Africa

The Djamaa el Djazaïr mosque is Africa's largest mosque and the third largest in the world.

"Iwájú," a 6-episode animated series set in a futuristic Lagos has been released this week.

"Iwájú," a 6-episode animated series set in a futuristic Lagos has been released this week.

The men will be executed by a firing squad if their appeal against the sentence fails.

By Winnie Byanyima
GENEVA, Switzerland, Mar 1 2024 (IPS)

This International Women’s Day (March 8) comes at a fiercely challenging moment. We can find inspiration, and hope, however, in the women and girls around the world who, often at great risk, are leading the fight for rights for everyone.

Today, more than ever, we need to put our energies and resources in support of their courage. We are facing an unprecedented and well-funded global attack on human rights and especially on the rights of women. Hard-won progress is in peril. It is not just the commitments made in the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 that are under threat. It is everything we have gained since 1945.

How do we push back against the pushback? How do we make sure our daughters can live in a kinder, safer, world, in which their rights are upheld and respected? How do we make sure women and girls are included in policy making that affects their lives?

Firstly, we need to deepen our understanding of this pushback on human rights and democracy.

Democracy is threatened when inequalities deepen. Today, more and more wealth is being concentrated in the hands a few men. The world’s five richest billionaires have doubled their fortunes since 2020 – while five billion people became poorer.

Globally, men own US$105 trillion more wealth than women. And the world’s poorest countries are being forced to cut public spending because of the debt crisis, which particularly impacts women and girls from poor communities.

The world is very far off track to meet the gender targets set in the Sustainable Development Goals because, as UN Women concludes, of “deeply rooted biases against women, manifesting in unequal access to sexual and reproductive health, unequal political representation, economic disparities and a lack of legal protection.” As the UN Secretary-General has urged, there is a need for a “dismantling and transformation of power structures that discriminate against women and girls”.

We need to tackle unequal access to education and information. When 122 million of our girls are still out of school, and even millions who attend school are denied lifesaving information on how to protect themselves from HIV, everyone loses.

We need to challenge the lie that women’s rights undermine culture and tradition.

And we need to resolutely confront the globally coordinated ruthless campaign to punish people for who they are and who they love. We need to put the human rights of every person at the centre of all our development efforts, just as we have been doing in the AIDS movement for decades. Because to protect the wellbeing of everyone, the health of everyone, we have to protect the rights of everyone.

Progress requires a deepening of multilateralism and a deepening of support for civil society. So it is concerning when countries, including in the West, retreat from their international commitments to development and human rights. And it is concerning when only 1% of all the aid going to gender equality reaches women’s and girls’ organizations.

We are not mourning, however, we are organizing. We can be hopeful because we have won before and we can again. To do so, we need to remember that hope is not idle optimism. It is active. We will win together, through determined collaborative action.

That is how we won the right to vote. That is how we opened the doors of parliaments and corporate board rooms. That is how we closed the gap between boys and girls in basic education. That is how won progress in moving away from the old colonial punitive laws that criminalised LGBTQ people, so that today two-thirds of countries no longer criminalize. That is how we won progress on the rights of people living with HIV, with three quarters of people living with HIV now on treatment.

We cannot give up or slow down on this unfinished journey of progress, or retreat because opponents of progress are well-organised. The stakes are too high, the risks if we act with a lack or courage are too great, the costs of insufficient action are unaffordable.

This is a moment that calls for unwavering support for women and girls on the frontlines, and for intersectional alliances in defence of everyone’s human rights. We need to strengthen the hand of those whose lives are most impacted by the denial of rights. The United Nations is clear: we are not only on the side of the frontline defenders of rights; we are by their side.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is UNAIDS Executive Director and United Nations Under-Secretary-General
 
The following opinion piece is part of series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.

Nigerian women returning from the forest with firewood. Credit: Peace Oladipo/IPS

By Peace Oladipo
KWARA, Nigeria, Mar 1 2024 (IPS)

One sunny mid-morning in Omu-Aran village, a community in Kwara State, North Central Nigeria, Iyabo Sunday sat beside a firewood stand observing her pot of beans with rice (a combination enjoyed by many in Nigeria).

