Africa

How Aar Maanta is teaching children in Minneapolis to sing in Somali and learn about their heritage.

By an IPS Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2021 (IPS)

Chakravarthi Raghavan, who passed away early this week, was a prolific writer and a distinguished journalist who covered the United Nations both in New York and Geneva for several decades.

A proponent of development journalism, Raghavan’s voluminous reporting and writings were sharply focused on the global South. A longstanding reporter for Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency in Geneva, he was Editor of Third World Economics and representative of the Third World Network (TWN) in Geneva.

Chakravarthy Raghavan

He was on a team which launched the first ever IPS UN conference newspaper – Terra Viva— at the historic 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.

As a leading Indian journalist, he once held the post of Chief Editor of Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency. In 1980, Raghavan became the Chief Editor of the SUNS (then known as the Special United Nations Service), which was founded by the International Foundation for Development Alternatives (IFDA).

The aim of the SUNS was to provide information and analysis on global events and developments from a Third World perspective. Raghavan was its strongest advocate. In 1989, TWN took over responsibility for publishing SUNS.

As Chief Editor of SUNS, Raghavan provided critical and unique analyses of crucial international developments (such as the Uruguay Round negotiations and the subsequent developments in the WTO) from the perspective of developing countries.

In 1997, he was presented with the G77/UNDP award for promoting TCDC/ECDC (Technical Cooperation Among Developing Countries/Economic Cooperation Among Developing Countries).

In his speech, he offered his profoundest thanks to the Group of 77 and China and the selection committee and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for the honour bestowed on him.

“I was not present at the birth of the Group of 77, and UNCTAD, in Geneva in 1964; but I was at its conception – here in New York when a handful of key delegates from Afro-Asia and Latin America used to meet in the corridors and lounges outside the ECOSOC/Trusteeship chambers, and this led to the joint resolution presented to the General Assembly in the name of 65 countries for a UN Conference on Trade and Development – to bring economic issues back into the UN,” he said.

Since then, cooperation among developing countries has increased. There are many regional and sub-regional groups and integration agreements. But the international system currently favours those groupings and integration agreements that are associated with or led by the North, and disfavours independent groupings, he pointed out.

“And, at a time as now when the developing world is facing new threats to its independence, sovereignty and the well-being of its people, there is also a measure of dis- spiritedness and disunity within the South that those of us who have an interest in the well-being of the South, and the North, must strive hard to reverse and remove’

“As one individual from the South, I do pledge my intention to continue to strive for this, but I do plead with the governments of the South, and their delegates represented here, and the international institutions to do their utmost in this direction,” he declared.

Raghavan’s publications include: Recolonization: GATT, Uruguay Round and Third World (1990); ‘The New World Order – A View from the South’ (1997); ‘World Trade Order: Advantage for Whom?’ Third World Economics (1994);, ‘Role of Multilateral Organizations in the Globalization Process,’ Third World Economics, No. 128 (1996); ‘The World Trade Organization and its Dispute Settlement System: Tilting the balance against the South’, TWN Trade and Development Series No 9 (2000); Financial Services, the WTO and Initiatives for Global Financial Reform (2010); From GATT to the WTO: The Secret Story of the Uruguay Round, Third World Network Penang (2000); Developing Countries and Services Trade: Chasing a black cat in a dark room blindfolded (2002) TWN Penang; Disconnects at all levels, Third World Economics 403, June 2007.

The awards he received during his journalistic career include: 1998 UNDP/Group of 77 TCDC/ECDC Award for outstanding contribution as Chief Editor of South-North Development Monitor and Editor of Third World Economics to the promotion of technical and economic cooperation among developing countries; Membre d’Honneur de l’Association de la Presse Étrangère en Suisse (June 2007); Membre d’Honneur Association des Correspondants auprès des Nations Unies.

 

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By Danielle Nierenberg
NEW ORLEANS, United States, Sep 28 2021 (IPS)

The global food system needs a massive overhaul – this was clear before the Covid pandemic and it is even more true today.

Feeding the world in a sustainable and healthy way is entirely possible but it is also inextricably linked to tackling the climate crisis by reaching net zero emissions, and to halting the dizzying decline in bio-diversity which is currently threatening the survival of one million plant and animal species.

Danielle Nierenberg

And yet nearly two years after the onset of the pandemic, collectively we are acting as if we are unaware of lessons learned or, in worst cases, turning our backs on them. We can’t pretend that it is possible to go back to normal. That ‘normality’, at least for the better-off, papered over the cracks in reality.

That reality, exacerbated by Covid-19, is a looming global food emergency, triggered by a combination of climate extremes, economic shocks of rising food prices and joblessness, as well as protracted armed conflicts.

The UN is warning that this year 41 million people across 43 countries are at imminent risk of famine. This compares with 27 million in 2019. Famine-like conditions are worsening in Ethiopia, Madagascar, South Sudan and Yemen.

More people are dying of hunger around the world each day than from Covid.

On the climate front, greenhouse gas emissions are rebounding after a relatively short hiatus caused by economic slowdowns, reaching new highs in 2021.

Transforming our food systems is thus not just about feeding people. Production and transport of food accounts for about a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. Industrial animal agriculture and increased mono-cropping with over-use of pesticides and fertilizers are major drivers of biodiversity loss.

