Africa

By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Mar 23 2022 (IPS-Partners)

Coral Bell, the great Australian political thought-leader had lucidly described in the 1970s how a “crisis-slide” could become unstoppable as it morphs into a catastrophe: “Gradually, imperceptibly but inevitably there is a build-up of events”, she writes, “rain falls in ever increasing volumes …becomes progressively more irresistible… until the dam breaks”. Ideally, the crisis management process should have been put in place as soon as the relevant observer notices the rains grow heavy, she argues; the disaster of the bursting dam was owed to the delay. A simple but profound metaphor, so apt for crises in international relations, also underscoring the challenge of the choice of appropriate timing for leaders.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

The conflict in Ukraine is fast becoming the torrential rainstorm threatening to immerse peace and stability, in Europe and in the world. This became evident last weekend when the Russian military took the battle to NATO’s doorstep by launching a ferocious missile attack at a large army training base in western Ukraine, less than 25 km from the border with Poland, a NATO member. Russia has alleged that the base provides training for mercenaries and transhipment for ‘foreign’ (read NATO) military ware in support of Ukraine. The incident has put NATO on a knife edge. Any spillage of this incident into Polish territory would have triggered the famous Article 5 of the NATO pact. It is the application of the ‘Three Musketeer-ian’ principle of “All for one and one for all”, in other words, a war against one is a war against all. NATO would then directly collide with Russia, which President Joe Biden of the US has with incontrovertible logic defined as “World War 111”.

We are in a situation far past the point of initial detection of a possible major “crisis-slide” in the Bell proposition. On this occasion the key protagonists are so powerful that potential crisis-managers, or a peace-maker, with the necessary clout and influence would be in short supply. President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Recep Erdogan of Turkey and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel took turns in having a go at it but were unable to make the cut. Clearly a heavier weight with greater influence was required. Eyes are already beginning to turn towards a candidate which seems to be fitting the bill. And that is China.

But why so?

There are several reasons. First, with the world’s largest population of 1.4bn, the second largest economy of US $ 18.1 trillion (after the US) and objectively the third strongest military (after the American and Russian), China is the fastest growing nation in power terms in the globe. Its “Zhang Guomeng “or “China dream” sees itself as a soon-to-be peer of the US. Its “Belt and Road Initiative” has carried its influence to much of the world’s nook and corner. China’s demonstrated resilience across many spheres, including its handling of the pandemic, has proved its administrative skill and efficacy. Despite many challenges, China has set for itself an ambitious 5.5 per cent target for economic growth this year. Despite its democratic deficit and doubtless authoritarian governance, it has earned for itself plaudits if not praise, albeit oftentimes grudging, from most global actors.

China is also in the unique position of enjoying a very close proximity to Russia. Their leaders Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have met each other thirty-eight times. In February, when Putin visited Beijing for the inaugural of the Winter Olympics, he and Xi signed a 5000 word document pledging “no limits” support to each other, at a time when the Ukrainian crisis was brewing. Indeed, received wisdom has it that Putin delayed his so-called “Special security operation” to humour Xi who did not want any major impediments to the smooth progress of the games, already under the West’s diplomatic boycott. The animus of the West was driving China obviously into Russia’s bearhug. Furthermore, the added attraction was that in this partnership the Chinese dragon was the senior vis-à-vis the Russian bear. The Chinese, as they usually do, must have thought through this at length having weighed all the pros and cons. They are not normally wont to take such major decisions in a fit of frenzy. Nor are they likely to backtrack from it easily, again without studied reflection.

Second, the sanctions slapped on Russia are hurting. But not Russia alone. Both sides of the divide, the West and Russia are being affected. Should Russian oil and gas supply to Europe stop in its entirety, energy price in Europe would skyrocket: “Currently there is no other way (apart from Russian sources) to secure Europe’s supply of energy to generate heat , for mobility, and for power supply” , German Chancellor Olof Scholz has said. The absence of Russian and Ukrainian wheat would translate into rapid rise in food price. Just as necessity is the mother of invention, compulsion is the driver of change. Blocking Russia out of the global financial system would mean it would be forced to create alternatives. Though difficult, with Chinese help it could be possible. A group of sanctioned countries would be happy to join up the alternative arrangements. China, already under western sanctions though not decoupled as yet from the western system would be interested in building up requisite resilience. Moreover, sanctions hit the poor more, and so if the purpose is to turn the populace against government, history shows so far it has caused people to turn the other way. Squeezing Germany at the +Versailles Treaty after the first World War was undeniably a major cause for the Second.

It has been said, the sanctions could put the Russian economy back thirty years. That may not be cause for rejoicing. It could push the Russian authorities to desperate actions, and when a country with a nuclear arsenal as large as Russia’s is driven to that point, the consequences could be enormously unsettling. It would be worse were Russia were to be joined by a disgruntled China, with North Korea in tow.

Third, despite the signing of the February accord between Putin and Xi, China has behaved with cool and hard- nosed circumspection. At the United Nations Beijing has abstained on voting on the resolutions condemning Russia, rather than oppose it. Part of the reason could be China may have while negotiating on the drafts helped tone down the language. But it was mainly because it did not wish to convey that there was no daylight between Beijing and Moscow. By such actions as these China was, apart from not impacting too negatively on its economic ties with Europe which it values, retaining a manoeuvrability in dealing with the crisis. The Chinese, who always tend to see the big picture, are deeply concerned about the broader implications of the war. Premier Li Keqiang has said that “the most pressing task now is to prevent tensions from escalating and getting out of control. A pragmatic China needs a conflict-free world to reach its goal of a “new kind of relationship between the two big powers” (i.e., China and the US).

The American structural realist John Mearsheimer, normally seen as a strong right-wing voice in the US foreign policy circles once said in Beijing that he was happy to be with “his own kind”, in acknowledgment of Chinese policymakers’ (according to him) penchant for realism. A constructive role in the resolution of the current crisis, rather than using it to deepen anti-western nationalist sentiments in China will enable Beijing to calm their neighbourhood in Asia in general and South China Sea in particular. Even with India, the common position at the UN could be translated into a better understanding, though too much need not be read into it. Already Ukraine itself has reached out to China. At Kyiv’s request Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba phoned his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Thereafter the China’s Xinhua News Agency reported that Kuleba has said Ukraine “stands ready to strengthen communication with the Chinese side and looks forward to China’s mediation in achieving Ceasefire”!

These factors suggest China would be in a sweet spot to undertake the effort to facilitate de-escalation. This is not to say it would do so, unless it sees the initiative, in line with any other country, as being in consonance with its perceived national self-interest. In a previous essay I have argued that we may be heading for a tripolar world which will likely be led by the US, China, and Russia. China as a potential newcomer in such a role will need to be doubly careful. The end of the Ukrainian war will not be the end of the crisis. China will need to prepare for the possibility that after Russia, it could be its turn. It, too, has a red line: Taiwan. In that scenario, it is not the West but to Russia it will need to turn for solace and succour. Beijing could, therefore possibly have a two-fold goal: first, in the short term help to put out the conflagration in Ukraine; second, in the long run prepare to combat the greater contradiction that it will likely face in the unfolding of history.

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is the Honorary Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, NUS. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President and Distinguished Fellow of Cosmos Foundation. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac @nus.edu.sg

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.

The official programme of the 2022 Financing for Development Forum will be complemented by side events which will be held in parallel to the Forum on 25 – 28 April 2022. Side events will provide additional space for sharing experiences and promoting concrete actions to advance the financing for development agenda. Side events should be aligned with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.

By Pooja Rangaprasad and Tove Maria Ryding
NEW YORK, Mar 23 2022 (IPS)

This week, exactly 20 years ago, world leaders adopted the United Nation’s Monterrey Consensus. They committed to “Confronting the challenges of financing for development” with a global response and to creating a fully inclusive and equitable global economic system.

The Consensus included the critical recognition that in a globalizing interdependent world economy “National development efforts need to be supported by an enabling international economic environment”. This was the birth of the UN’s Financing for Development (FfD) process which now – 20 years down the line – is as important as ever.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated core problems that the Financing for Development process was created to solve, including skyrocketing inequalities both within and between countries and genders, and lack of public resources to combat poverty and finance sustainable development.

The pandemic came after a decade of soaring public and private debts globally. It heightened the debt vulnerabilities in most countries, leading to the highest global debt levels in half a century. More than half of low-income countries are in, or at risk of, debt distress.

Very limited fiscal space, particularly in global south countries, is undermining the prospects of tackling key challenges such as the climate crisis and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The pandemic has also served as a stark reminder of why truly global solutions are needed to resolve key economic challenges such as large-scale international tax dodging and unsustainable and illegitimate debts.

The 20th anniversary of the Financing for Development process is an important moment to remind governments of the commitments they have made to providing such solutions.

In the Monterrey Consensus world leaders, for example, stressed that: “To promote fair burden-sharing and minimize moral hazard, we would welcome consideration by all relevant stakeholders of an international debt workout mechanism, in the appropriate forums, that will engage debtors and creditors to come together to restructure unsustainable debts in a timely and efficient manner”.

A global debt workout mechanism – under the auspices of the UN – is still today a central part of the solutions that civil society organisations are calling for. So why is it that even today – 20 years after Monterrey – we still do not have such a mechanism?

The hard fact of the matter is that the ambition and will to cooperate, which governments displayed in Monterrey, started to fade shortly after the summit. In particular developed countries continued to keep discussions about economic issues in non-inclusive forums such as G20, OECD and the Paris Club, where most developing countries cannot participate on an equal footing.

