Africa

A nurse walks into a hospital ward in Janakpur in Dhanusha District in southern Nepal. Credit: UNICEF/Rupadhayay

By Roopa Dhatt and Susannah Schaefer
WASHINGTON DC / NEW YORK, Apr 7 2023 (IPS)

As World Health Worker Week draws to a close on April 7, health organizations from around the world have been celebrating women’s vital role in the health workforce and sharing stories about the enormous value they bring to all areas of health and care.

But platitudes are not enough. It’s time for global health leaders to step up and turn these words into action.

Globally, women make up almost 70% of the global health workforce and 90% of the frontline health workforce, contributing over $3 trillion to global health each year. The health systems in which they work play a significant role in remote and marginalized groups’ access to health, especially in times of crisis. Despite this, the challenges faced by community health workers (CHWs) are frequently overlooked.

CHWs play a critical role in providing care to vulnerable populations, but they are undervalued and accorded lower status in the “informal” workforce. Upwards of six million women are estimated to be either unpaid or grossly underpaid despite working in core health systems roles and just 14% of CHWs in Africa are salaried.

It is unjust that global health systems rely on the labor of unpaid women who are creating social and economic value that is uncounted and unrewarded. Unpaid work reduces women’s economic security and increases their lifetime poverty.

It also weakens health systems. The pandemic has demonstrated the need for strong and resilient health systems, but there can be no global health security while health systems are subsidized by some of the world’s poorest women.

Women health workers continue to make huge sacrifices to work on the frontlines. They went door-to-door educating households on the COVID-19 virus, tracing contacts, and delivering vaccines.

At last year’s World Health Assembly, India’s one million women community health workers known as accredited social health activists (ASHAs) were honored for successfully protecting the health of millions of people during the pandemic.

At the start of the pandemic, however, reports were coming out of India about the unacceptable risk faced by ASHA workers who were being sent into communities without lack of infection controls and facing stigma and abuse as perceived vectors of the virus.

In 2020, they launched widespread street protests and strikes to demand better pay, protection, and working conditions. ASHA workers may have been acknowledged as global health leaders, but they continue to be underpaid with small performance-based honorariums. They are still fighting for a fair and regular salary and the benefits that come with formal sector roles.

Pre-pandemic the World Health Organization (WHO) projected a global shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030, which COVID-19 now has deepened. Health workers lost their lives to the virus and significant numbers are unable to work, affected by ‘long-COVID’. There have been increased reports of violence towards women health workers during the pandemic–from colleagues as well as patients and their families.

In a 2018 report on health policy and system support to optimize CHW programs, one of the primary WHO recommendations included fair remuneration for CHWs, but this is still far from the norm. When CHWs are compensated, it often fails to align with WHO recommendations, which call for financial packages that are commensurate with the demands of the job, the level of complexity, the training required, and the hours worked.

This World Health Workers Week, we come together with our partners to call on global health leaders, governments and policy makers to disrupt the status quo. We believe that every person, regardless of gender, should have access to quality health and care and opportunities to thrive.

We know a fairly-compensated health workforce–alongside training, supervision, and safe working environments–leads to improved productivity, wider access to healthcare, and better patient outcomes.

The gender pay gap in health of 24% is one of the largest of any sector. We are calling on leaders to take measures to close that gap. We stand with our partners in calling for and focusing on transformative change, including gender-equal leadership in global health and a new social contract for women health workers centered on the need for fair and equal pay and safe and decent work.

There is increasing urgency in both high-income and low- and-middle income countries to prioritize changes in guidelines, funding, and policies. After three years of COVID-19, women health workers, who have been the majority in patient-facing roles, are burned out and traumatized.

Understandably, women are leaving the health sector at all levels in a ‘Great Resignation,’ which threatens to deepen the global health worker shortage crisis.

Addressing these injustices is a moral obligation and an economic necessity. Investing in health workers is a win-win proposition and will send a message that we recognize and value them as professionals.

Not only can we restore justice to neglected global health systems, but we can improve the working conditions and pay of health workers, unleashing broader economic benefits.

We would like to send a clear message that as heads of global health organizations we are committed to building stronger health systems and a more equitable world. Achieving true health equity includes quality care for all–including health workers.

Dr Roopa Dhatt is Executive Director and Co-Founder Women in Global Health, a fast- growing women-led movement with 47 chapters worldwide.

Susannah (“Susie”) Schaefer is Executive Vice Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Smile Train, the world’s largest cleft-focused organization with a sustainable and local model of supporting surgery and other forms of comprehensive cleft care.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Apr 7 2023 (IPS)

The uncertainty that’s the hallmark of a democratic election was absent on 26 March, the day Cubans were summoned to appoint members of the National Assembly of People’s Power, the country’s legislative body. A vote did take place that day – people went to the polls and put a ballot in a box. But was this really an election? Cubans weren’t able to choose their representatives – their only option was to ratify those selected to stand, or abstain.

If each seat already had an assigned winner, why even bother to hold an election? Why would people waste their Sunday lining up to vote? And why would the government care so much if they didn’t?

Voting, Cuban style

According to its constitution, Cuba is a socialist republic in which all state leaders and members of representative bodies are elected and subjected to recall by ‘the masses’. Cuba regularly goes through the motions of elections, but it’s a one-party state: the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC) is constitutionally recognised as the ‘superior driving force of the society and the state’.

