Africa

Several African students tell the BBC they were prevented from entering Poland.

Security Council votes on draft resolution on Ukraine, 25 February 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Purnaka L. de Silva
NEW YORK, Feb 28 2022 (IPS)

Russian President and former intelligence officer Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been at the helm of power since 1999, promoting jingoistic nationalism to keep his hold on power and creating a democratic deficit on the home front.

In a long list of extrajudicial crimes under the aegis of Mr. Putin, it is alleged that critics and potential rivals generally meet an untimely demise – ranging from helicopter crashes (e.g., LTG Alexander Lebed), murdered in elevators (e.g., in the high profile case of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya), falling out of windows (e.g., former third secretary of Russia’s delegation to the United Nations in Vienna found at the bottom of the Russian Embassy in Berlin) to Polonium poisoning (e.g., Alexander Litvinenko) or getting incarcerated on trumped up charges like Russian opposition leader Alexie Navalny.

A throwback to Soviet totalitarian times Mr. Putin is a vocal proponent of ongoing hybrid militarized ‘foreign policy’ aggressions that aim to reclaim Russia’s sphere of influence in former Soviet Republics, as well as further afield, primarily in the continent of Africa.

Kremlin-controlled Spetsnaz mercenaries from the Wagner Group, who it is alleged hold Russian diplomatic passports, conduct military spearhead operations on behalf of the Kremlin and maintain bureaus in all 55 member states of the African Union – for more details see: https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/russia/vagner.htm.

The antecedents of this hybrid militarized ‘foreign policy’ stratagem follow a trajectory that begins in Chechnya with the Second Battle of Grozny from 25 December 1999 to 6 February 2000 during the premiership of Mr. Putin – where the world’s democratic powers were silent witnesses to the devastation of a city of almost 400,000, which led to a pratically halving of the population through an exodus of internally displaced persons.

In 2003, the United Nations called Grozny “the most destroyed city on earth”. It could be speculated that at the time democratic Western powers were largely silent given that the Chechens were perceived as Islamist terrorists.

After ‘success’ in Chechnya, in November 2007 Mr. Putin next withdrew Russia’s participation in the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, which limited the deployment of heavy military equipment across Europe. It enabled Mr. Putin and the Kremlin to thereafter experiment with a hybrid militarized ‘foreign policy’ adventure in the 5-day, 2008 August War in Georgia.

Russian troops invaded and established control over the occupied Tskhinvali region (now called South Ossetia) and Abkhazia constituting over 20% of Georgian territory – for more details see: https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-hybrid-aggression-against-georgia-use-local-and-external-tools. Once again, the world’s democratic powers were little more than passive bystanders.

While the world’s leading democratic powers stayed silent, a timeline of notable hybrid militarized ‘foreign policy’ aggressions orchestrated by Mr. Putin and the Kremlin, demonstrating their global reach in Europe and Africa, includes:

• Invasion and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in southern Ukraine (February-March 2014) – successful.
• Invasion and occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine (March-November 2014) – successful.
(NB: Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries made their first overseas combat appearance in the Donbas region in 2014).
• Military intervention in Syria to support President Assad and winning the civil war for the regime (in September 2015-2019) – successful.
• Military intervention in the Libyan civil war in support of renegade eastern Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar by Kremlin-controlled Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group (April 2019-October 2020) – failure.
(NB: followed by smaller, inconclusive Wagner Group interventions in Mozambique, Sudan, and the Central African Republic). For details see: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-58009514
• Invasion of Ukraine (February 24, 2022) – ongoing – with Mr. Putin and the Kremlin looking at long-term occupation and subjugation of the Ukrainian people in a carefully orchestrated military campaign that was planned for at least 8-10 years.
(NB: in the case of Ukraine, Mr. Putin and the Kremlin orchestrated a non-stop war of attrition in the Donbas and Crimea since February 2014, and the Wagner Group has been redeployed in Ukraine in February 2022 after withdrawing mercenaries from Africa).

Since November 2007 the slippery slope towards a global democratic deficit – attempting to prove that might is right – was taking shape and gathering momentum, harbingers of the return of authoritarianism, imperialism, and possibly totalitarianism.

A democratic deficit occurs when seemingly democratic governments fail to fulfill the principles of democratic governance for the benefit of their citizenry. When that happens in many countries worldwide it becomes a global democratic deficit with the rise to power of authoritarian and antidemocratic political leaders as in the case of Russia, North Korea, China, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and most recently in West Africa – Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea.

All countries are susceptible, including countries like Brazil, and the United States of America, as was the case during the Trump presidency from 2016-2020.

The biggest fear of authoritarians of the ilk of Mr. Putin is that the common people will be able to exercise their democratic rights through free and fair elections, and popular protests to repudiate the egregious corruption and misgovernance of political leaders, as was the case in Ukraine when pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych abandoned his country and fled in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

A similar fate was reversed in Belarus with the illegitimate reinstatement of Mr. Alexander Lukashenko, and its tacit occupation in plain sight by the Russian military in January-February 2022.

To the thus-far silent democratic powers it must strongly be pointed out that parallels can be drawn to Mr. Putin’s extrajudicial hybrid military ‘foreign policy’ actions to what Pastor Martin Niemöller said about crimes against humanity during the Nazi reign of terror under Adolf Hitler:

First, they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
— Martin Niemöller

Having noted the above in all its gory detail, it must be pointed out to Mr. Putin and the Kremlin that their perceived ‘successful’ hybrid militarized ‘foreign policy’ blunderings will only further weaken Russia’s economic and political standing in the 21 Century – especially once draconian long-term sanctions start to bite with alacrity, and deeply.

It all depends on the sleeping giant of democratic world powers waking up, uniting in common purpose, and responding to an existential threat to peace, security, and democracy. Sun Tzu was right all along Mr. Putin – “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”.

Dr Purnaka L. de Silva is Adjunct Professor UN Studies (M.A. Program) at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University, and Director, Institute of Strategic Studies and Democracy (ISSD) Malta.

 

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Excerpt:

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” – Sun Tzu

Creative ways are needed to meet the ICDP 25 goals. Here girls and young women are learning to code in North Darfur as a way to increase future job prospects and economic empowerment. Credit: UNFPA Sudan

By IPS Correspondent
Johannesburg , Feb 28 2022 (IPS)

A crucial two-day meeting of Parliamentarians from the Asian, Arab and African regions will put human-rights-based legislative frameworks under the spotlight as the regions work to implement the ICPD Programme of Action.

In the first part of this series, IPS spoke exclusively to the Regional Director of UNFPA ASRO, Dr Luay Shabaneh. He outlined the many responses the UNFPA had to gender-based violence, child marriage, and eradicating female genital mutilation in the Arab region.

In part 2, IPS spoke to Dr Rida Khawaldeh, MP Jordan, and Larry Younquoi, MP Liberia, Member of Executive Committee of the African Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (FPA).

 

Larry Younquoi, MP Liberia, Member of Executive Committee of the African Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (FPA) and Dr Rida Khawaldeh, MP Jordan spoke to IPS about creating a just, equitable and sustainable society post-COVID-19.

Here are excerpts from the interviews:

IPS: How are parliamentarians in your country ensuring adequate laws to protect women?

Dr Rida Khawaldeh, MP Jordan 

There is a Women’s Rights Committee at parliament and is considered one of the major and most influential committees. It includes specialists and lawyers, and they are acutely aware of developing a legal framework to protect women’s rights.

Larry Younquoi, MP Liberia, Member of Executive Committee of the African Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (FPA)

The Liberian Legislature has taken a number of steps to ensure there are adequate laws to protect women’s rights. For instance, the body has passed the devolution law, which provides enhanced women’s land rights. Women are guaranteed equal participation through the amendment of the electoral acts.

IPS: How are parliamentarians in your country ensuring the justice system (from the police to the courts) are adequately sensitized to GBV and have the budgets to ensure that perpetrators are charged, and women supported adequately?

Khawaldeh: The Legal Committee is one of the parliament’s major committees in Jordan, and specialists on this committee ensure the law, regulations, and practices are sound and supportive of women.

Younquoi: Parliamentarians in my country are on record for fighting against GBV. For instance, she has passed laws to amend the Gender Ministry Law and strengthened its role in protecting women and girls from GBV. Equally, the lawmakers have passed a law to establish the Women and Children Unit at the National Police. Of course, they ensure adequate budgetary appropriations for implementing the regulations.