In the years that followed, numerous additional governmental initiatives, groupings and forums have continued to shoot up and multiply in rich country capitals around the world. In Orwellian style, the forums outside the UN have sometimes been given names such as “global forum” or “inclusive framework”. But globally inclusive is exactly what these forums are not.

The United Nations remains the only body where all countries are able to participate on a truly equal footing, and developing countries have consistently called for this to be the place where global economic governance takes place. Ironically, rich countries often respond to these calls with the argument that this would be a duplication of the processes taking place in the non-inclusive bodies.

The hard lessons that led to the Monterrey Consensus are still very valid, namely that non-inclusive decision-making leads to an incoherent, unfair and ineffective global economic system and never-ending political power struggles between countries. And although the impacts of the breakdown of global economic cooperation is hardest felt in developing countries, the price is paid by citizens all around the world.

One powerful example of the price of failed cooperation is on international taxation. Hundreds of billions of dollars are lost to public budgets every year due to the blatant failure to stop large-scale international tax dodging by multinational corporations and the wealthy elites.

The most recent changes to the global rules – including the new minimum corporate tax rules – were carried out by the OECD-led so-called “Inclusive Framework”. Once again this resulted in an outcome that is not only ineffective, but also includes strong biases against the interests of the poorest countries.

Over one-third of the world’s countries were never part of the OECD-led negotiations, and four of the developing countries that did participate decided not to support the outcome document. Global tax governance is now also faced with a very familiar problem, as it looks impossible to reach anything near global implementation of the new rules.

The result will be a global tax system that continues to be a patchwork of thousands of bilateral and multilateral treaties, multiple different standards and a range of more or less creative unilateral tax solutions. In other words – an ineffective mess that will continue to cost countries billions of dollars due to international tax dodging and fail to ensure fairness.

Especially in light of the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis, it is clear that this is unsustainable. A number of concrete proposals for fair and inclusive global solutions to these problems have been tabled. This includes specific civil society proposals for a debt workout mechanism and a UN Tax Convention, that build on long-standing calls by developing countries.

What we need now is political will, and in particular the richest countries need to show a real will to cooperate in a truly inclusive forum.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the cooperative spirit of the Monterrey Summit, civil society organisations are calling for a Monterrey+20 Summit on Financing for Development to negotiate and adopt global solutions to confront the challenges of financing for development.

The spirit of Monterrey was a will to engage in truly global cooperation to address the financial and economic challenges we face. It is high time to bring that spirit back.

Pooja Rangaprasad is Policy Director, Financing for Development, Society for International Development (SID); Tove Maria Ryding is Tax Justice Coordinator, European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The struggle of Uganda's Batwa people three decades after they were forced from their ancestral home.

"Today the poverty rate in Syria is an unprecedented 90 percent; 14.6 million people in Syria depend on humanitarian aid.” Credit: Zak Brophy/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 22 2022 (IPS)

“Hundreds of thousands have been killed, more than half of the pre-war population – somewhere in the order of 22 million – have been displaced. More than 100,000 are missing or forcibly disappeared….

“Syria’s cities and infrastructure have been destroyed. Today the poverty rate in Syria is an unprecedented 90 percent; 14.6 million people in Syria depend on humanitarian aid.”

This is how one of the top UN-appointed human rights investigators on 9 March 2022 described the Syrian unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

Presenting the latest UN Human Rights Council-mandated report on the 11-year-old conflict, Paulo Pinheiro, Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, talked about the “devastating” impact on communities.

In Syria’s northwest, many Syrians forced from their homes “are still living in flimsy tents, stuck in snow, rain, mud,” Pinheiro added.

 

In the abyss

“Make no mistake that violence against civilians continues across the country, from bombardment in the northwest, north and northeast, to targeted killings, unlawful detention and torture…These are the abysses faced by the Syrian people.”

According to the report, covering the period July to December 2021, there were increased bombardments in the northwest of the country and skirmishes between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and the Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast.

The Commission documented “grave violations of fundamental human rights and international humanitarian law by parties to the conflict, including war crimes and ongoing patterns of crimes against humanity.

“In Idlib and western Aleppo in the northwest, residential areas were also shelled indiscriminately from the ground by pro-government forces.”

 

140 percent inflation

Previous reports by the Commission of Inquiry have warned about a worsening humanitarian situation across Syria because of fighting and insecurity, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February has heightened concerns that critical wheat imports may now be affected, said Commissioner Hanny Megally: “We’re already seeing inflation at 140 per cent at the beginning of this year (and) it’s gone up.

“We’re seeing the State already beginning to ration. We’re seeing the prices of commodities, basic commodities and fuel going up…Most of Syria’s imported wheat is coming from Ukraine or Russia, so we are very concerned that the war in Ukraine will have a bad impact on Syria.”

 

Teetering on collapse

With Syria “teetering on collapse”, the Commissioner urged a review of sanctions imposed on Syria on a country-by-country basis.

“Sanctions …should facilitate humanitarian assistance (but) this is not really working very well,” said Megally, who warned that many countries were so fearful of breaching the embargoes that they were practising “overcompliance”, leaving Syrian communities short of essential commodities.

 

War in Syria, a carnage

Last year, marking its tenth year, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, classified the war in Syria as a “carnage.” This year, Guterres said that Syria’s 11 years of brutal fighting has come at an “unconscionable human cost”, subjecting millions there to human rights violations on a “massive and systematic scale.”

“The destruction that Syrians have endured is so extensive and deadly that it has few equals in modern history.”

 

Healthcare under attack

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that only half of the 550 health facilities in the region remain open nearly a decade after the war began.

“Syria represents one of the worst cases of healthcare being affected by conflict, according to the agency, with a total of 494 attacks recorded between 2016-2019, mainly in the northwest.”

During that same period, 470 people were killed in attacks on health facilities.

“What is troubling is that we‘ve come to a point where attacks on health – something the international community shouldn‘t tolerate – are now taken for granted; something we have become accustomed to. ”, said Richard Brennan, WHO Regional Emergency Director in the Eastern Mediterranean. “And they are still taking place”.

 

12 million Syrians into food insecurity

As the Syrian war has driven poverty and hunger to levels higher than at any previous point, UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen told the Security Council on 25 February 2022.

“After 10 years of crisis, life is harder than ever for displaced Syrians. Millions of Syrians have been forced to flee their homes since 2011, seeking safety as refugees in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and beyond, or displaced inside Syria. As the crisis continues, hope is fading. With the devastating impact of the pandemic and increasing poverty, every day is an emergency for Syrians forced to flee.”

 

Largest refugee crisis in decades

According to the UN Refugee agency (UNHCR) already last year millions of Syrians have escaped across borders, in what has become “the world’s largest refugee crisis in decades.”

Turkey hosts the largest number of registered Syrian refugees – more than 3.6 million.

“The vast majority of Syrian refugees in the neighbouring countries live in urban areas, with only 1 out of 20 accommodated in a refugee camp. In all neighbouring countries, life is a daily struggle for more than a million Syrian refugees, who have little or no financial resources.” UNHCR added the following:

• Many lost employment since the COVID-19 pandemic has broken out. In Lebanon, nine out of ten refugees now live in extreme poverty,
• There are no formal refugee camps and, as a result, Syrians are scattered throughout urban and rural communities and locations, often sharing small basic lodgings with other refugee families in overcrowded conditions.
• In Jordan, over 660,000 men, women and children are currently trapped in exile. Approximately 80 percent of them live outside camps, while 128,000 have found sanctuary in refugee camps such as Za’atari and Azraq.
• Many have arrived with limited means to cover even basic needs, and those who could at first rely on savings or support from host families are now increasingly in need of help.
• In Jordan, about four out of five Syrian refugees (close to 80 percent ) were living under the national poverty line even before the pandemic, surviving on about US$3 a day.
• Iraq also is a main host country for Syrians, with some 244,000 registered refugees, while in Egypt UNHCR provides protection and assistance to more than 130,000.

 

The tragic frustration of the Arab Spring

“Today, March 15, marks the 11th anniversary of the start of the Syrian revolution. It was on this day in 2011 that Syrian government forces opened fire on peaceful pro-democracy protesters in the southern town of Daraa,” Human Rights Watch reminded.

“The violent crackdown sparked nationwide protests and growing demands for the resignation of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad. As the unrest spread, the government crackdown intensified, eventually descending into civil war. It’s a war that has been largely forgotten, although it bears similar hallmarks to the horrors inflicted on Ukraine in Russia‘s renewed invasion,” the international human rights defender organisation added.

“Yet, while the US and Europe responded with unprecedented urgency to the crisis in Ukraine, waiving visa regulations for people fleeing the conflict and welcoming Ukrainian refugees with compassion and open arms, people fleeing other wars and crises like the one in Syria have been facing unlawful and violent pushbacks at borders.”

Nevertheless, Syrian activists and refugees have often been among the first to demonstrate solidarity with other people facing crisis, offering to volunteer in Ukraine, too, said Human Rights Watch.

“So, even though the world largely abandoned Syrians to face down attacks from multiple abusive armed actors, this day [15 March 2022] should be a reminder that Syrians’ experience of violent rights violations is the same as Ukrainians’, and they deserve the same continued protections and support too.”

Tragically, the hopes of the Arab Spring have been crushed. Authoritarian regimes still reign in the region. And massive local and foreign military attacks continue, with weapons pouring in Syria. Confusing reports circulate about the key actors–Russia, Turkey, Iran, the United States and Europa. All that has failed. Yet, the brutal killing of civilians goes on.