The CPC is indistinguishable from the state, and the party and its ideology penetrate every corner of society. This means the nomination process for elections can be presented as ‘non-partisan’, with candidates nominated as individuals rather than party representatives – they are all party members anyway.

Cubans vote in two kinds of elections: for municipal assemblies and the National Assembly. Candidates for municipal assemblies are nominated by a show of hands at local ‘nomination assemblies’. The most recent local elections took place on 27 November 2022, with a record-breaking abstention rate of 31.5 per cent – an embarrassment in a system that’s supposed to routinely deliver unanimous mass endorsement.

According to the new constitution and electoral legislation, National Assembly candidates are nominated by municipal delegates alongside nominations commissions controlled by the CPC through its mass organisations, from whose ranks candidates are expected to emerge. The resulting slate includes as many names as there are parliamentary seats available. There are no competing candidates, and as most districts elect more than two representatives, options are limited to selecting all proposed candidates, some, one or none. But all a candidate needs to do is obtain over half of valid votes cast, so ratification is the only possible result. That’s exactly what happened on 26 March.

At the minimum, democracy could be defined as a system where it’s possible to get rid of governments without bloodshed – where those in power could lose an election. In all of Cuba’s post-revolution history, no candidate has ever been defeated.

A different kind of campaign

Unsurprisingly, since there is no real competition, there are typically no election campaigns in Cuba. Instead, there’s a lot of political and social pressure to participate, while abstention is accordingly promoted by the political opposition and democracy activists.

Eager to avoid the abstention rate seen in the November municipal elections, the government spared no effort. Against its own legal prohibitions of election campaigns, it ran a relentless propaganda assault.

Eyewitness accounts abounded of a voting day characterised by apathy, with no evidence of lines forming at voting places. A number of irregularities were reported, including coercion and harassment, with people who hadn’t voted receiving summons or being picked up from their homes. The official statement published the following day – that lack of independent observation made impossible to verify – reported a 76 per cent turnout that the government presented as a ‘revolutionary victory’. It might have helped that the electoral rolls had been purged, with over half a million fewer voters than in the previous parliamentary election held in 2018.

But a closer look suggests that abstention is becoming a regular feature of Cuban election rituals – this was the lowest turnout ever in a legislative election – and beyond this, other forms of dissent in the polls are growing, including spoilt ballots.

What elections are for

In Cuba, elections are neither the means to select governments nor a channel for citizens to communicate their views. Rather, they serve a legitimising purpose, both domestically and internationally, for an authoritarian regime that seeks to present itself as a superior form of democracy. They also serve to co-opt and mobilise supporters and demoralise opposition.

Ritual elections just one of many tools the regime employs to maintain power. Determined to prevent a repetition of mobilisations like those of 11 July 2021, the government has criminalised protesters and activists and curtailed the expression of dissent online and offline.

But all this, and the efforts to present a lacklustre election as a glittering victory, only reveal the cracks running through an old system of totalitarian power in decay. In Cuba, the fiction of a unanimous general will is a thing of the past.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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Egypt plans to sell shares in 32 state-owned businesses, including three banks. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Hisham Allam
Cairo, Apr 6 2023 (IPS)

Egypt intends to sell shares in 32 state-owned businesses within a year, including three banks, two military-owned businesses, and numerous businesses in the energy and transportation sectors. This is part of the administration’s efforts to reduce the role of the state in the economy and attract foreign capital.

That also follows the government’s December USD 3 billion deal with the IMF to resume privatization initiatives.

The IMF approved the USD 3 billion loan to strengthen the private sector and reduce the state’s footprint in the economy.

Egypt planned to sell 23 state-owned enterprises in 2018, but the plan was postponed due to the worldwide crisis.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has put pressure on the Egyptian economy and currency, making the proposal more urgent.

According to Rashad Abdo, head of the Egyptian Forum for Economic Studies, Egypt had already received sovereign loans from many donors, including international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and Gulf countries, and these parties either set harsh lending conditions or would be reluctant to lend due to increased risks.

The State Ownership Policy Plan, adopted by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in December, outlines how the government would participate in the economy and how it would increase private sector involvement in public investments. Egypt wants to increase the contribution of the private sector to the nation’s economic activity from 30 percent to 65 percent within the next three years. One-quarter of these enterprises will be listed by the government within six months.

Egypt announced the offering of these companies, intending to sell them to strategic investors, specifically Gulf sovereign funds. Egypt is expected to sell enterprises worth USD 40 billion within three years, including those held by the army.

Attracting foreign investment requires strengthening the investment climate, lowering inflation rates, and expanding anti-corruption efforts, Abdo told IPS.

The State Ownership document states that 32 Egyptian state companies will be listed on the Egypt Exchange (EGX) or sold to strategic investors within a year, beginning with the current quarter and ending in the first quarter of 2024. Stakes in three significant banks, Banco du Caire, United Bank of Egypt, and Arab African International Bank, are among the scheduled transactions. Insurance, electricity, and energy companies, as well as hotels and industrial and agricultural concerns, will also be on the market. Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly announced that the first stakes would be offered in March and a quarter by June, and more businesses could be added over the next year.