The provisions of the Rape Law also criminalize sexual relationships with girls below 18 years of age. The Legislature has made rape a non-bailable crime. Through the National Budget, it provides funding allocations to enhance the welfare of the girls while in school.

IPS: As parliamentarians, what programmes are you putting in place to ensure that child marriages are eradicated?

Khawaldeh:  Women Rights Committee ensures that the laws conform to good marriage practices. This issue is emphasized by both the Women’s Rights Committee and the Legal Committee to provide better protection and follow up on the implementation of the legislation.

Younquoi: The Legislature has taken practical steps by not only raising the age of marriage to 18 years but making it a criminal offense to engage in sexual activities with girls under the age of 18. This is irrespective of whether or not the girl consents.

To ensure that the laws are implemented, legislators create awareness about them during town hall meetings with their constituents. They further sensitize them not to keep the issue of such statutory rape secret within the family. Additionally, they speak openly against early marriage.

IPS: How are parliamentarians in your country ensuring that the practice of FGM is being eradicated?

Khawaldeh: This issue is consistently raised and addressed by the Women’s Rights Committee to ensure better practices and eradicate any misuse of the regulations.

Younquoi: Legislators’ major step towards eradicating FGM is the passage of a law that states that no one should be forced to undergo FGM. The Legislature is contemplating passing a law to eliminate it. However, the practice is deeply rooted in the culture of the people – despite this, the legislators continue to persevere.

IPS: Is your country on track to achieve ICPD 2030 agenda, and if not, what is required to ensure that the country moves towards this objective?

Khawaldeh:  Jordan’s Parliament is aware and working toward the ICPD 2030 agenda. The National Council for Family Affairs, in the Department of Family Affairs at the Police Directorate, civil societies organizations, and NGOs involved in family affairs and gender issues are working towards the ICPD25 PoA.

Hon. Larry Younquoi,

My country is on track to eradicate GVB by 2030, in line with ICPD25.

IPS: What is your expectation of the inter-regional meeting in Cairo?

Khawaldeh:  I expect a thorough discussion of different aspects of human security. We will learn from the experiences of others. In addition, I would expect coordination at the regional level to help achieve the 2030 goals.

Younquoi:

At the upcoming inter-regional meeting in Cairo, I expect a robust cross-fertilization of ideas and lessons learned from the various countries in attendance.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Wind turbines at the Gibara 1 wind farm generate electricity in the municipality of the same name in Holguín province, eastern Cuba. The aim is for at least 37 percent of Cuba’s electricity to come from clean energies by 2030; this is a first step towards a much more ambitious goal that envisions an energy mix made up 100 percent of domestic sources. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Luis Brizuela
HAVANA, Feb 28 2022 (IPS)

Cuba has readjusted its plans to achieve at least 37 percent of electricity from clean energy by 2030, a promising but risky challenge for a nation that is a heavy consumer of fossil fuels and has persistent financial problems.

This is a first step towards a much more ambitious goal: an energy mix made up of 100 percent domestic sources, in order to achieve sovereignty.

Approved in 2014, the Policy for the Prospective Development of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and their Efficient Use projected that solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric power would account for 24 percent of electricity generation by 2030.

Currently, 95 percent of the electricity produced in this Caribbean island nation comes from burning fossil fuels, including natural gas.

Based on government indications and research by the Electric Union and Cuban universities, “it was determined that we can reach 37 percent (by 2030) with RES,” said Rosell Guerra, director of Renewable Energies at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, in an interview with IPS.

The official pointed out that since it is an island nation, “Cuba is not interconnected with any major power system,” which means that as the use of RES gradually expands, “it is important to ensure the stability of the electric system and the quality of the service, voltage and frequency, as well as the storage of electric power for the night time.”

This archipelago consumes just over eight million tons of fuel annually, of which 4.4 million tons are used for electricity.

Nearly 40 percent of the fuel must be imported, mainly fuel oil and diesel, which have higher prices on the international market.

The country spends some 2.8 billion dollars annually on the electricity sector, including the purchase of fuel, the operation and maintenance of aging thermoelectric plants and the purchase of energy from independent producers.

“We have no alternative, the country cannot continue to pay such large energy bills, which together with food purchases (estimated at some two billion dollars annually), are our largest,” Guerra stressed.

Cuba’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions decreased in the last five years, to 22.9 million tons in 2020, according to international data, but energy generating activities are still the main domestic sources of polluting gases.

Achieving 37 percent generation with sustainable energies “will mean the emission of nine million fewer tons of carbon dioxide per year,” added the official.

A floating power plant arrives at Havana port from Turkey in November 2021. In Cuba, 95 percent of the electricity produced comes from the burning of oil and oil derivatives, together with natural gas. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Picking up the pace

The largest island nation in the Caribbean will have to step on the gas if it wishes, within eight years, to have 3954 megawatts per hour (MW/h) of installed capacity in renewable energies, as outlined in the government’s plan.

“The implementation of the RES Policy is behind schedule; by the end of 2021 we should have had 649 MW/h in operation, but today only 47 percent of what was planned, 304 MW/h, has been achieved,” Guerra acknowledged.

He attributed the delay to the country’s three-decade-long economic crisis, with its main sources of income impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led the authorities to request a moratorium on debt interest payments to international creditors.

Guerra also referred to the effects of the U.S. government’s embargo against Cuba, in force since 1962, which hinders access to credit and technology, increases the cost of freight for transporting fuel and keeps investors away.

However, he clarified, since 2014 “500 million dollars were invested in RES,” which provide energy for some 300,000 households at noon, in a country of more than 3.8 million homes and 11.2 million inhabitants.

The shift in the energy mix by 2030 will require an investment of some six billion dollars “that will have to be sought from external sources, whether through credits or foreign direct investment,” since the country is not in a position to assume the cost alone, said the official.

He pointed out that “in addition to the economic and environmental analysis, the vision in this matter is based on the need to move towards energy independence.”

Ongoing projects

Cuba has eight thermal plants with an average operating life of more than 30 years.

Most of these plants process heavy domestic crude oil, with a sulfur content between seven and 18 degrees API, which makes more frequent repairs necessary, that are sometimes postponed due to lack of financing.

Malfunctions in the facilities have caused generation crises in recent years, the most recent from April to July 2021, affecting industrial production and Cuban families, most of whom use electricity to cook food, among other uses.

Distributed in Cuba’s 168 municipalities, fuel engines and diesel generators, also suffering from a lack of parts, complement the electric power system.

The rest of the electricity is generated by the natural gas produced along with domestic oil, floating units (patanas), together with five percent renewable energies.

The solar program appears to be the most advanced and with the best growth opportunities in a nation whose solar radiation averages more than five kilowatts per square meter per day, which is considered high.

Solar parks contribute 238 MW/h, a little more than 78 percent of the renewable energy in the country, according to the statistics.

Guerra said that “Cuban universities are very proactive with RES and energy efficiency, with several innovative and applied science projects, and with funding, both nationally and in collaboration with the European Union.”

Marlenis Águila, an expert with the Renewable Energy Directorate, told IPS that “some of these programs or projects are based on national technologies, applied on farms, and with results in the field of agro-energy, which are worth replicating widely.”

Both experts referred to the installation, especially in rural areas, of more than 1,000 pumping systems with solar panels that save energy and provide water to livestock and farming families, while a 4,000 cubic meter biogas plant is planned to generate electricity.

“There are seven biogas plants in the country. They are small, the largest has a capacity of 250 kW/h, but they contribute during peak hours, when they are most needed,” said Guerra.

In addition, two new bioelectric plants with a capacity of 40 MW/h, three wind farms (151 MW/h) and two small hydroelectric plants (3.4 MW/h) are under construction, among other projects in different phases with foreign investment and credit management.

A store specializing in household appliances sells equipment to obtain electricity from renewable sources in the municipality of Playa, Havana. In recent years, Cuba approved regulations with tariff and tax benefits for foreign investors who participate in the expansion of renewable energies, and began selling solar panels and heaters to promote their use by the public. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Opportunities

The second edition of the Renewable Energy Fair, scheduled to take place in Havana Jun. 22-24, will seek to attract foreign investors for the transition to renewable energies in Cuba.

“The first fair, in January 2018, was modest in size but very useful,” Guerra said. “Prestigious international agencies came and transferred knowledge to us. This time we intend to emphasize solar energy – both photovoltaic and thermal – and biomass.”