Nigeria-born football coach Obi Ojimadu says his children were traumatised after fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

A water point near a water tank providing clean water to school children in Demnat Khadeer district of Taiz governorate. Credit: Fayad Al-Derwish/Oxfam – 2022

By Fayad Al-Derwish
IBB Governorate, Yemen, Mar 22 2022 (IPS)

As Yemen enters its 8th year of an escalating conflict, 21.7 million of my fellow Yemenis are forced to rely on humanitarian assistance to survive. The conflict has left a trail of devastation in its wake – the country is in economic freefall, and families face intensified violence, hunger, and disease.

As we also mark another World Water Day on March 22, within Women’s History Month, it is a time to reflect on the immense water and sanitation crisis that continues to take countless lives – and how it impacts women and girls so acutely. The destruction of the country’s health and water infrastructure has left Yemen acutely vulnerable to multiple epidemics including malaria, diphtheria, dengue, cholera, and COVID-19.

Due to the conflict, as well as a long history of under-development, Yemen was already the poorest country in the region long before the conflict broke out. Yemen suffers from an acute shortage of functioning irrigation systems, water points, and sanitation facilities.

This leaves the Yemeni people at risk of life-threatening diseases like cholera and typhoid and limitations regarding hygiene against COVID-19. In late 2021, Yemen experienced a third wave of COVID-19 infections.

As of August 2021, officially confirmed cases of Covid-19 had reached 8,265, with 3,252 associated deaths according to the World Health Organization, but the true numbers are likely much higher with the country having the poorest testing capacity and reduced influx to medical facilities due to economic barriers.

Improved water, sanitation, and hygiene services— like reliable access to clean water and access to functioning latrines in particular—isn’t simply a matter of convenience. It’s central to survival, especially for those already most vulnerable.

Women and girls often walk distances on foot, being responsible for fetching water using a rope to raise water from an open well. In some remote areas, some households still don’t have latrines and so follow cultural norms that force many women, who have no choice but to relieve themselves in the evening, while no one is watching.

All of these actions put women and girls in great danger of being attacked by predatory men or animals. Less than 10% of displaced people (80% of whom are children and women) have access to safe latrines. Additionally, waiting until nightfall to defecate increases the possibility of making themselves sick.

Credit: Wael Al-Gadi/Oxfam

This lack of water and sanitation infrastructure also impacts girls’ health and education. When there is no infrastructure at schools that allows girls to study with comfort and also maintain their personal hygiene, particularly during their menstrual cycle, many girls leave school at puberty.

Girls’ inability to manage their menstrual hygiene in schools results in school absenteeism, taboos, and stigmas attached to menstruation leads to an overall culture of silence around the topic, resulting in limited information on menstrual hygiene. Such misinformation can have severe impact on girls’ health.

One promising sign of change I’ve noticed is that society has begun to accept that menstruation is a very natural thing, thanks to the continuous work of organizations promoting awareness of the importance of this issue.

To response to the water, and sanitation, and hygiene crisis, aid organizations have launched services that play an essential role in saving lives and promoting gender equality. Unfortunately, these crucial efforts are severely underfunded – as seen at the disappointing pledging conference last week, where allocated funds for Yemen have sharply dropped again.

Accessing some of the hardest-to-reach areas in the country, Oxfam provides vulnerable communities with safe water, prioritizing schools and camps for displaced people. We also build latrines—both communal and in family homes—and make sure that local populations are given the skills they need to earn an income, amplifying the benefits of the intervention long after the organization departs from the area.

During the construction of the public sewage network constructed by Oxfam, with a total length of 2.4km. Credit: Mohammed Ghazi/Oxfam – 2021

Our work in water infrastructure extends beyond simple projects. Indiscriminate drilling of wells and the unrestricted use of groundwater during earlier periods of extended drought have left some rural areas with no safe sources of water and so forcing planners to consider new solutions.

In parts of Ibb Governorate, where rainfall is one of the heaviest in the country, we found that capturing, or “harvesting” rainwater is a viable option. We have built four harvesting tanks and a massive pumping solar system to more than five locations in both Taiz and Ibb Governorates.

We formatted around 12 water user committees and provided them with all they need to manage the water solar system properly, as well as including several women in these committees.

To improve the sanitation situation in the IDP camps in parts of Taiz governorate, we have constructed and rehabilitated more than 250 latrines that have been connected to the main sewage system project Oxfam constructed in Al-Howban City, Taiz Governorate, benefiting near to 13,000 individuals including displaced and hosts communities.

In the face of these many challenges, I’m proud of the role I’m able to play within Oxfam as WASH Team Leader, tackling what I can. After a challenging start in life – having faced autism, I feel like I truly beat the odds, and I feel fortunate I can now earn a living through helping others.

In my role, I manage all aspects of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions from assessments, analysis, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation in Taiz and Ibb governorates, in the South and North of the country.

Oxfam has been present in Yemen since 1983 and continued to work on development projects, empowering women and the vulnerable until the of conflict escalated early 2015. Now, Oxfam works across Yemen to provide clean water, sanitation and hygiene.

We provide affected communities with cash assistance, and help people earn a living. We also work to ensure that civilians are well protected, and work with civil society organizations to ensure that the voices of women and youth are heard and engaged including in the peace processes.

With the arrival of the Coronavirus in 2019, Oxfam refocused its work in Yemen to respond. Across Yemen, we have trained community health volunteers to spread the word about coronavirus and the importance of hygiene and hand washing.

The opportunity to save lives and provide relief to so many, brings hope and purpose to a wide range of people—including humanitarian workers like myself. Such work brings great meaning to our lives for those of us who are involved in delivering, managing, and distributing assistance.

But as Yemenis leading this response, we need to see progress. I hope to mark future World Water Days and Women’s History Months with more progress towards more peaceful, stable, and healthy futures for all Yemenis.

Fayad Al-Derwish is Team Leader Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) for Oxfam in Yemen.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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There is a fear that the crackdown on NGOs in Zimbabwe could impact the observer status during the upcoming election. Other areas that could be affected include access to sexual reproductive health, food aid, and education. This picture was taken during the 2018 elections. Credit: Commonwealth Observer Mission

By Ignatius Banda
Bulawayo, ZIMBABWE , Mar 22 2022 (IPS)

Zimbabwe is pressing ahead with a controversial bill that critics say seeks to criminalise the operations of nongovernmental organisations working in the country.

Zimbabwe is pressing ahead with a controversial bill that critics say seeks to criminalise the operations of nongovernmental organisations working in the country.

According to senior government officials, amendments to the Private Voluntary Organisations Act is designed to stem illegal money coming into the country under the guise of NGO funding but is allegedly used to push political agendas and political lobbying.

The country’s ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front), has been suspicious of NGOs, routinely accusing them of working with hostile foreign countries to push what it calls a “regime change agenda”.

In recent days, members of the public have been invited by parliament to share their views on the proposed amendments, but violent interruptions have marred these public gatherings by what rights groups say are ruling party activists eager to see the bill passed into law.

This comes as a senior government official, Larry Mavima, said in early March that the country does not need NGOs as Zimbabwe was not at war, advising that NGOs should “go to Ukraine” where their services are needed.

“How long should we continue relying on other people? There was a time when NGOs were necessary, but we to get out of this mentality,” Mavima told a public gathering in the country’s Midlands province devastated by cyclical droughts and where humanitarian needs continue to grow.

The remarks were quickly met with widespread condemnation from the humanitarian sector in a country where millions of people survive on NGO assistance, including sexual reproductive health, food aid and education.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, before the emergence of Covid-19, more than 7 million people in both rural and urban areas required food assistance, with the World Food Programme noting that the numbers grew with poor harvests during the 2020-21 and 2020-22 cropping seasons.

However, there are concerns about the proposed amendments of the law timing on the eve of elections slated for 2023.

NGOs involved in civic education have especially been targeted with a government minister alleging that the public, voluntary organisations working, especially in the rural areas, were straying from their mandates and politicising villagers.

“The banning of NGOs will have a bearing on the upcoming elections because it will undermine the ability of civic society organisations to observe, cover and monitor the elections,” said Carine Kaneza Nantulya, Human Rights Watch Africa Advocacy director.

“Active NGOs and civil society organisations are fundamental to an open, free, and democratic society because of the role they play in protecting and promoting human rights and the rule of law. The PVO Act amendment is a disturbing development that takes place against the backdrop of a broader crackdown on civic space in Zimbabwe.” Nantulya told IPS by email.

This is not the first time Zimbabwe has escalated efforts to muzzle NGOs.

In July last year, the capital city Harare’s provincial development coordinator Tafadzwa Muguti demanded that already registered NGOs seek approval from his office before carrying out any programmes.

The announcement was met swift protests from civic society groups who challenged the directive in court and won, with a high court judge questioning the legality of such demands.

The attempts to muzzle the NGOs also attracted international attention. The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights added its voice and issued a statement calling on the Zimbabwean government to “stop interfering with NGO operations.”

NGO groups have indicated they will challenge the amendment of the PVO Act in court if passed into law.

A joint report, authored by the Southern African Human Rights Defenders Network, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and the Accountability Lab Zimbabwe, looked into the possible economic impact of the PVO amendment bill. The report, released in February, raised concerns about the far-reaching impact of outlawing NGO work in Zimbabwe.

“Any disruptions in NGO activities and financing will likely worsen the poverty situation and threaten the development gains that have been made to date. Importantly, in Zimbabwe, there has been no instance of terrorist financing in the NGOs sector,” the researchers wrote.

“The country’s economic situation, human development indices, and progress towards meeting SDGs show that the country needs all the help it can get,” McDonald Lewanika, lead of Accountability Lab Zimbabwe, told IPS.