Abdo pointed out that the Monetary Fund affirmed the Egyptian government’s commitment to implementing the State Ownership Document when it agreed to grant it this loan and the Egyptian government saw it as a favorable opportunity to implement the terms of the document set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Mohamed Al-Kilani, professor of economics and member of the Egyptian Society for Political Economy, said the privatization effort seeks to eliminate the dollar gap in Egypt and thus provide indirect compensation in the form of services and benefits from the International Monetary Fund’s debt.

The state would also send a message to foreign investors that it responds to the private sector and is willing to withdraw from certain sectors to benefit the private sector.

“The state is attempting to exploit this proposal to stimulate and revitalize the Egyptian Stock Exchange while taking into account the fair valuation of these companies in comparison to the global market. However, the state was unclear about the details of this offering and whether it is a long-term or short-term investment, and it has not clarified the size of employment or the percentages offered in terms of ownership and management,” Al-Kilani told IPS.

“The state is trying to create new types of foreign investment to attract foreign currency due to the fluctuation in exchange rates and high-interest rates,” Al-Kilani added.

According to external debt data published on the central bank’s website in mid-February, Egypt’s external debt fell by USD 728 million to USD 154.9 billion at the end of last September, but its foreign exchange reserves remain low, prompting renewed demand for state assets. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has further pressured the economy and local currency, prompting the proposal for new urgency.

Despite its relatively modest improvement in the latest data from the central bank at the beginning of February (USD 34.2 billion), it lost about 20 percent of the level of USD 41 billion at the end of February last year.

Last January, the IMF suggested that the volume of the financing gap in Egypt would reach about USD 17 billion over the next 46 months in light of its decline in foreign exchange resources and the high cost of its imports as one of the largest countries in the world to import its food and the first importer of wheat in the world.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The carts of “cartoneros” or garbage pickers stand in front of a merchandise purchase warehouse in the La Paternal neighborhood in the city of Buenos Aires. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 6 2023 (IPS)

It’s a Monday morning in April on Florida, a pedestrian street in the heart of the Argentine capital, and a small crowd gathers outside the window of an electronic appliance store to watch a violent scene on a TV screen. But it is not part of any movie or series.

The scene, broadcast live, is happening a few kilometers away, in a poor suburb of Buenos Aires: colleagues of a city bus driver who was murdered during a robbery throw stones and fists at the Minister of Security of the province of Buenos Aires, Sergio Berni, who had come to talk and offer the government’s condolences in front of the cameras.

No one seems surprised among the office employees watching the scene on TV, and several make no effort to hide a certain sense of satisfaction that other ordinary people have decided to take action against a representative of the political leadership, the target of widespread discontent, as reflected by the opinion polls.“There is growing social polarization in Argentina, with an increasingly weak middle class. Each crisis leaves another part of society outside the system.” -- Agustín Salvia

“This was bound to happen sometime, if the politicians earn a fortune for doing nothing and we work all day to earn a pittance… And on top of that you go out on the street and they kill you just to rob you,” comments one of the viewers, as the rest listen approvingly.

The scene reflects the climate of tension and the sense of being fed-up that is felt in large swathes of Argentine society, in the midst of a long, deep economic crisis, which in the last five years has constantly chipped away at the purchasing power of wages, due to inflation that occasionally stops growing for a couple of months, only to surge again with greater force.

If there was room for modest optimism in 2022, as the result of a recovery in economic activity after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems distant today, since the beginning of this year brought news that reflects the magnitude of the breakdown of the social fabric in this Southern Cone country.

On Mar. 31, the official poverty rate for the second half of 2022 was announced: 39.2 percent of the population, or 18.1 million people in this South American country of 46 million, according to the most up-to-date figures.

Since 2021 ended with a poverty rate of 37.3 percent, this means that in one year a million people were thrown into poverty, despite the fact that the economy, thanks to the rebound in post-pandemic activity, grew 4.9 percent, above the average for the region, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

But these data are already old and the figures for 2023 will be worse due to the acceleration of inflation, which is surprising even by the standards of Argentina, a country all too accustomed to this problem.

The price rise in February reached 6.6 percent, exceeding the 100 percent year-on-year rate (from March 2022 to February 2023) for the first time since 1991.

When you look a little closer, perhaps the worst aspect is that prices grew much more than the average, 9.8 percent, for food, the biggest expense for the lowest-income segments of society.

To this picture must be added an extreme drought that has affected the harvest of soybeans and other grains, which are the largest generator of foreign exchange in Argentina. The estimates of different public and private organizations on how much money the country will lose this year in exports range between 10 and 20 billion dollars.

This is one of the reasons why the World Bank, which had forecast two percent growth for the Argentine economy this year, revised its estimates at the beginning of April and concluded that there will be no economic growth in 2023.

 

Luis Ángel Gómez sits in the soup kitchen that he runs in the municipality of San Martín, one of the most densely populated areas in Greater Buenos Aires. For the past 10 years, he has been serving lunch and afternoon snacks to about 70 children, but lately he has also been helping their parents and grandparents. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

 

Soup kitchens

About 15 kilometers from the center of Buenos Aires, in the Loyola neighborhood, the cold statistics on the economy translate into ramshackle homes separated by narrow alleyways, with piles of garbage at the corners and skinny dogs wandering among the children playing in the street.

In a truck trailer that carries advertising for a campaigning politician, a dentist extracts teeth free of charge for local residents, who have increasing problems accessing health services.