The UN Environment Program has recently issued its damning analysis of the industrial food system, with low retail costs in developed countries obscuring the massive damage caused to the environment, as well as epidemics of malnutrition and obesity and increased transmission of diseases between animals and humans.

We have to feed the world equitably in a sustainable way. Science, technology and more efficient market mechanisms are just one part of the solution. The greater challenge lies in addressing genuine land and agrarian reforms. Often it is the industrial food system and the corporate sector that holds the rights over the use of land, water, crops, plants and seeds – not those who produce and consume food.

Small farmers, pastoralists and indigenous peoples must be heard and respected, and the injustices of land grabbing must be reversed. Truly regenerative and restorative food systems cannot leave these people behind. Women, who produce much more food than recognised, and youth who struggle to access land need political empowerment.

The pandemic that has disrupted global food production has disproportionately affected women farmers and food producers who were already excluded from full participation in agricultural development. Food policies must not be gender blind and the needs of women should be at the forefront of responses to mass disasters. Imagine the changes that could really happen if we had women farmers running municipalities, towns and even countries.

Even during the depths of the pandemic, the threat for many people of poor nutrition and inadequate food was caused by loss of incomes and livelihoods, not shortage of food itself. But economic insecurity goes hand in hand with the climate crisis.

The world is facing radical choices. This decade must be one of decisive action as we strive to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030. New powerful and all-embracing alliances are needed to avoid a silo mentality that divides issues and communities. Governments, companies, institutions and citizens have to come together to reset food systems.

As members of civil society we have a responsibility to carry over the positive elements of the UN Food Systems Summit held in New York last week and make up for its deficiencies too. The issue of food must be addressed at the UN COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November and again at the UN biodiversity summit in Kunming next year.

We are on the cusp of a new era. The warning signals on climate, biodiversity and food crises have been repeatedly and clearly flagged by experts. If we have the individual and collective courage to act then our decisive responses to the pandemic can soon set us on the way to a more healthy, sustainable and just food system.

Danielle Nierenberg is co-founder and president of Food Tank, a nonprofit organization focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters.

 

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Patrick Zaki is standing trial over an opinion piece he wrote about being a Coptic Christian.

The agency apologises to the victims of exploitation by aid workers tackling the Ebola outbreak.

Border tent camp at El Chaparral Port of Entry, Tijuana, Mexico, March 2021. Credit: The Jewish Voice.

By Peter Costantini
SEATTLE, US, Sep 28 2021 (IPS)

A widely condemned Trump administration program designed to slash legal immigration to the United States, initially terminated by the Joe Biden administration, has been reinstated by court rulings on a Republican lawsuit. Human-rights and immigrant justice advocates have gone on the legal and political offensive against the decision, and are pressing the Biden administration to bypass the court’s roadblock.

The Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly known as Remain in Mexico, make asylum at the United States border more difficult and dangerous to obtain by forcing migrants initially accepted into the process to return to Mexico to await their next asylum hearing.

Human rights and immigrant justice advocates have protested forcefully that Remain in Mexico is a violation of the law and of migrants’ human rights, and must not be reinstated

During the United States presidential campaign, Joe Biden criticized the program as “dangerous” and “inhumane” and said he would end it. After taking office, his administration immediately suspended new enrollments into Remain in Mexico, and on June 1 terminated Trump’s original December 2018 program. So far, Biden has allowed some 13,000 affected immigrants to re-enter the United States to await their hearings, but an estimated 25,000 remain in limbo near the border. Tens of thousands more have apparently dispersed to other parts of Mexico and Central America, or crossed without documentation into the U.S.

In an effort to restore Remain in Mexico, the Republican attorneys general of the states of Texas and Missouri challenged the Biden administration’s repeal of the program in a U.S. District Court in Texas, and on August 13 a Trump-appointed judge ordered it reinstated. The Biden administration appealed unsuccessfully to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking them to stay the Texas ruling while the case proceeded. But on August 24 the Supreme Court rejected the request and allowed the original District Court decision to stand until the appeal is decided.

In response, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement disagreeing with the court decisions and regretting that the Supreme Court declined to issue a stay. “DHS has appealed the district court’s order”, it said, “and will continue to vigorously challenge it. As the appeal process continues, however, DHS will comply with the order in good faith.”

 

Civil society and Congress push back

Human rights and immigrant justice advocates have protested forcefully that Remain in Mexico is a violation of the law and of migrants’ human rights, and must not be reinstated. An official of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Gillian Triggs, called Remain in Mexico “a menace to the asylum system and to the compliance of the U.S. with its international obligations.“ She told Alberto Pradilla of the Mexican news site Animal Politico, “All people have a right to seek asylum. The difficulty with MPP is that, in effect, it denies access to a process.”

The original District Court ruling held that the Biden’s government’s memo terminating the program had not considered all relevant factors nor given sufficient justification for cancelling it. In response, immigrant advocates have called on Biden’s policy-makers to quickly redraft the memo with a fuller explanation for the rescission that would pass muster with the courts. “The government must take all steps available to fully end this illegal program,” commented Omar Jadwat, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, “including by re-terminating it with a fuller explanation. What it must not do is use this decision as cover for abandoning its commitment to restore a fair asylum system.”