“The fears around NGOs supporting materially political parties are unfounded in this environment where there has been donor flight and fatigue and where some NGOs have lost funding from big donors on suspicion of the same. It is not in the interest of NGOs to be partisan,” Lewanika said.

Zimbabwe had in the past made numerous calls for assistance, so it is not clear what has changed now for the authorities to declare NGOs are no longer welcome.

“No country can claim that it doesn’t need NGOs, when we know that NGOs, especially in Zimbabwe, are at the forefront of service delivery for communities. For instance, women and reproductive rights and HIV AIDS organisations provided critically needed services to the communities,” Nantulya said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres briefs reporters on Ukraine. The latest developments in Ukraine are testing “the entire international system”, he said at a media stakeout, adding “we must pass this test.” “Our world is facing the biggest global peace and security crisis in recent years – certainly in my tenure as Secretary-General,” he added. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Kul Chandra Gautam
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Mar 22 2022 (IPS)

In an opinion piece published in PassBlue on 15 March 2022, historian Stephen Schlesinger asked, “Where is the UN’s Guterres?” as Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war on Ukraine has been dominating the world’s headline news.

Schlesinger is a good friend and close observer of the UN, and author of the award-winning book: “Act of Creation: The Founding of The United Nations”. Like Schlesinger, many of us who are strong supporters of the UN and who watch the deliberations at the world body closely, do know the answer to his rhetorical question about the whereabouts of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

He is currently between a rock and hard place faced with the blatant violation of the UN Charter by a powerful Permanent Member of the UN Security Council. Many of us consider Guterres as a highly qualified statesman and the world’s top diplomat with impeccable credentials and a sober leadership style.

Understandably, he had to be extra cautious and could not take bold initiatives during his first five-year term, as he had to tread carefully in a world dominated by an erratic and dangerous Donald Trump in the White House, a devious Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, a resurgent Xi Jinping in Beijing and several other populist demagogues and autocrats like Jair Bolsonaro, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Boris Johnson with their antipathy towards multilateralism.

Now in his second term, Guterres is freed from the fear of not being re-elected and can afford to be more courageous and visibly proactive when the stakes for the UN’s credibility and effectiveness are high, given the threat to international peace and security posed by Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine.

To his credit, Guterres did not mince words in deploring the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a violation of the UN Charter both at the UN Security Council and the General Assembly. He even warned that the prospect of nuclear war was now back within the realm of possibility. And, he pleaded with Putin to stop the war and offered his good offices to help resolve the crisis peacefully.

It is understood that Guterres has also been in close contact with leaders of China, France, Germany, India, Israel and Turkey, among others, on mediation efforts to bring an end to this horrific war. This is all commendable.

But in an era of the 24/7 news cycle and the pervasive social media, the UN Chief’s remarks from his UN perch and his quiet diplomacy with influential member-states are necessary but not sufficient. The world’s general public – and especially the people of Ukraine and Russia – don’t see the UN leader being visibly proactive outside the glasshouse of UN headquarters in New York.

Guterres has been outspoken in highlighting the catastrophic humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine and has taken a leadership role to mobilize international support for humanitarian assistance.

In an opinion piece entitled “War on Ukraine also an Assault on World’s Most Vulnerable People and Countries” published by the IPS News on 15 March 2022, Guterres warned about the grave consequences and negative ripple effects of the war in Ukraine on the world economy, and in particular, the developing countries.

His plea to world leaders to resist the temptation of increasing military budgets at the expense of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and climate action, are also right on the mark.

The UN’s humanitarian agencies like UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, WHO, etc. are doing a heroic job to provide life-saving assistance both inside Ukraine and in its neighboring countries deluged with millions of refugees. These UN agencies and many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have honed their skills to mobilize resources and implement humanitarian assistance quite effectively over the decades.

Where the S-G’s leadership is needed most and is being tested publicly is not so much on humanitarian assistance, but in preventing and ending wars that are the root causes of the humanitarian crisis.

The global public sees and judges the S-G’s effectiveness on what it considers as his job number #1, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. Guterres is no longer the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, but the world’s top diplomat and guardian of international peace and security.

There have been many wars in the 76-year history of the UN, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine stands as the gravest challenge to the post-World War II international order as one of its guardians and a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council has struck at the heart of its architecture by threatening a nuclear conflagration and a potential World War III in the ramparts of the Second World War.

The UN has played an important role in mediating peace processes, organizing humanitarian ceasefires, helping to maintain peace through peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions in many inter-country and regional wars and conflicts.

But it has so far appeared helpless when the vital interests of its most powerful veto-wielding superpowers like Russia and the US are involved.

The Big Powers – the P-5 – often see the S-G as merely the “Chief Administrative Officer” of the UN, and as such subservient to world leaders, foreign ministers and ambassadors as the “governors” of the organization in the GA and SC.

However, “We the peoples of the world” regard the S-G as a world leader and the world’s top diplomat in his/her own right. After all, according to Chapter XV of the UN Charter, the Secretariat led by the S-G is akin to the principal organs of the United Nations. And the Charter gives the S-G sufficient leeway to take initiatives.

Apropos the old debate on whether the S-G is merely a “Secretary” or a “General”, the world’s Big Powers may see him as just a “Secretary” but “we the peoples of the world” wish to see him as an unarmed, Pacifist “General” and a world leader.

In an era of shuttle diplomacy, when we see Macron, Scholz, Johnson, Erdogan, Naftali Bennet, Blinken, et. al. conferring in Moscow, Brussels, Berlin and Washington, why don’t we see Guterres there, or hear about him calling or writing to Putin, Biden, Xi Jinping and Zelensky?

If the leaders of Poland, Czech Republic and Slovenia dare to risk visiting Kyiv in the midst of shelling to show their solidarity, surely Guterres, the world’s top peacemaker and coordinator of humanitarian assistance should be seen there too.

Guterres’ invisibility seriously undermines his and the UN’s credibility at this time of the greatest international security crisis since the founding of the UN in 1945, and certainly during his tenure as S-G.

I am pretty sure that in similar circumstances some of his more courageous predecessors like Dag Hammarskjold, Kofi Annan and even the otherwise quiet U Thant and the voluble Boutros Boutros-Ghali would have been more visible and outspoken.

We are all mindful of the limitations and constraints that the UN leader faces in dealing with crises involving strong vested interests of the world’s veto-wielding superpowers. The S-G can do nothing about changing the veto-power structure agreed and understandable in a different era, but which has now become an indelible birth defect of the UN Charter.

However, in the case of the Ukraine crisis, the S-G can and ought to be bolder and visibly more proactive, taking strength from the fact that the aggressor power is completely isolated and has become a virtual pariah.

Not even a single other member-state in the Security Council supported Putin’s justification for his attack on Ukraine. And in the “Uniting for Peace” resolution at the UN General Assembly, an overwhelming majority of 141 states denounced the Russian invasion and called for immediate end to the war, with the aggressor getting the support of only four notoriously autocratic pariah regimes.

These UN resolutions, and the world’s public opinion, give valuable moral mandate for the S-G to play a proactive and visible role as the world’s premier peacemaker.

I have no doubt about Guterres’ competence and commitment. But sometimes I worry about his (lack of) courage. Even if his efforts fail, he should dare to go down in history as someone who took the utmost risk for peace, rather than someone who was too timid to the point of making the UN appear like totally impotent or irrelevant.

There is always a place for behind the scene, quiet diplomacy in international relations. But that is not good enough for the UN’s credibility in this day and age when the world’s eyes are on Ukraine and people all over the world are asking “Where is the UN?” when its very raison d’être is being rudely challenged by one of its major founding member-states.

Kul Gautam is a former Assistant Secretary-General of the UN; Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF; and author of “My Journey from the Hills of Nepal to the Halls of the United Nations”. (www.kulgautam.org).

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Nigerian students in Ukraine plead for help leaving Kherson as food, medicine and water run low.

Credit: SADC Groundwater Management Institute.

By James Sauramba
PRETORIA, South Africa, Mar 22 2022 (IPS)

Groundwater is invisible and yet its impact is visible everywhere – this infinite resource provides almost half of all drinking water worldwide. About 40% of water for irrigated agriculture and about 1/3 of water required for industry is from groundwater resources. Despite these impressive facts, groundwater remains invisible and less prominent compared to surface water.

This year, 2022, the World Water Day puts groundwater resources on the spotlight as the day is celebrated under the theme: “Groundwater – making the invisible visible”. As we celebrate World Water Day, it is important that we pause and ask ourselves this question, “what are we doing to ensure the sustainable development and management of this precious resource or are we doing enough?”

Used sustainably, groundwater could provide potable water for the estimated 40% of the SADC region’s estimated 345 million inhabitants that currently lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation services. It could also alleviate pressure on the region’s surface water and help communities endure the nowadays very frequent and severe dry spells

Groundwater plays a critical role in providing water and food security and improving livelihoods of many in the SADC region, especially vulnerable communities in the rural areas and in the poor urban settlements.

“With the worsening impacts of climate change, we need to recognize that groundwater could be a catalyst for economic and social development in the SADC region. Furthermore, groundwater could play a significant role in sustainable development and building resilience – if sustainably developed and managed” says Eng. James Sauramba, SADC-GMI Executive Director.

The Sustainable Development Goal 6 underpins ensuring access to water and sanitation for all. If sustainably developed, groundwater could be instrumental in the achievement of SDG 6 as set out in the United Nations agenda 2030.

Eng. Sauramba continues to say, as climate change impacts intensify and many people turn to groundwater for their primary water supply, it becomes even more critical that we work together to sustainably manage this precious resource.