The 52-year-old widow used her plastic dirt parker to fan the flames, occasionally blowing air through her mouth for speed and frantically shielding her face from the wisps of smoke that curled from the firewood.

After a hike in electricity tariffs, Sunday told IPS that she abandoned her electric-powered stove for cooking gas. But instability in the “economy has successfully caused me to move back to the firewood since my children and I must eat.”

Oyedele Christiana, a 41-year-old restaurateur who specializes in making fufu, a local delicacy made from cassava, expressed her wish to stop using firewood and charcoal but was constrained by finances. “The smoke enters my eyes and makes me cough a lot.  I usually use firewood for my canteen business, while I use charcoal at home for household cooking.”

Like Iyabo, Christiana made use of cooking gas. The sporadic increase in the price of domestic gas has since pushed her to the traditional cooking method, with its attendant havoc on her eyes and lungs. “I am not as old as I look, but cooking has done this,” Oyedele sighed.

The price of cooking gas in Nigeria has soared wildly amid the country’s inflation woes. The removal of subsidy on petrol products, together with a depreciation of the naira, has resulted in a steep increase in the cost of food and transportation. This hike in the cost of living comes amid a minimum wage of N30,000 ($18), ranked among the lowest in the world, according to Picodi.

The price of 12.5 kg of cooking gas increased from N7,413. ($4) in 2022 to N16,875 ($10) in February 2024 across the country, a price just half the national minimum wage.

Implications on Women, Environment

Women living in grassroots communities who can no longer afford cooking gas have no choice but to bear the harsh method of cooking with firewood. Many, like Ajayi Omole, an octogenarian living in Akungba, a town in Ondo State, have made cooking with firewood a delight due to the lack of alternatives.

“We usually go into the forest, get the trees, sun dry (them), and prepare them for cooking.” However, she said, “I have a stove inside my room but I can’t use it because I don’t have enough to purchase kerosene.”

The nation’s alarming poverty circle, where Iyabo and Oyedele belong, speaks loudly about the reality of clean cooking. Statistics indicate that 63 percent of the entire population mostly relies on traditional method cooking, usually described as ‘dirty’.

The National Council on Climate Change (NCCC) has stated that, aside from the dangers of deforestation and climate destruction, the use of firewood and charcoal for cooking directly affects women’s health. This is in agreement with figures from the Federal Ministry of Environment about how more than 98,000 Nigerian women die annually from smoke inhaled while cooking with firewood.

Aisha Sulaiman, a renewable energy and green hydrogen technologist, said that rising prices of cooking gas have caused many to transition back to the use of firewood and charcoal, leading many women to multiple health issues. She emphasized that women suffer stronger health issues as secondhand smokers.

She said, “In an African setting, women belong to the kitchen; that’s how the narrative is, even if that is not supposed to be. In rural communities, the main source of energy in terms of cooking is the traditional method, which is unsustainable and harmful.

“The traditional methods of cooking involve charcoal and firewood. These are materials that lead to the release of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, into our environment, and this in turn contributes to global warming, which brings about climate change.”

Speaking on women’s health, Sulaiman mentioned that respiratory diseases could stem from inhaling smoke from charcoal and firewood. “These methods are a source of air pollution, which can cause serious health issues. Overexposure to the smoke also leads to a disease called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is very endemic to women,’’ she said. Sulaiman added that the Nigerian government should prioritize making clean energy accessible and cost-competitive to procure its acceptance by the people in low-income communities.

Ibrahim Muhammad, an energy consultant and team lead at Climate Alaramma Sustainable Development Initiative, a youth-led environmental organization in northern Nigeria, argued that the transition back to the traditional method of cooking would increase deforestation. He said the increase in LPG’s price is connected to the nation’s economic downturn.

In his words, “There is extensive research demonstrating the significant impact of traditional cooking methods on women and children. These methods contribute to deforestation and air pollution, particularly through the emission of smoke.”

Muhammad noted that women’s transition to traditional cooking was a setback in Nigeria’s transition plan to energy, especially in the area of clean cooking.

