Africa

Nigerians are heading back to the polls on Saturday to vote in governorship and local assembly elections.

Women in the health and care sector face a larger gender pay gap than in other economic sectors, earning on average of 24 per cent less than peers who are men, according to a joint report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Credit: ILOGENEVA (ILO News)

By Roopa Dhatt and Ebere Okereke
WASHINGTON DC / LONDON, Mar 16 2023 (IPS)

Women health workers are more than two thirds of the health workforce and represent 90% of the world’s frontline health workers, yet hold less than a quarter of senior leadership roles – a situation which is unfair and a significant risk for global health security.

Despite five years of ad hoc commitments, our new report The State of Women and Leadership in Global Health shows few and isolated gains, while overall progress on women’s representation in global health governance has remained largely unchanged.

The report, launched on March 16, assessed global data together with deep dives into country case studies from India, Nigeria and Kenya. It found that women lost significant ground in health leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Women in Global Health study calculated that 85% of 115 national COVID-19 task forces had majority male membership. At global level, during the World Health Organisation’s Executive Board meeting in January 2022 just 6% of government delegations were led by women (down from a high point of 32% in 2020).

It appears that during emergencies like the pandemic, outdated gender stereotypes resurface with men seen as ‘natural leaders’.

A key and disturbing finding in the report was that women belonging to a socially marginalized race, class, caste, age, ability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or with migrant status, face far greater barriers to accessing and retaining formal leadership positions in health.

Without women from diverse backgrounds in decision-making positions, health programs lack insight and professional experience from the women health workers who largely deliver the health systems in their countries.

Expanding the representation of diverse leaders in health is not just a matter of fairness, it also contributes to better decision-making by bringing in a wider range of knowledge, talent and perspectives.

Further, the report shows there is a ‘broken pipeline’ between women working in national health systems and those working in global health. As long as men are the majority of health leaders at national level and systemic bias against women continues, the global health leadership pipeline will continue to funnel more men into positions with global decision-making power.

The issues women face in national health systems are then reproduced at the global level where women are excluded from political processes and marginalized from the most senior appointments.

A deep dive of case studies in India, Nigeria and Kenya confirms that women are held back from health leadership by cultural gender norms, discrimination and ineffectual policies which don’t redress historic inequalities.

The similarities in the barriers faced by women health workers from very different socio-economic and cultural contexts are marked, indicating widespread systemic bias right across the global health workforce.

The consequences of locking women out of leadership represents a moral and justice issue, and also a strategic loss to the health sector. Through the pandemic, we saw how safe maternity and sexual and reproductive health services were deprioritized and removed from essential services in some countries, with catastrophic consequences for women and girls.

We saw women health workers unpaid or underpaid, and we saw dangerous conditions escalate as community health workers were sent to enforce lockdown, do contact tracing or provide services in unsafe conditions with no forethought given to providing security.

The findings of our report show that systemic change goes beyond numbers in gender parity leadership. What is needed is a transformative framework for action involving all genders from institutional, to national and global level.

Recommendations to drive transformative approaches include:

● Men must ‘lean out’ and become visible role models in challenging stereotypes to make way for qualified women
● Normalization of paternity leave to shift gender norms and reduce the burden of care of women
● Governments taking targeted actions to fast track the number of diverse women in health leadership roles through quotas and all-women shortlists, particularly for senior global health leadership roles that have never been held by a woman
● Institutions must be intentional about creating and maintaining a pipeline for women to move into leadership
● Measurable actions such as mentorship, shadowing / pairing and deputizing opportunities should be created and monitored to ensure women are visible for promotion opportunities
● A zero tolerance of discrimination towards pregnancy
● Supported flexible working options for all parents and carers

Investing in women is not only the right thing to do, but it also makes good business sense. When we get it right, we can unlock a “triple gender dividend in health” that includes more resilient health systems, improved economic welfare for families and communities, and progress towards gender equality.

The lessons of the pandemic have taught us much about the value of the health workforce and even more about the value of health workers. They are mostly women. It’s time for them to take their rightful roles in leadership.

Dr Roopa Dhatt is Executive Director and Co-Founder Women in Global Health, Washington, DC and Dr Ebere Okereke is Snr Health Adviser Tony Blair Institute London & incoming CEO Africa Public Health Foundation, Nairobi

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The UN General Assembly in session. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 16 2023 (IPS)

When Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) last week, he said the annual meeting takes on even greater significance at a time when women’s rights are being “abused, threatened, and violated around the world.”

Progress won over decades is vanishing before our eyes, and gender equality is growing more distant, he told the CSW, the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women (and which concludes its two-week session on March 17). And he quoted the dire prediction from UN Women that “gender equality is 300 years away”.

Hopefully, that prediction does not apply to the United Nations which has failed to elect a woman Secretary-General during the last 77 years while asserting male dominance in one of the foremost international institutions—even as it ceaselessly continues to advocate gender empowerment worldwide.

Guterres said last December that overall, “we have come a long way”, and achieved some notable firsts, such as reaching parity within the senior leadership group, for the first time in UN history, two years ago.

“That’s also true now among heads and deputy heads of peace operations. Five years ago, the proportion of women in those roles was just 25 percent”, he noted.

Parity was reached in 2018, among the 130 Resident Coordinators, and the representation of women at headquarters locations has now reached parity, while the number of UN entities with at least 50 percent women staff, has risen from five to 26.

Still, the male/female ratio for the Secretary-General stands at 9 vs zero. And the Presidency of the General Assembly (PGA), the highest policy-making body at the UN, is not far behind either: 73 men and four women.

The upcoming election for a new PGA –Dennis Francis of Trinidad and Tobago—will bring the total to 74 men and four women. Score another one for men.