“It is abundantly clear that the United States cannot safely reinstate MPP and that any attempt to return people seeking safety to harm in Mexico will violate U.S. and international legal obligations to refugees”, argued a letter from over 30 Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX16) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). “MPP does not represent our values as a country and should be permanently discarded along with the many other unlawful Trump administration policies designed to punish and deter refugees from seeking safety.”

Debate continues within the Biden administration, according to Anita Kumar of Politico, on whether to redraft the memo terminating Remain in Mexico to meet the courts’ objections, or to try to comply with the ruling by implementing “Remain in Mexico Lite”, requiring smaller numbers to wait in Mexico in better living conditions and with more access to attorneys. However, Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, told Kumar: “One of his campaign promises was to end MPP. He did that. He should stand by that. The answer is not to simply find a gentler, kinder MPP 2.0. That completely flies in the face of his promise.”

Over 70 civil-society groups and coalitions from the U.S., Mexico and Central America took a different tack: they sent a letter (reprinted below) to the Mexican government calling on it to refuse to cooperate with the revived Remain in Mexico program. When Trump originally launched it, the Mexican government said it did not agree with it, but would cooperate for humanitarian reasons. The organizations now urge Mexico to reject U.S. requests to accept returnees, which the Biden administration and the courts appear to recognize would make it impossible to reinstate the program. The letter points out that the Mexican Supreme Court and National Human Rights Commission are currently hearing cases about the legality and human-rights consequences of the program, and warns of the probable harm that would be inflicted on migrants by its reinstatement.

Negotiations are reportedly being conducted between Mexico and the U.S. on issues raised by the program’s provisional reinstatement. So far, the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been publicly non-committal on how much it is willing to cooperate, invoking national sovereignty to deny any obligation to comply with a U.S. court’s decision, yet not ruling out humanitarian assistance.

 

Migrant Protection Protocols, AKA Remain in Mexico

What the Trump administration officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols had nothing to do with protecting migrants. On the contrary, the measure put them in mortal danger, sending 72 thousand mainly Central American migrants who had already been accepted as potential candidates for asylum back to await their court hearings in Mexico, often for many months, sometimes for more than a year. As the ACLU’s Jadwat put it: “The whole purpose of the policy was to punish people for seeking asylum by trapping them in miserable and dangerous conditions.” The ACLU and other civil-society groups challenged the program in court, but were unable to overturn it during Trump’s term. They are considering restarting legal action if the Biden administration re-implements the policy.

Some border areas to which migrants have been returned by the program are so dangerous that the U.S. State Department warns travelers of the same threat level as in Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. They are dominated by organized crime, often in league with corrupt officials and police, and many thousands of returnees have fallen victim to violent crimes. Returned migrants are frequently forced to live in unsanitary tent camps and overcrowded shelters. Access to U.S. immigration attorneys is severely restricted, and migrants often encounter difficulties entering the U.S. for their hearings. As a result, the percentage of asylum seekers returned to Mexico under the program who eventually receive asylum is reportedly only 1.6 percent of completed cases.

The United Nations and international human rights groups have sharply criticized Remain in Mexico as a violation of the rights to request asylum and to avoid refoulement – forced return to situations of persecution that migrants are trying to escape. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet Jeria, said she was “profoundly disturbed” by the Migrant Protection Protocols and related Trump policies that had “drastically reduced protections for migrant families.” Amnesty International warned: “Trump’s efforts to end asylum are an all-out assault on human rights.”

 

“Zero Tolerance” for immigrants

Remain in Mexico was only one among many repressive weapons deployed by Trump’s immigration bureaucracy in its blitzkrieg on asylum. Early in his term, his administration began to restrict and sometimes cut off access for migrants to request asylum at official ports of entry, which is guaranteed by the Refugee Act of 1980 and international treaties. Around the same time, Attorney General Jeff Sessions imposed what he called “Zero Tolerance”, which decreed that all migrants trying to cross between ports of entry would be imprisoned, and that children would be separated from their parents. This also violated those laws and treaties, which protect the right to seek asylum anywhere along a border or within U.S. territory. The forced separation of families was condemned across much of the U.S. political spectrum. Physicians for Human Rights, a U.S. NGO, called it a form of torture and forced disappearance, and the American Association of Pediatrics characterized it as “government-sanctioned child abuse” that could cause “irreparable harm” with “lifelong consequences”.

Buttressing these interlocking virtual walls against seeking asylum, Trump’s cadre erected legal barriers against those already in the asylum process. These included Remain in Mexico and efforts to force Central American or Mexican governments to accept asylum seekers in lieu of granting them asylum in the U.S.

Some of these programs were struck down by courts. But Trump’s immigration Rasputin, Stephen Miller, and fellow operatives continued to launch other salvos against authorized and unauthorized immigration. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, they took advantage of it to strongarm the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into issuing an emergency order, known as Title 42, which prohibited nearly all immigration across the southwest border and ordered the rapid expulsion of migrants without a chance to ask for asylum. Although the Trump administration justified the measure as a means of preventing the spread of the pandemic, a loud chorus of public health experts inside and outside of the CDC objected that Title 42 could not be justified for public health reasons, and was yet another effort to exclude legal immigrants seeking asylum.

The incoming Joe Biden administration has eliminated some of Trump’s worst attacks on immigrants. But it is still enforcing Title 42, except for children, and continues to pressure other governments to stop immigration through Mexico.