The Nigerian government and international development partners must find avenues for cleaning cooking infrastructure to be subsidized so that rural communities, mostly affected, can be able to afford it. According to him, “Considering the nature of some communities that are into agriculture, they are expected to be supported with infrastructure that can help them use this agricultural waste to cook.  Additionally, the prices of these clean cooking stoves that are being developed are subsidized.”

Speaking further on alternatives, he added, “Briquettes, produced from agricultural waste, typically resemble charcoal and can perform all the functions of charcoal. They are energy-efficient and made from various agricultural waste materials, thus not promoting deforestation.”

Muhammad added that harmless solutions should be created to fit in Nigeria’s context; electric stoves may be considered impossible due to unstable electricity.

“Solar cookers are typically used when it is sunny, but many people hardly have lunch, they mostly focus on breakfast and dinner. Many women cook early in the morning or evening, so we need to tailor solutions to our specific circumstances,’’ he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: Louisa Gouliamaki/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 1 2024 (IPS)

After almost two decades of civil society campaigning, Greece’s parliament has passed a law enabling same-sex couples to marry and adopt children. It’s the first majority-Orthodox Christian country to realise marriage equality.

Equal marriage is now recognised in 36 countries, with Estonia last year becoming the first post-Soviet state to join the ranks. These notable firsts have however been accompanied by regression elsewhere, including in the country with the world’s biggest Orthodox Christian population, Russia.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AROUND THE WORLD

A long campaign

Debate on the rights of Greek same-sex couples dates back to 2006. That year and again in 2008, the centre-left PASOK party submitted bills to recognise unmarried couples, including same-sex ones. Neither made it through parliament, and a cohabitation law was eventually passed that didn’t include same-sex couples.

In 2008, LGBTQI+ rights activists exploited a loophole in a law that didn’t specify that marriage must involve a man and a woman. Despite instant backlash and legal threats, the mayor of the island of Tilos, a gay tourist destination, held a civil wedding ceremony for two same-sex couples. Courts soon annulled these weddings, but they helped put the issue on the agenda.

In the run-up to the 2009 election, the Lesbian and Gay Community of Greece sent candidates a questionnaire on LGBTQI+ rights. PASOK, which won the election, said it supported same-sex registered partnerships. But in office it dragged its heels.

LGBTQI+ activists took to regional and international human rights systems. They submitted shadow reports to the UN Human Rights Council’s review of Greece’s human rights record. In 2009, four gay couples brought two cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), stating that the restriction of civil unions to heterosexual couples amounted to unjustified discrimination.

In November 2013, the ECHR ruled that there was indeed discrimination, ordering the state to provide compensation. Within days, the PASOK-led government announced it would introduce a bill to extend civil unions to same-sex couples.

But time dragged. A year on, the government again said it was considering the change, but soon after, parliament was dissolved and snap elections were called for early 2015. Amid public anger at economic austerity measures imposed in response to Greece’s debt crisis, left-wing party Syriza won power.

Political change

The pace quickened under the Syriza-led government, and after a long and contentious December 2015 parliamentary debate, same-sex couples gained civil partnership rights. They still weren’t able to adopt or exercise parental rights over non-biological children, but the change was a vital first step. A year on, parliament further amended the law to extend some of the same rights as marriage, including labour rights.

LGBTQI+ rights activists made more gains during Syriza’s four years in power. In 2017, parliament passed a gender identity law enabling people to change gender on official documents without undergoing any medical procedure and allowing trans people to affirm their gender from 15 years onwards. Almost the entire political opposition voted against, including Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the centre-right New Democracy party and current prime minister.

In June 2019, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promised his government would legalise same-sex marriage if it won the upcoming election. But he was defeated by New Democracy and its bill was shelved. It renewed its promise ahead of the 2023 election, but again New Democracy won.

In a surprise move, an unlikely champion introduced a same-sex marriage bill in January 2024: Prime Minister Mitsotakis, having consolidated his hold over the political right, now sought to make inroads into socially progressive territory.

On 15 February, several prominent New Democracy parliamentarians abstained or voted against the bill but opposition parties on the left compensated. Syriza lawmakers voted overwhelmingly for.