Representatives of international agencies, projects and companies such as the International Renewable Energy Agency, the World Wind Energy Association, the International Solar Alliance, the Green Climate Fund, the Belt and Road Energy Partnership, the French Development Agency and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) are expected to attend.

In recent years, Cuba approved regulations to encourage the presence of foreign investors in the development of sustainable energy, both in large and small local projects.

Resolution 223 of the Ministry of Finance and Prices, published in June 2021, exempts wholly foreign-owned companies implementing electricity generation projects with RES from paying taxes on profits for eight years, from the start of their commercial operations.

Other regulations, such as Decree-Law No. 345 of 2019, contain incentives to promote self-supply, the sale of surpluses to the National Electric System, as well as tariff and tax benefits for individuals and legal entities that use them.

The government strategy also proposes the installation of the more efficient LED bulbs in public lighting and the sale of solar water heaters and efficient equipment, which despite their high prices are aimed at expanding the use of renewable energies among the public.

Related Articles

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Pacific Islanders depend on coastal fisheries for food and commercial livelihoods. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia , Feb 28 2022 (IPS)

Oceans play a pivotal role in regulating the world’s climate and maintaining the conditions for human life on earth. And they are a crucial source of sustenance and economic wellbeing in many developing countries, including small island developing states. But Pacific Islanders are deeply concerned about the fate of the oceans if world leaders fail to secure the pledges needed to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 Degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels at the next COP27 climate change summit in November.

“We all need to do more. The target has been set. In the coming year, in the lead-up to the next climate change conference, there is a huge emissions gap. We are not translating that into tangible commitments on the ground that enable us, as humanity, to say we are on the right trajectory,” Cameron Diver, Head of the Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability Programme at the regional development organisation, Pacific Community (SPC), in Noumea, New Caledonia, told IPS.

The Pacific Ocean is the world’s largest and covers one-third of the planet’s surface. It’s a major carbon sink. Oceans absorb nearly one-quarter of all carbon emissions associated with human activities every year. But, after mid-century, continuing high emissions will generate a decline in the capacity of oceans to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reports the IPCC. And this will compromise their role in regulating climate and weather extremes.

The socioeconomic impacts of climate change in this scenario “could be catastrophic. It will have a massive impact on people who ultimately live their lives with the ocean,” Diver emphasised. He elaborated that sea-level rise would diminish arable land and lead to population displacement, while higher levels of ocean acidification will threaten coral reefs and coastal fisheries. Food insecurity is a very real risk, given that 70 percent of Pacific Islanders derive their protein from inshore fisheries.

In the Polynesian atoll nation of Tuvalu in the Central Pacific Ocean, “all communities in Tuvalu live around the coast. We are surrounded by the sea, and coastal erosion is a great issue impacting on our food, especially inundating our pulaka pits,” Teuleala Manuella-Morris, Country Manager for the Live and Learn environmental non-governmental organisation, told IPS. “Pulaka is a root crop and is grown in pits dug down to reach the rainwater trapped in the water pan. However, these can become salty during droughts or cyclones when the waves manage to get into the pulaka pits.” Sea surges and cyclones are destroying many of these crops, she said.

Pacific Islanders have emerged as some of the world’s strongest campaigners for the conservation and sustainable development of the sea, a role that is driven by their dependence on the ‘Blue Continent’.

“All Pacific Islands have a reliance on tuna and other marine resources for government income, food security, livelihoods, and ecosystem services. In terms of income, this is particularly notable for many Pacific small island developing states and territories where there are limited resources to provide alternative revenue streams, such as in Tokelau and Kiribati,” Dr Graham Pilling, Deputy Director of the Pacific Community’s Oceanic Fisheries Programme told IPS.

The Pacific is the world’s largest ocean and plays a vital role in regulating the earth’s climate. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

It’s not just the Pacific but the world’s oceans that will be threatened if carbon emissions continue to rise. And this would have serious consequences for the more than 260 million people across the globe with livelihoods that rely on marine fisheries and developing countries which benefit from the US$80 billion which the sector generates in export revenues.

Over time, rising greenhouse gases lead to greater acidification and depletion of oxygen in the seas and changes in the circulation of sea currents. Rising temperatures are boosting thermal stress on coral reefs. Mass coral bleaching would lead to the deterioration and mortality of corals and the marine life they support.

The breakdown of reef and coastal marine ecosystems will have repercussions for coastal populations which depend on coastal fisheries and tourism for food and incomes. By 2050, only an estimated 15 percent of coral reefs worldwide will be capable of sustainable coral growth, according to the sustainable development organisation, Pacific Environment (SPREP).

Meanwhile, offshore fisheries, especially the tuna industry, provide essential government revenues and tens of thousands of jobs across the Pacific Islands. The tuna market is a global one, and the western and central Pacific Ocean is the source of 60 percent of the world’s tuna catch. Two-thirds of all tuna caught is acquired by foreign fishing vessels, with 90 percent taken by other countries for processing, reports the Pacific Islands Forum. The main nations that ply Pacific waters include Japan, the United States, Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Fishing access fees, for example, amount to US$128.3 million or 70.6 percent of government revenue per year in Kiribati and US$31 million or 47.8 percent of government revenue in the Marshall Islands.

However, a recent study by a group of international scientists, including several such as Steven R. Hare, Dr Graham Pilling, Dr Simon Nicol and Coral Pasisi, from the Pacific Community, highlights the serious consequences of global warming for the future of the region’s tuna fisheries. Changes in the ocean are projected to drive tuna populations away from tropical waters.

“Modelling results suggest that overall, climate change may lead to reduced abundance of tuna in the waters of many Pacific Island countries and territories, and key tuna resources are likely to move further east into the high seas outside the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of Pacific Islands,” Dr Simon Nicol, Principal Fisheries Scientist in the Pacific Community’s Fisheries Division told IPS. “Given the contribution of tuna to annual GDPs of Pacific nations, reduced abundances and greater variability in annual catches will enforce ‘Global Financial Crisis’ type stressors on government services provided by the Pacific Islands on a regular basis.”

The study, published in the Nature Sustainability journal, concludes that, by 2050, the purse-seine catch of tuna in 10 Pacific Island nations could decline by an average of 20 percent, leading to a loss of US$90 million in foreign fishing fees per year. The broader effects on islanders’ lives could be more precarious economies, food insecurity and higher unemployment.

The repercussions of climate change on the oceans will be experienced not only in the Pacific but also in nations dependent on the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. This could affect the lives of more than 775 million people worldwide who rely on marine resources for socioeconomic survival and jeopardise the global market for marine and coastal resources and industries, which is currently valued at about US$3 trillion every year.

Last year, Pacific Island Forum countries’ leaders issued a statement calling for meaningful global action. We “note with significant concern that based on current trends, we will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius as early as 2030 unless urgent action is taken, with significant adverse impacts on the ocean.”

Diver also emphasised that climate pledges had to be embraced not only by world leaders but by everyone. “We need a whole of society approach. We need the whole of society to meet their obligations. We can’t just rely on the public sector to do this; it has to go right across every sector. An integrated approach is needed,” he said.

COP27 will be held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, on 7-18 November 2022.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: Parvez Ahmad/Unicef

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Feb 27 2022 (IPS)

Safety and security are at the base of the ‘hierarchy of needs’ pyramid, second in importance only to life’s absolute necessities—air, water, food and shelter, warns a new report.

The report “Why we don’t feel safe,”elaborated by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and released on 8 February 2022, adds that in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, people were on average living healthier, more prosperous and better lives than ever.

“Yet still a growing sense of unease has taken root and is flourishing.”

 

Insecurity is everywhere, among the poor and the rich

It says that six out of seven people all over the world—including in the wealthiest countries— were experiencing high levels of insecurity even before the pandemic.

COVID-19 may have supercharged this feeling. Unlike any other recent crisis, it has laid waste to many dimensions of our wellbeing and set human development back.

“As well as the appalling health consequences, the pandemic has upended the global economy, interrupted education and life plans, disrupted livelihoods and stirred political division over masks and vaccines.”

Even with the distribution of vaccines and the partial economic recovery that began in 2021, the crisis has been marked by a drop in life expectancy of about one and a half years, UNDP further goes on.

 

Unequal level of suffering, unsafety

So far so good. However, the human suffering is most spread among the poor, rather than the rich. Just take the Sahel region as an example. Africa’s Sahel region is facing ‘horrendous food crisis,’ the World Food Programme (WFP) on 16 February 2022 warned.