PassBlue said last week that Some diplomats are rightly furious that this means that there will be a 74th man elected out of the 78 people to hold that role, but they have been unable to organise a rival to run against him.

“Pressure has at least caused Mr. Francis to publish a vision statement, although that is perhaps a generous term for a short document containing only four paragraphs on policy”.

“We wish Mr. Francis the best of luck in this important role but regret that the process wasn’t strengthened by meaningful competition and a thorough policy platform,” said PassBlue, a widely-read independent, women-led nonprofit multimedia news company that closely covers the US-UN relationship, women’s issues, human rights, peacekeeping and other urgent global matters playing out in the world body.

The nine Secretaries-Generals so far include Trygve Lie from Norway, 1946-1952; Dag Hammarskjöld from Sweden, 1953-1961; U Thant from Burma (now Myanmar), 1961-1971; Kurt Waldheim from Austria, 1972-1981; Javier Perez de Cuellar from Peru, 1982-1991; Boutros Boutros-Ghali, from Egypt, 1992-1996; Kofi A. Annan, from Ghana, 1997-2006; Ban Ki-moon, from the Republic of Korea, 2007-2016 and António Guterres, from Portugal, 2017-present.

https://archives.un.org/content/secretaries-general

The only four women elected as presidents were: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit from India (1953), Angie Brooks from Liberia (1969), Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa from Bahrain (2006) and Maria Fernando Espinosa Garces from Ecuador (2018).

But the blame for these anomalies has to be shouldered, not by successive secretaries-generals, but by the UN’s193 member states who are quick to adopt scores of resolutions on gender empowerment but fail to practice them in the highest echelons of the UN totem pole.

Ben Donaldson, speaking on behalf of Blue Smoke – described as “a new initiative shining a light on UN appointment processes”—told IPS progress on gender parity at the UN has been mixed.

“Gains have been made within the SG’s senior management group but this is not the full story. There is no avoiding the fact that an unbroken chain of nine male SG’s will have led the organization for 80 years by the time the next SG is due to be chosen and just two of the last 50 Presidents of the General Assembly have been female”.

https://www.passblue.com/article/blue-smoke-2023-02-12/

And like Guterres’s reappointment, the male candidate for the next PGA has a blank slate before him – unchallenged by any candidate, female or otherwise, he pointed out.

In both cases, he argued, states have failed to nominate female candidates despite the plethora of highly qualified women out there.

“Sexism still pervades the international system, stacking the deck against women from early career onwards resulting in our current predicament: just 25% of UN ambassadors are female and parity remains well out of reach in field operations, peacekeeping and in global health leadership despite 70% of the health and social care workforce being women,” said Donaldson.

“The most frustrating thing about the UN for those of us trying to understand this issue is the lack of transparency”.

“It remains impossible to obtain a readout of the gender balance of, for example, all D1 and D2 positions across the UN system, or a geographic breakdown for that matter. This is why we launched Blue Smoke – a monthly email shining a light on UN appointment processes and calling for inclusivity every step of the way,” he declared.

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, told IPS the gender imbalance in the election and appointments of the UN Secretary General and President of the General Assembly “is symptomatic of a larger malaise in our societies”.

“States in particular need to make progress on diversity, equity and inclusion but are often found to be lagging behind non-governmental actors,” he noted

Meanwhile, reflecting on Guterres’ statement on gender equality, one of the questions at the UN press briefing on March 6 was whether the Secretary-General would “consider making some kind of grand gesture to underline his point by stepping aside and giving his job to a woman”.

Responding to the question, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said “resigning is not something the Secretary-General is contemplating doing in any way, shape, or form.”

“He will continue and has, I think, shown demonstrable results in improving and reaching gender parity in the senior post that he appoints, right? Because he doesn’t have the authority over the whole administration”.

But he has been putting in place a strategy to reach gender parity at the professional levels to ensure that there is more equitable and clearer representation.

“And I think what he has done in terms of appointments was done extremely quickly, within UN standards. I think within two years he had reached the parity, also including the resident coordinators on the ground. And that is a policy he will continue with a lot of energy,” declared Dujarric.

Under the Guterres administration, gender empowerment has been on the rise at senior staff levels, at UN agencies, and in peacekeeping and field operations worldwide.

Mathu Joyini of South Africa, Chair of the CSW, said “gender-based discrimination is a systemic problem that has been interwoven into the fabric of our political, social and economic lives and the technology sector is no different.”

While digital technologies are allowing for unprecedented advances to improve social and economic outcomes for women and girls, new challenges may perpetuate existing patterns of gender inequalities.

She called for more opportunities to be available to women leaders and innovators and for the public and private sectors to make more available funding that enables the full participation of women and girls in the technology ecosystem.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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UN inspectors are trying to locate around two and a half tonnes of uranium ore.

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Mar 15 2023 (IPS)

Last October, Ales Bialiatski was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was one of three winners, alongside two human rights organisations: Memorial, in Russia, and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. The Nobel Committee recognised the three’s ‘outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses and the abuse of power’.

But Bialiatski couldn’t travel to Oslo to collect his award. He’d been detained in July 2021 and held in jail since. This month he was found guilty on trumped-up charges of financing political protests and smuggling, and handed a 10-year sentence. His three co-defendants were also given long jail terms. There are many others besides them who’ve been thrown in prison, among them other staff and associates of Viasna, the human rights centre Bialiatski heads.

Crackdown follows stolen election

The origins of the current crackdown lie in the 2020 presidential election. Dictator Alexander Lukashenko has held power since 1994, but in 2020 for once a credible challenger slipped through the net to stand against him. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya ran against Lukashenko after her husband, democracy activist Sergei Tikhanovsky, was arrested and prevented from doing so. Her independent, female-fronted campaign caught the public’s imagination, offering the promise of change and uniting many voters.

