Africa

France says growing hostility from Mali's new military junta forced the withdrawal

Graffiti on a wall in Benghazi, Libya, calls for elections and democracy. Credit: The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL)

By Anas El Gomati
TRIPOLI, Libia, Feb 17 2022 (IPS)

Libya was supposed to hold elections early this year. Instead, it now has two rival political administrations — a return of the divisions of the past.

Libya is entering a new cycle of its political crisis. In December 2021, a mere 48 hours before polls were supposed to open, the elections were postponed. Emad Sayah, the head of Libya’s High National Election Committee (HNEC), declared it to be a case of force majeure. He then proposed to Libya’s parliament, the House of Representatives (HoR), to reschedule the elections for 24 January 2022.

This deadline has now also passed. But rather than resolve and reschedule elections, the HoR appointed a new rival Prime Minister Fathi Bashagha on 10 February, dividing Libya between two rival political administrations.

Libya’s now faces a dangerous new reality, as rival factions cling to power returning the country to the political divisions of the past, whilst proposing future election roadmaps designed to bring about the demise of their political rivals while guaranteeing their own political survival.

The tactical moves on the part of rival factions go back at least twelve months. Since then, Libya’s constitution, election law, and judiciary have become weapons in a new battle over Libya’s electoral roadmap as political actors attempt to either stall or re-sequence elections to push a rival out of power, whilst preserving one’s own institutional power indefinitely.

The crisis began shortly after the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF), a United Nations appointed body of 75 members, was tasked with appointing a new interim unity government and establishing a political roadmap to culminate with democratic elections.

The LPDF made early progress in appointing an interim Government of National Unity (GNU) to be led by Abdulhamid Dbeibah that took office in March 2021 and in agreeing to schedule simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections for 24 December.

Libya’s political deadlock

Since last summer, however, the LPDF faced internal political deadlock over how to proceed with the legal framework, namely a constitutional basis for elections. Libya has had a draft constitution since 2017, but it has faced criticism for its lack of inclusivity.

Anas El Gomati

At the same time, it became clear that the widespread threat of a boycott of the referendum would almost certainly lead to further delays to the political transition – especially if the constitution were rejected at a pre-election referendum.

The debate over how to establish a constitutional basis before the elections swiftly became a reality check over how long Libya’s political transition would last, as factions within the LPDF alleged this would stall the transition and extend the GNU’s interim mandate beyond 24 December.

In the LPDF’s stalemate, the HoR’s chief speaker Aguila Saleh captured an opportunity to reshape the political roadmap to remove the GNU from power whilst preserving his own power in parliament. In September, Saleh illegally bypassed a parliamentary vote and issued a presidential elections law by decree.

The law rescheduled the LPDF roadmap by sequencing presidential elections before parliamentary elections instead of holding them simultaneously, a move designed to ensure an end to the GNU’s eight-month political tenure whilst extending Saleh’s eight years of institutional control over parliament.

Moreover, the law sidestepped the constitutional referendum and used Libya’s rump 2011 constitutional declaration that offers weak legal restraints and limits on the power of Libya’s first elected president, increasing the prospects of a winner-takes-all outcome at the polls.

The law also faced criticism by the GNU’s prime minister Abdelhamid Dbeiba for including conditions to block his candidacy, whilst being tailored to allow Saleh and one of his key allies responsible for Libya’s civil war, Khalifa Haftar, the self-styled leader of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), to run on the presidential ballot, but return to their positions in parliament and the LAAF should they lose.

Saleh’s law sparked outrage from parliamentarians and members of the LPDF, but was accepted by former UN Special Envoy to Libya, Jan Kubis, who – rather than reject the law and mediate – decided to accept Saleh’s law to expediate the process to hold one (but not both) elections by any means on 24 December.

When Kubis resigned one month before the elections and was replaced by his predecessor Stephanie Williams as UN Special Advisor, it became clear that confidence was lost in the UN mediation and election process under his custodianship. However, it was left to HNEC, the body responsible for administering elections, to announce the news – without compromising their apolitical standing.

The future of parliamentary and presidential elections remains unclear under the HoR’s new political roadmap but what comes next is certain to be a deeper political crisis and potential delays to full elections by years. The international community have already ruled out recognising a replacement for the GNU before elections.

The appointment of a new parallel administration is thus a cynical attempt at a power grab in the knowledge it returns Libya to the tense years of political divisions between East and West that legitimised Haftar’s war on Tripoli in 2019. Secondly it is a major setback for the UN’s Berlin process that will require the UN to reverse course on its democratic roadmap to address the present elite power struggle before future elections can be rescheduled.

Finally, the HoR’s roadmap remains weaponised to include milestones to extend the political life by years, and in the process sparking new legal disputes that will drag Libya into a new complex crisis. Saleh has passed a motion to allow the HoR to draft a new constitution rather than pass a referendum on the current draft prior to elections.

Saleh’s own constitutional process is designed to allow him to delay parliamentary elections until the HoR’s work on a new constitution is completed.

Given the 2017 constitution was drafted by a democratically elected assembly in 2014, Saleh’s proposed constitution lacks an elected mandate to replace it and would open so many further legal disputes and political challenges prior to parliamentary elections that the HoR’s new roadmap could delay parliamentary elections and extend the HoR’s mandate by years not months.

Today’s crisis is in large part based on the assumption that individuals responsible for Libya’s political crisis and wars will demonstrate self-sacrifice and willingly give up the political institutions and military power they have clung to for years through an electoral roadmap of their own design.