As the Sahel region “stares down a horrendous food crisis”, the UN emergency food relief chief warned that the number of people on the brink of starvation has “increased almost tenfold” over the past three years and “displacement by nearly 400 percent.”

The vast Sahel, which runs nearly the breadth of the continent, south of the Sahara Desert, is experiencing some of its “driest conditions” in years.

“In just three years, the number of people facing starvation has skyrocketed from 3.6 to 10.5 million, in the Sahelian nations of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.”

And insecurity, COVID-induced poverty, dramatic food cost increases and other compounding factors, have put those countries and others in the region, on a trajectory that would surpass any previous crises, according to WFP.

“I’ve been talking with families who have been through more than you can possibly imagine”, Beasley said. “They have been chased from their homes by extremist groups, starved by drought and plunged into despair by COVID’s economic ripple effects”.

 

On the brink of starvation

The number of people on the brink of starvation across Africa’s Sahel region is ten times higher than it was in 2019, the World Food Programme warns, while the number of people who are displaced is up by 400 percent.

The combined effects of conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate, and rising costs are putting basic meals out of reach for millions.

 

Afghanistan tragedy

Let alone Afghanistan, where conflict last year (2021) had forced more than 700,000 Afghans to leave their homes and added to the 5.5 million people already displaced over past years, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on 8 February 2002 reported.

“The ongoing crisis in Afghanistan is intensifying humanitarian needs and increasing displacement risks both inside the country, as well as across borders to countries in the region”, according to a statement issued by Ugochi Daniels, the IOM Deputy Director-General for Operations.

 

Growing distrust

Back to the UNDP special report on unsafety and insecurity, it also warned that in tandem with this comes a growing distrust in each other and in the institutions which are, in theory, designed to protect us.

 

Change

“The world has always been in flux, but the challenges we face today as technology advances, and we experience inequality and conflict, are playing out on a different stage.

“Because we are now in the Anthropocene, the era in which humans are changing the planet in dangerous ways that our species has never seen.”

 

A deadly dance

It’s a deadly dance and no-one is immune from its consequences, UNDP warns.

“Despite global wealth being higher than ever before, a majority of people are feeling apprehensive about the future and this feeling has likely been exacerbated by the pandemic.”

“In our quest for unbridled economic growth, we continue to destroy our natural world while inequalities are widening both within and between countries,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator.

Climate change is likely to become a leading cause of death. With a moderate decline in carbon emissions, it could still cause 40 million deaths before the end of the century.

“The Anthropocene era is adding fuel to conflict, as human lives become more precarious. Conflicts involving the state—raging in 37 countries—are the highest since the end of World War II.”

 

Violence, normalised

According to the UNDP report, violence is becoming normalised in many places, and the number of people forcibly displaced due to conflict or disaster has risen over the past decade, reaching more than 80 million in 2020.

“About 1.2 billion people live in areas affected by conflict—almost half of them in countries not considered to be fragile.”

 

Old inequalities, new realities

“Old inequalities are still with us despite advances in wealth and living standards. And a new generation of inequalities is opening up. These include the ability to flourish in a modern economy, and access to now-necessary technology such as broadband internet.”

Technology is a two-edged sword—bringing vast opportunities and potentially catastrophic risks, says the UNDP report.

“At the same time as digitalization can connect communities, encourage new skills and education, and promote human security, social media is spreading misinformation and fueling polarisation.”

 

Cybersecurity in Africa, below “poverty line”

In 2017, an estimated 95 percent of companies in Africa were rated on or below the cybersecurity ‘poverty line’, unable to protect themselves from malicious attacks, the report adds.

“The damage of cybercrime was estimated to cost about US$6 trillion in 2021, a 600 percent increase since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.”

Getting back on track post-COVID-19 is crucial says Regional Director of UNFPA ASRO, Dr Luay Shabaneh. The UNFPA runs several programmes for women and girls, here girls listen to a youth educator network Y-PEER presentation on the harms of female genital mutilation at their school in Garowe, Puntland. Credit: UNFPA Somalia/Tobin Jones

By IPS Correspondent
Johannesburg , Feb 27 2022 (IPS)

Parliamentarians’ leadership in a post-COVID-19 recovery is crucial to achieving the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) agenda. The involvement of lawmakers in ensuring a more equal, just, and sustainable society will come under the spotlight during a two-day inter-regional meeting organized by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the Forum of Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development (FAPPD,) and supported by UNFPA ASRO in early March 2022.

The Regional Director of UNFPA ASRO, Dr Luay Shabaneh, spoke exclusively to IPS.

Under the spotlight at the meeting will be efforts by lawmakers to ensure that no one is left behind.

“To this end, parliamentarians’ leadership is vital in ensuring population issues are addressed using a human rights approach and a gender lens and in securing rights and choices for all,” Shabaneh says.

At the Cairo hybrid meeting, APDA, with support from UNFPA ASRO and FAPPD, will engage parliamentarians in a debate on issues impacting human rights and gender-based violence (GBV). The aim is to champion a rights-based approach to policies and legislation to achieve the 2030 Agenda and ICPD PoA.

Regional Director of UNFPA ASRO, Dr Luay Shabaneh.

Here are excerpts from the interviews:

Inter Press Service:

UNFPA works extensively with women displaced, often affected by wars/conflicts, living in crises, and now over the past two years, has had to deal with COVID protocols characterized, in many countries, by lockdowns and restrictions. How has UNFPA continued with its GBV services during this time?

Regional Director of UNFPA ASRO, Dr Luay Shabaneh

It is well known that the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women and girls and has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities, resulting in alarming health and economic impacts for women and increased reports of GBV.

UNFPA adjusted its support to mitigate against some of the impacts through programmes like Women and Girls Safe Spaces. UNFPA and partners have adopted different delivery modalities due to COVID-19 restrictions such as hotlines and online counseling instead of face-to-face engagement. It is increasingly investing in cash and voucher assistance (CVA) in the Arab States region to address economic barriers to access SRH and GBV services or purchase necessary items.

On the ground, UNFPA continues to address GBV prevention and response through sensitizing national partners on intersections of gender and public health and how to manage the increased risk of GBV ethically and effectively.

UNFPA works to ensure barriers and risks of exclusion faced by women and girls with intersecting and multiple forms of discrimination are lowered. It developed online tools on GBV prevention and response during COVID-19 supported hotlines to address the immediate needs of GBV survivors. It distributed dignity kits adapted to COVID-19 for female healthcare workers, women and girls in quarantine and isolation, and refugees and asylum seekers. UNFPA updated the GBV referral pathways to compensate for the disruption of services, particularly for clinical management of rape and offering GBV prevention and response essential services package at UNFPA-supported safe spaces.

At the regional level, UNFPA continues to provide capacity building and support to government and civil society representatives responsible for delivering GBV services to ensure that service provision continues to meet international human rights standards in light of COVID-19 restrictions.

In 2021, capacity-building training was delivered online to officials in Iraq, Tunisia, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, and Bahrain based on a regional handbook on essential services for GBV developed by the UNFPA ASRO.

IPS:  In the Arab region, as in other areas, child and early marriage, harmful practices like FGM continue. How is UNFPA working with parliamentarians to ensure legislation, budget, and support services for women and girls?

Shabaneh: The collaboration with the parliamentarians in Somalia includes advocacy efforts for the passage of the draft sexual offenses bills, which considers child marriage as a violation of the bodily autonomy of young girls and therefore is considered a sexual offense. The women’s caucus of the national parliament is the focal point for child/women-related policies and strategies.

On June 10, 2021, Puntland State in Somalia passed a zero-tolerance FGM bill to the parliament. It is expected that this bill, once passed into law, will have a ripple effect in the campaign to end FGM in Puntland. The approval of the FGM bill in Puntland makes it one of the first constituencies in Somalia to approve a zero-tolerance FGM bill.

Substantial advocacy efforts have been invested ahead of the passing of this legislation. The Ministry of Justice in Puntland, which is among the key recipients of UNFPA UNICEF Joint Program funds, has been vigorously pushing to endorse the zero tolerance of FGM. UNFPA supported consultations with religious leaders, parliamentarians, and communities and in drafting the FGM Zero Tolerance Bill. UNFPA has also supported FGM campaigns in Puntland, leading to many abandoning the practice. Currently, UNFPA Somalia is working with the women caucus in the parliament and the human rights committee to ensure the passage of the zero-tolerance bill.