The religious factor

But powerful forces still oppose equality. According to a 2018 survey, Greece is Europe’s fourth most religious country. Around half of adults consider themselves ‘highly religious’ and 59 per cent say they believe in God with ‘absolute certainty’. Up to 98 per cent identify as Greek Orthodox Christians. For many, belonging to the church goes beyond religion – it’s bound up in Greek identity.

The church has fiercely resisted every victory of the women’s and LGBTQI+ rights movements. It’s been particularly belligerent towards the gender identity law. Church authorities condemned it as ‘a satanic deed’ and shared the same conspiracy theories as far-right groups.

With public opinion evenly divided, the debate on same-sex marriage was deeply polarising. Parliamentary debates saw a barrage of abusive language and hate speech. Far-right politicians claimed the bill was ‘anti-Christian’ and warned it would enable paedophiles. Church representatives insisted homosexuality was a ‘mortal sin’. The church insisted the bill would destroy the family. Priests propagated disinformation and threatened excommunication.

What – and where – next

As Equaldex’s Equality Index shows, the new law is way ahead of prevailing public attitudes. Activists will need to do much more work to shift public opinion to prevent regression and keep moving forward. But they’re optimistic this latest victory will help further normalise the presence of LGBTQI+ people and bring more social acceptance of diversity.

It matters too outside Greece, which is ahead of the curve among Orthodox-majority states – and could offer an example to follow.

Belarus, Russia and Moldova are the Orthodox-majority countries with the most hostile environments for LGBTQI+ people. Belarus and Russia have closed civic space, making it next to impossible to advocate for rights, and Russia has further intensified its repression of LGBTQI+ people as a matter of national identity during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

But Moldova, along with several other of Greece’s Orthodox-majority neighbours – Bulgaria, Montenegro and Romania – have relatively enabling civic space and active LGBTQI+ movements seeking change.

Activists in Greece will keep pushing for social change to match legal progress. And activists in neighbouring states will keep campaigning, knowing that, sustained advocacy can pay off even in hostile contexts. They’ll keep trying to force open political windows of opportunity so decades-sought change can finally materialise.

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

 

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A selection of the best photos from the African continent and beyond.

Two huge biodigesters process around 40,000 tons of organic waste produced by Grupo Campestre's poultry farms and other companies in El Salvador each year. This material is used to generate biogas to produce electricity that is injected into the national grid. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador, Mar 1 2024 (IPS)

In a win-win relationship, a segment of El Salvador’s agribusiness industry is taking steps to ease the tension of the historic socio-environmental conflict caused by poultry and pig farms, whose waste has caused concern and anger in nearby communities.

Today, some companies in the sector are converting the waste into biogas to produce electricity for their own consumption and to inject the rest into the national grid.

“People no longer say that the chicken manure is contaminating our water or land. That is very important for the community, now we don’t have to deal with that pollution anymore,” small farmer Elizabeth Méndez, who welcomes the investments made by Grupo Campestre to process the waste and generate biogas, told IPS."Things used to be different, there was a bad stench. But now we are living in a more favorable environment." -- Elizabeth Méndez

Méndez, 44, lives in the San Carlos El Amate canton, in the municipality of San Miguel in eastern El Salvador. Near her community is located one of the four poultry farms of Grupo Campestre, which owns several companies in the agribusiness sector and fried chicken restaurant chains.

“Things used to be different, there was a bad stench. But now we are living in a more favorable environment,” stressed Méndez, after a hard day working as a farm laborer, during an IPS tour of rural localities in San Miguel near poultry farms.

El Salvador, the smallest country in Central America, with 6.7 million inhabitants and a territory of 21,000 square kilometers, is the scene of disputes between poultry and pig farms and the rural families that live near them, as the industry has generally failed to manage its biowaste properly.

Elizabeth Méndez (left), who lives in the San Carlos El Amate canton, in the municipality of San Miguel in eastern El Salvador, says the biogas plant that processes waste has significantly reduced the pollution produced by a poultry farm installed in her community. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

 

Circular economy: biogas from manure

Grupo Campestre took a key step about four years ago when it decided to invest around seven million dollars to tackle the thorny issue of biowaste head-on, and acquired state-of-the-art technology to produce biogas, to generate electricity for consumption and injection into the national grid.