The scope and brutality of the Trump administration’s policies made clear that its ultimate goal was to eventually end all immigration to the U.S., except perhaps from Norway. It came close to completely eliminating the refugee program. In measures tantamount to ethnic cleansing, it also tried to exclude Muslim, African, and other immigrants and visitors of color. It also imposed measures to make both lawful permanent resident status and naturalization more difficult to achieve and maintain. More than four-fifths of migrants to the U.S. are from Latin America, Asia and Africa, as Trump’s cadre were well aware. Their white sado-nationalism unleashed scapegoating and repression that reeked of racism, xenophobia, and fascism. As Adam Serwer observed in The Atlantic of Trump and his supporters: “The cruelty is the point.”

In the eyes of many observers around the world, the Trump régime came to be viewed as a rogue state that flagrantly denied the human rights of migrants. The Biden administration could take a step towards repairing the damage by refusing to reinstate one of Trump’s most destructive violations.

 

(Full text of the letter and list of endorsers)

Civil Society Organizations Call on the Mexican Government to Reject Any Reinstatement of MPP

https://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/research-resources/civil-society-organizations-call-on-the-mexican-government-to-reject-any-reinstatement-of-migrant-protection-protocols

 

For more information

American Immigration Council. “The ‘Migrant Protection Protocols’”. Washington, DC: American Immigration Council, January 22, 2021
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/migrant-protection-protocols

Hecho en América. “’Quédate en México’ y la expulsión de migrantes al territorio mexicano” (video). YouTube, August 26, 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPIyxBVPP4A
Laura Carlsen of Americas Program interviews three Mexican analysts on the reinstatement of Remain in Mexico (in Spanish).

In Somalia, water infrastructure projects are building climate resilience and reducing emissions by using solar panels to provide energy. Credit: UNDP/Tobin Jones

By Franck Kuwonu
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2021 (IPS)

Rondrotiana Barimalala is a climate researcher at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and a lead author for the IPCC report to the recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report titled Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.

The report says we can act on climate change but warns that time is running out.

In this interview with Africa Renewal’s Franck Kuwonu, Barimalala talks about what extreme weather events mean for Africa and what could be a new normal if global warming is not tackled urgently.

Excerpts from the interview.

Africa is not a major contributor to carbon emissions, yet human-made global warming is advancing more rapidly on the continent than in the rest of the world, the IPCC report says. How do you explain this?

The warming is global. It happens everywhere. But the situation in African is worse because of our limited capacity to adapt even when most emissions happen elsewhere. More extreme events, for example, happen in different parts of the world, but [again] our capacity to adapt is low compared to other places. And I think that makes us vulnerable and to suffer most from the consequences.

Rondrotiana Barimalala

Q: Following 1998, 2010 and 2016, Africa experienced its fourth-warmest April this year. These rises in temperature have been noticeable over the last two decades. Is this a trend we’re likely to see in the future?

A: Yes. For the past few decades, the warming rose rapidly. And one of the consequences of global warming is frequent extreme events, frequent extreme temperature—for instance, very hot temperature or very cold temperature. If it continues to increase at this speed, then we should expect more frequent events. And these will become the new normal.

Q: On Africa, the report’s findings include increased hot and cold extremes, rise in sea-level, increased drought and pluvial flooding. Do these events happen equally across the regions? Is North Africa experiencing these at the same rate as West, Central or Southern Africa, for instance?

A: There are differences. In the report, Africa is divided into nine areas. That’s basically based on the understanding of climate systems in the region. So, West Africa wouldn’t be the same as Southern Africa, for instance. All regions in Africa experience extreme heat. But it will be different across the regions.

Let me just take the example of the heatwave magnitude. We are expecting that the number of days that we have more than 35°C across Africa will increase substantially by 2050, but especially in West Africa and East Africa. The substantial increases in these regions may not be the same in Central Africa. So, it’s not evenly distributed; everything will not increase to the same degree everywhere.

Q: Talking about West Africa: the report projects precipitation to increase over Central Sahel and decrease in the western regions?

A: Yes. The report concluded that the western regions of Africa will experience decreased precipitation except in Western Sahel, and there will be an increase in the eastern regions.

Franck Kuwonu

Q: What would be the impact of that on the livelihoods of people in the Sahel? Will parts of the Sahel be green, in the central areas for instance, while the western area will become more arid?

A: Yes. For the western part, there will be an increase in aridity, unfortunately. Because we have a decrease in rainfall, that will impact agriculture, ecology and biosphere. In areas with projected increase in precipitation, it’s not impossible to have a greener land, for example in the eastern part. But again, we need more studies to confirm it.

Q: Another finding and projection of the report is the rise in sea level across the continent. The western side, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic, appears to be the most affected. How bad is it? How about the eastern parts along the Indian Ocean? To what extent are these affected?

A: Let’s look at what happens [now] before we talk about the future. For the Atlantic Ocean, from 1900 to 2018 the level rose by around 2 millimeters per year. The Indian Ocean was 1.3 millimeters per year. And recently, the levels are almost the same. Now, it’s around 3.40 millimeters in the Atlantic Ocean and 3.60 millimeters in the Indian Ocean. So, it’s serious on both sides. What makes it more serious on the western side, I think, is the the low-elevation land in the area.

Q: So, both are rising, and it looks like the Indian side has outpaced the western side. Is that correct?