In Djibouti, the UNFPA has put two strategies to end harmful practices and child marriages.

This includes article 333 of the penal code and Article 13 of the 2013 Family Code now stipulate that the legal age of marriage is 18 years old. In February 2020, a law on the promotion, protection, and care of victims of gender-based violence with the technical support of UNFPA was adopted by a presidential decree.

UNFPA continues to implement activities through a joint program against FGM. UNFPA has also supported the development of a national protocol for the care of victims of GBV, including FGM. It established a circuit for the care of victims through the adoption of essential service packages by the three key sectors such as health, justice, and social.

IPS:  How is UNFPA supporting parliamentarians in developing human rights-based legislative frameworks in the region?

Shabaneh: ICPD affirmed the application of universally recognized human rights standards to all aspects of population programmes. Its Programme of Action (PoA) provides that the promotion rights for all people in reproductive health, including family planning and GBV, is deeply rooted in gender inequality. It is a notable human rights violation in all societies.

To this end, parliamentarians’ leadership is vital in ensuring population issues are addressed using a human rights approach and a gender lens and securing rights and choices for all.

ASRO proved to have interlinkages between the executive and legislative authorities to collaborate and work closely towards implementing Nairobi commitments and the ICPD’s unfinished agenda through Parliamentarians’ declarations.

These declarations rolled out at the country level, for example, Lebanon, Morocco, Djibouti, Palestine, to ensure concrete implementation and linkage between the regional and national levels, promoting and advocating for the UNFPA mandate.

IPS: Many countries are far off course to meeting the ICPD25 agenda. How can parliamentarians assist in getting the Programme of Action back on track?

Shabaneh: Parliamentarians can support the enforcement of laws and policies to respect and protect human rights-based approaches and eliminate GBV to accelerate the implementation of the ICPD PoA.

IPS: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Shabaneh: It is important to plan for growing numbers and proportions of older persons and ensure budgetary issues to achieve the goals laid out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There is a need to invest in young people (life cycle approach) by promoting healthy habits and ensuring education and employment opportunities. We also need to broaden access to health services and social security coverage for all workers to improve the lives of future generations of older persons.

Overall, opportunities to strengthen partnerships to use informal support systems and unveil the potential capacities can significantly drive the agenda forward.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A woman stands in an abandoned school, damaged after a shell strike, in Krasnohorivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. The world is facing “a moment of peril,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told a General Assembly session, 23 February, dedicated to the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. Credit: UNICEF/Ashley Gilbertson

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Feb 25 2022 (IPS)

It is now clear diplomacy matters little to Vladimir Putin. Despite the efforts of a string of presidents and prime ministers to prevent conflict, on 24 February, Putin started the war he’d been itching for.

What now seems evident is that Putin expects to maintain a Cold War-style sphere of influence around Russia’s borders. It isn’t only his treatment of Ukraine, seemingly punished for orienting a little more towards the west and entertaining a vague idea of joining NATO, that shows this.

Putin intervened decisively to prop up a fraudulently elected dictator in Belarus; in return, Belarus became Russia’s client state, the launching point for forces now heading towards Kyiv.

In January Russian troops were despatched to suppress a protest movement for political and economic change in Kazakhstan. It’s now established that demands for democracy or even displays of autonomy will not be allowed in what Putin sees as Russia’s buffer zone, and force will be used if required.

Power without accountability

The invasion began with Putin’s recognition of two areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, which have been Russian-controlled and Russian-aligned since the 2014 conflict. Russian troops were despatched to those regions shortly after, even though they remain part of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

That was the prelude to the bigger invasion now under way.

This decisive move was preceded by a bizarre televised ceremony of statesmanship in which one by one members of Putin’s security council lined up to give an opinion that coincided with his, in scenes reminiscent of a Soviet-era show trial.

The staged discussion began with the delivery of an angry speech from Putin, not for the first time, in which he denied Ukraine’s right to an existence separate from Russia.

This is what untrammelled, unaccountable power looks like, and this is where it leads: to the making of erratic, emotional and possibly catastrophic decisions. Putin has eliminated all real political opposition. He’s changed the rules to stay in power as long as he likes, won elections that weren’t remotely free or fair and jailed opponents – or even ordered them killed.

He’s crushed independent civil society and media, ordering organisations to close, smearing them as foreign agents and making virtually all forms of protest illegal. Even solo protests by brave Russian citizens against the law have been brought to a quick end.

The disastrous results offer a powerful reminder of the value of democracy, accountability and independent scrutiny of power. The cost of Putin’s unchecked, unpredictable rule is clear: this conflict will bring death and human rights violations on a large scale.

At a time when the world should be fighting climate change, conflict zones will see further environmental devastation. Unimaginable resources will be spent not on addressing climate change, developing essential infrastructure or improving the lives of local communities but on destruction and immiseration.

This has costs for Russia too. Putin’s aggression will cause his country immense diplomatic and economic harm. Having extracted some potential concessions, he’s thrown them away. The conflict has potential to become an extended one.

Although Russia has far superior forces, it could still incur heavy losses. Conflict could even revivify NATO and encourage more countries to join – the opposite of what Putin might have been trying to achieve.

Conflict in short, is bad not just for Ukraine but also for Russia. But there’s no one left who can tell Putin that. This is terrible news for Russians, and it’s increasingly endangering the world.

Need for an international response

A response of international censure must follow, and it must be a unified response. As Russia’s neighbours, the 27 states of the European Union (EU) and other European states such as the UK must hold a strong common line. States that have previously kept on friendly terms with Putin, such as Germany and Hungary, should get on board.

This means the cessation of trade that benefits Putin’s military machinery and his inner circle. As part of this, Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, must stay offline whatever the short-term pain for Europe’s gas supplies; Germany acted commendably fast on this and now must stick to its position.

The UK, long a safe haven for the fortunes of Russian oligarchs and Putin allies, must finally get tough on Russian money laundered in London. Not nearly enough has been done here so far.

Putin moved to buffer himself from sanctions by reaching new trade and energy deals with China on the eve of the Winter Olympics, but these would not be sufficient to mitigate economic pressure exerted by unified action by democratic states.

EU countries also have a responsibility to accept and respect the rights of refugees who may be driven from Ukraine by conflict. They must respond with empathy and compassion – something they have rarely shown so far.

At the global level, it must be recognised that Russia’s invasion is a clear violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty – ironically from a state that is quick to rebuff any international questioning of its appalling human rights record as intrusive foreign interference in its sovereign affairs.

Since China’s international representatives always push a public position of respect for sovereignty and non-interference, it should face sustained diplomatic pressure to distance itself from its ally.

Given the disparity between the military strength of the two countries and Russia’s evident determination to go to war, it should be clear that this is a war of aggression – a conflict without the justification of self-defence – which is one of the most serious crimes in international human rights law.

No one is buying Putin’s lame attempts to somehow position Ukraine, a country that has repeatedly made clear it does not want war, as the aggressor.

This act threatens to undermine the international order – and it is coming not just from a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, but one that signalled its contempt by launching its invasion even as the Security Council was meeting.

There are signs that Russia is already losing friends at the UN. Current Security Council member Kenya, which previously abstained on a vote on Ukraine, spoke out powerfully against Russia’s latest imperial action.

Russia’s status as a Security Council permanent member means the body can do nothing. This sorry state of affairs only strengthens civil society’s longstanding calls for Security Council reform.

But at the very least more states – and more global south states – should follow Kenya’s lead and condemn Russia’s aggression, on the basis that Putin’s trampling of international norms endangers us all. There should be no path back to respectability for Putin.

Vital role of civil society

In the context of conflict, there’s a need to monitor and collect evidence of human rights violations – with the aim of one day holding the perpetrators and commissioners of crimes to account in the international justice system.

Civil society can play a vital part here – not only in defending human rights and monitoring violations, but also in building peace at the local level and providing essential humanitarian help to people left bereft by conflict.

As Russia’s propaganda machine goes into full effect there’s a need to build links of mutual understanding and dialogue between Russian and Ukrainian citizens. To do this, alongside their other efforts, democratic states should invest in local civil society, which in these bleak times is needed more than ever.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Editor-in-Chief, CIVICUS, a global civil society alliance of over 12,000 members in 175 countries.

Russian military operations inside the sovereign territory of Ukraine “on a scale that Europe has not seen in decades, conflict directly with the United Nations Charter,” Secretary General Antonio Guterres told journalists February 24. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2022 (IPS)

As a new political twist to an old saying goes: the dogs bark but the military caravan moves on.