Lukashenko’s response to this rare threat was to arrest several members of Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign staff, along with multiple opposition candidates and journalists, introduce additional protest restrictions and restrict the internet. When all of that didn’t deter many from voting against him, he blatantly rigged the results.

This bare-faced act of fraud triggered a wave of protests on a scale never seen under Lukashenko. At the peak in August 2020, hundreds of thousands took to the streets. It took a long time for systematic state violence and detentions to wear the protests down.

Everything Lukashenko has done since is to suppress the democracy movement. Hundreds of civil society organisations have been forcibly liquidated or shut themselves down in the face of harassment and threats. Independent media outlets have been labelled as extremist, subjected to raids and effectively banned.

Jails are crammed with inmates: currently it’s estimated Belarus has 1,445 political prisoners, many serving long sentences after trials at biased courts.

Lukashenko’s only ally

Lukashenko’s repression is enabled by an alliance with an even bigger pariah: Vladimir Putin. When the European Union and democratic states applied sanctions in response to Lukashenko’s crackdown, Putin provided a loan that was crucial in helping him ride out the storm.

This marked a break in a long strategy of Lukashenko carefully balancing between Russia and the west. The effect was to bind the two rogue leaders together. That’s continued during Russia’s war on Ukraine. When the invasion started, some of the Russian troops that entered Ukraine did so from Belarus, where they’d been staging so-called military drills in the days before. Belarus-based Russian missile launchers have also been deployed.

Just days after the start of Russia’s invasion, Lukashenko pushed through constitutional changes, sanctioned through a rubber-stamp referendum. Among the changes, the ban on Belarus hosting nuclear weapons was removed.

Last December Putin travelled to Belarus for talks on military cooperation. The two armies took part in expanded military training exercises in January. Following the constitutional changes, Putin promised to supply Belarus with nuclear-capable missiles; Belarus announced these were fully operational last December.

Belarussian soldiers haven’t however been directly involved in combat so far. Putin would like them to be, if only because his forces have sustained much higher-than-expected losses and measures to fill gaps, such as the partial mobilisation of reservists last September, are domestically unpopular. Lukashenko has struck a balance between belligerent talk and moderate action, insisting Belarus will only join the war if Ukraine attacks it.

That may be because Belarus’s enabling of Russia’s aggression has made people only more dissatisfied with Lukashenko. Many Belarussians want no involvement in someone else’s war. Several protests took place in Belarus at the start of the invasion, leading to predictable repression similar to that seen in Russia, with numerous arrests.

Crucially, Belarus’s security forces stuck by Lukashenko at the peak of protests; if they’d defected, the story could have been different. Full involvement in the war would likely see even Lukashenko loyalists turn against him, including in the military. Soldiers might refuse to fight. It would be a dangerous step to take. As Russia’s war drags on, Lukashenko could find himself walking an increasingly difficult tightrope.

Two countries, one struggle

It’s perhaps with this in mind that Lukashenko’s latest repressive move has been to extend the death penalty. State officials and military personnel can now be executed for high treason. This gives Lukashenko a gruesome new tool to punish and deter defections.

As well as worrying about their safety, Belarus’s activists – in exile or in jail – face the challenge of ensuring the cause of Belarussian democracy isn’t lost in the fog of war. They need continuing solidarity and support to make the world understand that their struggle against oppression is part of the same campaign for liberty being waged by Ukrainians, and that any path to peace in the region must also mean democracy in Belarus.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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Fifa is controlling Africa for strategic reasons and its ethics committee lacks independence, says former Caf president Ahmad.

A staggering 40% of groundwater is used for global irrigation, this alone indicates the importance of this precious resource in navigating the population through impacts of climate change. Credit: SADC Groundwater Management Institute.

By Thokozani Dlamini
PRETORIA, South Africa, Mar 15 2023 (IPS)

In contrast to its strategic role as an essential resource to help achieve community development and poverty alleviation globally, groundwater has remained a poorly understood and managed resource.

This is according to a scoping study pertaining to the status of groundwater resources management in SADC. The study continues to say that over a staggering 40% of groundwater is used for global irrigation, this alone indicates the importance of this precious resource in navigating the population through impacts of climate change.

More food needs to be produced to meet future demands due to population growth, lifestyle change and dietary changes and this calls for robust agricultural water solutions to sustainably manage water resources

Dr Manuel Magombeyi, Regional Researcher at the International Water Management Institute
Groundwater has become indispensable particularly for agriculture production in many countries, and it is said that it accounts for half of South Asia’s irrigation and China where it supports two-thirds of grain crops produced.

Sustainable groundwater development for water and food security can never be over emphasized in mitigating against the worsening impacts of climate change. As surface water becomes more variable and uncertain, groundwater provides a crucial buffer for commercial and small holder farmers – who rely on groundwater to keep their crops green.

Therefore, it is imperative that sustainable and innovative strategies are developed to ensure sustainable supply of groundwater resource for improved livelihoods.

Groundwater responds to the water demands in a more flexible and reliable way, which allows farmers to increase their yields and mitigate effects of extreme water shortages. While water in general is a critical input for agricultural production and plays a significant role in food security, science reveals that Sub-Saharan Africa is not on track to reach the sustainable development goal on eradicating hunger.

The Synthesis Report on the State of Food and Nutrition Security and Vulnerability in Southern Africa 2022 says food and nutrition insecurity in the region continues to be unacceptably high and concerted efforts are required to build resilience to address the multiple and increasing shocks the region faces.

The report further asserts that the number of food insecure people is estimated to increase to 55.7million during the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023 in the 12 Member States that provided data for the 2022 Regional Synthesis Report on Food Security, Nutrition and Vulnerability.