The UN’s Berlin roadmap offered the international community an opportunity to erode the power of spoilers by dismantling the political and military institutions responsible for war into a unified neutral state rather than reward the figures at their helm with an opportunity to revive their political fortunes through elections.

Now it’s high time for the UN to demonstrate bold leadership and resuscitate the aims of the Berlin Process, and sequence a neutral political roadmap, setting sober election milestones based on substantive compromise and institutional reform, rather than stick to dates and timelines for political expedience that disguise conflict and reward spoilers with custodianship over Libya’s future.

Anas El Gomati is the founder and current Director General of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute, the first public policy think tank in Libya’s history established in August 2011.

Source: International Politics and Society is published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

 

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With 200 million speakers there is a renewed push to make Swahili a common language for Africa.

The world should, with urgency, remove the barriers to education for crisis-affected children with disabilities, says Education Cannot Wait Director Yasmine Sherif. Here she is pictured in Lebanon speaking to a young child at an ECW-supported facility. Credit: Education Cannot Wait (ECW)

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Feb 16 2022 (IPS)

Unable to walk, see or hear, and without assistance, the multiple barriers between 240 million children with disabilities and the education system mean nearly half are likely never to have attended school.

“We must reach these children with the fierce urgency of now,” says Yasmine Sherif, Director, Education Cannot Wait, speaking at the Global Disability Summit.

UNICEF research paints a dire picture for millions of children with disabilities worldwide. Forty-nine percent were more likely to have never attended school; 47 percent were more likely to be out of primary school. One-third are likely to be out of lower secondary school, and 27 percent are likely to be out of upper secondary school.

In emergencies and protracted crises in countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Chad, Lebanon, Syria, and many more, Sherif says, “No one is left furthest behind and more vulnerable than a refugee or forcibly displaced child with disabilities.”

At the Global Disability Summit, hosted by the International Disability Alliance (IDA) and the governments of Norway and Ghana, on February 16-17, 2022, Sherif spoke about the harsh reality challenges faced on a daily basis by crisis-affected children with disabilities within current education systems and the urgent need to intervene.

She urged the global community to be concrete in action and not abstract in thinking, calling for a collective response for children with disabilities caught in armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters, and protracted crises. Their inclusion in response and protection interventions need to be systemized through legal frameworks and leveraging on pooled funding.

“Being the only global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, ECW cannot accomplish its mission unless all children with disabilities can learn in an inclusive and protected setting along with their peers,” she says.

“Nor will we collectively ensure the right to inclusive, equitable, and quality education for every child if children with disabilities remain behind.”

ECW commits to ensuring that its partners and grantees embed inclusion standards in their investments and act upon them.

“More specifically, ensuring that families of children with disabilities and organizations of persons with disabilities are engaged throughout each programme cycle with adequate budgetary allocation to support and sustain participation. This includes enhancing accountability to the affected population,” she says.

For disability rights groups, activists, experts, and supporters, the ongoing Summit is key in highlighting that the time to make education in emergency and protracted crises settings inclusive is now.

The Summit is pivotal in ensuring that governments, UN entities, and civil society back their commitments to persons with disabilities with adequate resources to implement them.

Sherif spoke in a high-level panel discussion of experts including Gerard Quinn, UN Special Rapporteur on Persons with Disabilities; Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross; Gillian Triggs, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, UNHCR and Nadia Hadad, European Disability Forum.

Also in attendance were Johanna Sumuvuori, State Secretary Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland, and Nujeen Mustafa, a UNHCR Supporter who, at 16, traveled 3,500 miles from Syria to Germany in a steel wheelchair; her compelling story captured in the book ‘Nujeen, One Girl’s Incredible Journey from War-Torn Syria in a Wheelchair’.

Hadad opened with astounding statistics indicating that 41 million people with disabilities would need humanitarian assistance in 2022.

Against this backdrop, Triggs emphasized respect for those displaced by conflict, including internally displaced persons and refugees. She affirmed that disability inclusion remains a priority for UNHCR and that the UN Refugee Agency is firmly committed to doing more to achieve it.

Maurer confirmed that the International Committee of the Red Cross is seriously taking on board the philosophy of inclusion in their humanitarian work, and more so, in conflict situations.

Nujeen Mustafa, a UNHCR Supporter who, at 16, traveled 3,500 miles from Syria to Germany in a steel wheelchair says active participation of children with disabilities is “not a favor but a right”.
Credit: Education Cannot Wait

Mustafa explained she was born with cerebral palsy in Syria, and as a result, society saw a girl without a future. She said conflict situations further exposed the lack of infrastructure, support, and protection for people with disabilities.

Sumuvuori expressed Finland’s commitment to champion the rights and inclusions of persons with disabilities “with a special focus on the rights of women and girls with disabilities. Building on our existing efforts in humanitarian assistance, Finland commits to promoting meaningful participation of persons with disabilities.”

Quinn called for increased visibility for persons with disability, saying that war is not a thing of the past because conflicts were very much alive.

The character of conflict was changing, but it has not gone away. It has become more lethal for those with disabilities, Quinn says.

“This leaves people with disabilities at even greater risk of violence and discrimination. Demand for active and meaningful participation is not a favor but a right for all people living with disabilities,” Mustafa told a community of global participants.

Sherif noted that disability inclusion for children in emergencies and protracted crises requires the removal of economic barriers.