Despite ominous warnings from an overwhelming majority of member states both in the General Assembly and the Security Council— against a military attack on Ukraine —Russian President Vladimir Putin stood defiant when he ordered a full-scale invasion of a sovereign territory.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a hard-hitting statement, said the invasion was a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine– and inconsistent with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

But a lingering question remained: has the 15-member UN Security Council (UNSC), which is mandated with the task of maintaining international peace and security, outlived its usefulness.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), told IPS there is no more glaring example of how irrelevant the United Nations Security Council, which is the custodian of global peace and security, has become, than the debate at the UNSC.

Despite overwhelming opposition from both the Security Council member states and the General Assembly, he pointed out, Putin went ahead with his planned invasion of the Ukraine, knowing full well that he is grossly violating the UN Charter.

“What has transpired was a clear reflection of how the Security Council has outlived its usefulness, and demonstrated the dire need to reform it to meet the changing global order,” he added.

While the UN General Assembly has the ability to pass resolutions criticizing individual member states, he argued, it has no power to enforce any measure.

“The UNSC does have the power to take action, but it is limited to establishing peacekeeping missions. More often than not, the five permanent UNSC members with veto power almost always exercise that power to defend their interests, regardless of how the issue being debated impacts world peace and security”.

Thus, it is a given, he said, that the Russian ambassador will veto any of security resolutions to which the Kremlin objects. There is really no other recourse that the UN can take to correct what is fundamentally flawed in its current structure.

“The time is overdue to reform the UN so that the Security Council reflects the changing geostrategic reality and its impact on the global order to ensure that the UNSC lives up to its founding premise to ensure peace and security,” he declared.

Ian Williams, President of the Foreign Press Association in New York, told IPS: “If Moscow wants to play by the rules, according to the Charter, Russia is not on the Security Council and does not have a permanent seat.”

The Soviet Union is in the Charter and Russia usurped the seat with no resolution at the General Assembly or on the Council. Russia never applied or was formally accepted into membership, he pointed out.

Maybe the Secretary General and the President of the General Assembly, along with other members, could simply deny them.

“Unless such decisive action is taken it’s difficult to see the organization surviving this League of Nations moment. Others have stretched the Charter – but Putin has taken it past breaking point, said Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents’ Association (UNCA) and author of UNtold: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War.

Thomas G. Weiss, Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and Presidential Professor of Political Science, told IPS this is precisely what the Security Council voted to halt when Iraq invaded Kuwait (in August 1990).

“Even if one mouths the fiction that Ukraine was created by the Bolsheviks, Ukraine is more of a “state” than Israel or all countries “created” after decolonization. The UN is as central or peripheral as it always has been”.

The veto was agreed so that action versus one of the P5 was unthinkable. The only remaining option is the General Assembly which would at least force China to take a public stand as to whether state sovereignty matters, said Dr Weiss, Director Emeritus, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, The CUNY Graduate Center.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General who headed the Department of Public Information, told IPS the U.N. could prove its useful role by taking initiatives —perhaps through back channels and the “good offices of the Secretary General ‘ to offer practical proposal to diffuse escalating tension.

He pointed out the role “discreetly played” by the first Asian secretary General, U Thant, to diffuse the escalating Cuban Missile crisis and Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold’s efforts to avert a big power confrontation over an American pilot held by China and also over the conflict in the Congo.

Also, a group of third world member states could move to make potential proposals, said Sanbar, who served under five different Secretaries-Generals during his tenure in office.

Asked about the irrelevance of the UNSC, Martin Edwards, Professor and Chair, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, told IPS: “This is an old claim. I remember all the handwringing after the Iraq war. The Security Council didn’t go away then, and it’s not going away now”.

Even though Putin launched this savagery during the meeting of the Council Wednesday, ”we need to remember that permanent members are not constrained by the Council. The veto ensures this.”

But that having been said, the Council still has value for efficient coalition building. While Russia can’t be meaningfully censured by the Security Council, the speeches from two nights ago make clear that Russia is isolated, thus making it easier for Ukraine’s allies to cooperate by imposing harsh sanctions, he noted.

“And Russia is not getting expelled because no proposal to expel Russia will make it through the Security Council to go to the General Assembly”.

So, the fact that diplomacy is going to shift away from the UN is not necessarily surprising. The US and Europe have a better sense of who stands with them and who supports Russia, and they can work with these allies to impose harsh sanctions quickly, declared Edwards.

Web: https://sites.google.com/view/martin-s-edwards/home

Asked if there is a precedented for a member state, in violation of the UN charter, being suspended or ousted from the UN, Dr Ben-Meir said although the UN Charter includes a provision for suspending any country that violates the charter, no country had ever been suspended or ejected, regardless of how egregious its violation of the charter might have been.

And while many UNSC resolutions have condemned specific countries, such as Israel for violating the Palestinians’ human rights, or threatened to take punitive action against a state, they have largely been rebuffed, as the UNSC fundamentally lacks an enforcement mechanism.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A selection of the best photos from across the Africa and beyond this week.

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Feb 24 2022 (IPS)

I hope you had a chance to listen to our last episode, Environmental disasters creating more migrants within countries. We talked about the rising number of people who are forced out of their homes because of climate or environmental disasters. Nearly 30 million men, women and children in 149 countries were displaced in 2020, temporarily or for good and the signs are, that those numbers will only grow. Today we’re continuing our series of conversations about people on the move globally, talking about remittances and the migrant workers worldwide who send these earnings home to their families—$200 each month on average according to today’s guest, Pedro de Vasconcelos. He is the Senior Technical Specialist/ Coordinator at the Financing Facility for Remittances of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, or IFAD.

 

The size of global remittances is astounding—$554 billion US dollars in 2019. More surprising to me is that this sum is greater than combining all of the foreign direct investment (FDI) and overseas development assistance (ODA) sent to the countries of the developing world.

In effect, the workers of the world’s poorest countries are doing more to lift themselves out of poverty than anyone else, but that’s not something you often hear in development discussions.

Of course we couldn’t have this conversation without noting the impact of Covid-19 on remittances and migrant workers. Here in Nepal there were horrifying stories in the media of groups of workers, many in Persian Gulf countries, who were forced out of work during lockdowns, eventually ran out of money, then food, and had to rely on the kindness of friends and even strangers, until they could raise enough cash to buy an air ticket home—when flights were available—or just wait out lockdowns.

Pedro predicts that Covid-19’s impact on remittances will be a wake-up call to the public and private sectors about the crucial role that the earnings generated by the world’s migrant workers play in keeping economies afloat. If those involved can sync their efforts to ensure that the money can be sent home as efficiently as possible and that workers are given more and better options to use their earnings, it is possible to imagine a day when migration for work will be a choice and not a necessity.

Please listen now to my conversation with Pedro de Vasconcelos.

Thanks again to Pedro de Vasconcelos of IFAD for sharing his time with me, especially for agreeing to a second interview within days, and when he was travelling, after online connection problems during our first chat. If you have any thoughts about this episode, you can share them with us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn—our handle is IPSNews. We’d also love to hear your ideas for future episodes about People on the Move around the world. Don’t forget—you can follow or subscribe to Strive on Spotify, Google, Apple Podcasts and most other podcast players.

My name is Marty Logan, you can email me at mlogan(at)ipsnews.net. Strive will be back soon and is a production of IPS News.

 

Faces of a group of domestic workers in Brazil, during a meeting of one of their unions – a reflection that they are mostly black and poor. They have been fighting for decades for their labor recognition and rights. Today they are organized in 22 unions in states or municipalities and, since 1997, they have a national federation that represents them. CREDIT: Trabalhadoras Domésticas/Flickr

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 24 2022 (IPS)

“Woman, poor, black and illiterate” – most domestic workers suffer quadruple discrimination in Brazil, which made them more vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, says one of their leaders, Gloria Rejane Santos.

President of the Paraíba Domestic Workers’ Union for the past 12 years, she found herself out of work after coronavirus appeared on the scene.

Of the 6.2 million domestic service jobs in Brazil in 2019, 1.5 million were lost in 2020, estimated Hildete Pereira de Melo, an economics professor at the Federal Fluminense University who has been researching gender and economics for four decades.

Vaccination against COVID-19, which began in January 2021, made it possible to recover only part of the lost jobs.

Paraíba is one of the nine states of the Northeast, Brazil’s poorest region, which is home to 4.06 million of the country’s 214 million inhabitants.