“More food needs to be produced to meet future demands due to population growth, lifestyle change and dietary changes and this calls for robust agricultural water solutions to sustainably manage water resources,” says Dr Manuel Magombeyi Regional Researcher at the International Water Management Institute.

Dr. Magombeyi further asserts that it is critical that people in general understand that as the food demand increases, so the water usage, and all these increases happen amidst climate change, therefore, thorough reconsideration of how water is managed in the agricultural sector, and how it can be repositioned in the broader context of overall water resources management and water security is critical.

Unfortunately, according to the United Nations Development Programme, at least 821 million people were estimated to be chronically under-nourished as of 2017, often as a direct consequence of environmental degradation, drought, and biodiversity loss.

Under-nourishment and severe food insecurity appear to be increasing in almost all regions of Africa. Several studies indicate that innovative Agricultural Water Solutions are urgently needed if we want to meet Sustainable Development Goal 2, Zero Hunger for everyone by 2030 as promulgated by the United Nations.

In the SADC region alone, at least 11 million people are facing critical food shortages due to drought caused by climate change. This situation calls for groundwater practitioners to think deeper and look for innovative solutions to support agricultural sector to improve food security.

According to Agricultural Water Management in Southern Africa Report, investments by both public and private sectors in Ag-water solutions represent an untapped opportunity. It is important that both sectors invest in Ag-water solutions to achieve the overall objective of poverty alleviation and broad-based agricultural growth. Most of these ag-water solutions have been implemented at a smaller scale. It is now important that they get upscaled for the benefits of larger communities, especially if the solution is working well.

The SADC Groundwater Management Institute has in the past years managed to help rural communities in some SADC Member States to ensure that they get access to water resources by tapping into groundwater resources available in respective countries.

Through the Sustainable Groundwater Management in SADC Member States project supported by the World Bank Group between 2016 and 2021, SADC-GMI managed to reach communities in Eswatini, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and assisted them to unlock groundwater resources for improved livelihoods.

Thokozani Dlamini is Communication and Knowledge Management Specialist for SADC Groundwater Management Institute

They were on a mission to help survivors of devastating floods that have killed more than 200 people.

Malawi police services are 'trying their best' as more than 200 die as a result of Storm Freddy.

Protests in Myanmar. Credit: CIVICUS

By Mandeep S.Tiwana
NEW YORK, Mar 15 2023 (IPS)

On 29 and 30 March, the US government, in partnership with Costa Rica, Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia, will co-host the second virtual Summit for Democracy. Several elected leaders and state representatives will come together to highlight achievements in advancing democratic principles.

This online global gathering intends to ‘demonstrate how democracies deliver for their citizens and are best equipped to address the world’s most pressing challenges’. Yet evidence gathered by civil society researchers indicates that all is not well with the state of democracy worldwide. Civic space, a key ingredient of democracy, is becoming increasingly contested.

Pundits have long argued that democracy is not just about majoritarian rule and nominally free elections. The essence of democracy lies in something deeper: the ability of people – especially the excluded – to organise, participate and communicate without hindrance to influence society, politics and economics.

Civic space is underpinned by the three fundamental freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression, with the state having responsibility to defend and safeguard these freedoms.

Yet, as revealed by the 2022 People Power Under Attack report from the CIVICUS Monitor, a collaboration of over 20 research organisations across the globe, states themselves are the biggest violators of civic freedoms.

Among the top violations recorded globally are harassment and intimidation of activists, journalists and civil society organisations to deter them from their human rights work; arbitrary detentions of protesters as punishment for speaking out against those in power; and restrictive laws designed to prevent people mobilising and exercising their fundamental civic freedoms.

Shockingly, two billion people – 28 per cent of the world’s population – live in the 27 countries where civic space is absolutely shut down, where mere expressions of democratic dissent can mean prison, exile or death.

These countries categorised as ‘closed’ on the CIVICUS Monitor include powerful authoritarian states such as China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, as well as well as dictatorships with one-party or one-family rule such as Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Syria and Turkmenistan, among others.

However, the problem extends beyond autocracies. Worryingly, there’s been a perceptible decline in civic space in democracies. In the UK, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 gives police unprecedented powers to restrict protests on grounds of preventing serious ‘distress, annoyance, inconvenience or loss of amenity’.

A deeply draconian public order bill to further limit protests in response to civil disobedience activities of climate and environmental activists is also on the cards. As a result, the country has been downgraded to the ‘obstructed’ category on the CIVICUS Monitor.

Civic space in India, which calls itself the world’s biggest democracy, is under attack, with continuing intimidation of independent media, think tanks and civil society groups that oppose serious human rights violations and high-level corruption.

Tactics include raids on office premises of organisations on flimsy grounds and denial of permission to access international funding. Prominent victims include the BBC, Centre for Policy Research and Oxfam India.

Tunisia, where democracy was until recently starting to grow roots, is now experiencing severe regression due to the high-handed actions of President Kais Saied, who has assumed emergency powers, undermined judicial independence and misused the law enforcement machinery to persecute critics.

India and Tunisia are now both in the second lowest category, ‘repressed’, on the CIVICUS Monitor.

Despite continuing civic space impediments, people are speaking out: the CIVICUS Monitor recorded significant protests in over 130 countries in 2022. The rising costs of food and fuel have sparked mobilisations even in authoritarian contexts.

Protests initially driven by people’s financial pain have tended to grow quickly into mass mobilisations against regressive economic policies, corruption by political leaders and systemic injustice.

Women have often been at the forefront of protests, as seen in Iran, where a brave mobilisation to demand rights has seen thousands of protesters ruthlessly persecuted through mass imprisonment, police brutality and targeted executions.

