the common bean.

“We are interested in finding resistance to heat and drought,” the expert said.

Information from digital sequencing has gained relevance in recent years, due to the advances made by information technology. In fact, CGIAR has a big data platform in place to enhance collaboration between its partners and research.

As part of its strategy to link research and consumption, the Alliance is developing a project to biofortify rice, beans and corn with iron and zinc. Since 2016, they have released more than 40 bean varieties in Central America and Colombia, benefiting some 500,000 people. In Colombia, they have distributed two types of beans, one of rice and one of corn.

The seed bank building holds Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council and the Living Building Challenge from the Seattle-based International Living Future Institute.

Among its innovations, it operates with a rainwater harvesting system that meets its water needs, backed by a water recycling scheme; solar panels that provide half of the electricity; and a pergola made of certified wood that prevents heat accumulation.

A girl looks for toys among the gifts left for refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine. With women and children forming the overwhelming majority of people fleeing the country, rights groups are concerned about trafficking and sexual violence. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 30 2022 (IPS)

States must do more to protect women and children fleeing war in Ukraine, rights groups have urged, amid growing concerns they are falling prey to trafficking and sexual violence.

Since the Russian invasion on February 24, an estimated 3.5 million people have fled the country, while another 6.5 million have been internally displaced.

Local and international humanitarian organisations have warned these people – overwhelmingly women and children –  are vulnerable to trafficking and gender-based violence within and outside the country as they make often long, dangerous journeys in a desperate bid to reach safety.

“Wherever people have to flee their homes, there will be vulnerabilities [for those fleeing]. The risks are rampant in any situation like that. We are deeply concerned about reports of trafficking and sexual violence,” Shabia Mantoo, spokesperson at UNHCR, told IPS.

Ukraine’s refugee crisis –  described by the UN as the world’s fastest-growing since WWII – has seen millions of people flee to neighbouring states Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Moldova.

While there has been a massive humanitarian response in those countries and across Europe and in other states, much of the help refugees have been given has been organised ad-hoc by aid groups and individual volunteers.

Organisations and volunteers working with refugees at border crossings and transit points have warned a lack of official organisation has left those arriving at serious risk of exploitation.

Nico Delvino, a researcher at Amnesty International who has been monitoring the situation at Polish border crossings with Ukraine, told IPS: “The system [for receiving refugees] exposes them to risks, not just trafficking and sexual violence, but other predatory behaviour.

“The outpouring of solidarity from volunteers has been heart-warming, but it has not been matched by the state’s organisation. There is little or no coordination, there is a lack of management at the borders. Anyone can show up and put a vest on and say they are a volunteer. There are no checks on volunteers. It is a chaotic and dangerous situation.”

There have already been anecdotal reports of trafficking and sexual violence against refugees.

Volunteers and aid groups who spoke to IPS said they had heard of women who had been raped, attacked, solicited by men, or approached in what appeared to be attempts by criminals to traffic them.

Interpol has now deployed officers to help investigate alleged trafficking in Moldova, where 376,000 refugees have fled since the start of the war, while local police forces are reportedly investigating alleged incidents in other countries.

Meanwhile, the specific profile of the refugee crisis may have exacerbated the vulnerability of those fleeing, say aid organisations.

The overwhelming majority of those trying to leave Ukraine are women and children – the UNHCR told IPS they make up as many as 90% of those fleeing the war – as a Ukrainian government order has banned men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country.

“What is different about this crisis of displaced people is that when you have women with children and old people, they have multiple responsibilities, and responsibilities have always been used by traffickers as a means of control – threats to family are made. But now, these can be made directly. That these women have multiple responsibilities makes them more vulnerable,” Eliza Galos, Migrant Protection and Assistance Programme Co-ordinator at International Organisation for Migration in Ukraine, told IPS.

Children are at particular risk, with a number of the latter often making journeys unaccompanied.

UNICEF has said in a statement  that the war in Ukraine has displaced More than half of Ukraine’s children displaced after one month of war (unicef.org) 4.3 million children, with 1.8 million of those having crossed into neighbouring countries as refugees.

Missing Children Europe, an umbrella group for 24 child-protection organisations across Europe, has warned that many unaccompanied minors are disappearing at the borders.

“There are so many children […] that we lost track of,” Aagje Ieven, secretary-general of Missing Children Europe, told international media: “This is a huge problem, not just because it means they easily go missing, and are difficult to find, but also because it makes trafficking so easy.”

However, it is not just the people leaving Ukraine who are in danger of being exploited.

There are an estimated 6.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs) within Ukraine, and humanitarian groups say many among them are also at risk of falling into the hands of trafficking gangs or being subjected to sexual violence.

“Like refugees, IDPs are also facing threats. The threats to women are sexual violence and exploitation. For IDP children, for various reasons – for example, men having to stay in Ukraine and mothers being abroad working – we see many of them ending up travelling alone. We are worried about the risk of trafficking of these unaccompanied children,” Galos said.

Past experience suggests trafficking gangs are taking advantage of the dire situation in Ukraine, with many women and children forced to suddenly leave their homes with their family networks broken and their financial security often under threat.