Sherif stresses that families of children with disabilities bear extra costs to send them to school, including transportation and assistive devices.

“Families, therefore, may not afford to send their children to school or may not see the need for it because of widely shared negative attitudes toward children with disabilities and their potential,” Sherif says.

Once children with disabilities in emergencies and protracted crises go to school, says Sherif, they often must overcome inaccessible pathways and navigate schools and temporary learning spaces that are not accessible. Accessible transportation and assistive devices are usually not provided in these contexts.

Without training and support for teachers to adapt the teaching and learning environment to the special needs of vulnerable learners, children with disability struggle to learn the basics. More often than not, few enter higher learning and training.

Sherif says that quality and safety start with inclusion, ensuring that children with disabilities learn along with their peers.

“Ensuring quality education in an inclusive setting necessitates knowledge and capacities, adapted curricula, and targeted interventions such as the provision of specialized material and equipment,” Sherif emphasizes.

“In emergencies and protracted crises, where resources are often scarce, it is fundamental to leverage local resources through partnerships between school personnel and families.”

Sherif concluded by saying it is possible to intervene and maintain educational systems even in the aftermath of conflict to ensure that future generations can escape the cycle of poverty.

• IPS UN Bureau Report

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Burundi and Burkina Faso take big steps to securing a place at their first Women's Africa Cup of Nations.

The frog is found at a Wirral school after surviving a trip of 5,000 miles from the Ivory Coast.

The so-called laboratory in a container is being developed by the firm behind the first MRNA vaccine.

While most health care workers in the wealthy world were vaccinated early in 2021, only a quarter of Africa’s health workers had received their Covid-19 jabs at the end of last year. Credit: UNICEF/Nahom Tesfaye

By Akshaya Kumar
NEW YORK, Feb 16 2022 (IPS)

Efforts to combat the vast global inequity in access to Covid-19 vaccines just got a boost. A Cape Town company claims it successfully made a vaccine that mimics Moderna’s messenger RNA vaccine—without any help from Moderna. This copycat will still need to undergo clinical trials, but the effort could yield Africa’s first Covid-19 vaccine.

So far, African factories have been cut out of the effort to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines and largely limited to filling and labelling bottles with the drug substance manufactured elsewhere. As a result, when vaccines were in short supply globally, Africans were forced to wait. When they did arrive, vaccines were often dumped on overburdened public health systems with very short notice, in some cases, close to their expiration date.

Strive Masiyiwa, the African Union Special Envoy to the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team and a prominent businessman, described his experience seeking to buy vaccines on behalf of the continent, “I met all the manufacturers in December (2020), and said, we would like to buy some vaccines. We had money, we were willing to pay up front in cash. We were not asking for donations, and they said all capacity for 2021 has been sold…. the people who bought the vaccines knew there would be nothing (left) for us.”

 

To date, 10 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered globally, including up to four doses per person in some places. But in the world’s least developed countries, just 10 percent of people have accessed even a single dose.

While most health care workers in the wealthy world were vaccinated early in 2021, a study by the World Health Organization found that only a quarter of Africa’s health workers had received their Covid-19 jabs at the end of last year. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Chad, even today, less than 1 percent of the population is vaccinated.

To date, 10 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered globally, including up to four doses per person in some places. But in the world’s least developed countries, just 10 percent of people have accessed even a single dose

The South African company working on the copycat, Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, hopes to shift these dynamics by building greater manufacturing capacity on the continent. If all goes to plan, Afrigen will begin its clinical trials in 2023. That’s still a long way off. It’s worth noting that experts agree, it didn’t have to be this way. If Afrigen had been able to get a technology transfer, it says, it could have produced a vaccine suitable for trials months ago.

If, for example, the United States and German governments had used their influence to press Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech to share their Covid-19 vaccine recipes and know-how, Afrigen and a lot of other potential manufacturers in Africa, Latin America and Asia would have already been able to join the global effort to make enough doses for everyone, everywhere.

But when Human Rights Watch asked Moderna about its approach to technology transfers more broadly, representatives replied that the company was “not aware of any idle mRNA manufacturing capacity,” and that transferring their technology “requires significant time from a limited pool of experienced personnel with the requisite expertise.”

Instead, Moderna has promised “investment in a state-of-the-art mRNA manufacturing facility in Africa,” of its own which it claims will eventually manufacture up to 500 million doses annually, estimating three years to get a plant up and running.

In contrast, Afrigen hopes to eventually transfer the skills and technology for its vaccine to factories across Africa and even train companies in Argentina and Brazil too. Experts have already identified over 100 facilities that could be manufacturing mRNA vaccines right now. Eight of them are on the African continent

Moderna has yet to comment on Afrigen’s breakthrough. The WHO technology transfer hub catalyzing the effort does not intend to “infringe” on patents. For their part, Afrigen’s managing director has said, “this is not Moderna’s vaccine, it is the Afrigen mRNA hub vaccine.”

They also point to a commitment from Moderna that it will not enforce its Covid-19 related patents against those making vaccines intended to combat the pandemic. But MSF Access Campaign has expressed concerns that Moderna retains the right to decide when it thinks the pandemic is over and its patent enforcement will resume.

Afrigen’s leap forward comes amid renewed attention to India and South Africa’s plea to waive some intellectual property rights until everyone everywhere has access to vaccines. The African Union has thrown its weight behind the proposal and the Biden administration backed the idea, at least for vaccines, in 2021.