The gendered nature of repression against women and LGBTQI+ protesters seeking equal rights remains a sadly persistent reality.

However, in the midst of civic space regressions, some successes spurred by civil society action have also come. In Honduras, a group of water and environmental rights activists called the Guapinol defenders were released in February 2022 after two and a half years of pretrial detention following a concerted global campaign calling for an end to their unjust imprisonment.

In Sri Lanka, mass protests led to the resignation in July 2022 of corrupt authoritarian president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who presided over widespread economic mismanagement and civic space restrictions; however, since then the old guard has reasserted its control over government, resuming repressive tactics to undermine constitutional guarantees, pointing to the need for continuous vigilance over civic space.

Some countries have seen significant improvements in civic space conditions following elections and political shifts, including Chile and the USA. Both countries have moved from the ‘obstructed’ to ‘narrowed’ category on the CIVICUS Monitor.

In Chile, initiatives by President Gabriel Boric’s government to provide reparations for human rights abuses and establish a framework to protect activists and journalists have contributed to an improvement in civic freedoms.

In the US, new policies by the Biden administration to strengthen police accountability, workplace organising and humanitarian assistance, as well as the adoption of a less adversarial position towards independent news outlets, are key reasons for the upgrade.

Nevertheless, civic space remains contested globally. Our research shows that just 3.2 per cent of the world’s population live in the 38 countries rated as ‘open’, where states actively enable and safeguard the enjoyment of civic space.

The scale of global civic space challenges is enormous, and the price paid by civic space advocates can be heavy. In January, human rights lawyer and democracy activist, Thulani Maseko, was gunned down at his home in Eswatini. His killers continue to roam free.

The need to safeguard civic space is great. Many of us in civil society hope that this month’s Summit for Democracy will help build international resolve to recognise civic space challenges and catalyse action to end impunity.

Mandeep S. Tiwana is chief programmes officer at the global civil society alliance, CIVICUS. The People Power Under Attack 2022 report collates findings from the CIVICUS Monitor which rates civic space conditions in 197 countries and territories along five categories: open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed and closed.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Bad roads in rural Zimbabwe mean the community have to rely on donkey carts and jalopy cars as bus operators are not prepared to travel there. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
MWENEZI, Zimbabwe, Mar 15 2023 (IPS)

From the Masvingo-Beitbridge highway in Zimbabwe at a spot popularly known as Turn-P, the road passing through Neshuro Township has been degraded, disused, and derelict for over two decades, with buses avoiding the route. Now donkey-drawn carts that operate alongside jalopy vehicles have become the new alternative for remote travellers around Mwenezi villages.

The scotch carts have become even more common in areas around Maranda and Mazetese in Mwenezi as villagers switch to them for transport to hospitals and clinics.

Such has become a life for 64-year-old Dennis Masukume of the Mazetese area.

The diabetic patient is forced to use alternative means of transport.

“I board a scotch cart every time I want to travel to Neshuro hospital for my medication, which means I use the scotch cart up to somewhere in Gwamatenga where I then get some private cars that ply the route to Neshuro at nominal fares,” Masukume told IPS.

At Tsungirirai Secondary school and Vinga Primary school in the Mwenezi district, the rare availability of public transport means that even teachers have to cope with scotch carts each time they have to travel to Maranda, where they catch jalopies to the Masvingo-Beitbridge highway on paydays.

In fact, with road infrastructure badly damaged in most rural areas in Zimbabwe, villagers are resorting to olden ways of transport-using scotch carts and walking to reach places where they can access essential services like health care.

The unpaved rural roads have become impassable for buses.

Now, some villagers are capitalizing on the crisis, using their scotch carts to earn a living.

Mwenezi district, located in Masvingo Province, south of the country, has become famed for routes plied by scotch carts.

Entrepreneurs have turned to making easy money from scotch carts. Twenty-four-year-old Clive Nhongo, who resides closer to Manyuchi dam in Mwenezi, said the bad roads had meant good business for him.

“I’m charging a dollar per passenger every trip I make with my scotch cart taking people anywhere around my area, and I can tell you I make about 20 USD daily depending on the number of customers I get, considering that villagers rarely travel here,” Nhongo told IPS.

While many villagers fume at the damaged roads and lack of a proper modern transport system, many, like Nhongo, have something to smile about.

“I provide the alternative transport, and until roads are rehabilitated and buses return on our routes, I might remain in business, which is fine for me,” said Nhongo.

He (Nhongo) has made wooden seats and installed them on his scotch cart to accommodate passengers.

More and more villagers, cornered with transport woes amid derelict roads in villages, are now having to rely on donkey-drawn scotch carts owned by village entrepreneurs like Nhongo.

Public transport operators like 56-year-old Obed Mhishi, based in Masvingo, Zimbabwe’s oldest town, said there was no way he could endure damaging his omnibuses plying routes with defunct roads.

Donkey-drawn carts have taken over.

“It’s not only me shunning the routes the ones in Mwenezi and its villages, but we are many transport operators shunning the routes owing to deplorable roads, and yes, scotch cart operators are capitalizing on that to fill the vacuum. That’s business,” Mhishi told IPS.

Yet even as scotch carts operators cash in on the growing crisis in the Southern African country, local authorities have said donkey-drawn scotch carts have never been regularized to ferry people anywhere in Zimbabwe.

An official working at Mwenezi Rural District Council, who said he was not authorized to speak to the media, said, “scotch carts don’t pay road tax, nor do they have insurance for passengers.”

But for ordinary Zimbabwean villagers in Mwenezi, like 31-year-old Richmore Ndlovhu, with dilapidated roads that have been neglected for years, the scotch carts have become the only way—insurance or not.