A: Yes. But the impact is not felt the same way because coastal areas on the east side are higher than on the west side. If you look at the coast along Tanzania, those areas have high topography—higher elevation.

Q: Traveling along coastal areas in West Africa, from Lagos (Nigeria) to Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) for instance, one can see ruins of entire roads and villages, historical sites washed away by the sea. What is the main cause of this—expanding warming waters or sinking lands? Or is it the melting ice, which is far away from the continent?

A: When we talk about sea level rise, we must consider expansion due to the warming of oceans. And that contributes most to the global rise in sea-level. And then, we have the melting ice and glaciers. But I think that from the examples you just gave, these are more classified as coastal erosion than sea level rise, I think houses and roads disappearing are more about coastal erosion. And the continent has experienced shoreline retreats at the rate of one meter per year from 1984 until around 2016/2017, and that’s been very important as well.

Q: Are there other places around the world where, comparatively, the rate of the rise is much higher?

A: Similar to the extreme heats, the rate of rise is not uniformly distributed. For instance, the Atlantic is warming at a faster rate than the Pacific, leading to larger sea level rise than the global mean, along the European and US east coastal areas. There are also different factors such as land settling or rising due to loss of the weight of ice due to melting.

Q: What then are the likely consequences of the sea level continuing to rise?

A: The likely consequences would be on coastal areas because when the sea level rises, you tend to have more erosion from the sea, decline of water quality and destruction of different infrastructures.

Q: What lies ahead? Are the projected trends irreversible for the continent? What should people and policymakers be aware of going forward?

A: That’s a tricky question. Of course, we would benefit from having the greenhouse gases decreasing everywhere. In Africa, that’s what we are looking forward to, as we are very vulnerable. So, if you ask me what lies ahead for Africa, I would say it depends on global efforts. I think we know the facts. We know what is going to happen if we don’t make decisions. Through this report, we are putting facts in front of governments. So, it’s hard for me to say what lies ahead for Africa. But it really depends on global decisions as well as decisions made in every country in Africa regarding what to do based on these facts.

Footnote

Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis: Key facts on Africa:

Mean temperatures and hot extremes have emerged above natural variability, relative to 1850–1900, in all land regions in Africa.

The rate of surface temperature increase has generally been more rapid in Africa than the global average, with human-induced climate change being the dominant driver.

Observed increases in hot extremes (including heatwaves) and decreases in cold extremes (including cold waves) are projected to continue throughout the 21st century with additional global warming

Marine heatwaves have become more frequent since the 20th century and are projected to increase around Africa.

Relative sea level has increased at a higher rate than global mean sea level around Africa over the last three decades. Relative sea-level rise is likely to virtually certain to continue around Africa, contributing to increases in the frequency and severity of coastal flooding in low-lying areas to coastal erosion and along most sandy coasts.

The frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events are projected to increase almost everywhere in Africa with additional global warming.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

 

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2021 (IPS)

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan during 1996-2001, the United Nations was engaged in a losing battle for women’s rights.

And that battle was occasionally led by two senior female UN officials, one of them working for a UN agency providing humanitarian assistance inside unfriendly Taliban territory.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, a former UN Under-Secretary-General, who travelled around the world as Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women (1994-2003), recounted an uncomfortable eye-to-back – not an eye-to-eye — meeting she had with a Taliban official.

“When I met the Foreign Minister”, she told me last week, “We sat side by side on two distant chairs and he would not look at me. I kept putting my face in the line of his vision and he slowly turned his back.”

“My bodyguard then leaned over and told me what should have been obvious: that he will not set eyes on me”.

“And when I met the Minister of Justice, I asked him about domestic violence” and he told me that “Afghan women were well brought up, and they do not attack their husbands,” said Coomaraswamy, one of the third high-ranking officials in the UN hierarchy, next to the Secretary-General and the Deputy Secretary-General.

Meanwhile, when Anoja Wijeyesekera, received her new UNICEF assignment in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan back in 1997, her appointment letter arrived with a “survival manual” and chilling instructions: write your last will before leaving home.

A former UNICEF Resident Project Officer (1997-1999) in Jalalabad and later in Kabul (1999-2001), she recounted an identical anecdote similar to Coomaraswamy’s.

“When I first went to Afghanistan in 1997, as the UNICEF Resident Project Officer in Jalalabad, the Taliban refused to look at me, as I happened to be a woman. At meetings, which were all- male events, they would look away from me with an expression of total disgust and would keep their heads turned away from me, when speaking to me,” she recounted.

“After a couple of months of this icy reception, which I considered to be a farcical comedy, they gradually thawed and even shook my hand, spoke in English, and became friendly”

“And I said to my staff perhaps the Taliban thought that I had turned into a man!” she added jokingly.

Many Afghan families were displaced when the Taliban advanced on Kabul. Credit: UNHCR/Yama Noori

According to a report in the New York Times last week, during the first years of Taliban rule, women were forbidden to work outside the home or even to leave the house without a male guardian.

“They could not attend school, and faced public flogging if they were found to have violated morality rules, like one requiring that they be fully covered.”

At a fund-raiser last week for humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, which generated more than $1.2 billion in pledges, Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said when he met with Taliban officials recently in Kabul, he received assurances— in writing.