Talks remain stalled at the World Trade Organization due to short-sighted opposition from the European Union. If a waiver is adopted this month, as some diplomats hope, it could help shield Afrigen’s vaccine, and make it easier to make more of the Covid-19 treatments, tests and vaccines that we all need.

Afrigen’s success spotlights a failure of global solidarity. Africa’s scientists shouldn’t have to go it alone. Companies behind the name brand Covid-19 vaccines, Pfizer, Moderna and BioNTech should share their technology more widely, or governments will need to make it happen.

 

Excerpt:

Akshaya Kumar is the crisis advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

Former Zimbabwe left-back Charles Yohane has died in South Africa at the age of 48, in an apparent car-jacking incident.

Greenpeace activists fly a giant turtle kite outside the United Nations headquarters in New York as countries gathered to begin negotiations towards a treaty covering all oceans outside of national borders. September 2018 Credit: Greenpeace

By Will McCallum
LONDON, Feb 16 2022 (IPS)

Over the past two weeks, a petition signed by almost five million people globally was handed in to governments around the world. It called for a Global Ocean Treaty to help rescue our oceans.

Yet with governments gathering next month to discuss the fate of half our planet, civil society is being shut out. The climate crisis and industrial fishing are pushing our oceans to the brink. Wildlife populations are collapsing, our oceans are heating and their very chemistry is changing.

World leaders will meet at the so-called BBNJ negotiations from 7-18 March to attempt to reckon with the scale of the crisis facing one of our planet’s key life support systems. But, as NGOs found out in a closed-door briefing call yesterday, the meeting will not allow for proper participation from civil society.

This is effectively closing the door to organisations which represent millions of people worldwide, many of whom rely on the ocean for their lives and livelihoods, and all of whom depend on the ocean for the oxygen it gives us.

It is worth noting that without years of campaigning by organisations like Greenpeace and many others, this treaty process would not even be happening: civil society has played a crucial role in getting us to this stage.

It contributes expertise and information, facilitates policy development and provides a network of connections and experts, as well as a platform for frontline communities facing these issues day in, day out.

The extremely limited participation at this meeting simply does not represent the urgency with which we need a rescue plan for our oceans: a Global Ocean Treaty that allows us to cover at least a third of international waters with ocean sanctuaries – areas free from harmful human activity like destructive fishing.

As COVID-19 continues to impact on all of our lives, we all recognise and appreciate the seriousness of health measures around large international conferences. But there has to be a way to also ensure that the vital voices which civil society represents are heard in a safe and meaningful way, particularly during a time when not only our global health, but our planetary health, is in jeopardy.

Closing the doors to civil society – and even restricting government participation so severely – should be unthinkable and sets a worrying precedent for democratic engagement at the UN. What possible justification can there be to deny civil society the right to speak on video screens?

It hampers the important role that civil society has played, and continues to play, in the Global Ocean Treaty negotiations, as well as other UN processes. Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, innovative hybrid models and flexible health measures have shown that effective and safe participation is possible, and a failure to embrace this approach at the UN – especially as we face critical decisions that affect us all – is simply untenable.

Almost 5 million people globally are demanding urgent action to tackle the ocean crisis. Over 100 governments claim to back ocean protection. Organisations amplifying the voices of millions of people worldwide must be represented as decisions are made.

These negotiations are simply too important to avoid proper scrutiny: the UN should review its decision and work to ensure that civil society can participate in Global Ocean Treaty negotiations in a safe and meaningful way.

This means allowing in-person representation from NGOs during the deliberations, timely access to information prior to and during the meeting, and the opportunity to provide interventions and written submissions.

This isn’t simply a matter of transparency and accountability: ocean protection is a scientific imperative and governments are not acting fast enough. We know that for the three billion people who depend on the oceans for their food and livelihood, for the wildlife that call the ocean home and for the fight against climate breakdown, we need a network of ocean sanctuaries across at least a third of the world’s oceans by 2030.

To do that we first need to win an ambitious Global Ocean Treaty at the UN that gives us the tools we need to meet that target in the vast majority of the oceans beyond national boundaries.

The pandemic has pressed the pause button on so many things, but not for our natural world. From the melting Arctic to the plundered Pacific, the climate and nature crises are accelerating. Political momentum for a network of ocean sanctuaries across our oceans is gathering pace, but governments need to act like our lives depend on it, because they do.

Out on the water, while we delay, destructive fishing companies are operating out of sight and beyond the rule of law, stripping the oceans of life. This plunder of the seas is pushing wildlife populations towards collapse and leaving nothing for the coastal communities who rely on artisanal fishing to survive.

Pollution, oil drilling and the emerging threat of deep-sea mining, are poisoning marine life and making the climate crisis worse by killing off vital ecosystems.

Our oceans connect us all and what happens there will impact the future of life on Earth. Ocean sanctuaries can give wildlife space to recover and, in turn, help to cycle carbon and avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis. We need to protect at least 30% of the oceans by 2030, not the paltry 1% of the global ocean that is currently protected.

We desperately need progress at this meeting: governments were expected to conclude the treaty at these negotiations, and so it is vital that every effort is made to ensure the maximum participation possible, so that essential negotiations can take place.

To do that, we need civil society organisations in the room.

Will McCallum runs Greenpeace’s Protect the Oceans campaign and is head of oceans at Greenpeace UK

 

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The 10-year-old refuse worker in Khartoum became trapped in the truck's crushing mechanism.