The company’s biogas plant is located in the El Brazo canton, also in San Miguel, near the area where the farms are located, which produce eight million chickens per year, whose manure is the main component to produce biogas.

All biowaste from the company’s various business activities, such as chicken manure from the farms and liquid and solid waste from the poultry processing plant, as well as biodegradable material from the fried chicken restaurants, are processed here.

“As part of the sustainability of operations, the need arises to move towards a circular economy model, to reincorporate waste into its life cycle, through reuse, recycling, or producing energy,” Jimmy Gómez, environmental compliance manager for Grupo Campestre, told IPS at the facility.

The biogas plant, in operation since 2021, processes some 40,000 tons per year of biological waste with energy potential, which is fed into two huge biodigesters where bacteria decompose the waste to generate gases such as methane, the main fuel that drives a generator with 850 kilowatts of installed power.

The biodigesters generate around 10,000 cubic meters of biogas per day, producing 17 megawatt hours a day of electricity.

A photo of one of Grupo Campestre’s four poultry farms, which raise 200,000 chickens each. It is located on the outskirts of El Brazo, in the eastern Salvadoran municipality of San Miguel. Thanks to its biogas plant, the surrounding villages no longer have to put up with the foul odors emanating from the farms. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

“Today chicken manure is the main waste product that is given new value at the biogas plant, generating about 80 percent of all the energy we produce and sell,” said Gómez, a chemical engineer.

Grupo Campestre has entered into an energy sales contract with Empresa de Electricidad de Oriente, one of the four electric power distribution companies in El Salvador, owned by AES El Salvador, a subsidiary of the U.S. transnational AES Corporation.

“We resolved a socio-environmental issue, which brought complaints from nearby communities about bad odors and flies, and we turned it into an opportunity, which has also helped us to provide support to the other companies in the group,” said Gómez.

When the plant began to operate, it was also necessary to address the noise pollution caused by the generator that produces the biogas. The solution was to enclose it in a metal container so that the sound now does not exceed 50 decibels and cannot be heard from 20 meters away.

Part of the energy generated, around 50 kilowatts, is used for the plant’s own consumption, production manager Rubén Membreño told IPS. In addition, hundreds of solar panels, placed on the roof of a large shed containing thousands of chickens, generate 5.5 megawatts per hour per day.

This energy efficiency provides the company with the capacity to even provide waste processing services to other companies in the agroindustrial sector that have not yet made the necessary investments to carry out the transition.

“We are taking advantage of all the waste from our own companies, and also from other companies. For them it is waste but for us it is our raw material” to generate electricity, Membreño pointed out.

The technology used in the plant was provided by European companies, mainly from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, he said.

Jimmy Gómez (left), environmental compliance manager, and Rubén Membreño, production manager of Grupo Campestre, inspect the 850 kilowatt generator that produces electricity from biogas generated by the company’s activities. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

 

Relief for the climate

Methane, the main gas produced in the bacterial decomposition process in the biodigester, is one of the major pollutants and causes of the greenhouse effect. But using it in the production of electricity prevents it from being released into the atmosphere, thus alleviating the effects of climate change.

According to company estimates, methane makes up 60 percent of the plant’s biogas production process, thereby “capturing” around 24,000 tons of CO2 or carbon dioxide per year, which damages the atmosphere and impacts life on the planet through climate change that produces extreme rainfall and droughts.

If that methane were not “burned” at the plant, “it would remain on the ground, in the open and would go into the atmosphere,” said Gómez.

Another agroindustrial company that has included new technologies to process its waste and generate biogas is Avícola El Granjero, which produces eggs from farms with more than one million hens.

Its 5,000 cubic meter biodigester produces the biogas that drives two 360 kilowatt generators, and the resulting electricity is fed into the national grid.

Granja San José, in the poultry and swine industry, also has a biodigester that processes the manure from 13,000 hogs and 75,000 hens.

One of the first phases of biogas production at the Grupo Campestre plant in central El Salvador consists of depositing biological material in huge underground tanks to begin the decomposition process. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Pending disputes

But despite these strides, the poultry and swine farming sector has not completely reconverted and socio-environmental conflicts are still simmering in several parts of the country.