Used sustainably, groundwater could provide potable water for the estimated 40% of the SADC region’s estimated 345 million inhabitants that currently lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation services. It could also alleviate pressure on the region’s surface water and help communities endure the nowadays very frequent and severe dry spells.

Communication pertaining to groundwater related issues is key to making groundwater visible. Stakeholder participation, shared knowledge, and informed decision-making are integral cornerstones of good water governance and can never be over emphasized.

It is important that we seek innovative ways to create awareness and communicate groundwater issues. Although some progress has been achieved in this area in the last five years, more still needs to be accomplished.

The SADC region’s estimated current extraction rates of around 2,500 m3 per capita per year represent only 1.5% of the renewable groundwater resources available. This means that groundwater remains largely untapped at a time when the gap between water demand and availability is growing drastically.

The Earth’s population of nearly 8 billion in 2020 is expected to reach 11 billion by 2100. Humans will have to learn to produce sufficient food without destroying the soil, water, and climate. This has been dubbed the greatest challenge humanity has faced. Sustainable management of groundwater is at the heart of the solution.

 

Credit: SADC Groundwater Management Institute.

 

SADC-GMI strives to making groundwater visible

SADC Groundwater Management Institute (SADC-GMI) as the centre of excellence in promoting equitable and sustainable groundwater management in the SADC region since 2016 has to date implemented various impactful small scale infrastructure development projects in 10 SADC Member States to support the development and management of this finite resource.

The projects ranged from groundwater monitoring and evaluation systems, community water supply schemes, exploration of deep aquifers, and groundwater mapping and development. These projects contributed to enhancing water security and improved livelihoods for the benefiting communities. Approximately 93000 beneficiaries (of which 53% were women) across the SADC region benefitted from the interventions.

Transboundary cooperation among Member States sharing groundwater resources was also promoted through undertaking research to generate knowledge in six of the estimated 30 transboundary aquifers in the SADC region.

Three new boreholes were drilled in Chongwe to promote sustainable groundwater development and reduce the devastating effects of water shortage for approximately 12,000 residents. The project augmented the existing cluster of boreholes while easing the water shortage in the area.

Again, SADC-GMI implemented a similar project in Muchocolate in the Matutuine district of Maputo Province where safe and clean drinking water was provided for approximately 2 000 people and their livestock. Another milestone was recorded in the Kingdom of Eswatini where a groundwater monitoring project was completed. The project involved 10 monitoring sites, four of which use renewable energy to pump the water.

 

2nd Phase – Sustainable Groundwater Management in SADC Member States

Since mid-November 2021, SADC-GMI embarked on implementation of the 2nd Phase of the Sustainable Groundwater Management in SADC Member States project that will again put groundwater on the spotlight.

As the results, SADC-GMI will continue to engage SADC Member States to sustainably develop groundwater resources in the region to improve the livelihoods of the vulnerable communities, especially those heavily dependent on groundwater and address groundwater challenges facing the region.

Excerpt:

Eng. James Sauramba is Executive Director of the SADC Groundwater Management Institute. 

A Pakistani child receives a dose of the oral polio vaccine (OPV). Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Matshidiso Moeti
BRAZZAVILLE, Mar 22 2022 (IPS)

In the outskirts of Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, just beyond where paved roads transition to dirt, an undiagnosed polio infection paralysed a three-year-old girl. From one day to the next, the child’s life was changed forever.

Among Africa’s public health community, we had looked at our successes against wild poliovirus as a cause for optimism. In the 1990s, the disease paralysed more than 75,000 African children every year. But following extensive immunization campaigns coupled with strong surveillance, the wild poliovirus was officially kicked out of sub-Saharan Africa just under two years ago.

We went from 300,000 cases in 1985 to zero in 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic struck. In Malawi, there had been no case of wild poliovirus since 1992, and for many, the disease had become a distant memory.

The four-month suspension of polio vaccination campaigns in more than 30 countries in 2020, coupled with related disruptions to essential immunization services, led to tens of millions of children missing polio vaccines. Including the three-year old girl in Malawi who is now paralysed for life

Polio is a viral infection that causes nerve damage and, in some cases, paralysis that can lead to permanent disability or even death. It is transmitted mostly through contaminated water or food, and its symptoms—fever, sore throat, headaches, pain in the arms and legs—are so generic that an active infection is often difficult to diagnose until paralysis strikes.

While polio remains endemic to Afghanistan and Pakistan, with a few dozen cases identified every year in each country, it has been eradicated just about everywhere else. The Americas were declared polio-free in 1994; China, Australia, and the Western Pacific countries in 2000, Europe in 2002; and Southeast Asia in 2011. The last cases in Africa were in Nigeria, in 2016, in the north of the country where the horrors of armed conflict had upended immunization efforts.

But over the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted efforts to combat vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio, in many other places. The four-month suspension of polio vaccination campaigns in more than 30 countries in 2020, coupled with related disruptions to essential immunization services, led to tens of millions of children missing polio vaccines. Including the three-year old girl in Malawi who is now paralysed for life.

We know a lot about wild poliovirus now, enough to trace the case in Malawi to a strain of the virus originating in Pakistan. While this new detection does not affect the African region’s wild poliovirus-free certification status, it has set the world back in its efforts to eradicate the disease.

And if transmission is not stopped within the next 12 months, the continent’s certification status would likely be revisited. This disease creates far too much devastation, on a personal and health system level, for us to allow that to happen.

We can detect the presence of the virus, along with its genetic origins, through sampling urban sewers—and so we have launched surveillance efforts in Lilongwe and cities in neighbouring countries. We’ve also deployed healthcare workers to go door-to-door in Malawi, identifying families whose children have unexplained paralysis, and securing samples for testing to see if polio was the cause.

With support from international and local partners, governments in the region have now launched an intensive immunization campaign, with the intent of vaccinating more than 23 million children in Malawi and its neighbours Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique, as well as Zimbabwe.

The vaccine needs to be administered in multiple doses, so the logistics of reaching out to both urban and rural locations, with trained staff who carry sufficient numbers of doses, has to be well planned and executed. Luckily, we are benefiting from lessons learned from experiences in Syria and Somalia in recent years, where the polio programme quickly stopped the spread of imported wild poliovirus, despite challenges posed by on-going conflict and insecurity.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization Regional Director for Africa

It was no coincidence that the African Region achieved its wild polio-free status two years ago. This only happened because of the decades of commitment by governments, communities and partners, and we are now leveraging the wealth of experience and expertise we have built in the region to move quickly to bring this outbreak under control.

The payoff is immense. Globally, eradication efforts have saved the lives of an estimated 180,000 people and spared an estimated 1.8 million children from disability. The economic benefit for ending polio have been projected at upwards of US$50 billion by 2035, with the vast majority of these benefits accruing to low-income countries freed from having to handle such a terrible health threat.

Eliminating polio is about more than an economic stimulus, of course. We do it because it is a source of suffering that we can remove from this world, because every child paralysed by a polio infection is one child too many. Wild poliovirus cases around the world are at an all-time low, and we have a historic opportunity to stop the transmission of the virus for good.

To achieve this, we need governments throughout Africa—especially the southern nations—to join these efforts, step up surveillance, vaccinate their children, and get back on track to wipe this virus off the planet.

Excerpt:

Dr Matshidiso Moeti is the World Health Organization Regional Director for Africa.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 22 2022 (IPS)

“If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. Still haunted by the clever preaching of monetarist guru Milton Friedman’s ghost, all too many monetary authorities address every inflationary threat or sign they see by raising interest rates.

Anis Chowdhury

Friedman’s dictum that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” still defines the orthodoxy. Despite changed circumstances in the world today, for Friedmanites, inflation must be curbed by monetary tightening, especially interest rate hikes.

No central banker consensus
The threat of higher inflation has risen with Russia’s Ukraine incursion and the punitive Western ‘sanctions from hell’ in response. International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warns wide-ranging sanctions on Russia will worsen inflation.

European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde fears, “The Russia-Ukraine war will have a material impact on economic activity and inflation”. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has also acknowledged the new threat.

She recognizes tighter monetary policy could be contractionary, but expresses confidence in the Federal Reserve’s ability to balance that. Meanwhile, US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has pledged to be “careful”.

Terming Russia’s invasion “a game changer”, with unpredictable consequences, he stressed readiness to move more aggressively if needed. On 16 March, the Fed raised its benchmark short-term interest rate while signalling up to six more rate hikes this year.

But other central bankers do not agree on how best to respond. Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda has ruled out tightening monetary policy. He recently noted, “It’s inappropriate to deal with [cost-push inflation] by scaling back stimulus or tightening monetary policy”. For Kuroda, an interest rate hike is inappropriate to deal with inflation due to surging fuel and food prices.

Friedman’s disciples at some central banks began tightening monetary policy from mid-2021. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the first to adopt strict inflation targeting in 1989, raised interest rates in August for the second time in two months.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The Bank of England (BOE) raised interest rates for the first time in more than three years in December. Going further, Norway’s central bank doubled its policy rate on the same day.

Anticipating interest rate rises in the US and under pressure from financial markets, central banks in some emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) – such as Brazil, Russia and Mexico – began raising policy interest rates after inflation warning bells went off in mid-2021. Indonesia and South Africa joined the bandwagon in January 2022.

Ukraine effect
With inflation surging after the Ukraine incursion, the Bank of Canada doubled its key rate on 2 March – its first increase since October 2018.

The ECB has a more hawkish stance, dropping its more cautious earlier language. Its governing council has reiterated an old pledge to “take whatever action is needed” to pursue price stability and safeguard financial stability.