By Emilia Reyes, Iolanda Fresnillo, Neth Dano and Pooja Rangaprasad
NEW YORK, Feb 15 2022 (IPS)

On 10 September 2021, UN Secretary-General (SG) Antonio Guterres released the “Our Common Agenda” (OCA) report. This report was in response to a request from UN member states to “report back before the end of the seventy-fifth session of the General Assembly with recommendations to advance our common agenda and to respond to current and future challenges”.

UN member states are currently meeting, as part of a consultation process on the OCA report, to discuss these proposals. The report contains many concerning recommendations in relation to the global economic and financial architecture and has larger implications for democratic global governance.

Corporate capture of the UN in the name of multistake-holderism

Rather than reaffirming the role of inclusive member state led processes, the proposals made by the Secretary General (SG) rely on new multi-stakeholder approaches, termed ‘networked multilateralism’ in the report.

This would bring to the decision-making table global corporate monopolies and international financial actors that have concentrated wealth and power, subsumed regions into debt and austerity, eroded environmental integrity, exacerbated poverty and human rights violations, actively undermined equal and just access to vaccines, and profited from disasters.

This modality of operation undermines the United Nations’ role in international decision-making as well as the related accountability and transparency that is central to its legitimacy.

Speaking of the Common Agenda, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has highlighted the power of youth engagement and the importance of their voices across the UN system and beyond, recalling his proposal to establish an Office on Youth. Credit: United Nations

Multistake-holderism conflates duty-bearers (governments), rights holders (people) and corporations as equal stakeholders, under the illusion that all of them are equal in their rights, responsibilities, and capacities. Such processes would also embed the UN in extreme conflict of interests.

For instance, the SG proposes a multi-stakeholder digital technology track in preparation for a ‘Summit of the Future’ to agree on a ‘Global Digital Compact’. The proposal echoes the recommendation of the UNSG’s High Level Panel of Experts on Digital Cooperation which was co-chaired by key personalities in global technology platforms (Big Tech).

Instead of enabling the self-serving push from Big Tech, the UN should support inclusive, member state led processes to address the development divide that underpins the digital divide, to regulate and curb the growing powers and wealth of Big Tech and ensure that human rights are respected.

The extent to which the OCA report and its “solutions” rely on multi-stakeholder approaches, reinforcing the role of problematic exclusive membership clubs and giving a seat at the table to those who have preyed on disaster, is worrisome.

The UN should be the normative space for making decisions on critical global challenges which has increasingly been captured by global north led spaces such as the OECD and G20 instead. The UN should indeed be addressing all those substantive issues included in the agenda.

But it should be done through strengthening inclusive member state led processes. Not by surrendering to the corporate capture and undermining even more the possibility to regain global democracy.

Eroding existing inclusive, multilateral processes at the UN

The OCA report proposes to establish a multistakeholder ‘emergency platform’ as well as a Biennial Summit between G20, ECOSOC, SG and IFIs noting that “we still lack pre-negotiated ways to convene relevant actors in the event of a global economic crisis”. This is incorrect.

The UN’s Financing for Development (FfD) process already has the mandate to convene and make decisions in the event of a global economic crisis with a legitimacy spanning 20 years. In fact, an FfD crisis conference titled “UN conference on the world economic crisis and its effects on developing countries” was convened in 2009 in direct response to the global economic crisis.

The FfD process is already mandated to address urgent global systemic challenges on debt, international tax, private finance, ODA, trade, technology and financial regulation. The modalities of the FfD process already recognises civil society and the private sector as stakeholders for inputs, in addition to IFIs, WTO and UNCTAD, while ensuring that negotiations are clearly intergovernmental with member states as decision-makers.

The challenge is not the lack of existing processes to convene but the need to overcome the obstinate blocking from a handful of member states in the UN who prefer such decision-making to happen in undemocratic forums rather than the UN. Establishing multi-stakeholder initiatives will not resolve this political economy challenge and will only further delay decision-making by strengthening the status quo.

Recommendations to member states

Convene the 4th Financing for Development (FfD) conference: UN member states should urgently agree on the next FfD Conference to respond to the multiple crises we face and move towards a new global economic architecture that works for the people and planet.

We need leadership from UN member states to reinforce existing member state led processes rather than inventing new forums and summits that only delay decision-making.

Democratise global economic governance: Multilateral reforms are urgently needed to ensure the democratisation of global economic governance such as the need for a global debt workout mechanism at the UN, establishing a universal UN intergovernmental tax commission and a global technology assessment mechanism at the UN.

We call on UN member states to reject multistake-holderism that reinforces the role of problematic exclusive membership clubs (OECD, G20 etc) and enables corporate capture of intergovernmental decision-making and to instead uphold the democratic potential of the United Nations.

Emilia Reyes is co-convener of the Women’s Working Group on FfD; Iolanda Fresnillo is Debt Justice Manager at European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad); Neth Dano is Asia Director of Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group); and Pooja Rangaprasad is Policy Director, FfD at Society for International Development (SID).

This article is based on Civil Society FfD Group’s response to the OCA report: https://csoforffd.org/2022/01/19/response-to-un-secretary-generals-our-common-agenda-report/

 

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Experts say proper hygiene, especially during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life is critical. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Feb 15 2022 (IPS)

For two days in a row back in 2018, four-year-old Calvin Otieno suffered from diarrhoea and vomiting, and his mother responded by giving him a salt solution.

Pearl Otieno tells IPS that diarrhoea among children in Kibera, the largest urban informal settlement, is commonplace. A mixture of salt and warm water is often the go-to remedy.