The neighborhood is in San Martín, one of the municipalities on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Eleven million people live in these working-class suburbs (almost a quarter of the country’s total population), where the poverty rate is 45 percent, higher than the national average.

“I have never before seen what is happening today. Before, only men went out to pick through the garbage (for recyclable materials to sell), because the idea was that the streets weren’t for women. But today the women also go out,” Luis Ángel Gómez, 58, born and raised in the neighborhood, who does building work and other odd jobs, told IPS.

Indeed, the carts of the “cartoneros” or garbage pickers, which used to be seen only in the most densely populated working-class neighborhoods of Buenos Aires after sunset, when the building managers take out the garbage, are now seen throughout the city and at all hours.

 

A market selling clothes at low prices in Parque Centenario, one of the best-known markets in Buenos Aires, located in Caballito, a traditional upper middle-class neighborhood of Buenos Aires. This type of street fair has mushroomed in Argentina in the face of persistent inflation that is destroying the purchasing power of wages. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

 

Gómez has been running a soup kitchen in Loyola for 10 years, where he provides lunch three times a week and afternoon snacks twice a week to more than 70 children and adolescents. It is in a room with a tin roof, a couple of gas stoves and photos of smiling boys and girls as decoration.

“The municipality gives me some merchandise: 20 kilos of ground meat and two boxes of chicken per month. Besides that, I cook with donations,” said Gómez. “This box was given to me by the company that collects garbage in the municipality,” he added, pointing to cartons of long-life milk.

But the soup kitchen cannot meet all the needs of the local residents, said Gómez. “My concern was to give the kids a better future and I fed them until they were 14 or 15 years old. Today I also have to help their parents and grandparents.”

 

The carts of “cartoneros” or garbage pickers, which until a few years ago were only seen after sunset in the most densely populated low-income neighborhoods, today have become a common image in every part of Buenos Aires at all times of the day. One is seen here in the neighborhood of Flores. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

 

The middle class on the slide

The crisis has picked up speed since 2018 and deepened with the pandemic, but Argentina is going through a period of stagnation, with low economic growth and very little formal private sector job creation for more than a decade.

A study recently presented by the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (UCA) shows that since 2010 access to food, healthcare, employment and social security have steadily worsened, despite social assistance, affecting five million households out of a total of 12 million.

“There is growing social polarization in Argentina, with an increasingly weak middle class. Each crisis leaves another part of society outside the system,” sociologist Agustín Salvia, director of the UCA’s Social Observatory on Argentine Social Debt, which is considered a chief reference point in the country, told IPS.

Salvia explained that the improvement in economic activity after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic drove the creation of new jobs until the third quarter of last year, although poverty grew just the same because they were almost all precarious low-wage jobs.

“The post-pandemic recovery cycle is over. Since the last quarter of 2022 there has been no more job creation, which added to inflation will cause poverty to grow in 2023,” added Salvia.

The expert said structural or chronic poverty used to be 25 or 30 percent in Argentina, but has now held steady at 40 or 45 percent, with a deterioration marked by the stagnation of quality employment, which has pushed many formerly middle-class families into poverty.

Credit: UNICEF/UN0658410/But

By Robert Jenkins
NEW YORK, Apr 6 2023 (IPS)

With schools now reopened around the world, countries are called to take transformative action on education financing to recover and accelerate learning for all children, especially the poorest and most marginalized.

Findings from our recent study, however, reveal that we have yet to overcome hurdles to equitable education financing: in far too many countries, the poorest children often benefit the least from public education funding.

To transform education for every child, governments must address all three aspects of education financing: adequacy, efficiency, and equity. Our analysis covering 102 countries zeroed in on the equity challenge in education.

Many dimensions of equity are important to address, as vulnerable children can face simultaneous disadvantages related to poverty, disability, gender, location and more.

However, our study focuses on the poorest children, often hit the hardest by multiple, compounding barriers to quality education and learning.

Unfortunately, children from the poorest households often benefit the least from public education spending. On average, the poorest learners receive only 16 per cent of public funding for education, while the richest learners receive 28 per cent.

In 1 out of every 10 countries, learners from the richest 20 per cent of households receive four or more times the amount of public education spending than the poorest.

In Guinea, Mali and Chad, the richest learners benefit from over six times the amount of public education spending compared to the poorest learners.

Moreover, despite repeated commitments towards equitable financing – including the Incheon Declaration adopted at the World Education Forum 2015, the Paris Declaration of the 2021 Global Education Meeting, and most recently at the Transforming Education Summit in 2022 – data suggests that progress in delivering on these promises has been far too slow.

Evidence from 46 countries indicates that public education spending has become more inequitable in 4 out of every 10 countries. The data speaks for itself: the poorest learners are not receiving their fair share of public education funding, and we must intensify efforts to address these inequities.

Equitable education spending is critical and can reverse the effects of the global learning crisis before an entire generation loses its future. Our analysis shows that if public education spending stagnates, a one percentage point increase in the allocation of public education resources to the poorest 20 per cent is associated with a 2.6 to 4.7 percentage point reduction in learning poverty rates – translating to up to 35 million primary school-aged children that could be pulled out of learning poverty.

How can we address the equity challenge and ensure education funding reaches the poorest? One way is to ensure public funding prioritises lower education levels.