A 2018 report by the Council of Europe highlighted the increased vulnerability to human trafficking of millions of IDPs who were forced to flee their homes following the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the armed conflict in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Meanwhile, IOM estimates  that 46,000 Ukrainians suffered from human trafficking during 2019-2021 alone.

“Human trafficking cases [in Ukraine] are difficult to identify, not least because there is a state of war at the moment, but it is reasonable to assume that it is going on – it happened before after the Crimea annexation and conflict in Luhansk and Donetsk – and it can eventually be detected,” said Galos.

Aid groups say authorities in countries receiving Ukrainian refugees must put in place proper systems to register and follow up on those arriving and ensure they do not become victims of criminal gangs or others looking to exploit their vulnerable situation.

International humanitarian groups, such as UNHCR, UNICEF, and others, are working with local authorities in countries receiving refugees to set up systems to, among others, vet volunteers at border crossings and transit centres.

Meanwhile, in some places, NGOs are handing out information leaflets to refugees, warning them to be careful of accepting offers of accommodation or transport from strangers, while hotlines have been set up for people to report any suspicions they have of potential criminal activity or danger.

In a statement, Helga Gayer, President of GRETA, the Council of Europe’s expert group on trafficking, said: “People fleeing war are physically and psychologically weakened, unfamiliar with their new surroundings and highly vulnerable to falling prey to criminals. Structures receiving refugees must ensure that they are informed of their rights, in a language they can understand, and provided with psychological and material support. The authorities must take steps to prevent fraudulent offers of transportation, accommodation, and work, and strengthen safety protocols for unaccompanied children, linking them to national child protection systems.”

However, at some border crossings and transit centres, there seems to still be no way for refugees to check on the veracity of any offers they may receive.

“One refugee we spoke to told us she was looking for transport and was aware that she needed to be careful and check that anyone she took a ride from was trustworthy, but she didn’t know how she could check that. We don’t know what she did in the end because there is no way of following up on people. There is no registration of who is coming or leaving the centres, nor who they are leaving with,” said Delvino.

Notwithstanding any efforts by authorities to strengthen protection against exploitation, the situation for the women and children involved in the crisis, and the risks they face, is not expected to improve anytime soon.

“Women and girls face greater risk in conflict displacement situations. Refugee numbers are going up, and until there is an end to what is going on in Ukraine, we will continue to see people on the move, and we can expect to see displacement continue,” said Mantoo.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The food crisis in the Middle East, which began with the COVID-19 pandemic, has worsened with the war in Ukraine. Credit: UNICEF Middle East and North Africa Regional Office

By Stefan Lukas and Marius Paradies
BERLIN, Mar 30 2022 (IPS)

In a short period, the war in Ukraine has already had a major effect on the world economy. The United States and the European Union have levied sanctions on an unprecedented scale against Russia, energy prices have skyrocketed, and with the Black Sea closed, the world’s most fertile region is no longer linked to its markets. This will cause an appreciation of food prices that could wreak havoc in the European periphery.

Russia and Ukraine are important sources for raw materials that are now all but shut off from the world economy. Ukraine, for example, exports about half the world’s supply of semiconductor-grade neon, hitting an industry that had already been plagued by pandemic-related shortages.

While this bears the potential to significantly appreciate manufactured goods from cars to consumer electronics, it is primarily industrialised nations that will shoulder the costs.

The war’s impact on the Middle East

Rather, it is the war’s effects on the food prices that should really worry us. Russia and Ukraine boast some of the most fertile soil in the world, making them world-leading exporters of agriculture produce. Especially grains and oil seeds can be produced here at relatively low cost, and in close proximity to their main export markets.

Many countries are highly dependent on basic foodstuffs from Russia and Ukraine, especially those in the Middle East.

Egypt imports almost 70 per cent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine. In 2019, 73 per cent of the Egyptian population benefitted from bread subsidies, an enormous strain on public finances. But attempts to cut subsidies run a high risk of causing unrest.

The country has already banned the export of several foodstuffs and is currently seeking new sources for wheat and vegetable oil. It is unlikely, however, that Egypt will be able to finance new imports on its own.

Tunisia and Lebanon both import about half their wheat from the Black Sea region. While the former is still grappling with the recent power grab by President Saied, the latter is more politically fractured than ever. Since the Lebanese Central Bank’s ponzi scheme imploded, the country’s currency has been in free fall.

The Lebanese government has already petitioned the US for $20 million in order to buy grain on the world market. And with grain silos diminished to only a quarter of their previous capacity after the explosion in the port of Beirut, food security in Lebanon is precarious to say the least.

Turkey is highly dependent on Russian and Ukrainian wheat as well, with 64.5 per cent and 9.6 per cent of its imports respectively. Even if the Turkish government is able to negotiate sanctions wavers for food imports from Russia, the prospect of rising food and energy prices poses an existential threat to President Erdogan, who currently presides over a historic economic downturn and hopes to be re-elected in the coming year.