“He did not seem to get worse, but he was not getting better either. He lay on the floor too weak to play,” she says.

It was too late by the time Otieno realized the magnitude of the situation and rushed her son to the nearby Mbagathi Hospital.

Kibera has long been synonymous with ‘flying toilets’, where residents relieve themselves in bags during nighttime and throw them away at dawn because they lack toilets inside their homes and fear using public toilets due to insecurity.

“Open defecation, flying toilets, lack of water and money to buy soap, people dumping household and human waste in open spaces is the life that children in the slums are exposed to,” says Nelson Mutinda, a Community Health Volunteer working hand-in-hand with a local NGO.

But Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) challenges are not limited to informal settlements in this East African nation.

Overall, even though Kenyans have access to safe drinking water at 59 percent, according to UNICEF statistics, only 29 percent of the population has access to basic sanitation.

In all, five million Kenyans practise open defecation, a problem that statistics by the World Bank show is similarly prevalent in many low- and middle-income countries.

Open defecation is prevalent in Chad, Benin, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Madagascar, Niger, Namibia, and Sao Tome and Principal. Only a handful of countries such as South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, Seychelles, Mauritania, and the Gambia have successfully addressed access to sanitation.

World Health Organization (WHO) data indicates that Africa is not on track to achieve universal access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation in keeping with global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In the absence of increased investments in WASH interventions, the health body stresses that Africa will remain off track due to the added pressure from climate change and projected growth in population.

Against this backdrop, WHO says children in Sub-Saharan Africa are at least 14 times more likely to die before their fifth birthday than children in developed nations.

According to government statistics, in Kenya, at least 64,500 children die every year before reaching the age of five. Three-quarters of these deaths occur before their first birthday.

Mary Wanjiru, a pediatric nurse at Mbagathi Hospital, tells IPS that, like Otieno, many die from preventable diseases because the primary cause of death is diarrhoea, pneumonia, or neonatal complications.

“It is very important for mothers to understand that proper hygiene, especially during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, is a very important pillar of child health. Poor hygiene can lead to death or a child failing to reach their full developmental and growth potential,” she says.

“WASH interventions are pillars of maternal, newborn and general child health because they prevent life-threatening infections such as tetanus, diarrhoea, sepsis and helps reduce stunted growth.”

According to USAID research, proper hygiene is a fragile pillar in Africa’s low- and middle-income countries.

In all, 50 percent of health care facilities lack piped water, 33 percent lack improved sanitation, 39 percent lack handwashing soap, 39 percent lack adequate infectious waste disposal, and 73 percent lack sterilization equipment, research shows.

While WASH interventions, such as safe drinking water, proper handwashing practices, and even basic sanitation, could prevent an estimated 297,000 global deaths among children under the age of five every year, this goal is not within reach for many Sub-Saharan African countries.

Hand washing, says the WHO, is the single most cost-effective strategy to prevent pneumonia and diarrhoea in young children successfully.

Still, data from UNICEF and WHO Joint Monitoring Programme released in August 2020 shows that an estimated 818 million of the world’s children lacked basic handwashing facilities within their schools. Of these children, 295 million live in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Overall, seven out of 10 schools lacked basic handwashing facilities in the least developed countries worldwide.

It is within this context that UNICEF paints a dire picture. Over 700 children worldwide under the age of five die daily of diarrheal diseases because of a lack of appropriate WASH services.

Children in conflict situations are especially vulnerable because they are nearly 20 times more likely to die from diarrheal diseases than in conflict.

“For ten years, I have worked in four slums in Nairobi. I find it very shocking that people have not understood how serious diarrhoea in children is. But small children will be given a mixture of water and salt, and sometimes some herbs and people just take the situation very lightly,” Mutinda observes.

Wanjiru agrees. She says that diarrhoea can escalate to a fatality within a matter of hours, “by the time mothers rush to the hospital with children suffering from acute watery diarrhoea, it is sometimes a losing race against time. Any form of illness among children should never be a wait-and-see situation. Seek immediate medical attention.”

 

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By Vikas Rawal and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
NEW DELHI and KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 15 2022 (IPS)

A recent Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) study shows the largest farms cultivate a high and increasing share of agricultural land in much of the world.

Farm size concentration
World Agricultural Census data for 129 countries show about 40% of the world’s farmland is operated by farms over 1000 hectares (ha) in size. About 70% is operated by the top 1% of farms, all bigger than 50 ha each.

Vikas Rawal

A rising share of farmland is in larger farms. But farm sizes in developed and developing countries seem quite different. Farms smaller than 5 ha accounted for 63% of land in low and lower middle-income countries. But such farms covered only 8% of farmland in upper middle and high-income countries.

The “share of farmland farmed on the largest holdings has increased in … several European countries (France, Germany and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and in the United States of America.” Similarly, in recent decades, more land in many Latin American and sub-Saharan African countries is in larger farms.

Data coverage uneven
Most agricultural censuses in developing countries do not cover large scale farms well. Official agricultural statistics in many developing countries focus on farm households, often ignoring corporate farms.

Agricultural censuses typically rely on land records, usually neither up to date nor complete. Large farms often have land registered to different persons and entities, typically to avoid taxes and bypass land ownership ceilings and regulations.

Government surveys in India have not comprehensively covered large farms, understating inequality. Other data from India suggest the top fifth of farms account for 83% of land.