Following the US Fed’s move, the BOE raised its interest rate the next day. A month before, in February, the BOE Chief Economist was against raising interest rates, favouring a more nuanced approach.

However, instead of kneejerk interest rate responses, Reserve Bank of Australia’s Governor Philip Lowe is “prepared to be patient” while monitoring developments.

EMDE central bankers have also responded differently. Brazil has raised its benchmark interest rate after the Fed, and signalled more increases could follow this year. But Indonesia has been more circumspect.

Interest rate not inflation cure-all
The interest rate is a blunt policy tool. It does not differentiate between activities facing rising demand and those experiencing supply disruptions. Thus, interest rate hikes adversely impact investments in sectors facing supply bottlenecks needing more investment.

In short, the interest rate is indiscriminate. But the prevailing policy orthodoxy of the past four decades does not differentiate among causes of inflation, prescribing higher interest rates as the miracle ‘cure-all’.

This monetarist policy orthodoxy does not even recognize multiple causes or sources of inflation. Most observers believe that current inflationary pressures are due to both demand and supply factors.

Some sectors may be experiencing surging demand while others are facing supply disruptions and rising production costs. All this has now been exacerbated by the Ukraine crisis and the ensuing sanctions interrupting supplies.

Old lessons forgotten
Well over half a century ago, the UN’s World Economic Survey 1956 warned, “A single economic policy seems no more likely to overcome all sources of imbalance which produce rising prices and wages than is a single medicine likely to cure all diseases which produce a fever”.

Addressing ‘cost-push’ inflation using measures designed for ‘demand-pull’ phenomena is not only inappropriate, but also damaging. It can increase unemployment significantly without dampening inflation, warned the UN’s World Economic Survey 1955 as Friedman’s anti-Keynesian arguments were emerging.

Interest rates do not discriminate between credit for consumer and investment spending. In efforts to dampen demand sufficiently, interest rates are raised sharply. Such monetary tightening can do much lasting economic damage.

Declining or lower investment is harmful for the progress needed for sustainable development, requiring innovation and productivity growth. After all, improved technologies typically require new machines and tools.

No one ‘one size fits all’
Dealing with ‘stagflation’ – economic stagnation with inflation – caused by multiple factors requires both fiscal and monetary policies working together complementarily. They also need particular tools and regulatory measures for specific purposes.

Monetary authorities should also create government fiscal space by financing unanticipated urgent needs and long-term sustainable development projects, e.g., for renewable energy.

Governments need to first provide some immediate cost of living relief to defuse unrest as food and fuel prices surge. This can be done with measures that may include food vouchers, suspending some taxes on key consumer products.

In the medium- to long-term, governments can expand subsidized public provisioning of healthcare, transport, housing, education and childcare to offset rising living costs. Such public provisioning – increasing the “social wage” – diffuses wage demands, preventing wage-price spirals.

Such policy initiatives brought down inflation in Australia during the 1980s without causing large-scale unemployment. This contrasted with the deep recessions in the UK and USA then due to high interest rates.

Get correct medicine
But to do so, governments need more fiscal space. Hence, tax reforms are critical. Progressive tax reforms – such as introducing wealth taxes and raising marginal tax rates for high income earners – also mitigate inequality. Governments also need to align their short- and long-term fiscal policy frameworks.

Monetary authorities need to apply a combination of tools, such as reserve requirements for commercial bank deposits, more credit, including differential interest rate facilities, and more inclusive financing.

For example, central banks should restrict credit growth in ‘overheated’ sectors, while expanding affordable credit for those facing supply bottlenecks. Central banks also need to curb credit growth likely to be used for speculation.

Governments also need regulatory measures to prevent unscrupulous monopolies or cartels trying to manipulate markets and create artificial shortages. Regulatory measures are also needed to check commodity futures and other speculation. These increase food and fuel price rises and other problems.

Relying exclusively on the interest rate hammer is an article of monetarist faith, not macroeconomic wisdom. Pragmatic policymakers have demonstrated much ingenuity in designing more appropriate macroeconomic policy responses – not only against inflation, but worse, the stagflation now threatening the world.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Today, plastics are ubiquitous, pervading all aspects of human activity and invading all dimensions of the environment, with the result being the emergence of planet Plastics. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Mar 21 2022 (IPS)

Planet Earth is increasingly being transformed into planet Plastics. Approximately 400,000,000 metric tons of plastics are produced worldwide annually. Those plastics amount to about 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, every year for each of the 8 billion human inhabitants living on the unfolding planet Plastics.

The Garden of Eden with all its wonderful flora and fauna did not contain plastics. None of the world’s sacred religious texts refer to or mention plastics. Also, in the great historical works of literature, drama, philosophy, mathematics, science, music, and art, one does not read, think, hear, see, or feel plastics.

Yet today, plastics are ubiquitous, pervading all aspects of human activity and invading all dimensions of the environment, with the result being the emergence of planet Plastics. From birth to death plastics have become an integral part of human daily life and infiltrated the planet’s environment. Without plastics, it is difficult to imagine how human populations would function.

Plastics can be found everywhere on the planet, including oceans, waterways, air, forests, plains, cities, towns, farms, highways, clothing, buildings, furniture, packaging, transport, factories, sewers, beaches, mountains, and animal life. Plastics have also made it to Earth’s upper atmospheres, the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Plastics first appeared on planet Earth at the start of the 20th century and with their discovery began the start of the Age of Plastics. The first fully synthetic plastic was invented by Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland in 1907. His plastic, which he named Bakelite, was a combination of two chemicals, formaldehyde and phenol, made under pressure and heat.

Facilitating the rapid growth of the plastics industries was the utilization of waste materials from the processing of crude oil and natural gas, including ethylene gas. Industrial experimentation lead to various forms of plastics, the most abundant being polyethylene. In brief, plastics are made mostly from fossil fuels, i.e., oil and natural gas, through a process that is energy intensive and emits greenhouse gases.

By the middle of the 20th century the annual production of plastics increased rapidly to about 2 million metric tons. Seventy years later the annual production of plastics worldwide reached approximately 400 million metric tons, or two hundred times the amount of plastics that was produced in1950. And by 2050 the annual production of plastics is projected to be twice the 2020 level (Figure 1).

 

Source: Our World in Data.

 

Plastics have created an alarming global throw-away culture. It is estimated that single-use plastics represent about 40 percent of the annual production of plastics.

The recycling of plastics remains at a relatively low level worldwide. Recycling is estimated to account for less than 10 percent of all plastics produced every year, with more than 10 million metric tons of plastics being dumped in the oceans annually. Moreover, without needed action to address that dumping, the amount of plastic trash flowing into the oceans every year is expected to nearly triple by 2040.

The primary reason why less than a tenth of plastics produced annually are recycled is the cost. For the plastics industries the costs of recycling are far greater than the costs of producing new plastics.

Consequently, the cumulative worldwide amount of plastics is many times more than the annual production. Since the end of World War II, it is estimated that close to 10,000 million metric tons of plastics have been produced globally (Figure 2).

 

Source: Our World in Data.

 

Most of those plastics were produced relatively recently. About two-thirds of all the plastics in the world today were manufactured since the start of the 21st century. In addition, by mid-century the cumulative amount of plastics produced is projected to nearly triple and be equivalent to the weight of all the fish in the oceans.

The consequences of plastics read like a science-fiction doomsday novel. In brief, the novel’s plot involves invisible aliens from outer space taking over planet Earth by encouraging humans to exterminate themselves through the exponential accumulation of plastics.

In addition to being a serious threat to human health and wellbeing, the increasing production and use of plastics are undermining the planet’s natural environment. Plastics are polluting the soil, air, oceans, and waterways, entering the food chain, killing and injuring wildlife and damaging habitats, producing greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, and creating hazardous chemicals (Table 1).

 

Source: Author’s compilation.

 

Most plastics do not biodegrade and therefore remain in the environment for many hundreds of years. Consequently, those plastics often break down into microplastics, which are small pieces of plastics, including fibers, microbeads, fragments, nurdles, and foam. The various forms of microplastics are contaminating the planet’s land, oceans, water, air, food and increasingly living organisms.

The low level of recycling plastics has also resulted in enormous global plastic trash problems that cost the public billions to abate. Attempts to deal with the plastics trash are also contributing to contentious political issues and tensions among nations.

A global agreement adopted by more than 180 countries in 2019 aims at restricting the exporting of plastics trash from wealthy countries to poor countries. However, some countries have been able to get around the restrictions and continue exporting plastics trash.

Also, in March representatives of 175 countries agreed to begin writing a legal binding global treaty aimed at addressing the exponential growth of plastic pollution as well as its impact on climate change and biodiversity loss. In addition to improving recycling efforts and cleaning up plastics trash, the treaty is to include curbs on the production of plastics and may even include a ban on single-use plastics.

At the country level, various actions are being taken to address some of the causes contributing to plastics pollution. Some countries, for example, have banned the use of plastic bags for bagging groceries. Others have also eliminated the use of bottles, cutlery, straws, and coffee stirrers made from plastics.

In addition to the actions and policies of governments, important steps can be taken by individuals to curb the emergence of planet Plastics. People can reduce their use of plastics, particularly disposable plastics, plastic water bottles, and plastic grocery bags and support policies and programs for recycling and reusing plastics.

Public information campaigns can also contribute to responsible behavior regarding the use, reuse, recycling, and disposal of plastics. Educational programs, especially in elementary schools, can be effective in creating awareness about the detrimental effects of plastics on the planet.