Adding to pre-existing fiscal worries in most Middle Eastern countries, two years of a global pandemic only exacerbated the economic crisis. Thus, the current situation has the potential to spell chaos in the region. Research suggests that there was a direct link between rising food prices and the protests that led to the Arab Spring.

Even though food shortages and higher prices were not the reason for every protest, they undoubtably were a contributing factor that triggered pre-existing grievances. It is no coincidence that ‘bread’ was one of the three demands all Egyptian protesters during the revolution rallied behind.

With the pre-Arab Spring political order more or less restored, the people may not have the degree of participation, but they at least demand a decent life. If this becomes unattainable due to drastically rising costs of living, however, the fragile ruling bargain may erode sooner rather than later. This time, regimes across the region are prepared, but suppression and co-optation can only buy time, and conflicts are becoming more likely with each passing week.

The implications for Europe

It is, however, not just the Middle East region that will face major challenges. As has already been seen in the aftermath of the wars in Syria and Libya, European actors will also once again be confronted with new migration movements – a situation that has already put European unity to the test several times in the past.

Since the coming food shortages may last up to two years, the southern periphery of Europe can also once again expect to see people leaving their home countries in the face of war, hunger, and a lack of prospects. As Emanuel Macron recently emphasised, all EU member states must already take precautions to cope with or ideally cushion developments in the Middle East.

To this end, the EU’s biggest member states in particular must launch new aid programmes at the national and international level, and it is not only EU structures that need to act. The involvement of international organisations such as the FAO, the WFP, or the World Bank can also be helpful in ensuring that the necessary funds reach the affected countries.

Moreover, as almost all agricultural areas in the region will come under pressure from climate change and water stress, the EU’s agricultural policy needs to be reconsidered and connectivity with the Middle East strengthened. This can happen especially in the areas of water-saving cultivation options, but also in the planting of heat-resistant grain varieties.

Since the food crisis is also a fiscal challenge, emergency financial programmes must be set up in addition to food supplies to provide timely assistance to countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Yemen to stabilise their national budgets. This must also take place with the involvement of the regional players – first and foremost the Gulf monarchies, which are in a good financial position.

The international community needs to coordinate

Against the backdrop of the past from 2011 onward, states such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait have no interest in a new destabilisation of their own environment. Therefore, a united ‘coalition of the willing’ is likely to be in the interest of both sides.

At the same time, Western actors in particular must coordinate their efforts, since ‘hoarding purchases’ by individual states would lead to new shortages on the world market, which would not least provoke new international disagreements.

The example of Egypt also shows that international actors need to take action not only at the governmental level. Since the Al-Sisi government in Egypt is now moving to buy yields from their own agriculture, rural areas and the poorer classes in particular are likely to suffer from the shortages.

To prevent this, nutrition programmes must have much better access to these population groups and also be better funded. This also applies to humanitarian aid deliveries to countries such as Syria or Yemen, which are also suffering from wheat price increases and will be threatened by shortages in the future.

If Western and regional actors were not able to jointly master this tour de force and initiate measures in a coordinated manner, Russia and China in particular would be left holding the reins of power. While China is replenishing its own stocks on a large scale from Russia and other exporting nations, Russia has meanwhile moved to restrict exports of products such as wheat or vegetable oil.

Both are measures designed to increase pressure on Western states, as Russia’s victory in Ukraine and on the international stage is a long way off.

For the Middle East, inaction would mean one thing above all: a new phase of massive destabilisation that would ultimately affect governments as well as the socially weaker population. As was said in the days of the French Revolution, if the population has no bread, those in power are threatened with disaster.

Source: International Politics and Society, based in the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s Brussels office.

Stefan Lukas is a Middle East analyst in Berlin and has been a guest lecturer at the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Hamburg since 2019; Marius Paradies is a researcher in international affairs who focuses on security and political economy in the Middle East.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Widespread sexual violence against women and girls in conflict is being fueled by systemic impunity, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan reports. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 29 2022 (IPS)

While several politicians -and media– have been viewing the ongoing armed conflict in South Sudan as a “civil war” between rival ethnic groups, so nothing to worry about, there are some key facts that should be considered for the sake of having a wider, more accurate panorama. One of them is that this country is rich in oil.

Many politicians and media have also been blaming the widespread corruption as one main cause of South Sudanese inhumane living conditions while ignoring the evidence that if there are corrupt it is because there are “corruptors.”

Meanwhile, the armed conflict in South Sudan has been having tragic consequences. Women and girls are taken as “war trophies,” subjected to mass rape, forced pregnancy, torture, slavery and a long list of brutalities. In the meantime, the country is rapidly bracing for a devastating famine.

 

A bit of background

South Sudan is the youngest State in the world. It was born in 2011, following accusations of war crimes committed by the then regime of Sudan’s Omar Al Bashir, who served as the seventh head of state of Sudan under various titles from 1989 until 2019, when he was deposed in a coup d’état.

This young State was an integral part of Sudan since the British Empire and European powers distributed the world between themselves during the long era of European colonialism which lasted from the 15th to the 20th centuries. During that period, European powers vastly extended their reach around the globe by establishing colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

 

There is oil down there!