This financing principle refers to ‘progressive universalism’, by which resource allocation initially prioritises lower levels of education, where poor and marginalized children tend to be more represented. These first few years of learning lay the groundwork for children to acquire basic foundational skills. Then, when coverage at lower levels is near universal, resource allocation is gradually increased to higher levels, with a continued focus on the poorest and most marginalized.

Finally, it is important to note that inequity issues exist not only in domestic education financing, but also in international aid to education.

For instance, over the past decade, official development assistance (ODA) to education allocated to the least developed countries (LDCs) has never exceeded 30 per cent, far from the 50 per cent benchmark set forth by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.

Moreover, appeals for education in emergencies often receive just 10 to 30 per cent of the amounts needed, with significant disparities across countries and regions. On average, the education sector receives less than 3 per cent of humanitarian aid.

The global community must come together to ensure that children living in the poorest countries and in emergencies can benefit from equitable education financing.

To respond to the equity challenge in education, we call on governments and key stakeholders to take the following key actions:

• Most critically, unlock pro-equity public financing to education through broader coverage and volume of decentralized allocations, resources to schools, resources to students of disadvantaged backgrounds (by education and social protection ministries), and strengthened resource allocation monitoring.
• Prioritize public funding to foundational learning by securing funding for all in pre-primary and primary education and targeting the poor and marginalized at higher levels of education.
• Monitor and ensure equitable education aid allocation in developmental and humanitarian contexts between and within countries, including sub-sector levels, when applicable.
• Invest in innovative ways of delivering education to complement gaps in existing public funding through multiple and flexible pathways, including quality digital learning.

We cannot hope to end the learning crisis if we invest the least in children who need it the most.

We must act now to ensure education resources reach all learners and progress towards achieving the goal of inclusive and quality education for all – allowing every child and young person a fair chance to succeed.

Source: UNICEF Blog

The UNICEF Blog promotes children’s rights and well-being, and ideas about ways to improve their lives and the lives of their families. It brings insights and opinions from the world’s leading child rights experts and accounts from UNICEF’s staff on the ground in more than 190 countries and territories. The opinions expressed on the UNICEF Blog are those of the author(s) and may not necessarily reflect UNICEF’s official position.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A camp for displaced people in Jindairis in northwestern Syria. Credit: UN News/Shirin Yaseen
 
Syrians whose lives have been upended by a 12-year civil war and a catastrophic earthquake are looking to return home and rebuild their lives. Shirin Yaseen from the Office of the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General visited northwestern Syria as part of an interagency mission to assess the situation there. 1 April 2023

By Malik al-Abdeh and Lars Hauch
LONDON, Apr 5 2023 (IPS)

Europe’s current approach to facilitating refugee returns and containing new arrivals from Syria is based on wishful thinking. Europeans have come to terms with the fact that a political settlement for Syria’s 12-year conflict is not on the horizon.

In conversations with diplomats, one hears a reoccurring theme these days: Syria is not a priority anymore. Notoriously hesitant to lead and busy with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europeans want to keep things as calm as possible.

But what stands in the way of this old-fashioned wait-and-see approach is the issue of refugees. Not only are significant numbers not returning to Syria, but tens of thousands more continue to set out to the EU each year.

Against this background, Europeans have indicated to president Bashar al-Assad that concessions on the ‘refugee issue’ could prompt them to re-think their policy of ostracising the Syrian dictator and his regime.

Notably, discussions on refugee return have almost exclusively been about their return to regime-held Syria. Much of the official thinking on the matter, which includes that of the UN envoy, envisages Assad conceding to taking back refugees in return for the normalisation of relations with other Arab countries and Western political and financial inducements.

Putting refugee return on the negotiating table with Assad makes sense from a diplomatic expediency angle. And it is certainly attractive: if voluntary and dignified returns can be realised, this would please the domestic audience in Europe and foreign ministries as well as EU institutions could sell it as an indicator that political progress is being achieved.

However, Europe’s current approach to facilitating refugee returns and containing new arrivals is based on wishful thinking.

Assad’s ‘population warfare’

First of all, Europe falsely assumes that Assad wants his people back. Apart from the crippling pressures that any sizeable refugee return would place on resources in regime areas – water, electricity, fuel, food, etc. – there is the more important matter of security.

The regime considers all Syrians who have fled to neighbouring countries to be at best cowards and at worst traitors. By placing themselves out of the reach of the regime’s military conscriptors, they are seen as having voted with their feet in Syria’s civil war.

‘We will never forgive or forget’ echoes a longstanding view among regime supporters of those perceived to have skipped the war but now want to return once the fighting is over.

The testimonies of those who have returned only to see their loved ones arrested and killed suggest that it is not an empty threat. Those connected to rebels or their families by blood or marriage, or those that have been reported as having anti-Assad views by informants, immediately fail the regime’s security check for returning refugees, as will most that hail from former rebel strongholds.

Additionally, living in a neighbouring country for many years and establishing roots there, as most refugees have done, enables the regime to brand them as ‘politically suspect’. Syria’s Foreign Minister claims that refugees can return ‘without any condition’, but this magnanimity is only voiced when around Western reporters.

‘Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the Syrian regime’s discourse on refugees is that there barely is one’, a study on the matter finds. This should not come at all as a surprise.

Syria’s mass population displacement has for too long been seen as an unfortunate secondary effect of the war rather than an intended goal. But in civil wars that take on an ethnic or sectarian nature, de-population becomes a strategic goal in itself.