Furthermore, with the aim of reducing the growing accumulation of billions of metric tons of plastics and limiting the plastics pollution of the environment, the private sector can produce and use less plastics. And very importantly, the major industries that produce and those that extensively utilize plastics should take the lead in establishing, promoting, and facilitating worldwide programs for recycling and reusing plastics.

The available indicators on the production, consumption, recycling, reuse, and disposal of plastics all point to the same outcome, namely, a ruinous worldwide transformation of the environment. However, it is not too late to take actions to arrest the transformation of planet Earth into planet Plastics and by so doing contributing to an opportunity to return to a semblance of the original Garden of Eden.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

Ambassador Cindy Hensley McCain, Permanent Representative of the US Mission to the Food and Agriculture Organization on the United Nations (FAO) is pictured here with a community involved in an FAO climate smart agriculture project. Credit: FAO

By Farhana Haque Rahman and Sania Farooqui
Rome, Mar 21 2022 (IPS)

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Ambassador Cindy Hensley McCain, Permanent Representative of the US Mission to the Food and Agriculture Organization on the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, Italy, shares her thoughts on food security, sustainable food systems, the impact of climate change on food production, conflicts and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, and her plans while working with the FAO, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and World Food Programme (WFP) with Farhana Haque Rahman and Sania Farooqui.

The Biden Administration swore in ambassador Cindy Hensley McCain to serve as Permanent Representative of the US Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome on November 5, 2021.  She has dedicated her life to improving the lives of those less fortunate both in the United States and worldwide. She is the former Chair of the Board of Trustees of the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University, where she oversaw the organization’s focus on advancing character-driven global leadership based on security, economic opportunity, freedom, and human dignity, as well as chairing the Institute’s Human Trafficking Advisory Council.

In addition to her work at the McCain Institute, she served on the Board of Directors of Project CURE, CARE, Operation Smile, HaloTrust, and the Advisory Boards of Too Small To Fail and Warriors and Quiet Waters. She was the chairperson of her family’s business, Hensley Beverage Company, one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributors in the US.  McCain is the wife of the late US Senator John McCain.  Together, they have four children.

IPS: There has been a dramatic worsening of world hunger since 2020. While the pandemic’s impact is yet to be fully mapped, according to WHO, more than 2.3 billion people (or 30 percent of the global population) have lacked year-round access to adequate food, and malnutrition continues to persist in all its forms, with children paying a high price. What are your concerns on this crisis, and what can be done to achieve food security and improve nutrition within reach of all those impacted?

UN Mission Embassy, Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, Cindy McCain.
Credit: UN/Cristiano Minichiello.

Cindy McCain: In my new role as US Ambassador to the UN Agencies in Rome, my top priority is to bring high-level attention to the urgent food security crisis that you mention, one that is being felt particularly in places like Afghanistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and now Ukraine. I also want to raise the alarm about the broader, far-reaching threats to our global food systems—and to work together with other members of the United Nations to build resilient, sustainable food systems for everyone.

IPS: The FAO has said that the land and water resources farmers rely on are stressed to a ‘breaking point’, and there will be two billion more mouths to feed by 2050. What are your thoughts on this, and what can be done to find sustainable solutions and adapt to these changing climate challenges?

McCain: To meet these challenges, we need to dramatically ramp up innovation and cooperation to both mitigate and adapt to climate change, particularly in agriculture.  Our food systems are vulnerable, and the sector must urgently adapt.

Agriculture must also be part of the solution to climate change.  Food production and food systems, in general, are responsible for a quarter to a third of greenhouse gas emissions. We need new technologies, products, and approaches to food production, consumption, and food loss and waste.

At COP26, the UAE and the United States announced the creation of the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate, or AIM4C, with the goal of accelerating the search for breakthrough solutions in the agricultural sector.  AIM4C is promoting significantly increased investment in support of climate-smart agriculture and food system innovation.

Already, more than 40 countries and over a hundred partners – including Lightworks at Arizona State University – my home state, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization – have joined forces under AIM4C.

Additionally, President Biden launched the Global Methane Pledge at COP26 with the goal of reducing global methane emissions at least by 30% by 2030, the minimum required to keep 1.5C within reach. The Pledge now has over 110 country participants, including six of the top eight emitters of agricultural methane.

We can cut agricultural emissions through measures that also enhance agricultural productivity in developing countries—which has the added benefit of reducing global pressure to convert rainforests to farms. For example, typical US and EU dairy operations produce milk with 1/8th the emissions of typical Indian and African operations.  Increasing productivity in developing countries benefits farmers while tackling climate change by cutting methane emissions and deforestation – it’s a win-win.

IPS: Climate change is threatening food production, which means there is a need for more investments, including creating new jobs to adapt to climate change to help small-scale farmers currently producing food for 2 billion people – or global stability is at risk. What is your view about IFAD’s new investment programme to boost private funding of rural businesses and small-scale farmers?

Ambassador Cindy McCain with women at an IFAD financed women’s cassava cooperative. Credit: IFAD

McCain: Truly sustainable food systems must be economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable.  IFAD is right to consider the private sector an indispensable partner in improving smallholder farmers’ access to markets, capital, technology, and innovation – the same tools producers in developed countries rely on.  These partnerships bolster rural resilience in the face of increased conflict, COVID-19, climate change, and other acute and systematic threats. The United States is proud to be IFAD’s largest current and historical donor.  We appreciate IFAD’s focus on the livelihoods of rural, smallholder farmers in the world’s least developed countries, who account for the majority of the world’s poor.

IPS: More than 800 million people across the globe go to bed hungry every night, most of them smallholder farmers who depend on agriculture to make a living and feed their families, many of whom are also women. What can be done to close the present global gender gap in agriculture and build sustainable futures for women farmers?

McCain: Women play a critical and potentially transformative role in agriculture, especially in developing countries where they make up over 48 percent of the rural agricultural workforce. They also make a crucial contribution to nutrition and food security by feeding their families and contributing to their communities.

Nonetheless, women continue to face persistent obstacles and economic constraints.  The FAO notes that, given the same tools as men, women could increase yields on their farms by 20–30 percent. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries up to 4 percent, and production gains of this magnitude could reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12–17 percent. That’s huge. We need to provide rural women and girls with greater access to the assets, resources, services, and opportunities that are available to men – especially land. Women still account for less than 15 percent of agricultural landholders in the world.

We know the promise women hold in agriculture, and we are acting on it.  Empowerment of women is a strong focus of Feed the Future, the US food security initiative with programs equipping women with the right tools, training, and technology to increase their production, improve their storage, and give them access to markets.

In the same way, all FAO, IFAD, and WFP programs have a strong focus on women.  Gender is an essential component of their work, providing extension services, technical and financial training, helping them to become successful producers, marketers, and entrepreneurs.  If we want to improve our food systems to be more productive and sustainable, we must invest in women farmers.

IPS: According to the World Bank, between 88 and 115 million people are being pushed into poverty due to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. In 2021, this number was expected to have risen to between 143 and 163 million. Millions of people worldwide have been suffering from food insecurity and different forms of malnutrition because they cannot afford the cost of healthy diets. What could be done to build resilience to such shocks?

McCain: To achieve lasting food security for everyone, even the world’s most vulnerable people, we must strengthen and safeguard the entire food system – the land, the local economies, the supply chain, the farmers, and the communities that all depend on one another to thrive.  And we must reach for all the tools in the toolbox to build resilience and give people a chance to not just survive the emergencies but also grow and thrive in their wake.

That includes investing in cutting-edge technology, promoting climate-smart and water-efficient agricultural solutions, capitalizing on private-sector resources, expertise, and partnership, and improving access to financing, training, and markets. Building resilience, making our food systems more sustainable, doing more with less: this is the challenge before us, and it demands a united, global effort.

IPS: Conflict drives hunger. According to WFP data, there are almost 283 million people marching towards starvation, with 45 million knocking on famine’s door. Why do we urgently need humanitarian action towards the ongoing conflicts around the world?

McCain: We must continue to provide urgent humanitarian action to save lives wherever they are at risk.  As you noted, conflict is the biggest driver of hunger around the world today.  Sixty percent of the world’s hungry live in conflict areas. The food security situation is particularly dire in Yemen and South Sudan and in the northern areas of Ethiopia and Niger, where people are facing starvation.  And now we have a rapidly unfolding crisis in Ukraine, to which USAID and the UN agencies are all responding with emergency assistance.

The Ukraine crisis also risks exacerbating hunger in other regions of the world as wheat supplies from one of the planet’s major breadbaskets are disrupted.  That means markets must adjust, driving up the cost of wheat and other staples, which will affect relief operations in other parts of the world where people are desperately in need of food assistance. We must do our best to address and help resolve these conflicts by joining forces with other countries and the UN to push for diplomatic solutions.

IPS: The ongoing crisis in Ukraine is worsening every day, which could push thousands into a state of poverty and hunger. What are your thoughts on this?

McCain: Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine was a flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.  It has unleashed a humanitarian crisis in the heart of Europe, with over 2.5 million refugees so far and probably many more to come. We have a longstanding partnership with the people of Ukraine and are very focused on the urgent humanitarian needs there.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team – our nation’s finest international emergency responders – to the region to support the Ukrainian people as they bear the brunt of Russian aggression.

On March 10, 2022, US Vice President Kamala Harris announced nearly $53 million in new humanitarian assistance from the United States government, through the USAID, to support innocent civilians affected by Russia’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine. This additional assistance includes support to the WFP to provide lifesaving emergency food assistance to meet the immediate needs of hundreds of thousands affected by the invasion, including people displaced from their homes and who are crossing the border out of Ukraine. In addition, it will support WFP’s logistics operations to move assistance into Ukraine, including to people in Kyiv.