Anyway, South Sudan is home to oil reserves, representing more than 80% of the total oil stocks of Sudan, to which it belonged until its precipitated declaration of independence in 2011.

The country ranks third in oil reserves in Sub-Saharan Africa with an estimated 3.5 billion barrels produced annually. However, it is also estimated that 90 percent of its gas and oil reserves are still untapped.

See what Alan Boswell, of ‘The International Crisis Group,’ an independent organisation working to prevent wars and shape policies that will build a more peaceful world, reported on February 2022:

“Oil then laid the groundwork for South Sudan’s secession. A landmark 2005 peace deal granted Juba half of the South’s oil revenues, pumping billions into the new semi-autonomous government.

“But the sudden wealth gravely compromised the country’s stability. By 2013, only two years after independence, the elite scramble for South Sudan’s oil riches helped trigger a fresh war that may have killed 400,000 people while displacing millions.

“Nowadays, despite a 2018 peace agreement and a government of national unity, Juba’s monopoly on oil revenue obstructs a broader political settlement the country desperately needs.

“South Sudan’s leaders siphon off the bulk of the petrodollars, leaving much of the population starved of basic services and, in some parts of the country, on the brink of famine.”

 

‘Hellish existence’ for women and girls

Meanwhile, widespread sexual violence against women and girls in conflict is being fueled by systemic impunity, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan reported on 21 March 2022.

The Commission’s report, based on interviews conducted with victims and witnesses over several years, describes a “hellish existence for women and girls”, with widespread rape being perpetrated by all armed groups across the country.

According to the UN Commission, sexual violence has been instrumentalized as a reward and entitlement for youth and men participating in the conflict.

The goal is to inflict maximum disruption of the fabric of communities, including through their constant displacement, the report continues.

Rape is often used as “part of military tactics for which government and military leaders are responsible, either due to their failure to prevent these acts, or for their failure to punish those involved”, the Commission advanced.

“There, women are taken as ‘spoils of war, a ‘trophy’ for armed men.”

On this, the UN Human Rights Council, in its 49th session (28 February–1 April 2022), has included in its agenda the conflict-related sexual violence against women and girls in South Sudan.

 

Hellish situation

Conflict-related sexual violence against women and girls is widespread and systematic throughout South Sudan. Ongoing conflict across the country has created a perilous situation of great insecurity for women and girls, exacerbated by a lack of accountability for sexual and gender-based violence, says the Council summary document.

The Human Rights Council’s paper explains that sexual violence in South Sudan has been instrumentalized as a ”reward and entitlement” for youth and men participating in the conflict.

“… The objective being to inflict maximum disruption and the destruction of the fabric of communities, including through their constant displacement. This scourge has had the most profound impact on victims, their families and communities.”

“Widespread and pervasive, conflict-related sexual violence against women and girls in South Sudan takes place in the context of persistent conflict and insecurity, drastic gender inequity, and prevailing impunity, which exacerbate its prevalence and contribute to its normalisation.”

The report concludes that conflict-related sexual violence in South Sudan’s conflicts takes many forms: “rape; gang rape and mass rape; abductions and sexual slavery; sexual torture, beatings and cruel and inhuman treatment; being forced to witness sexual violence; forced unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancies; and other forms of violence.”

Conflict-related sexual violence in South Sudan, it adds, has been instrumentalised to destroy the very fabric that binds communities, and as a strategy to displace, terrorise and humiliate civilian populations. This sexual violence is linked to the political and ethnic divisions at the heart of these conflicts.

“Sexual violence is used to humiliate and force opponents to leave a given territory, and thereby plays a critical role as one of the instruments of ethnic displacement.”

 

Pervasive poverty

Such brutal violence and injury, the study goes on, take place in a context of pervasive poverty and extreme gender inequality, reflected in high rates of sexual and gender-based violence outside of conflict, a lack of women’s participation in political and public life, high rates of girl children being subjected to early or forced marriage, the lack of access by women and girls to livelihoods, and poor health outcomes that rank amongst the lowest for women and girls globally.

“The experiences of women and girls subjected to sexual violence in conflict cannot be isolated from wider political violence, which typically involves brutal violations and abuses perpetrated by armed men against civilians, including killings, abductions, torture and forced displacement.”

 

Bodies reduced to ‘spoils of war’

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan report also adds that “It is outrageous and completely unacceptable that women’s bodies are systematically used on this scale as the spoils of war,” as declared by Yasmin Sooka, Chair of the UN Commission.

Sexual violence survivors have detailed “staggeringly brutal and prolonged gang rapes” perpetrated against them by multiple men, often while their husbands, parents or children have been forced to watch, helpless to intervene.

“Women of all ages recounted being raped multiple times while other women were also being raped around them, and a woman raped by six men said she was even forced to tell her assailants that the rape had been “good”, threatening to rape her again if she refused.”

 

Bracing for ‘worst hunger crisis ever’

More than 70 percent of South Sudan’s population will struggle to survive the peak of the annual ‘lean season’ this year, as the country grapples with unprecedented levels of food insecurity caused by conflict, climate shocks, COVID-19, and rising costs, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) in 11 March 2022 warned.