According to one study, ‘combatants displace not only to expel undesirable populations but also to identify the undesirables in the first place by forcing people to send signals of loyalty and affiliation based on whether, and to where, they flee.’

In Syria, population displacement was at the heart of Assad’s counter-insurgency strategy. Moreover, Assad’s use of chemical weapons and its wider war effort are inextricably linked – tactically, operationally and strategically.

Whether it be artillery strikes, barrel bombs, or sarin gas, the overall war strategy was collective punishment of the population in opposition-held areas.

Assad’s ‘population warfare’ doctrine aims to ensure the population balance of pre-war Syria – so nearly fatal to his family and clan – cannot be recreated. ‘Two-thirds of the population [of Syria] was Sunni and half of it has been scattered to the winds, as refugees or internal exiles’, writes one observer – a favourable outcome for the Alawite president.

For Assad, the country has now gained a ‘healthier and more homogenous society’. With that in mind, it is understandable that most Syrians reject returning to areas under the control of his regime.

Working with Turkey

Does this mean that Europeans should remove the ‘refugee file’ from the negotiating table? Not quite. But they would be well advised to be sober about their goals. If they try to utilise the refugee file as an entry point for advancing a moribund political process, it would be ethically irresponsible.

In fact, EU diplomats have already signalled that credible steps allowing refugee returns could pave the way for gradual engagement with the Assad regime. This is concerning given that turning refugees into a diplomatic currency to trade concessions with Assad hardly passes the ‘do no harm’ test.

If the goal is to get results where refugees actually return to Syria in large numbers and fewer people leave the country, Europeans should be talking not with Damascus but with Ankara.

The inconvenient truth about refugee return is that it will only work if enough refugees are willing to return voluntarily, given realistic conditions and a serious partner on the ground with an active interest in seeing returns happen.

Right now, only Turkey and a share of its Syrian refugees can tick both boxes, given the connectivity between populations on both sides of the border and Turkey’s ability to assure relative security.

According to UNHCR figures, about 800 Syrian refugees are returning to Syria from Turkey every week despite the UN agency’s assessment that conditions are not suitable for a large number of voluntary returns.

Moreover, of the nearly 750,000 refugees that have returned to Syria since 2016, most of them (500,000) have returned from Turkey to opposition-controlled areas in the north and northwest of Syria. In contrast, only 10,766 refugees returned to regime-controlled areas between January and October 2022. A greater number have fled Assad’s Syria in the same period.

The absence of security hurdles to return and compulsory military conscription (both major push factors in regime areas and those controlled by the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces) and the fact that Sunni internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees feel relatively safe under Turkey’s protection are solid foundations on which to build a realistic returns policy.

Perhaps most important for European policymakers, Turkey controls the territory in northern Syria through which large numbers from regime and SDF areas are passing through to enter Turkey and continue to Europe, all for vast sums of money.

Dealing with Ankara on a programme for voluntary refugee return would create a firebreak in the logistical chain of the people traffickers that ends in Berlin and Amsterdam but begins at the M4 Highway.

In sum, Europeans should recognise that significant refugee returns to areas currently controlled by the Assad regime cannot precede a political settlement. Talk of ‘post-conflict reconstruction’ and investments in local development labelled as ‘Early Recovery assistance’ will not change that fact.

This also applies to limiting new refugee movements. Any sort of minor concession from the regime has the purpose of maintaining the momentum of normalisation, but it cannot alter the calculus of Syrians who have no illusions about the regime’s unalterable nature.

The facts support the case for European engagement with Turkey both on returns and border security. Europeans are of course entitled to take a critical stance on Ankara’s Syria policy. Notwithstanding their condemnation of Turkey’s incursions into Syria, new realities have emerged that require a nuanced position rather than blissful ignorance.

Unless Europeans adapt to the reality that Syria is now a de facto divided country, their policy response will remain poor. If areas outside of the regime’s control continue to be seen as not being part of Syria proper, and therefore not integral to any credible nationwide refugee return programme, there will be much more talk but no delivery.

Individual diplomats may be very much aware of this reality, but as long as this realisation does not translate into actual policy, the EU will continue to deceive itself.

Malik al-Abdeh is a conflict resolution expert focused on Syria. He is managing director of Conflict Mediation Solutions, a consultancy specialized in Track II work.

Lars Hauch works as a researcher and policy advisor for Conflict Mediation Solutions, a London-based consultancy specialising in Track II diplomacy.

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 Abortion Dream Team (from left to right Natalia Broniarczyk, Justyna Wydrzynska, Kinga Jelinska) outside the Warsaw court after Wydrzynska's conviction. Credit: Abortion Dream Team

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Apr 5 2023 (IPS)

“People want the abortion laws here liberalised. Society has changed; even the politicians can see it,” Kinga Jelinska, a Polish reproductive rights activist, says. “In four or five years, I believe, the abortion laws here will be liberalised, because it’s what the people support.”

Jelinska, a member of the Abortion Dream Team (ADT) collective, which provides assistance to women in Poland who need an abortion, spoke to IPS not long after her fellow activist and ADT co-founder Justyna Wydrzynska had been sentenced to eight months of community service for giving abortion pills to another woman.

She is disappointed by the ruling but, like her colleague, remains defiant and determined to carry on her work.