In May 2023, IPS reported on the struggle of rural villages near the municipality of Suchitoto, in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán, to defend their community water system, built in 2002, which will be affected by Avícola Salvadoreña, a company that is building an agribusiness farm nearby.

“The work has continued, trucks with construction materials are passing by all the time,” Blanca Portillo, a resident of Nueva Consolación, one of the seven rural settlements affected by the project, told IPS in a conversation on Feb. 28.

Portillo said local residents have learned that a court, which is handling the conflict, has requested that the poultry company carry out a new environmental impact study and citizen input consultation, due to apparent violations committed previously.

Many of the nearby villages are not supplied by the national grid, and have worked hard to set up their own community water projects, which are now at risk of being contaminated with waste from the farm.

“The authorities have told us that they will not give water exploitation permits to the company if there is a risk of contamination. But we don’t know if they are just saying that to keep us quiet,” said Portillo, a member of the Haciendita Rural Water and Sanitation Association, which serves some 1,000 families in seven communities, including Nueva Consolación.

A woman featured in a BBC video struggling to feed her children is overwhelmed by the help she has received.

A woman featured in a BBC video struggling to feed her children is overwhelmed by the help she has received.

A woman featured in a BBC video struggling to feed her children is overwhelmed by the help she has received.

An oil production field near Rumilan, in Syria´s northeast, shortly after being hit by Turkish drones. Oil is one of the main sources of income for the entire Kurdish region. Credit: Jewan Abdi/IPS

By Jewan Abdi and Arkan Sloo
QAMISHLI, Syria, Feb 29 2024 (IPS)

The Ramsys, a farming couple from northeast Syria, never thought they’d spend almost all their savings on solar panels. “We’ve paid 1,700 USD. We simply couldn’t cope with darkness and being disconnected from the outside world,” Najma Ramsy tells IPS from her residence in Keshka, a small Kurdish village 70 km east of Qamishli.

Ramsy admits she still needs to familiarise herself with the new device, mirroring the sky from the house roof. It’s also a reminder of an ongoing threat.

Those in the region already facing a severe water crisis, now also bear the brunt of increased bombardment, exacerbating their struggle to get essential water supplies

Human Rights Watch
“It’s devastating. The Turks are shelling us almost daily. I will never forget how our house trembled when the oil pump station nearby was hit,” she recalls.

Although under-reported in the international media, bombing raids have been common currency in this region over the last few years.

A report released last January by the Rojava Information Centre —an independent and volunteer-staffed organisation— points to a “periodic airstrikes campaign” conducted by Turkey against civilian infrastructures in Syria’s northeast. Moreover, hundreds of civilians have been killed.

The RIC says the bombing campaign started when Ankara launched a cross-border attack against the Syrian Kurdish region of Serekaniye in 2019, giving air support to Islamist militias on the ground.

After the Istanbul attack on 13 November 2022 which killed six and wounded dozens, Turkish airstrikes and bombing intensified in the region. Ankara blamed the Kurds for the attack. Both the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) denied any involvement in it.

However, the bombing continued, and even gained momentum.

In October 2023, electricity, gas, and oil facilities were hit by airstrikes, causing extensive infrastructure and economic damage and worsening the already fragile humanitarian situation in Northeast Syria.

Najma Ramsy stands next to the newly installed solar panel on the roof of her house. The family spent a month in the dark after the power plant was attacked by a Turkish airstrike. Credit: Arkan Sloo/IPS

One month later, Turkey conducted new airstrikes following operations of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) against Turkish military bases in the mountains of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, where several Turkish soldiers were killed.

In retaliation, medical facilities, construction material factories, industrial sites and agricultural complexes which included grain silos and mills were targeted in Syria´s northeast.

“For the last five months, we had no access to clean water, and our only source of electricity is to subscribe to community generators. We can only afford 3 hours of electricity every day,” 50-year-old Gulsin Malla told IPS from her residence on the outskirts of the city of Qamishli, 700 km northeast of Damascus.

Unlike the Ramsys, Malla hasn’t got the money needed for a solar panel. “It would be like three year’s worth of salary, you know?” she explains. Besides, gas has also become too expensive.