In its largest inland city, Campina Grande, population 415,000, police and labor inspectors freed a woman on Feb. 2 who was working in a home under slavery-like conditions including overwork, unhealthy conditions, rarely being allowed to leave the workplace, and no labor rights.

Helping her colleagues and combating discrimination against domestic workers, who are overwhelmingly black women, is the mission of Gloria Rejane Santos, president of the Domestic Workers Union of Paraíba, a state in Brazil’s poor Northeast region. CREDIT: Courtesy of Santos

Lingering slavery

“The pandemic aggravated the continuation of slavery,” Santos told IPS from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba, a city of 825,000 inhabitants, where two cases of slave labor were discovered and are still under investigation, she said.

Modern-day slavery in Brazil tends to be a more rural phenomenon. There were 1937 workers rescued from slavery conditions in 2021, almost all of them in the countryside of the Brazilian hinterland.

“Many employers demanded that their domestics stay at work all the time,” fearing that they would bring coronavirus back and forth to their homes. “The day laborers who could not accept it, we lost our jobs,” Santos said, referring to live-out domestic workers.

The pandemic thus created conditions for a return to work without time limits, without time off, and with a greater violation of labor rights, which have never been well-respected in domestic work.

The domestic labor market has changed since the 1980s. Live-in maids who worked an unlimited number of days have disappeared, as have domestics who work exclusively for one employer with a monthly salary.

There was an increase in the number of domestics who lived in their own homes and were hired for a limited number of days, who were more autonomous, in a process that accompanied advances in society, with new technologies and new habits, such as eating out more frequently, Melo noted. In addition, homes have become smaller and have lost the “maid’s room,” she said in an interview with IPS in Rio de Janeiro.

Domestic workers from Paraíba, a state in the Northeast region of Brazil, hold a protest organized by their union demanding respect for their rights and compliance with the laws that regulate their activity in the country. CREDIT: STDP

Female and informal

But informal employment is predominant. Nearly 70 percent of domestic workers do not have an employment contract. As a result, they do not have legal rights and are subject to the employer’s discretion, which has facilitated dismissals during the pandemic.

Their vulnerability is aggravated by the fact that 92 percent are women and 66 percent are black women, according to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in 2019, the year before the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.

Domestic workers’ trade unions have included the feminine form of the word “workers” – trabalhadoras – in their names, recognizing the overwhelming majority of women in the sector.

Santos, despite presiding over the union, was left without regular work as a day laborer throughout the pandemic, as were “more than half of the domestic workers in Paraíba,” she estimated.

Getting by

Work in the trade unions is voluntary. It only offers limited per diem income from a few sponsored projects, generally for the training of female workers, but “lately we don’t even get that,” lamented the 64-year-old trade unionist, who has six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

In the last two years she has survived on food basket donations and the emergency aid that the government granted to the poorest of the poor, worth 600 reais (about 115 dollars) in 2020, reduced by half during 2021, when it was only made available for a few months.

“I managed to get it after much struggle, with the support of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, because I was registered as a town councilor, although I was an unelected candidate,” said Santos.

She attributes her decision to accept the presidency of the union to her “vocation”. “I am the daughter of a domestic worker, I suffered a lot watching my mother work hard for scraps of food, some clothes or shoes,” she said.

When she became a trade union leader at the age of 52, she decided to go back to school, and completed primary and middle school. Going to school with adolescents was very difficult, she said, as she was rejected as an “old woman”, especially when it came to group projects.

She then attended an adult education course for high school, where everything went well. But she did not make it into university, where she wanted to pursue a degree in social work. She has channeled that inclination at least partly into her union work.

During the pandemic, the union carried out a permanent campaign to collect food and aid for unemployed members. “We provided assistance to more than 400 families” at the João Pessoa headquarters and the subheadquarters in Campina Grande, she said.

The pandemic forced Roseli Nascimento to replace beef in her diet with chicken, eggs and legumes. A live-out domestic worker in Rio de Janeiro, she lost four of the five days she worked weekly in 2020 and only regained them in mid-2021, when her employers felt protected by the widespread vaccination against COVID-19. CREDIT: Courtesy of Nascimento

Rights

But her main ambition is to “fight discrimination and make society recognize the value of domestic work.” She pointed out that she receives almost daily complaints of mistreatment and other conflicts from her colleagues. In these cases she receives help from a lawyer who has been working with the union on a pro bono basis since 2019.

To illustrate, she cited the case of “a maid who came to the union in tears” after she was accused of having stolen one hundred reais (19 dollars) from her employers. She was saved by a phone call from a son of the family, who confessed to taking the money without telling his parents.

The marginalization suffered by domestic workers in Paraíba is probably stronger than in other states because in that state “90 percent of them are black women,” said Santos.

“I am black, poor and the daughter of a domestic, but since I have an active voice, I decided to use it for the collective good,” she said.

Roseli Gomes do Nascimento, a 60-year-old resident of Rocinha, one of the large, famous favelas or shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro, had slightly better luck than Santos. Also a live-out domestic worker, of the five days she worked during the week, she lost four at the start of the pandemic.

It was not until the middle of the following year that she was able to return to work five days a week, when a good part of the Brazilian population was vaccinated against COVID. Only one supportive employer had kept her continuously employed and even paid her for her day of work during three months in which, for health safety reasons, she stayed away from her employer’s home.

That small income and 115 dollars a month in emergency government assistance for one quarter of 2020 and a fourth of that for nine months of the following year were barely enough to survive on. She lives alone, as her two daughters are now on their own, with her six cats. “I used to have nine, but I gave three away,” she told IPS.

A drastic reduction in beef consumption, sometimes replaced by less expensive chicken and eggs, and a diet with more fruits and vegetables, as well as fewer outings, helped her to live on a reduced budget, with the advantage of losing “about eight kilos, without even dieting.”

Legislators and trade unionists celebrate the first anniversary of the constitutional amendment establishing the rights of domestic workers in Brazil on Apr. 2, 2014. CREDIT: José Cruz/Agência Brasil

Context

Domestic work employed 75.6 million workers, or 4.5 percent of all wage earners around the world, according to a 2021 report by the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Latin America accounted for 18 percent of these workers and Brazil for nine percent, a much higher proportion than the size of the population, which represented 7.4 percent of the total in the case of Latin America and 2.7 percent in the case of Brazil.

In other words, the region has a higher proportion of paid domestic work, a product of its history and slavery, noted economist Melo. Only 20 percent of Brazil’s 60 million families hire domestic workers, a privilege of the upper-middle and upper classes.

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Tahira Hasan poses under the Fearless Collective public wall artwork, she and others in India and internationally are calling for tolerance and an end to hate speech in India. Credit: Mehru Jaffer/IPS

By Mehru Jaffer
Lucknow, Feb 24 2022 (IPS)

More and more women from different walks of life and corners of the world are raising their voices against the treatment of minorities in India today.

“Unity and the safety of citizens is the first and foremost condition of a country’s security,” Roop Rekha Varma, former vice-chancellor of Lucknow University (LU), told IPS.

With Ramesh Dixit, a former professor LU, Varma walked into a local police station to file a police report against hate speech against those who have threatened to kill Muslims in India.

In a recent case, provocative speeches allegedly calling for a genocide of Muslims were made at a December 2021 conclave held in the Himalayan town of Haridwar.

“If 100 of us become soldiers and are prepared to kill two million (Muslims), then we will win … protect India, and make it a Hindu nation,” said Pooja Shakun Pandey, a senior member of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha political party in a video recording of the event.

Pandey, Wasim Rizvi alias Jitendra Narayan Tyagi, Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati, and Sagar Sindhu Maharaj are facing hate speech charges for their utterances.

The Fearless Collective public wall artwork. Credit: Mehru Jaffer/IPS

Varma is shocked at rising incidents of unprovoked targeting of Muslims, including Muslim women, in recent times.

Sunita Viswanath, founder and executive director of Hindus for Human Rights, a US-based civil society organization, is equally anxious.

“Muslim women in India are being barred from entering college for wearing the hijab. This is a country where the Prime Minister rode to power promising equal rights for women. Clearly, not everyone is equal. If this is not apartheid, please tell what is,” Viswanath says. She referred to the controversy that erupted in January when a government-run college in the Udupi district of Karnataka state barred girls from attending lectures for wearing headscarves. The matter is now under judicial review.