Buses that used to reach areas like Mazetese now prefer not to go beyond the Masvingo-Beitbridge highway, where scotch carts and a few jalopy vehicles scramble for passengers alighting from buses. These are the passengers wanting to proceed with their journeys into villages.

Zimbabwe’s rural roads in districts like Mwenezi have remained unpaved for more than four decades after gaining independence from colonial rule.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwean President Emerson Mnangagwa has been on record affirming that his country would become a middle-income state by 2025, just about two years from now.

Yet for opposition political activists here, like Elvis Mugari of the Citizens Coalition for Change, Mnangagwa may be building castles in the air.

“With corruption in his government and the sustained hatred for the opposition, Mnangagwa won’t achieve a middle-income Zimbabwe. That is impossible,” Mugari told IPS.

Batai Chiwawa, a Zimbabwean development expert, blamed the regime here for taking the whole country backwards.

“Is it not taking the country to the stone age era when villagers now have to use scotch carts as ambulances? Is it not a return to the dark ages when people now have to walk long distances because there is no public transport in their villages? This is embarrassing, deeply embarrassing, when people start using scotch carts as public transport in this day and era,” Chiwawa asked when commenting to IPS.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By External Source
Mar 14 2023 (IPS-Partners)

 

 
On Commonwealth Day, a powerful reminder of the values—justice, peace, equality, and inclusion.

It is by respecting and protecting those values that the Commonwealth’s 2.5 billion citizens can help shape a different future for their communities, countries, and the planet.

 

People of the Commonwealth: let’s turn our #ValuesIntoAction in the decade ahead.#CommonwealthDay pic.twitter.com/CtQ1VrIq9P

— Commonwealth Foundation (@commonwealthorg) March 13, 2023

Credit: United Nations

By Armand Houanye
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, Mar 14 2023 (IPS)

Burkina Faso’s interim President Captain Ibrahim Traoré spoke late last year of the conflicts that are now blighting his country and much of his region. He described the situation in Burkina Faso as predictable given the endemic weaknesses in governance that he believes have led to the economic abandonment of many young people, particularly outside of urban areas.

He delivered these remarks on November 13th to political parties, civil society organizations, and traditional and customary leaders in Ouagadougou to raise awareness of Burkina Faso’s rapidly degrading security situation. Of particular note was his focus on water, as he described seeing people throughout the Southwest, Northwest and Sahel regions including Gorom-Gorom, Tinasane and Markoye carrying jerry cans to fetch water.

This led him to question why there were no development projects in these impoverished regions. The people walk, he lamented, for miles to get water for the cattle that die on the way.

There are no roads for trucks to even transport livestock feed to sustain livestock, he reflected, before referring to the Kongoussi-Djibo road bridge built in the 1950s that has fallen into such dilapidation that it can no longer support the trucks that would otherwise take the now rotting local produce to market.

All he says, because of a lack of investment in the construction and the maintenance of essential infrastructure.

His speech depicts a reality across the Sahel region where terrorist attacks have been rampant since 2012, following Mouammar Kadhafi’s assassination and the subsequent looting of Libya’s weapons deposits. Many villages have since been abandoned in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, with thousands of people having been displaced with no proper government intervention to curb the violence.

As clean drinking water is a basic need, lack of access to it triggers many problems at every level of society. Traditionally, villages are located close to waterways to allow for the smooth provisioning of water, as well as the practice of gardening to produce basic ingredients for food which can be consumed and sold for cash for the community.

With the rise of terrorist attacks mostly in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso but reaching coastal countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Benin, many villages have been abandoned or are under the control of armed terrorist groups who impose their own rules and dictates on the local people.

Displaced populations are deprived of their traditional water sources, be they natural water courses, standpipes or boreholes, cutting off their water supply and therefore the access to their means of physical and economic sustenance.

“They lay down the law for the management and use of water and other natural resources by delimiting areas to be exploited,” said a local elected authority to me in a terrorist dominated zone in the Central-Southern part of Mali, adding that, “the cultivable areas are reduced and they [terrorist groups] occupy the wooded areas suitable for agriculture and which contain the local water reserves.”

The chiefs of villages occupied under duress are obliged to cooperate with these groups. They are therefore the preferred interlocutors of all those who “seek permission to operate” in these controlled areas.

The opinion of the village chief is conditional to the prior agreement of the group to which the village belongs. There are real negotiations with these terrorist groups before any projects or partners are allowed to enter the territory.

The reality in Sahelian countries in general is that successive governments since independence have concentrated their “administration” on urban areas. But once you leave the urban areas the populations are left to their own devices with an administration that is more oppressive and not in the least concerned with providing sustainable responses to the development needs of these localities.

The agents of the land registry (customs), law enforcement (police, gendarmes), and nature protection (water and forests) are quicker to find ways to engage in racketeering than to offer the poor the services they require.

“We have lost a lot of funding which has been transferred to other localities deemed more accessible,” explained a local government official to me recently in one of the areas under control. “Given the fact that the groups themselves need to have privileged access to drinking water, they facilitate the arrival of certain partners to install water supply systems,” he added.

GWP West Africa is implementing the European Union funded project “water for growth and poverty reduction in the Mekrou sub catchment in Niger” but it was not been able to launch the project as planned in August 2020 due to a terrorist attack that tragically killed eight people.

Water management and development is but one of many sectors affected by terrorist activities in the region, but water, unlike some other sectors, is a matter of survival.