“The case against Justyna was politically motivated,” said Mara Clarke, co-founder of Supporting Abortions for Everyone, told IPS, pointing out that the judge in the case was promoted on the same day as she handed down the verdict and that the Christian fundamentalist group Ordo Iuris was allowed a role in the trial helping the prosecution.

“We’re just going to keep going. The court claimed Justyna was ‘guilty of helping’ someone have an abortion. Well, we have to help each other in cases where people are being systematically denied access to care.

Without people like Justyna, women are left to take their own decisions [on abortions], and they may take an unsafe option,” Jelinska says.

It is this public support which, Jelinska believes, may have stopped the court from handing down a jail sentence to the activist.
“Justyna’s case put even more focus on the issue and the ways women can access abortion services,” says Jelinska.

“People want access to abortions; public surveys have shown that. We see it too in the work we do every day,” Jelinska says, adding that during Wydrzynska’s trial, “public opinion was overwhelmingly pro-Justyna.”

Wydrzynska’s trial and conviction have, activists such as Jelinska say, highlighted problems connected with abortion access in Poland and the risks women needing the procedure – and those they turn to for advice – often face. Poland has some of the world’s strictest abortion laws – terminations are only permitted where the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life or health, or if it results from a criminal act, such as rape or incest – and while not illegal to have an abortion, it is illegal to help someone do so.

Many women in Poland who want an abortion self-administer pills bought online from abroad or travel to neighbouring countries with less restrictive legislation, such as Germany and the Czech Republic, for terminations. Some contact groups like ADT for help. It is not illegal to give out information about abortions, including advice on how to buy pills online.

In February 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic in Poland, ADT had been contacted by a woman named Anya*, who was 12 weeks pregnant and desperate. She said she was a victim of domestic violence and was considering going abroad to terminate her pregnancy as the pills she had ordered online were taking too long to arrive.

Wydrzynska decided to give Anya her own pills, but the package she sent was intercepted by Anya’s partner, who reported what had happened to police. Anna later miscarried.  Wydrzynska was convicted of “aiding an abortion” – a crime under Polish law which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison – by a Warsaw court in March 2023 in what is believed to be the first time in Europe that a women’s health advocate has gone on trial for aiding an abortion.

The conviction was immediately condemned by both local and international activists who said the case should never have been brought to court.

“We were disappointed that Justyna was convicted. We are happy that she is not going to jail, but her trial has dragged on for a year, in which time a lot of international organisations, including gynaecologists, said the case should be dropped. It should never have come to trial, and this would never have happened in another country,“ Clarke says.

Amnesty International described the court’s ruling as “a depressing low in the repression of reproductive rights in Poland”.

“This ruling is going to have a chilling effect and we are already seeing women who are worried about what they should do if they found themselves in the situation that they need an abortion,” Mikolaj Czerwinski, Senior Campaigner at Amnesty International, told IPS.

Others believe the trial was part of a wider campaign to crack down on women’s rights and those of the minorities such as the LGBTQI community, by the right-wing government and its conservative religious allies.
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has long been accused by critics in Poland and abroad of systematically suppressing women’s rights, and it was instrumental in pushing through a tightening of abortion laws in 2021 which banned abortions even in cases where the foetus was diagnosed with a severe birth defect.

Meanwhile, the European Commission (EC) has raised serious concerns over judicial independence in the country under the PiS, with some judicial bodies seen as being under the control of the ruling party.

Czerwinski said that following the trial, there were now “questions over the independence of the judiciary in Poland and what impact that [lack of independence] might have on women’s rights, and human rights in general, in Poland”.

But while anger remains at Wydrzynska’s conviction, activists such as Jelinska and Clarke believe that the trial has only highlighted how out of touch Poland’s government is with society on abortion laws.

Since the abortion laws were tightened even further in 2021 – a move which was met with massive street protests – surveys have shown strong support for liberalisation of abortion laws. In one poll last November, 70% of respondents backed allowing terminations on demand up to 12 weeks.

“People want access to abortions, public surveys have shown that. We see it too in the work we do every day,” she says, adding that during Wydrzynska’s trial “public opinion was overwhelmingly pro-Justyna.”

In a public opinion poll carried out in February for Amnesty International, 47% of respondents said they would have done the same as Wydrzynska. The survey also found that people were overwhelmingly against punishment for helping to access an abortion in Poland.

Meanwhile, some opposition politicians have suggested they would introduce legislation which would allow for abortion on demand if they get into power, pointing to public support for such a measure.

It is this public support which, Jelinska believes, may have stopped the court handing down a jail sentence to the activist.

“This is an election year, and the government knows it would be political suicide to give her a harsher sentence with so many people in favour of liberalising access to abortion,” she explains.

It may also be behind Polish parliament’s rejection in early March of a bill, proposed by an anti-abortion group as a citizen’s legislative initiative under a special parliamentary procedure, which would have criminalised even providing information about abortions. Government MPs voted against it with some reportedly saying they did back it for fear of fuelling protests just months away from elections.

“Even they know that would have been going too far,” said Czerwisnki. The trial, which was reported extensively in Poland and widely in international media, has also helped raise awareness of the work of groups like ADT and others with some organisations, including the Abortions Without Borders network, which has a Polish helpline reporting a three-fold rise in calls since the trial began.