Even where large farms are legally recognized as commercial entities, land is often held via subsidiaries in complex arrangements. For such reasons, the extent of concentration is probably greater than what the study suggests.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Ominous trends
Despite its limitations, the study findings are ominous. Changing inequalities in farmland ownership and cultivation have reduced the smallholder or peasant share of food production.

The study suggests that ‘land grabs’, new laws and policies have enabled large (capitalist) farmers, agribusiness corporations and other commercial entities to control most of the world’s farmland.

Disparities in government support allowed by World Trade Organization and other trade agreements have enabled large farms in developed countries, like the US, to gain more advantages over relatively uninfluential peasants in the South.

More advantages to big farm capital in recent decades, particularly to large-scale commercial agriculture in the global North, have enhanced their edge. More peasant distress has pushed many deeper into debt. Many of the most vulnerable have had to migrate, seeking precarious employment elsewhere.

Under various pressures not to protect food agriculture, developing countries have cut support for peasants. Withdrawal of such assistance has forced farmers to buy inputs at commercial prices. Meanwhile, many have to sell their produce cheap to those providing credit or other facilities.

By enabling easier land takeovers, commercial farming has quickly spread in ecologically fragile areas such as the Brazilian Cerrado, various parts of sub-Saharan Africa and steep slopes subject to deforestation.

Small farms, world food
The study has triggered a controversy by asserting that ‘family farms’ is a broader category than smallholdings. These would include large family-owned or run farms.

Hence, family farms account for 80% of the total value of food produced in the world, while smallholdings account for only 35%. These estimates have been contested by several civil society organizations who have protested to the FAO Director General.

Most agricultural censuses do not provide data on production by farm size. Instead, the study divides the total market value of a country’s food output by its total farmland. It then assumes a constant food output value per hectare. But this ignores significant differences in crop output among farms of different types.

Commercial bias
In many countries, large farms produce more commercial crops, not necessarily food. These may be for manufacturing (e.g., rubber, cotton), animal feed, or to be industrially processed for consumption (e.g., sugar, palm oil, coffee).

Many smallholder peasants consume significant shares of their own farm outputs. They typically work on limited land and need to meet their own food needs, rather than maximize cash incomes. Hence, their priorities may be rather different from those of commercial farms.

More fertile regions (e.g., river deltas) tend to have greater population densities, smaller farm sizes and higher productivity. Such smaller farms often grow multiple crops yearly, while larger farms with harsher agro-climatic conditions (e.g., higher temperatures, more snow or less water availability) often only have a single crop annually.

Although not universal, and often overstated, there is evidence of smallholders having higher land productivity, inversely related to farm size, owing to differences in the way factor inputs are used by various types of farms.

By assuming constant food output value per hectare, the study ignores many important variations, and probably under-estimates the contributions of small farms to world food supply.

Peasants marginalized
The study shows how various systemic advantages and biases have enabled big capitalist farms to control more of the world’s farmland and food supplies. But the share of food supply produced by smallholder producers is far from settled.

While more pronounced in rich countries, large corporate farms have also been growing in many developing countries. Even where family farming is predominant, increasing farm sizes have been apparent.

The study rightly notes the need to consider different types of farms in making appropriate policies for family farms of various sizes. This is necessary to better formulate policies to address poverty and livelihoods, especially for smallholder producers in distress.

It even suggests the need to “hold large scale and corporate agriculture accountable for the negative externalities of their production (for example on the environment)”. Besides better farming data, farmland concentration and its many implications in various parts of the world should be more appropriately addressed.

Vikas Rawal is Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has conducted field research on agrarian relations in different parts of India for three decades, and works on global agricultural development challenges. Inter alia, he was lead author of The Global Economy of Pulses (FAO).

 

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Brazil has become the world’s leading exporter of beef in recent years. It has more cattle than its 214 million human inhabitants. But this leads to serious environmental damage: deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, as cattle drive the illegal appropriation and possession of deforested public lands. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 14 2022 (IPS)

With its accelerated growth agriculture has emerged as a key sector of Brazil’s economy, but it is failing on its own to spread prosperity and reduce poverty and inequality, with industry in decline.

However, it can do so by bringing in foreign exchange with its large exports and thus create macroeconomic conditions for pro-poor social policies, argues Carlos Guanziroli, a professor at the Fluminense Federal University.

Brazil used to be a food importer, producing only about 50 million tons of grains in 1980. Thirty years later the harvest was three times bigger and in 2020 it reached more than 250 million tons, the economist noted.

The fivefold increase in the harvest in 40 years was due to a strong growth in productivity, since the sown area expanded by only 60 percent, from 40 to 64 million hectares, according to the Agriculture Ministry’s National Supply Company.

The country became the world’s largest producer and exporter of soybeans, meat, sugar, orange juice and, long before that, coffee. Agribusiness exports reached 120.6 billion dollars in 2021 and led to a sectoral surplus of 105.1 billion dollars, which more than offset the industrial deficit.

Soybean is the main symbol of the success of agribusiness in Brazil, whose landscape has been stained with its monotonous crops. In four decades, agricultural research has achieved high soy productivity in the hot lands of the Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah. Flat land suitable for mechanization, with regular rainfall and the possibility of planting corn or cotton after the soybean harvest are the advantages of tropical agriculture in Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Economic cycles

Brazil achieved this agricultural strength in the midst of dizzying economic, demographic and political upheavals in the country over the last 100 years.

The 20th century industrialization drive, which picked up speed after World War II and continued until the 1980s, was apparently set to give rise to a new industrial powerhouse, the “Great Brazil” announced by the 1964-1985 military dictatorship’s propaganda.