In mid-January, at least seven employees were seriously injured in an attack on the Suwadiyah gas extraction plant, 85 kilometres southeast of Qamishli. The infrastructure which serves almost one million people has been constantly targeted by Turkish attacks in the last twelve months.

“We have been cooking on wood. We haven’t had any gas for over a month,” explains Malla. The gas shortage, she adds, has increased its price tenfold.

“Add to the list the difficulties to get medical supplies and you´ll understand why we say it’s like a `slow death´ for us,” she says.

A day at the market in downtown Qamishli. The airstrike campaign targeting civilian infrastructures is pushing many to leave the region. Credit: Jewan Abdi/IPS

 

Jihadist threat

A Human Rights Watch report published last October confirmed that Turkish drone strikes on Kurdish-held areas of northeast Syria had damaged critical infrastructure and resulted in water and electricity disruption for millions of people.

“Those in the region already facing a severe water crisis, now also bear the brunt of increased bombardment, exacerbating their struggle to get essential water supplies. Turkey should urgently stop targeting critical infrastructure necessary for residents’ rights and well-being, including power and water stations,” HRW stressed.

IPS spoke to Kurdish Red Crescent officials who pointed to “war crimes”. They described the situation as “unbearable” and accused Turkey of “vandalising” the region. “The loss of vital infrastructures is leading to an increase in displacement from the region. Many are trying to find their way out, especially to Europe,” KRC officials disclosed.

But Ankara has a completely different approach.

In a televised address following a Cabinet meeting on January 16, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to “widen military operations against groups linked to Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria”. Turkish officials have repeatedly claimed the airstrike campaign is targeting Kurdish “terror groups.”

“Those claims by Ankara have no credibility,” YPG (“People’s Protection Units”) —the main Syrian-Kurdish armed contingent— media officer, Siyamend Ali, told IPS from his office in downtown Qamishli.

“Most of the casualties were plain civilians, and most of the targets were civilian infrastructures. Nearly two million have been left without electricity, not to mention water and healthcare,” added the official.

He also warned about other risks.

”By targeting our infrastructures they’re suffocating our people, but they’re also giving oxygen to IS to increase their activities again,” he stressed.

The Kurds in Syria have been the main allies of the international coalition led by the United States in the war against IS. Over 10,000 Kurdish fighters were killed.

 

Massive destruction at the Suwadiyah oil, gas and electricity plant in northeastern Syria. The only station supplying cooking gas to the entire region has been hit by Turkish airstrikes at least four times in the past two years. Credit: RIC

 

In a phone conversation with IPS, Abdulkarim Omar, the representative of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria to Europe claimed that Ankara’s main goal is “to destabilize the Kurdish region and change its demography.”

The Brussels-based Kurdish official also highlighted that two Syrian-Kurdish districts — Afrin and Serekaniye— are still under occupation by Turkey-backed Islamist groups in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

“Ours is not only a Kurdish administration as there are also Arabs, Syriacs, Armenians and Chechens living among us. We cater for nearly five million people in northeast Syria. One million of them are Syrian war internally displaced people,” Karim recalled.

The threats are seemingly piling up for all of them.

Fahad Fatta, a 43-year-old businessman from Qamishli, thought about moving with his wife and their three kids to a small farm they own close to the Turkish border. But they don’t dare go there any more after they were shot at from Turkish territory.

“The security situation is worsening by the day. We’re always worried about our three children, especially when they are away at school or playing outside with their friends,” Fatta tells IPS from his flat in Qamishli.

That police security checkpoints have moved from their positions on the main road due to the airstrikes is far from reassuring. IS is still active, and Fatta fears the Jihadists might take advantage of the security gap.

“We have neither electricity nor gas at home” he says. “We can barely afford a few amperes of the community generator but I’m afraid these could be the least of our concerns.”

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Children look at their destroyed homes in Rafah city, in the southern Gaza Strip. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba

By James Elder
GAZA STRIP, Feb 29 2024 (IPS)

Nothing could prepare me for my recently concluded mission into the Gaza Strip, where children face catastrophic conditions.