“Justyna’s case put even more focus on the issue and the ways women can access abortion services,” says Jelinska.

If the conviction was designed to put activists off their work, it seems to have backfired, said Czerwinski.

“A lot of activists have been re-energised by this because they have seen Justyna and her response to the ruling,” he said. “They are aware of the risks, but at the same time, will not stop helping women.”

Wydrzynska has appealed her conviction and insists that she has done nothing wrong. She has also vowed to continue her activism.

Speaking on public radio after her trial, she said: “Even if I should leave the country, I will never stop. In the same way, I know that there are thousands of people who’d do the same for me.”

*NOT REAL NAME

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We’re spewing a torrent of waste and pollution that is affecting our environment, our economies, and our health, warns UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Apr 4 2023 (IPS)

Straight to the point: the current system of voracious money-making production and the induced over-consumption patterns have turned Planet Earth into a giant garbage dump.

And straight to the facts:

• Every minute, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into the ocean.
• If food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
• More than 75% of all electronic waste is not safely managed.
• Resource extraction is responsible for half of the world’s carbon emissions.
• The amount of municipal solid waste generated globally could rise from around 2.24 billion tons to 3.88 billion tons by 2050.
• 80% of marine pollution originates on land.

 

One billion tons of food in the garbage

The waste sector contributes significantly to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity and nature loss, and pollution.

Those who produce waste must design products and services that are less resource and material intensive, smartly manage any waste created across all stages of their products’ lifecycle, and find creative ways to extend the lives of the products they sell
António Guterres, UN Secretary-General


Just take the shocking case of food. Every year, around 931 million tons of food is lost or wasted and up to 14 million tons of plastic waste enters aquatic ecosystems.

Such an unimaginable waste of food in a world of one billion empty plates, is just to be added to the dumping of billions of tons of plastics, textiles, discarded electronics, and debris from mining and construction sites.

 

‘Trashing our only home’

“The planet is literally drowning in garbage, and it is high time to clean up,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned, marking the first-ever International Day of Zero Waste (30 March 2023).

“We are trashing our only home,” he said. “We’re spewing a torrent of waste and pollution that is affecting our environment, our economies, and our health.”

Guterres said it was time for “a war on waste” on three fronts, calling on polluters themselves to take the lead.

“Those who produce waste must design products and services that are less resource and material intensive, smartly manage any waste created across all stages of their products’ lifecycle, and find creative ways to extend the lives of the products they sell,” he said.

“We need to find opportunities to reuse, recycle, repurpose, repair and recover the products we use. And we need to think twice before throwing these items in the garbage.”

 

The case of Türkiye

The Türkiye’s Zero Waste Project has so far managed to conserve some 650 million tonnes of raw material, and to eliminate four million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions through recycling.

“All life on earth is connected but industrialization has led to the over-consumption that is polluting the planet, said the Turkish First Lady, Emine Erdoğan, who spearheads the Project.

“Humans have created this frightening landscape.”

“We are obliged to establish a fair system and take on measures based on burden sharing where we look out for countries deeply impacted by the consequences of climate change which had no part to play in the first place,” she said.

 

Be ‘waste wise’

The head of the UN’s urban development agency, UN-Habitat, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, urged countries to be “waste wise”, including through finding value in reusing items before discarding them.

“Zero Waste is the first step towards creating waste-wise societies,” she said. “The first step is to take responsibility and make a conscious effort to reduce our consumption of single-use plastics. Remember that everything we use and discard must go somewhere.”

 

Food systems

The global population is on track to reach 10 billion by 2050, and demand for food and non-food agricultural products is also expected to rise by up to 56%, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Meeting this demand will require healthier and more sustainable food production and consumption, FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu said.

“We need to urgently address the inefficiencies and inequalities in our agri-food systems to make them more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable.”

For this, it would be of great help to implement the world’s Global Strategy for Sustainable Consumption and Production, which calls for the adoption of sustainable consumption and production objectives across all sectors by 2030.

Another available tool is the “End plastic pollution: towards an internationally legally binding instrument”, which was adopted at the United Nations Environment Assembly on 2 March 2022.

 

Zero waste?

A zero-waste approach entails responsible production, consumption and disposal of products in a closed, circular system. This means that resources are reused or recovered as much as possible and that we minimise the pollution of air, land or water.

Products should be designed to be durable and require fewer and low-impact materials. By opting for less resource-intensive production and transport methods, manufacturers can further limit pollution and waste.

Consumers can also play a pivotal role in enabling zero waste by changing habits and reusing and repairing products as much as possible before properly disposing of them.

 

‘The world is bigger than five’

Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has suggested that “the world is bigger than five” – a reference to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

Sounds good. But the fact is that those five are the world’s major producers and their corporations are dominating the global markets, making astonishing profits from destruction, being all of them the greater polluters.

For example, alongside oil and gas corporations, food companies more than doubled their profits in 2022 at a time when more than 800 million people were going hungry and 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, as reported by Oxfam International.

Meanwhile, the food industry continues to intensively use toxic chemicals in their products, some of them provoking heart diseases and death. Trans fat is just one of them, adding to contaminating fertilisers, pesticides, microplastics and a long etcetera, that end up in land, water and the air.

Shouldn’t such deadly practices be classified as “crimes against humanity”? And their perpetrators be taken to International Criminal Courts?

 

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