While global attention is focused on Ukraine, said WFP, a “hidden hunger emergency” is engulfing South Sudan with about 8.3 million there – including refugees – facing extreme hunger in the coming months.

As the 2022 lean season peaks, food becomes scarce and provisions are depleted, according to the latest findings published in the 2022 Humanitarian Needs Overview.

“Particularly at risk are tens of thousands of South Sudanese who are already severely hungry following successive and continuous shocks and could starve without food assistance.”

Meanwhile, the oil business goes on.

There is no shortage of pandemics that continue to plague humanity. TB was responsible for the deaths of more than 1.5 million people in 2020, and more than a third of these deaths took place in Sub-Saharan Africa. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Morounfolu Olugbosi
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 29 2022 (IPS)

As countries around the world—from Kenya to Canada, South Africa to Sweden—relish the prospect of an unofficial transition of COVID-19 from pandemic to endemic and start to ease pandemic-related restrictions, many of us in the tuberculosis (TB) community find it hard to relate. In TB, we know what can happen when a pandemic becomes an accepted fact.

Understandably, people everywhere are eager to return to normal. COVID-19, the thinking goes, has evolved to be milder, so it’s time to stop worrying and get on with our lives. Although the virus is still present, many think it has reached endemic levels and so restrictions are being lifted worldwide, despite warnings from more than a few epidemiologists.

There is no shortage of pandemics that continue to plague humanity. Malaria killed more than 620,000 people in 2020. TB was responsible for the deaths of more than 1.5 million people in 2020, and more than a third of these deaths took place in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Prior to COVID-19, hope was on the horizon that the TB pandemic was beginning to ebb. Over the past decade, case rates and fatalities had been slowly declining while research and development efforts had yielded breakthroughs.

After four decades without new medicines approved to treat TB, three have been approved in the past ten years. New technology can not only diagnose TB more easily and quickly than before, but also determine if the infection has any drug resistance. That counts as progress in the TB world—but there’s always the challenge of getting the technologies to the people who need it. And that’s where the COVID-19 pandemic really hit hard.

Dr.Morounfolu (Folu) Olugbosi

In 2020, the most recent statistics that we have for TB, the number of deaths equals that of 2017, with five years of progress eliminated. An estimated 9.9 million people had TB infections, but only 5.8 million were diagnosed. We lost ten years of progress in this benchmark. And only about one third of the estimated 450,000 people with multi-drug resistant TB or Rifampin-resistant TB started treatment in 2020, a 15% decrease from the previous year.

In Africa, countries like Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda had been making progress against TB, with deaths from the disease steadily declining, but these declines ended—all because of the COVID-19 pandemic and related control measures.

In 2015, the world pledged to reduce deaths from TB by 90% by the year 2030, and we are nowhere close to achieving this goal. Epidemiologists evaluating the impact of this failure found that, before the COVID-19 pandemic began, sub-Saharan Africa had been hit hard by TB, with a heavy economic impact and significant loss of life from failing to meet this ambitious benchmark.

And yet, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that, in sub-Saharan Africa, domestic spending on TB prevention, diagnostic and treatment services has declined over the past 10 years. It is no wonder the pressures of COVID-19 tore apart the TB safety net. We too, in Africa, had decided it was ok to live with a lethal disease.

Yes, overall global spending on the disease is less than half of what it needs to be but for us in Africa, TB is not a disease of somewhere else. It is here and we need to roll up our sleeves and fight back or will never stop plaguing us.

No disease should be tolerated, especially deadly infections like TB and COVID-19. All diseases need to be tackled with new technologies and the outreach needed to make sure they are used appropriately. Endemic is never good enough.

Dr. Morounfolu (Folu) Olugbosi, M.D. is the Senior Director, Clinical Development, TB Alliance. He works with the clinical development of products in the TB Alliance portfolio and helps to oversee clinical trials in TB endemic countries and heads the South Africa office.

Gunmen surrounded the carriages and opened fire - an unknown number of people have been abducted.

Alice Atieno relies on sack farming outside her shanty in the sprawling Kibera Slums in Nairobi, Kenya. COVID-19 reversed gains made in poverty reduction, and the unequal access to vaccines has deepened global inequality. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Mar 29 2022 (IPS)

Even as COVID-19 brought Africa’s already fragile health care and economic systems to the brink, wealthy states colluded with corporate giants to dupe people with empty slogans and false promises of a fair recovery from the ongoing health pandemic, a newly released report by Amnesty International report finds.

The global human rights organization says at the heart of the report are revelations of how “global leaders peddled false promises of a fair recovery from COVID-19 to address deep-seated inequalities, despite only 8 % of Africa’s 1.2 billion people being fully vaccinated by the end of 2021.”

Amnesty International Report 2021/22: The State of the World’s Human Rights finds that wealthy nations, alongside corporate titans, have driven deeper global inequality. As a result, African countries are worse off and left struggling to recover from the pandemic against a backdrop of significant levels of inequality.