In my twenty years with UNICEF, traveling from one humanitarian crisis to the next – from famines to floods and war zones to refugee camps – I’ve simply never seen such devastation and despair as is happening in Gaza.

The intensity of the attacks, the massive number of child casualties, the desperation and panic of the people on the move – people who already have nothing – is palpable. It is humanitarian disaster on top of humanitarian disaster.

Near the start of the recent brief pause in fighting, we set out early in the morning at Rafah on the border with Egypt. Our convoy of trucks carrying vital humanitarian aid made its way slowly in a punishing journey north to Gaza City, which hadn’t seen aid in weeks.

The two cities are just 35 kilometres apart, but travelling through a war zone always makes distances seem more daunting. Along the way, I saw apartment building after apartment building, home after home, flattened by the bombings, a dystopian scene that stretched for miles.

In Gaza City I got out to look more closely at a building that had been reduced to rubble. Inside, I noticed bloodstains, but it’s impossible to know whether the people who were pulled out of this mass of concrete survived.

I will never forget how a man in his 60s walked out from the ruins of a recently bombed apartment building. At first, I thought he was indicating the number 10, as in 10 people had been killed. But he corrected this, using a stick to write in the dirt: 30. It wasn’t the number of people killed. It was the number of his extended family members killed in the blast.

This man had lost everyone, his whole extended family, everyone he loved. At the start of this war, UNICEF said Gaza was a “graveyard for children and a living hell for everyone else.” It has only gotten worse as the bombing and fighting have continued.

There was a hope that the devastation seen before the pause would not be repeated should the fighting resume. But after hearing hundreds and hundreds of rounds of artillery and more explosions, I could tell that it’s happening.

Within hours, the humanitarian pause felt too long ago.

I walked across the wreckage of what I was told was once a tight-knit community that is now broken glass, rubble and steel crunching under my feet. Homes sliced open, their contents exposed like doll houses, the inside of lives laid bare.

Against the grey rubble, eerie remnants of normalcy cropped up, like a sofa on a third-floor apartment with no walls, or a painting on the only wall left standing after a blast.

I looked at what was once a child’s bedroom, with pink blankets, a cupboard, shelves full of books, fluffy stuffed toys. It looked like the room of any 12-year-old girl, from any middle-class family, anywhere in the world. It was largely untouched. The little girl would have been safe if she wasn’t in another room with her family when the home was struck.

Driving through Gaza there’s never much time for reflection. The aid convoy needs to keep moving.

Along the route we saw the same theme repeated in neighborhood after neighborhood: basic needs are not being met. People need water and nourishment. Hospitals need medicine. This convoy has all those things. But despite our efforts and those of our UN colleagues, I know it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough.

As one of my UNICEF colleagues noted just a couple of weeks into the war, the killing and maiming of children, abduction of children, attacks on hospitals and schools, and the denial of humanitarian access are a stain on our collective conscience. It was true then, it remains true now.

From Gaza City we pushed further north, to Jabaliya. The first thing I noticed were the piles of rotting garbage outside hospitals, offices and schools. Sanitation and rubbish collection services have broken down completely, of course, as trucks have no fuel to collect it and the conflict has displaced most of the workers who do these jobs anyway.

One hospital we visited, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, was utterly chaotic. It was overcrowded, loud, intense. Our trucks were delivering medical supplies while wounded people were being rushed in bleeding.

We eventually made it back to the south of Gaza, to what we call the Joint Operation Centre. That’s where dozens of UN workers meet to discuss the next mission. The mood was sombre. We all know what Palestinian families need: they need more of everything, especially medicines, water, fuel, food.

But genuine safety for Gaza’s children depends on parties to the conflict ensuring that humanitarians have unimpeded access to civilians wherever they are… on our ability to bring water, essential food, nutrition supplements, fuel and other humanitarian supplies into the territory… and on parties implementing an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

Unless those conditions are met, children in Gaza are now in danger from the sky, disease on the ground, and death from hunger and thirst. Nowhere is safe.

The children of Gaza have suffered enough. We need a humanitarian ceasefire, and peace, now.

James Elder is UNICEF’s spokesperson. Follow him @1james_elder

Source: UNICEF BLOG

IPS UN Bureau

 

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