The United States is the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and has provided $159 million in overall humanitarian assistance to Ukraine since October 2020, including nearly $107 million in the past two weeks in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This includes food, safe drinking water, shelter, emergency health care, and winterization services to communities affected by ongoing fighting.

IPS: Lastly, what is your take (personal thoughts) on your appointment by the Biden administration? Do you plan to visit some countries where the FAO, IFAD, and WFP are currently working? What are your thoughts on the current crisis in food and hunger, and what do you see happening by the end of your term? Are you optimistic?

McCain: I am honored President Biden appointed me to this role and very proud to be serving my country in my capacity as Ambassador to the UN Agencies in Rome. The work we do on food security here in Rome is crucial, and we need food security to be in the spotlight because, the fact is, everything else depends on it. I will be doing my best to bring the necessary attention to the challenges we are facing.   It is time for food security to take center stage in global security discussions everywhere.

I do indeed plan to do many visits to the field to see FAO, IFAD, and WFP at work.  In fact, I just returned from Madagascar, where a sustained drought is severely affecting the population in the south of the country, and to Kenya to see the work of our UN partners there.

Am I optimistic?  Actually, I am. The momentum around food security right now gives me great hope. At the Munich Security Conference this year, food security was finally recognized as a crucial part of global security. I participated in a food security town hall – a first and definitely not the last – at the conference. The UN Food Systems Summit last fall was an important recognition that food security is a systemic issue, that we all must work together to ensure we have sustainable and equitable food systems. At that summit, the United States committed 10 billion US dollars towards food security efforts at home and abroad, 5 billion US dollars of which we’re investing through Feed the Future, America’s initiative to end hunger and malnutrition.

With the newly released Global Food Security Strategy to guide the United States’ efforts, we’re increasing investments in partnerships and innovation to catalyze inclusive agriculture-led growth, eradicate malnutrition, and help people adapt to the perils of climate change.  There is a renewed focus on the need to address food insecurity, and we are putting tools in place to do just that.

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service and Executive Director IPS Noram; she served as the elected Director-General of IPS 2015-2019. A journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Sania Farooqui is a New Delhi-based journalist, filmmaker, and host of The Sania Farooqui Show, where she regularly speaks to women who have made significant contributions bringing about socio-economic changes globally. She writes and reports regularly for IPS news wire.

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Mathu Joyini, Permanent Representative of South Africa to the United Nations, speaks at the 78th plenary meeting, on the voting and elections for non-permanent members of the Security Council. The General Assembly elected Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana and the United Arab Emirates to the Security Council for a two-year term starting on 1 January 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
 
Meanwhile, the 66th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which begam March 14 is scheduled to conclude on March 25.

By Kingsley Ighobor
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 21 2022 (IPS)

Ambassador Mathu Joyini began her role as the Permanent Representative of South Africa to the United Nations in January 2021, becoming the first South African woman to hold the position.

Representing the African States Group, she is the Chair of the Bureau for the 2022 Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). She has championed causes related to Africa’s peace and security, human rights, women’s empowerment, among others.

In this interview with Africa Renewal’s Kingsley Ighobor, Amb. Joyini discusses her work and career path.

Excerpts from the interview:

What has been your journey to this role?

This place [United Nations] is a centre for global governance, and I think it provides an interesting space for any Permanent Representative to engage to promote their country’s interest, and to promote cooperation between their country and others.

My journey has been an interesting one. It started when I worked in social welfare. And I always go back there because it made me understand the needs of human beings at an individual level, at the community level, and so forth.

Social work grounded me in understanding human needs around poverty, hunger, health—you deal with all these issues in that space. Now, when I look at the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals], and what we’re trying to achieve, I pay my respects to the social workers out there.

Also, I spent a lot of time in the private sector, which helped me to understand how business and society intersect; how a business makes profits but to what extent are they making profits and at the same time helping build their communities and societies?

Again, when you get here you realize there is a focus on economic development that is sustainable and responsible. You get to deal with issues around financing, sustainable financing, financing for development, and the need for the private sector to get involved in development.

Of course, there is my journey within the Department of International Relations and Cooperation [South Africa’s foreign ministry], over 20 years in different positions at different levels, where I learned more about our country’s foreign policy and international relations.

I always say that democratic South Africa has been good with its foreign policy—its focus and its consistency over the years.

Kingsley Ighobor

What are your top achievements so far here at the UN?

I can give you some highlights. I will start with human rights. As you know, in 2021 we commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, which is a landmark anti-discrimination framework. South Africa was given the responsibility of preparing for that commemoration and facilitating the development of a political declaration.

We were given that role together with Portugal, and I have to commend Ambassador Francisco António Duarte Lopes of Portugal because we managed to put on the table a political declaration that was successfully adopted on the margins of the UN General Assembly High Level Week in September 2021.

Secondly, on peace and security, South Africa and the Peacebuilding Support Office of the United Nations hosted a webinar and initiated a dialogue on how to get the private sector to contribute to peacebuilding. I must tell you it was an interesting webinar.

We looked at how we can make resources available for peacebuilding. We believe that the private sector that benefits from a stable and peaceful society needs to contribute to peacebuilding. And it happens that the private sector is ready to make such contributions. So, we hope to put in place a strategy for private sector engagement.

Thirdly, there are issues that we will always care about. These are not just 2022 issues, but issues that will always be South Africa’s priorities because of our history. One such priority is our solidarity with the people of Palestine and the people of Western Sahara. We also have the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which aligns with the SDGs, and now includes the post-COVID-19 recovery agenda.

Fourthly, we are known for gender equality and women’s empowerment. In 2022 and 2023 South Africa will be the Chair of the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW). We are chairing on behalf of the Africa Group, and we want to make sure that we drive the implementation of agreed conclusions.

Talking about gender equality, you are one of only a handful female Permanent Representatives to the UN in New York. Why do you think that is so?

Governments have the primary responsibility for promoting gender equality; they need to always be reminded to walk the talk. That is not always necessarily the case. When women take leadership positions in public spaces, they’re likely to promote other women. I can say that in my case. But again, I represent my President who is strongly supportive of gender equality.

Gender equality is a huge priority here at the UN headquarters. Is that the case in Africa?

I think so. I know so. Many of the African Union’s instruments focus on gender equality, on women’s empowerment. In fact, the AU might be ahead of many other regional bodies in terms of thinking through issues related to gender equality. If you look at the number of AU protocols and instruments, you will find that gender equality is a priority for our leaders. But there’s a lot to do in terms of implementation.

This year’s CSW is hybrid — both in-person and virtual events. What should African women expect from it?

They should expect two baskets of outcomes. The first basket is the formal one, which is what CSW is there for. Every year, we look at how far we are implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and then come up with recommendations to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment. This year it will be in the context of climate change.

So, the CSW looks at the lived experiences of women. You and I know that the effects of climate change affect women disproportionately. And so, in the agreed conclusions, Member States will make recommendations to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the context of climate change.

So African women should expect that their needs and their challenges are being addressed through agreed conclusions. We need to be aware that it’s not just how damaging the impact of climate change is to women, it’s also to what extent women are involved in mitigation and adaptation activities? Are they funded? Are they engaged?

The second basket is the CSW space, where civil society and the UN system, including the Member States, engage to address pertinent issues. It is fertile soil for learning from each other, for sharing experiences, and for creating knowledge.

So, our sisters and our mothers in Africa can expect to learn and exchange ideas; they will hear how Zimbabwean women, for example, are tackling their challenges, or what women in Pakistan and other parts of the world are doing.

How much impact will the virtual events have on the outcomes?

The women can learn not necessarily by coming here. The experience of the last CSW has shown that they learn very well on virtual platforms. In fact, most people will say that virtual platforms allow many women access.

Those who cannot afford to get on the plane to New York can log on and exchange experiences with others. So, we will have to be sensitive in creating those platforms: how you design topics, the learning spaces, and the exchanges that happen.

What are your views regarding how women can take advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which is probably Africa’s biggest project currently?

Absolutely, the AfCFTA is the biggest project. And it is a transformative one. Creating that market of 1.3 billion consumers, you can imagine what it will do for our manufacturing sector, for trading, for agriculture, and so forth. To the extent that the free trade agreement will transform the continent economically, women need to be part of it, if not at the center of it.

We often talk about the economic and financial inclusion of women. If you walk into any market right now in Africa, most informal traders would be women. We need to start thinking creatively about how to include them in a manner that advances their socioeconomic wellbeing.

When we [South Africa] chairing the AU, our President [Cyril Ramaphosa] really became the champion of women’s financial and economic inclusion. Take procurement, for example. If I have two suppliers with equal capabilities, and one of them is a woman, I’m going to give the opportunity to the woman supplier.

So, we need to be deliberate within the free trade area in building capacity and creating opportunities for women. We need to put in place policies and programmes that support women-led small, medium and large enterprises.

I must mention the SheTrades that was initiated by the International Trade Centre and is helping connect African women entrepreneurs to the markets. Such programmes are helpful.

Finally, what message would you like to send to Africans, particularly women?

We are in a continent whose future is bright. Studies show that future economic growth will be in Africa. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the top six of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world were in Africa. It is about how we organize ourselves to recover from the pandemic. And that is currently being coordinated so well by the continent.

If you look at the various initiatives that have been put in place by the continent to coordinate our recovery and our preparedness for future pandemics, you become hopeful.

We have all the frameworks, all the policies, all the opportunities. What we now require is to roll up our sleeves and do the work.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations, March 2022

IPS UN Bureau

 

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