Their message read: “We have made it clear in all public forums that we are committed to all rights of women, rights of minorities and principles of freedom of expression in the light of religion and culture, therefore we once again reiterate our commitment and will gradually take concrete steps with the help of the international community.”

But the lingering question is whether the Taliban government will honour these commitments – particularly, judging by its past track record.

Of the $1.2 billion in pledges, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said September 27, only about $131 million has actually been received; that’s 21.7 per cent of the $606 million required through the end of this year.

“We are very pleased with pledges; we are even more pleased when we get cash,” he said.

Meanwhile, asked about her personal experiences during her tenure in Afghanistan, UNICEF”s Wijeyesekera, described the Taliban as a motley group of fighters, mullahs and other fringe elements of society including drop outs, bandits, criminals and bigots that have come together under the umbrella term “Taliban” which means students.

They are supposed to be students of Islam and by their own definition, she pointed out, they are students and not graduates or professors. This is revealing as many of the foot soldiers are semi-literate but well versed in the art of guerrilla warfare.

“Their brand of Islam is totally opposed to the accepted version of Islam that is taught in universities and other places of genuine learning,” said Wijeyesekera, in an interview with IPS last week.

“As you know the madrassas of Pakistan were established with the support of the CIA to train mujahidin fighters to defeat the Russians. I have seen the Nebraska curriculum, which is explained in my book (“Facing the Taliban,” available on Amazon) which was a tool to brain-wash poor children into becoming cannon fodder on the battle field.”

During her time in Afghanistan, she said, some Talibs holding positions in government were more educated. However, many were Mullahs who were completely closed to the outside world, having only been taught in a Madrassa.

The Minister for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue [V&V] named Torabi was a one- eyed, one-legged fighter whose only occupation was beating people, mostly women, she said.
His Ministry was in charge of floggings, beheadings, amputations and stonings. If the newly created Ministry with that name, is headed by a similar person, the result would be similar, she added.

Despite these absolutely horrific practices, conducted by their own “government”, “I have to say that at a personal and sub-national level, the more educated departmental heads were relatively flexible, as they understood the benefits of UNICEF programmes for the children and women of Afghanistan.”

As time progressed, one of the most ruthless and die-hard Taliban leaders — the Minister of Health, developed an understanding with me, regarding the implementation of UNICEF programmes, as he could see the benefits of those programmes.

Thus,” I would say that although “policy” could be one thing, practices could vary depending on the location and the particular Talib in question”.

Asked about other senior female UN officials, she said there were women heading other UN agencies in Afghanistan, including the head of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) both in Jalalabad and Kabul. Also, in Jalalabad the head of the office of the World Health Organization (WHO) was a woman.

Meanwhile, the UN may keep posting women to Afghanistan– at least to challenge the validity of Taliban’s claims on women rights.

Speaking at a seminar at the UN on September 21, Michelle Bachelet, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said there were credible reports of serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses taking place in many areas under effective Taliban control such as summary executions of civilians, restrictions on the rights of women, including their right to move freely and girls’ right to attend schools, recruitment of child soldiers, and more.

Since the Taliban’s takeover, its spokespeople have issued several announcements of human rights commitments. Notably, in a letter to the United Nations they announced their “commitment to all rights of women… in the light of religion and culture” and vowed to “gradually take concrete steps with the help of the international community”.

However, practices on the ground have undermined and sadly contradicted these stated commitments, she added.

“Women have been progressively excluded from the public sphere. In many areas, they are prohibited from appearing in public spaces without a male guardian. In numerous professional sectors, women face increasing restrictions”.

To date, Bachelet said, girls over the age of 12 have in effect been prohibited from attending school. Female and male university students are now separated, with female students only to be taught by female professors – of whom there are few, further undermining women’s access to higher education.

She pointed out that the Ministry that once promoted women’s rights has been dis-banded, and its premises taken over by a Ministry for the propagation of Virtue and the prevention of Vice – an all-male office that will apply guidelines on appropriate dress and behaviour.

Taliban representatives have dismantled many Departments of Women’s Affairs across Afghanistan, gaining access to sensitive files and threatening their personnel, and have accused women’s civil society groups of immorality and spreading ‘anti-Islamic’ ideas, said Bachelet.

“Afghan women and girls comprise half of the population. It will be to Afghanistan’s advantage that the talents and capabilities of its women are utilised, to contribute to the Afghanistan of the future.”

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 28 2021 (IPS)

US President Biden’s earlier support for a vaccine patent waiver raised hopes for his summit last week. However, it proved disappointing, not only for efforts to end the pandemic, but also for US leadership in these challenging times.

Most rich countries have opposed most developing countries’ request to temporarily suspend World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property (IP) rules to more quickly contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Expectations were high as Biden had supported a patent waiver, albeit only for vaccines.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

With their IP, suppliers control production, supplies and prices. The industry claims it can meet all pandemic-related needs. But although it has no intention of meeting these needs, it insists the waiver is unnecessary. Hence, unless rich country governments stop opposing it, forthcoming WTO meetings will not achieve much.

Rich defend mRNA vaccine duopoly
COVID-19 vaccine supplies and prices are controlled by a few companies. Although BioNTech developed one of the two approved mRNA vaccines, it is now largely manufactured and marketed by Pfizer outside Europe.

BioNTech’s relationship to Pfizer is complementary, but not one between equals. By contrast, Moderna is a vaccine development start-up, with limited marketing and other capacities, especially outside the USA.