Along with 16 other civil society organizations in the US, Viswanath organized two Congressional briefings on India’s treatment of Muslims.

“We are US citizens of Indian origin, and we have the power to influence and to move US lawmakers and the Biden Administrations to speak out,” says Viswanath on social media. She feels that the world needs to understand that something is wrong in India, that India is on a perilous path.

“India’s tryst with hate is on overdrive. The only way we can fight systematic hate is to stand by India’s tried and tested secular fabric,” Saumya Bajaj told IPS on the phone. Bajaj is associated with Gurgaon Nagrik Ekta Manch (GNEM), a Delhi-based group for unity among citizens.

“Terrorizing Muslims and Christians on a daily basis seems to be the new norm. We, as citizens, can no longer afford to remain silent spectators to this macabre celebration of hate engulfing us?” reads a circular, inviting citizens to say no to hate mongers.

GNEM demands that the police investigate all violence cases against fellow citizens, including online abuse.

Nayantara Sahgal, 94, an award-winning Indian, says she does not recognize the new India.

“Today, that India is disappearing. My country is unrecognizable. It seems like a foreign country full of hatred and exclusion. There is a deep slide in democracy. It is utterly despairing. Yet we cannot be silent. A writer has to speak loud and clear,” the former vice president of PEN International said in a recent interview.

Booker Prize-winning author and essayist Arundhati Roy fears that Hindu nationalism could break India into little pieces like Yugoslavia and Russia. The hope is that ultimately the Indian people will resist what she calls the fascism of the ruling party.

Sahgal is pinning her hopes on the elections in five Indian states, including Uttar Pradesh (UP), until March 7.

In UP, interfaith marriages have been restricted in recent times. Muslim men married to Hindu women have been harassed by vigilante mobs and often arrested by the police. Many online attempts to humiliate and terrorize Muslim women continue.

Sahgal is the daughter of Vijay Laxmi Pandit, sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of independent India. She is also the widow of the late bureaucrat Edward Nirmal Mangat Rai, an Indian Christian. Today she is concerned about the safety of her Christian relatives and Muslim friends as incidents of majoritarian hate against minorities peak.

Sabika Naqvi, community and advocacy head at The Fearless Collective, says that vocal and assertive Muslim women have woken up in India to find their names on Auctioning apps – from Sulli Deals over the last two years to Bulli Bai. The call to rape and kill Muslim women is routine, and efforts to dehumanize Muslim women is on the rise, she says.

“They fear our ability to write, to speak, to journal, to dream, articulate, assert, organize, and fiercely fight the oppressors. They either sexualize us, try to act as our messiahs or plot to kill. But we are here to conquer the world. We are lawyers, poets, journalists, actors, activists, entrepreneurs, scholars and much more,” says Naqvi, adding that this is not just a ‘prank’ or mere ‘bullying’ but harassment that Muslim women face every day.

The Fearless Collective is a movement that helps citizens move from fear to love through the creation of participatory art in public space.

Naqvi feels that the time has come to speak up and ensure that solidarity voices are louder than those who support hatred.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Cameroonian soldiers patrol parts of Lake Chad that have been affected by terrorist activity. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Mohammad Abu Rumman
AMMAN, Jordan, Feb 24 2022 (IPS)

Killing terrorist organisations’ leaders is no effective way of fighting terrorism — as it’s political and economic crises on which terrorism feeds.

At the start of February 2022, the US celebrated the killing of Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi in Syria. The ensuing euphoria, however, failed to disguise the fact that this operation was merely a modest setback for jihadist groups.

It was probably more important for US President Joe Biden, who may hope – in anticipation of the midterm elections in November – that such actions will boost his popularity. After all, didn’t his predecessor Donald Trump celebrate the killing of the then IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi two years ago, and Barack Obama before him that of Osama bin Laden?

A brief look at the career of al-Qurashi shows clearly what is happening in the ongoing field of terrorism and counter-terrorism. The emir, on whose head the US administration had placed a bounty of millions of dollars, was once an ordinary unknown officer in the Iraqi army.

Mohammad Abu Rumman

He comes from a village in the Tal Afar district, which lies in north-western Iraq in the border region with Syria. His father was a muezzin at the local mosque. Al-Qurashi’s life – like that of most IS leadership figures – only started to derail when the Americans invaded Iraq.

Al-Qurashi joined al-Qaida and was then arrested. After his release, he rose up the ranks of the IS and eventually became a ‘hidden caliph’.

Let us imagine that the invasion of Iraq never happened, and all the ensuing sectarian violence, with thousands dead and millions displaced, never took place. Instead, a political solution was found for Iraq. Would this officer’s life have been so profoundly transformed then? And even if he had become radicalised, would this not have remained at worst an internal Iraqi issue?

Decapitating the IS doesn’t work

The example of al-Qurashi is hardly different from the career of dozens of other Islamist leaders. They all have a turning point in common that arrived with the devastating crises in the Arab and Islamic world.

Their rise as terrorist leaders was the result of state failure, misguided security policies, conflicts between opposing ethnic, religious and sectarian groups, as well as failed development policies and adverse socio-economic conditions.

The ensuing violence became a global threat as the international political community responded with military interventions, drones, and bounty campaigns – a game that seems to be far from over.

Mother and daughter injured during a terrorist attack. Credit: UN News

In Iraq and Syria, the IS may be less dangerous today than it was in its heyday.

The spiritual father of the IS in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed by an American air strike in 2006. A whole series of other leaders followed, all more or less equally dangerous. In 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed in a US military operation at his hideout in Pakistan.

Numerous other terrorist leaders were killed in similar fashion both before and after that. But has the danger from extremism and terrorism diminished as a result?

In Iraq and Syria, the IS may be less dangerous today than it was in its heyday. It is certainly no longer able to attract tens of thousands of fighters from all over the world. That time of magic, and the associated opportunities for propaganda, recruitment, and terrorist attacks, are in the past.

But the IS has not disappeared from Iraq and Syria either and still feeds on the crises there – notwithstanding the US’s declaration that the militia has been defeated. Nothing could illustrate this better than the complex and daring operation against a prison in Kurdish-controlled Hassakeh in Syria carried out by the IS just a few days before its leader was eliminated.

It ended with the deaths of hundreds of IS fighters and dozens of Kurdish militiamen – but only after nearly a week of fighting.

How the IS has globalized

The IS may be under pressure in Iraq and Syria, but it is not in the process of disappearing. Rather, it has become a global brand, maintaining dozens of bases around the world. In Africa in particular, it has been able to spread like a bushfire in recent years.

Africa is rife with religious and ethnic conflicts. Many states are fragile. Their land areas are often so large that IS offshoots have safe areas where they can retreat and spread out. Their conduct there is sometimes even worse than in the original caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Just as the IS has succeeded in spreading its ideology in Africa, this has also happened in East Asia.

Since 2019, there have been dozens of terrorist attacks in about 15 African countries, with thousands of deaths. IS jihadists are active in central, western, and eastern Africa, from the Sahara to Congo, Uganda, and Mozambique. There are also cells in North Africa.

So far, the African terrorism problem is confined to the continent and is linked to regional crises. But the more joint international action is taken against it, and the more the local crises become entrenched, the greater is the concern that the African variant of IS terrorism could be exported around the world.

A foothold in Asia

Just as the IS has succeeded in spreading its ideology in Africa, this has also happened in East Asia, especially against the backdrop of splits within the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Since the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan, there have already been large-scale attacks carried out by the IS offshoot ‘Khorasan’.

Among other recruitment sources, this organisation has received an influx of jihadists who have had to flee Iraq and Syria with their families and whose countries of origin no longer want to take them back. But fighters from Central Asia are also flocking to it.

For now, the ‘Khorasan’ is still fighting against the Taliban, who want to rule Afghanistan and to prove to the world that they are capable of doing so. To that end, they are also trying to avoid the scenario from their first rule, when they offered shelter to al-Qaida and suffered a huge backlash following the attacks of 11 September 2001.

To be successful, then, the fight against terrorism must first and foremost address the root causes of the respective crises. The billions of dollars spent on military operations and bounties should be used for projects to strengthen state institutions, political integration, and economic development. Governments should be supported through projects that aim to build up their societies, integrate citizens into public life, and strengthen democracy and civil culture.

Mohammad Abu Rumman is a political scientist and director of the Politics and Society Institute in Amman. He was Minister of Culture and Youth in Jordan from 2018 to 2019 and is the author of numerous books, including I am a Salafist.

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

 

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