There is therefore a critical need to enhance and improve the governance of water resources and land while ensuring that required investments are put in place to sustainably respond to the water related development needs of people living in urban and rural areas at all levels in Sahelian countries.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Regional Executive Secretary of the Global Water Partnership in West Africa (GWP-WA)

Credit: Akila Jayawardana and Hiran Priyankara. Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 14 2023 (IPS)

When the US was planning to sell fighter planes to a politically-repressive regime in South-east Asia in a bygone era, a spokesman for a human rights organization, responding to a question from a reporter, was quoted as saying there were no plans to oppose the proposed sale because “it is very difficult to link F-16 fighter planes to human rights abuses”

If fighter jets are fair game and cannot be used to violate human rights, the same cannot be said of “weapons of mass control” (WMCs), including water cannons, tear gas grenades, pepper spray and rubber bullets—used mostly against civilian demonstrators.

But these weapons, contrary to popular belief, are not just the sole monopolies of authoritative regimes in Asia, the Middle East and South and Central America but are also used by Western democracies such as the US, Spain and France – along with Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Gaza, Guinea, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Peru, Sudan, Tunisia and Venezuela.

A Reuters report published in October 2019 about the mass resistance in Hongkong said the protests erupted over planned legislation that would have allowed extraditions from Hong Kong to mainland China.

The police reportedly fired over 6,000 tear gas rounds, around 2,400 rubber bullets, some 700 sponge grenades and over 500 bean bag rounds.

Empty tear gas canisters. Credit: Sunday Times

A new report from Amnesty International (AI), released March 14, says security forces across the world are routinely misusing rubber and plastic bullets and other law enforcement weapons “to violently suppress peaceful protests and cause horrific injuries and deaths, –and called for strict controls on their use and a global treaty to regulate their trade”.

The report, My Eye Exploded, published jointly with the Omega Research Foundation, is based on research in more than 30 countries over the last five years.

It documents “how thousands of protesters and bystanders have been maimed and dozens killed by the often reckless and disproportionate use of less lethal law enforcement weaponry, including kinetic impact projectiles (KIPs), such as rubber bullets, as well as the firing of rubberized buckshot, and tear gas grenades aimed and fired directly at demonstrators”..

“We believe that legally-binding global controls on the manufacture and trade in less lethal weapons, including KIPs, along with effective guidelines on the use of force are urgently needed to combat an escalating cycle of abuses,” said Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Military, Security and Policing issues.

Amnesty International and the Omega Research Foundation are among 30 organizations calling for a UN-backed Torture-Free Trade Treaty to prohibit the manufacture and trade of inherently abusive KIPs and other law enforcement weapons, and to introduce human rights-based trade controls on the supply of other law enforcement equipment, including rubber and plastic bullets.

https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/02/ngos-campaign-torture-free-un-trade-treaty/

Dr Michael Crowley, Research Associate at the Omega Research Foundation, said a Torture-Free Trade Treaty would prohibit all production and trade in existing inherently abusive law enforcement weapons and equipment.”

These include intrinsically dangerous or inaccurate single KIPs, rubber-coated metal bullets, rubberized buckshot and ammunition with multiple projectiles that have resulted in blinding, other serious injuries and deaths across the world.”

The Amnesty report says these weapons have led to permanent disability in hundreds of cases and many deaths.

There has been an alarming increase in eye injuries, including eyeball ruptures, retinal detachments and the complete loss of sight, as well as bone and skull fractures, brain injuries, the rupture of internal organs and haemorrhaging, punctured hearts and lungs from broken ribs, damage to genitalia, and psychological trauma.

A recent report in the Sri Lanka Sunday Times said dissent in Sri Lanka is often met with tear gas and water cannon fired by the Sri Lanka Police. Mass demonstrations that culminated in a protest site, resulting from an economic and political crises last year, were often subdued with police tear gas and water cannon blasts.

Some protesters have died while some deaths were attributed to complications following tear gas attacks. Sri Lanka Police are now being accused of abusing the use of the riot control agent. Lawyers have also filed complaints with human rights authorities, the police, and courts.

Sri Lankans who have been exposed to tear gas allege they have suffered long-term coughs, phlegm, irritation of the throat, and in some cases, asthma. Between March and July 2022, the Police had fired more than 6,700 tear gas canisters.

Meanwhile, according to an evaluation by Chile’s National Institute for Human Rights, police actions during protests which began in October 2019 resulted in more than 440 eye injuries, with over 30 cases of eye loss, or ocular rupture.

At least 53 people died from projectiles fired by security forces, according to a peer-reviewed study based on medical literature between 1990 and June 2017. It also concluded that 300 of the 1,984 people injured suffered permanent disability. The actual numbers are likely to be far higher, according to the report.

Since then, the availability, variety and deployment of KIPs has escalated globally, furthering the militarization of protest policing.

The Amnesty report finds that national guidance on the use of KIPs rarely meets international standards on the use of force, which states that their deployment be limited to situations of last resort when violent individuals pose an imminent threat of harm to persons. Police forces routinely flout regulations with impunity.

In the United States, the report said, the use of rubber bullets to suppress peaceful protest has become increasingly commonplace.

One demonstrator hit in the face in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 31 May 2020 told Amnesty International: “My eye exploded from the impact of the rubber bullet and my nose moved from where it should be to below the other eye. The first night I was in the hospital they gathered up the pieces of my eye and sewed it back together. Then they moved my nose back to where it should be and reshaped it. They put in a prosthetic eye – so I can only see out of my right eye now.”

In Spain, the use of large, inherently inaccurate tennis-ball-sized rubber KIPs has led to at last one death from head trauma and 24 serious injuries, including 11 cases of severe eye injury, according to Stop Balas de Goma, a campaign group.