Grace Gakii, a Nairobi-based gender and development expert, says fall-out from COVID-19 includes “poverty and unemployment, severe food insecurities, increased sexual and gender-based violence as well as a strained and struggling health system.”

According to the World Bank, as early as August 2020, COVID-19 induced economic downturn had already pushed an estimated 88 to 115 million people in the world’s most vulnerable communities into extreme poverty. For the first time in a generation, gains made in global poverty reduction were reversed. For instance, an UN-backed report indicated that extreme poverty in West Africa rose by almost 3 % in 2020 due to COVID-19.

World Bank’s Kenya Economic Update showed that the East African nation gained an additional two million ‘new poor’ as of November 2020 due to the ongoing health pandemic. Many like Alice Atieno in the sprawling informal settlements practice sack farming outside their shanties to put food on the table.

According to Amnesty International, many countries in Africa and the Sub-Saharan Africa region face multiple socio-economic challenges because of the unequal distribution of vaccines in the year 2021.

“COVID-19 should have been a decisive wake-up call to deal with inequality and poverty. Instead, we have seen deeper inequality and greater instability in Africa exacerbated by global powers, especially rich countries who failed to ensure that big pharma distributed vaccines equally between states to ensure the same levels of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s director for East and Southern Africa.

“As things stand now, most African countries will take longer to recover from COVID-19 due to high levels of inequality and poverty. The after-effects of COVID-19 have been most damaging to the most marginalized communities, including those on the frontlines of the endemic poverty from Angola to Zambia, Ethiopia to Somalia, and the Central Africa Republic to Sierra Leone.”

Dr Githinji Gitahi, a medical doctor, currently serving as the Global CEO of Amref Health Africa, tells IPS Africa was first let down when it desperately wanted COVID-19 vaccines. But they were hoarded despite high demand and urgency.

He tells IPS the trajectory has changed because the COVID-19 vaccine supply has significantly improved after rich countries satisfied their need and greed. With this sudden increment, more than 50% of doses in the continent were supplied from November 2021. However, other cracks have appeared and will continue to widen if urgent responsive measures are not taken.

“Africa has major inequalities with regard to COVID-19 vaccine distribution and delivery between urban and rural areas and between rich and poor communities. Whereas the urban centers may have reached up to 50 percent COVID-19 vaccination coverage rate, some rural areas are at below 10 percent absorption rate even in Kenya,” he observes.

He explains that vaccine distribution inequalities exist between countries and within countries because initially, countries in Africa, including Low-Income Countries, were required to buy their vaccines.

This was before COVAX – the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access, which is co-led by GAVI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and the World Health Organization – was able to supply vaccine doses for Low-Income Countries as earlier planned.

“African countries in a position to buy were able to access these vaccines ahead of others. Kenya, for example, bought COVID-19 vaccines with a loan from World Bank. Other African countries could not afford it.”

Gitahi further speaks about the different capacities that countries have to deliver these vaccines once they arrive in African countries, as countries have better health system infrastructures than others.

“Health systems capacities in terms of clinical health workers and the vaccine cold chain that ensures proper storage and distribution of vaccines in a country such as Morocco is not the same as those in South Sudan or even Chad. This creates inequality because of a lack of capacity to deliver the vaccines to the people and more so, in far-flung areas in a manner convenient to them,” he cautions.

“Today, they are sending vaccines in Africa, and it is almost as if they are being dumped, and some of them are short expiry vaccines forcing countries to hold back shipments and demand all arriving vaccines must have at least three months of shelf life. The supply is high, but distribution and convenient delivery are low in communities doing informal work and facilities that open only on weekdays when people are at work.”

Just because a country can and has received millions of doses of vaccines does not mean that people are receiving these vaccines in a manner that fits their daily lives. He says millions of doses arrive three months or six weeks before the expiry date.

Africa, he stresses, needs an ongoing increased supply of vaccines to match delivery capacities so that vaccines are available and easily accessible to all who need them on time – further emphasizing the need to match shipments to absorption to avoid wastage while at the same time working to improve delivery capacity.

In the absence of increased delivery and distribution capacities in African countries, health experts such as Gitahi are raising alarm that Africa will remain ill-equipped to overcome and recover from existing COVID-19 induced challenges and that socio-economic inequality will only widen.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Its membership of the East African Community offers citizens free movement and trade.

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Credit: UN Women

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Mar 29 2022 (IPS)

The 10th edition of the World Happiness Report was recently published and once again the findings raised an array of mixed emotions with many questioning the real foundations underpinning the most discussed aspect of the Report, the World Happiness Ranking,

For example, according to the ranking, Nepal appears to be the happiest place in the South Asia but is it really the case? Many experts from the country doubt about it as it was reported by The Kathmandu Post on the 22nd of March.

In the article, Dambar Chemjong, head of the Central Department of Anthropology at Tribhuvan University simply asks “What actually constitutes happiness?”

This is a complex question to answer but certainly it is fair to wonder how come each time this report gets published, it is inevitable that the richest nations, especially the Nordic ones come up on the top while the poorest and more fragile ones instead are hopelessly at the bottom.