But industry stalled since the 1980s, with its share of GDP declining in the following decades, while agriculture took off.

In the 1990s, a previously neglected sector, family farming, gained a more clearly defined identity, thanks to promotion policies. Guanziroli, then a researcher at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), contributed to this process.

Industrialization accelerated the urbanization of the population. Only 36 percent of Brazilians lived in cities in 1950. By 1980 the proportion had climbed to 67 percent and in 2010, when the last national census was carried out, it stood at 84 percent, according to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which puts the current population of Brazil at 214 million.

In other words, during the following cycle of strong agricultural expansion and industrial stagnation the tendency towards urbanization was maintained. Mechanization, extensive monocultures and the high concentration of land ownership are some of the reasons for the massive rural exodus.

But agriculture involves an extensive chain, which includes manufacturers of tractors, harvesters and other machinery, chemical inputs, packaging, as well as activities such as transportation and other services, said Guanziroli.

“This chain accounts for 22 percent of GDP and 28 percent of all jobs” in Brazil, he stressed in an interview with IPS in Rio de Janeiro.

Farmer Alison Oliveira stands among his organic crops on the small farm he works with his wife near the town of Alta Floresta, on the edge of Brazil’s Amazon region. Sustainable family farming is a barrier against deforestation and soybean monoculture. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Family farming

Family agriculture, which comprises 3.9 million farms with more than 10 million employed workers in Brazil, according to the 2017 agricultural census conducted by IBGE, is a sector which stands to experience major social and economic benefits from public policies.

“It is more labor-intensive and responds to trends towards local consumption and organic production, which are more evident in developed countries, especially in Europe,” said Rafael Cagnin, an economist at the Institute for Industrial Development Studies, promoted by the sector.

In addition to providing employment for families and potential employees, family farming enhances food security and boosts the local economy.

The activity is defined not by the size of the property or what it produces, but by the predominance of family labor, which must not be surpassed by hired workers, said Guanziroli.

Studies and proposals of researchers on the subject, especially in the 1990s, “sought to avoid simplifications, such as saying that family farmers were all poor and only produced food,” he said.

A misconception that is widespread – not only in Brazil – is that family farming is responsible for the production of 70 percent of the country’s food, Guanziroli said. He clarified that this is correct with regard to beans and cassava, but not to food production as a whole.

“This is a lie used for political means that affects dialogue and public policies, rhetoric that is not based on serious evidence,” he argued.

Studies estimated the share of family farms in total agricultural production at 38 percent in 1996 and 36 percent in 2006, according to IBGE census data. In 2017 the proportion dropped to 28 percent because of a prolonged drought that began in 2012 in the semi-arid Northeast region, which concentrates almost half of the country’s family farms.

A farmer harvests lettuce in Santa Maria de Jetibá, a mountainous agricultural municipality, the main supplier of horticultural products for school meals in the city of Vitoria, in southeastern Brazil. The synergy between family farming and school meals programs strengthens local production in the country. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Long-range policies

In Brazil, the recognition and clear definition of family farming benefited from good statistics from IBGE, a factor absent in many countries.

But studies on the subject and the proposals of researchers taken up by the government face hurdles, due to “ideological issues and the antagonism with agribusiness which has worn the issue down,” lamented Guanziroli.

“The idea was to clearly define family farming in order to promote projects and policies, such as credit,” he explained. It is an activity that is part of the agricultural business, integrated into the marketing chain, and inputs.

In spite of everything, the researcher assesses the balance of the last 30 years as positive. “Family farming has been consolidated, it has irreversible policies giving it a solid structure,” he said.

The best example is the National Program for the Strengthening of Family Agriculture (Pronaf), created in 1995, which continues to guarantee credits with low interest rates and favorable payment conditions. Not even the current far-right government, hostile to peasant farmers, has dared to abolish the program.

What is most lacking is technical assistance, “which never reached family farmers in those 30 years. We tried a thousand formulas, old institutions, non-governmental organizations, but we were unable to mobilize agronomists,” said Guanziroli.

Pig farmer Anelio Tomazzoni stands among biodigesters that convert the manure from his 38,000 hogs into biogas, in the southern state of Santa Catarina, Brazil’s main pork exporter. Energy production is a new aspect of agriculture and livestock farming in Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Agriculture and industry

Nevertheless, he believes that Brazil’s competitiveness lies in agriculture. “In industry we fell behind, it is difficult to compete with Asia,” he said. Some services, such as digital platforms, can be an alternative, but they require a long-term effort in education, in which Brazil is lagging.

But Cagnin told IPS from São Paulo that “Resuming Brazil’s economic and social development does not seem possible without progress in industry, following the example of other countries, especially the more complex ones.”

It is the sector that “generates and disseminates the most innovations in a capitalist economy, the one that builds bridges between other activities, adds value to agricultural or mineral products and promotes more sophisticated services,” he argued.

The economist, who specializes in industrial development, recognizes that Brazil’s political conflicts and educational shortcomings hinder progress in the midst of “technological transformations,” productive reorganization and new labor relations.

But industry is also indispensable because of the numerous serious risks facing the “agriculture of the future,” such as the climate crisis, changes in consumption and the directions that the large Chinese market will take, he maintained.

Everything points to the wisdom of not limiting the economy to a few export products, as Brazil is doing, and to seeking “synergies between industry and agriculture,” instead of excluding other sectors, he argued.

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