In France, a medical review of 21 patients with face and eye injuries caused by rubber bullets noted severe injuries including bone fragmentation, fractures and ruptures resulting in blindness.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Residents of Mexico City take shelter from the heat in a covered area, on a central street in the capital, in the month of March, when spring has not even arrived yet in the country. Heat waves will become more frequent and will last longer, due to the climate emergency. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Mar 14 2023 (IPS)

On Mar. 9, more than half of Mexico reported maximum temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius, although spring has not even arrived yet in this Latin American country located in the northern hemisphere.

In fact, the Megalopolis Environmental Commission, which brings together the federal government, the Mexican capital city government and those of five states in the center of the country, forecasts four heat waves, a level similar to that of 2022 – one in March, one in April and two in May – before summer.

Despite constituting a public health problem, Mexico lacks a national heat warning system, like the ones that other Latin American nations, such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia, have in place.“The authorities must keep the public informed and get them to take the necessary measures. It is very important for the entire population to know what kind of weather lies ahead and to act appropriately. Unfortunately, misinformation is a social problem that we must eradicate all together, but it cannot be a pretext to say that we did not know what could happen." -- Ismael Marcelo

Ismael Marcelo of the National Meteorological Service recommended the creation of a warning system with a regional scope, based on temperature levels.

“Most of the population has a cell phone,” the meteorologist told IPS. “It’s important for the authorities to inform the public about meteorological events that affect us. In a culture of prevention, we have to adapt. At the National Meteorological Service we have all the tools to inform people, a website and through the social networks.”

A heat wave is an unusually hot, dry or humid period that begins and ends abruptly, lasting at least two to three days, with a discernible impact on humans and ecosystems, as defined by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), based in Washington DC.

These phenomena cause public health problems, especially for vulnerable groups – such as children and the elderly – food spoilage, increased air pollution, atmospheric environmental emergencies and forest fires.

The Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization warns that heat waves and other negative trends in the climate will become more frequent and will continue until at least 2060, due to the climate crisis.

In Mexico, a federal country, there are two governments that do have their own heat warning systems: Mexico City, which has a Meteorological Early Warning Network, and the southeastern state of Veracruz, which has a Grey Alert.

The scorching sun

Meanwhile, several Latin American countries do have heat warning systems.

In Colombia, a country of 52 million people, the government Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies monitors hot spots.

Lídice Álvarez, an academic in the nursing program at the Colombian University of Magdalena, told IPS about the relative usefulness of early warnings.

“In assessing how to prevent mortality from climatic events, we found that early warnings help, but it is difficult to predict certain events, because climatic variability further complicates things,” she told IPS from the city of Santa Marta, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

“What they do is to say that we are in a heat wave. But the public do not pay attention to the warnings. There is no discipline when it comes to checking climatological variables.”

In Colombia, heat waves have not yet occurred this quarter, but when the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon hits in July, a period of drought and lack of rain is expected, which will bring heat waves in the Caribbean zone in the second half of the year. ENSO cools the surface of the ocean and unleashes droughts in some parts of the planet and storms in others.

In Chile, a country of 19.2 million inhabitants, the government of Santiago introduced an “Extreme Heat and High Temperatures” system in December, which seeks to prevent deaths and protect people’s health during the southern hemisphere summer, through preventive alerts.

The number of heat waves in the Andean country increased from nine to 62 in the last 10 summers, according to figures from the Annual Environment Report from the government’s National Institute of Statistics.

In the metropolitan region there were 81 heat waves between 2011 and 2020 and forecasts point to a doubling of the percentage of days of extreme temperatures in the next 30 years. During a summer day in Chile, 100 people die from different causes, but when the temperature exceeds 34 degrees Celsius, the number goes up by 10 additional deaths, related to heat waves in Santiago.

Since 2018, Argentina’s National Meteorological Service (SMN) has operated a national warning system, which ranges from white to red according to the impact on human health, in the country of 46 million people.

Since 2009, the SMN has used a heat wave alert mechanism in the capital, Buenos Aires, which was later replicated in several other cities. In the current southern hemisphere summer that officially ends on Mar. 20, there have been nine heat waves so far, and in the metropolitan area of ​​Buenos Aires a red alert has been issued due to the high temperatures.

The places marked in red show spots where temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius were recorded in Mexico on Mar. 9, according to a map of the National Water Commission. In Latin America, extreme heat warnings can save lives. CREDIT: Conagua

A worsening problem

In Mexico, population 129 million, events due to high temperatures and victims of heat stroke are on the rise, with the exception of 2020, due to the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic led millions of people to stay at home.

In 2018, 631 health incidents linked to extreme temperatures and 30 deaths were documented, with the numbers growing to 838 and 44 the following year, according to figures from the General Directorate of Epidemiology, under the Ministry of Health.

Due to the pandemic, the numbers fell to 193 health events and 37 deaths in 2020, but the first figure jumped to 870 in 2021, although the latter dropped to 33. However, in 2022 both statistics climbed, to 1,100 and 42, respectively.

PAHO recommends strengthening the ability of the health sector, through the design of action plans against heat waves that include improvements in preparedness and response to this threat, to reduce the excess of diseases, deaths and social disruptions.

It also recommends improving the capacities of the meteorological services to generate accurate projections and forecasts, so that meteorological information can be used for decision-making before, during and after a heat wave.

Marcelo, the Mexican meteorologist, emphasized the importance of disseminating information.

“The authorities must keep the public informed and get them to take the necessary measures. It is very important for the entire population to know what kind of weather lies ahead and to act appropriately. Unfortunately, misinformation is a social problem that we must eradicate all together, but it cannot be a pretext to say that we did not know what could happen,” he said.

Álvarez from Colombia said mortality is preventable. “We have focused on how people are part of the problem and can take measures. They believe that they cannot make any changes, but they are realizing that simple steps taken at home can generate changes,” she said.