There is no doubt that material prosperity determines a person’s quality of life and the World Happiness Report looks at GDP and life expectancy. In addition, the report also explores other factors like generosity, social support, freedom, and corruption.

These six variables, put together, are central to depict what the report calls “life evaluations” that “provide the most informative measure for international comparisons because they capture quality of life in a more complete and stable way than emotional reports based on daily experiences”.

The ranking is based on the Gallup World Poll, that asks “respondents to evaluate their current life as a whole using the mental image of a ladder, with the best possible life for them as a 10 and worst possible as a 0”.

One of the key findings is that social connections in dire times, especially if we think about what the entire world had to endure following the pandemic, do make the difference.

“Now, at a time of pandemic and war, we need such an effort more than ever. And the lesson of the World Happiness Report over the years is that social support, generosity to one another, and honesty in government are crucial for well-being” says Jeffrey Sachs, one of the major “architects” behind the entire concept of measuring happiness worldwide.

This statement further validates the need to further think more broadly about the importance these social relationships and social bonds have in developing nations.

That’s why analyzing happiness across nations should be considered as a working progress and the goal should be to better picture the complex situations on the ground in many parts of the developing world.

These are all nations that have been experiencing hardships consistently, even before the Covid pandemic outbreak and, therefore, they should be acknowledged for having developed unique forms of social bonds and solidarity.

Instead, these social factors, these connectors and the levels of reliance stemming from them in these “unhappy” nations”, are overshadowed by some of the variables determining the life evaluations.

People in developing nations have less access to public services and they are more exposed to corruption and bad governance. Lack of health infrastructures or unequal job market do have a strong incidence in determining a person’s human development and quality of life.

Yet does the fact that their lives are tougher automatically means people are there are unhappy?

Moreover, should not we consider the stress and mental health often affecting the “prosperous” lives of the citizens living in the north of the world?

Probably the problem is the idea of having a ranking itself. Though desirable and useful, measuring real happiness is a daunting and complex job.

Trust, benevolence, real generosity (not just the extrapolated, like in the report, based on donations during the last month) are all key determinants of happiness.

Yet these same factors have always been strong in developing societies where people rely on mutuality and self-help rather than depending on governments unable to fulfill their duties.

As it is now, the World Happiness Ranking risks to become just a “plus” version of the Human Development Index.

There is still a long way to better decipher and understand the meaning of happiness in the so called South of the World.

There is also a great need for the authors to better explain in simpler terms their methodology of calculating the ranking especially the relationships between the six key variables analyzed and positive and negative emotions that are also taken into consideration.

The fact that the ranking and the science behind the report is still a working process, it is recognized in the report itself.

An option would be to re-consider the variables of “life evaluations” that, by default, underscore the concept of wellbeing from a western perspective.

On the positive side, it is encouraging to see how the report includes also a part on “cross-Cultural Perspectives on Balance/Harmony”, central if we want to have a less westernized approach to happiness.

The 2022 edition of the Report devotes also considerable space to the biological basis of happiness, the relationships between genes and environment, what the report calls “Gene-Environment Interplay”.

Such nexus, affecting a person’s feelings and emotions and all the intricacies coming from these interactions, should make us reflect if it is really worthy to continue pursuing the goal of having an annual global ranking on happiness.

The idea of a ranking on happiness risks defeating the purpose of the gigantic and noble effort of better understanding how we can be happier and how public policies can have a role or not in these unfolding dynamics.

Simone Galimberti is Co-Founder of ENGAGE, an NGO partnering with youths living with disabilities. Opinions expressed are personal.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 29 2022 (IPS)

The spectre of ‘stagflation’ threatens the world once again. This time, the risk is the direct consequence of political provocations and war, and not simply due to inexorable economic forces.

Stagflation?
Stagflation is a composite word implying inflation with stagnation. Stagnation refers to weak, ‘near zero’ growth, inevitably worsening unemployment. Inflation refers to price increases – not high prices, as often implied.

Anis Chowdhury

The term ‘stagflation’ was supposedly first used in 1965 by Iain Macleod, then UK Conservative Party economic spokesperson. He later became Chancellor of the Exchequer, or finance minister, in 1970 for little over a month, the shortest tenure in modern times.

In 1965, he told the UK Parliament that amid “swiftly rising” incomes and “completely stagnant” production, “we now have the worst of both worlds. We have a sort of stagflation situation”.

The term caught on in the 1970s, when high inflation and unemployment ended an economic era dubbed the ‘Golden Age of capitalism’ describing the post-World War Two (WW2) boom.

Normally, in a recession, the inflation rate – i.e., the overall rate at which prices increase – falls. As unemployment rises, wages come under pressure, consumers and businesses spend less, reducing demand for goods and services, slowing price rises.

Similarly, when the economy booms, the labour market tightens, pushing up wages, in turn passed on to consumers via increasing prices. Thus, inflation rises and unemployment falls during a boom.

However, stagflation poses a dilemma for central banks. Normally, when economies stall, central banks try to stimulate growth by cutting interest rates, encouraging more borrowing, and thus spending.