Meanwhile, able to pay more, rich countries have taken most vaccines, far, far more than enough. The duopoly initially sold more than 90% of their vaccines to rich countries, charging up to 24 times actual production costs.

Then, more vaccines started reaching MICs before recent efforts to push booster shots. Meanwhile, only 2.2% in low-income countries (LICs) have received at least one dose. Without drastic improvements, most in LICs will not be fully vaccinated before 2023.

Millions are dying as more dangerous variants emerge, confirming no one is safe until everyone is. Meanwhile, the October 2020 WTO waiver request to temporarily suspend IP rights for COVID-19 tests, treatments, equipment and vaccines has garnered broad support.

Vaccine technology not for sharing
Most global initiatives to make vaccines less unaffordable to MICs, such as COVAX, do not address the massive supply shortfall and high prices. Meanwhile, vaccine suppliers jealously protect their monopolies, claiming nobody else can safely produce them.

While at least 80 developing countries have been producing generic medicines and vaccines for decades, not all can produce the novel mRNA vaccines without access to new technical knowledge and materials. Yet, MSF has identified ‘mRNA vaccine-capable’ manufacturers in developing countries, including four in Africa alone.

MSF estimates such manufacturers can establish the capacity to produce up to 100 million doses annually within ten months for between US$127–270 million. But they would still need access to mRNA vaccine technology and reliable supplies.

But Pfizer and Moderna have both refused to share the needed. Now, instead of transferring technology or increasing vaccine supplies to developing countries, they have only contracted to supply vaccine ingredients to companies in rich countries and China.

State-subsidised super-profits
Despite benefiting from taxpayer funds, legally enforced patent monopolies and low taxes, People’s Vaccine Alliance research shows the three have used their mRNA vaccine duopoly to secure super profits. Their vaccines sell for US$41 billion over production costs estimated at US$1.20 per dose.

As a charity has noted, “Instead of partnering … to make sure that we have enough vaccine doses for everyone, these pharmaceutical companies prioritize their own profits by enforcing their monopolies and selling to the highest bidder”.

Moderna and Pfizer pay little in taxes despite making many times more than the pre-pandemic average profit rate of 8% for Fortune 500 companies in 2019. In the first half of 2021, Moderna – which had never made a profit before – paid a 7% US tax rate while Pfizer paid 15%, still well under the US statutory rate of 21%.

Perverse incentives
This new situation has created various perverse incentives prolonging the pandemic. Suppliers can make a great deal more in the medium term from tests, treatments, protective, other equipment and booster shots, supposedly for new, more dangerous variants.

Pfizer – already a large, diversified pharmaceutical conglomerate – has recently been growing by taking over businesses selling COVID-19 needs. With the prospect of more profitable booster sales, vaccine suppliers have little incentive to rapidly end the pandemic.

With COVID-19 now endemic, they continue to limit access to their vaccine technology to ensure scarcity and set prices to maximise profits. Hence, despite not having developed its own vaccine, Pfizer is now dominant.

What Biden must now do
Meanwhile, Biden has been under growing pressure to do much more. Probably more than anyone else, economist Dean Baker has long shown how the US can lead international cooperation to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, making the case for an inclusive international vaccine summit half a year ago.

Baker has argued how existing patent arrangements are not only inequitable, but also inefficient and wasteful. He has shown patent advocates as not only self-interested, but also dishonest. Instead, direct public funding would better incentivise new drug development.

US law – specifically Section 1498 of its commercial code – allows the government to require patent licensing in emergencies. Moderna, Pfizer and their scientific personnel can thus be induced to help rapidly scale up production internationally to vaccinate the world.

Also, the waiver proposal must be swiftly approved by the WTO to quickly enable more affordable access to tests, treatments, equipment and other materials urgently needed to better fight the pandemic until it can be ended altogether.

At his summit, Biden vowed to expand vaccine output in Africa and Asia. He can still do the right thing. This could well open a new era of multilateral cooperation instead of the dog-eat-dog new Cold War we are lurching towards. Perhaps there is still hope.

 

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By External Source
NEW YORK, Sep 27 2021 (IPS-Partners)

– On the sidelines of this year’s United Nations General Assembly, public, private and philanthropic donors announced a total of US$138.1 million in new contributions to Education Cannot Wait (ECW).

The new contributions come from: Germany (€50 million; approx. US$58.6 million); United States of America (US$37 million); European Union/European Commission (€25 million; approx. US$29.3 million); The LEGO Foundation (DKK35 million; approx. US$5.6 million); France (€4 million; approx. US$4.7 million); Switzerland (CHF2 million; approx. US$2.2 million); and, Porticus (€500,000, approx. US$588,000).

This new round of funding contributions will accelerate the impact of ECW’s education in emergencies investments, which have already reached more than 4.6 million crisis-affected children and adolescents. ECW’s COVID-19 response has also been delivered in record speed across 32 countries, reaching an additional 29.2 million vulnerable girls and boys. Since its inception in 2016, ECW has mobilized US$828.3 million through the ECW Trust Fund, and helped leverage with its partners US$1 billion worth of programmes aligned with ECW’s multi-year resilience programmes in 10 countries.