But that could also fuel further price rises and higher inflation. On the other hand, if they raise interest rates to check inflation, growth may slow even more, further worsening unemployment.

1970s’ stagflation
The growth of world trade after WW2 increased demand for the US dollar, the de facto world currency under the 1944 Bretton Woods (BW) international monetary agreement. The US financed much post-WW2 reconstruction to broaden its ‘Free World’ sphere of influence as the Cold War began.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Following post-WW2 reconstruction, demand for the greenback was met by greater US imports paid for with US dollars. As foreign central banks increasingly accumulated dollar reserves, flows were reversed in the 1960s, with net resources into rather than out of the US.

During the 1960s, US economic growth was increasingly sustained by government military and social expenditure. Spending increased for both ‘defence’, especially the Vietnam War, and social programmes, e.g., President Lyndon B. Johnson’s ‘war on poverty’ and ‘Great Society’.

As LBJ was reluctant to acknowledge the rising costs of the Vietnam War, it was difficult to raise taxes to pay for his ‘swords and ploughshares’ spending. Instead, spending was financed by government debt, from selling US Treasury bonds. Thus, the world financed US government spending, including the war.

By January 1967, Johnson was under pressure to cut the growing budget deficit. But it took a year and a half for the US Congress to pass his new budget with tax increases. When finally passed in mid-1968, US federal debt had grown even more as spending for both ‘guns and butter’ did not decline.

US monetary policy was obligingly expansionary. Unsurprisingly, inflation shot up from 1.1% during 1960-64 to 4.3% in 1965-70. Higher inflation also eroded US competitiveness, further worsening its balance of payments deficit.

Inflation also undermined US ability to honour its BW commitment to maintain full convertibility to gold at US$35 per ounce. This obligation did not go unnoticed by foreign governments and currency speculators.

As inflation rose in the late 1960s, US dollars were increasingly converted to gold. In August 1971, US President Richard M. Nixon ended the exchange of dollars for gold by foreign central banks, effectively violating its BW commitment.

A last-ditch attempt to salvage the international monetary system – through the short-lived Smithsonian Agreement – failed soon after. By 1973, the post-WW2 BW international monetary arrangements were effectively done with.

Commodity supply disruptions
Oil exporting, European and other countries which held reserves in US dollars suddenly found their assets worth much less. With Venezuela, the Middle East-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reacted by dropping their earlier willingness to keep oil prices low.

In October 1973, ‘nationalist’ Saudi monarch Faisal embargoed oil exports to nations supporting Israel soon after President Anwar Sadat’s attempted reprisal following Egypt’s defeat by Israel in 1970. The oil price almost quadrupled – from US$3 to nearly US$12 per barrel when the embargo ended in March 1974.

This steep oil price rise was paralleled by great increases in other commodity prices during 1973-74. Besides petroleum, other primary commodity prices more than doubled between mid-1972 and mid-1974. Meanwhile, the prices of some commodities – such as sugar and urea – rose more than five-fold.

Commodity supply shocks and higher commodity prices increased production costs, consumer prices and unemployment. As rising consumer prices triggered demands for higher wages, these in turn increased consumer prices. Thus, wage-price spirals accelerated price increases and inflation.

The 1979 Iranian revolution triggered a second oil price shock. The resulting ‘great inflation’ saw US prices rise over 14% in 1980. In the UK – then deemed the ‘sick man of Europe’ – inflation averaged 12% a year during 1973-75, peaking at 24% in 1975, while inflation in West Germany and Switzerland exceeded 5%.

In the 1960s, unemployment in the seven major industrial countries – Canada, France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US – rarely exceeded 3.25%. But in the 1970s, the unemployment rate never fell below that. By mid-1982, it rose to 8%, exacerbated by interest rate hikes, ostensibly to fight inflation.

The 1970s’ growth slowdowns – with rising unemployment and inflation – in major industrial economies caught many economists off-guard. Economic thinking then presumed inflation and unemployment were alternatives.

The Phillips Curve implied low unemployment came at the cost of higher inflation, and vice versa. This crude and static caricature of Keynesian economics enabled a major assault on its influence. The assault on development economics was collateral damage in this ‘counter-revolution’.

Peace is our best option
In October 2021, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the US Fed and other such institutions believed the factors driving inflation were transitory. None of these authorities saw an urgent need for interest rate hikes.

But in the last month, the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia have driven up the prices of commodities such as wheat and oil. This will exacerbate rising inflation in much of the developed world. The threat of stagflation is undoubtedly more real now than six months ago.

By October 2021, Google searches for ‘stagflation’ hit their highest level since 2008. Mention of stagflation in online news stories surged to more than 4,000 weekly by mid-March, up from slightly more than 200 at the start of the year.

This time, ‘stagflation’ is the direct consequence of political choices, especially for war, not unavoidable economic trends. Developing countries are fast learning where they really stand in this unequal world of endless war, e.g., from the European treatment of Ukrainian refugees.

Peace is therefore imperative. The alternative is the barbarism of conflict among big powers in which most of us have no vested interests. Instead, our shared hope lies in ensuring peace, to focus instead on the common challenges facing humanity.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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