“We all see the dramatic crises worldwide. Children and young people suffer the most from hunger, violence, and lack of education. Every child has a right to education. Thus, I am proud to announce that Germany will commit €50 million to Education Cannot Wait,” said Gerd Müller, Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany.

“We need to act now, because we know that in times of crisis, education can offer stability, protection and prospects for the future. For 2022, we will make available a total of €50 million for the ECW multi-year resilience programmes, because education is key for achieving all dimensions of sustainable development,” said Dr. Maria Flachsbarth, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany.

“The United States has proudly supported Education Cannot Wait since its inception in 2016. And we are proud to boost our support today. Education Cannot Wait is an educational lifeline in dozens of crisis-affected countries globally. We look forward to continued cooperation to increase access to education, improved learning outcomes and reach the most marginalized students – especially girls, refugees, internally displaced communities, gender and sexual minorities, and children with disabilities. We know when access to education is equal, the results are clear: greater economic growth, improved health outcomes, stronger democracies, more peaceful and resilient societies, and healthier and more successful children,” said USAID Administrator Samantha Power.

“We want all children to be born with the same opportunities. All too often, the fate and lives of our children are determined by the lottery of birth. This is why I am pleased to announce that Europe will be donating €25 million to the Education Cannot Wait global fund. An investment in education is an investment in a better world,” said the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

“We must unite to put the SDGs back on track. As we continue to witness, we can never take access to education for granted. Team Europe has to date contributed to more than 40% of the funding of Education Cannot Wait, and the new €25 million contribution from the EU will further support it to reach the most vulnerable children and bring them back to education,” said European Union Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urplilainen.

“As world leaders gather for the UN General Assembly and define a path to address the interconnected crises of conflict, COVID-19, climate change and forced displacement, these crucial contributions will ensure the world’s most vulnerable children and adolescents have the chance to go learn, grow and thrive. We call on all governments and private sector partners to follow suit and support the mission of Education Cannot Wait: to leave no child or young person behind in conflicts or as refugees, but to ensure they can exercise their right to a quality education. This is a true investment in peace and prosperity,” said The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of ECW’s High-Level Steering Group.

“This new round of funding is a bold and important step in reaching the world’s most marginalized children and adolescents with the power of inclusive quality education,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “It shows the commitment of our strategic donors to scale up their generous support and we are deeply grateful for the trust placed in the proven ECW model. I thank you for this important funding by all of our partners, who came forward during the UNGA Week, enabling us to deliver more support, faster and more sustainably, for crisis-affected children and youth.”

Falling behind in achieving SDG4
Despite these significant contributions, large gaps for education in emergencies funding persist. ECW analysis of humanitarian appeals indicate that funding requirements for education grew from US$1 billion in 2019 to US$1.4 billion in 2020.

Global leaders are signaling the alarm bells as new reports indicate the world is falling behind in delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals, (including SDG4 for inclusive equitable quality education), by 2030.

According to the United Nations, COVID-19 has wiped out 20 years of education gains, with an additional 101 million of children in grades 1 through 8 falling behind in minimum reading proficiency levels. Globally only 85% of children completed primary school in 2019, up from 82% in 2010, while only about half of students will graduate from secondary school.

An estimated 1.5 billion students were impacted by COVID-19 school closures, and a recent study by the Malala Foundation estimates that an additional 20 million girls would lose their access to education as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

Girls and boys already impacted by conflict, climate change and displacement are being pushed further to the margins. When these girls and boys are pushed out of school, they face increased risks of gender-based violence, forced recruitment, and other grave violations.

Excerpt:

With new contributions from Germany, United States of America, European Union/European Commission, The LEGO Foundation, France, Switzerland, and Porticus, ECW and partners are building a movement to reach millions of the world’s crisis-affected children and youth with the safety, hope and opportunity of a quality education.

Kenya midfielder Victor Wanyama announces his retirement from international football nearly a year on from his last cap.

Maru Aguzzi at the exhibition in Paris, in front of works by Alejandro Magallanes (photo by SWAN).

By SWAN
PARIS, Sep 27 2021 (IPS)

So, what’s the difference between illustration and “art”?  When asked this question, Maru Aguzzi replies with a wry smile: “Perhaps the price?”

Aguzzi is the curator of Gran Salón México-Paris – Contemporary Mexican Illustration, an exhibition taking place at the Mexican Cultural Institute in the French capital until Oct. 26. The show brings together some 40 illustrators, whose work includes painting, drawing, print-making, video and other genres.

‘Autorretrato’ by Rocca Luis Cesar, photo courtesy of Gran Salón México.

The pieces are strikingly artistic, even if they’re being presented as illustrations. All are “original” works created especially for this exhibition, which is the first in France from Gran Salón México, an annual art fair that Aguzzi created in 2014.

The fair’s mission, she says, is to offer a glimpse into the country’s growing illustration “wave”, and to bring to the public some of the best contemporary works in this category – a field that actually “plays” with the limits of art.

“Saying that price makes the difference is perhaps the funny answer, but you can go deeper and see how illustrators choose to explore content or not,” Aguzzi told SWAN. “The way the work is presented, viewers don’t have to dig for content or meaning as with contemporary art, where the work requires some kind of engagement from the viewer for completion. Illustration has an immediate impact, and viewers can like what they see or not. It’s that simple.”

Gran Salón’s participating illustrators use a variety of media just like their “artist” peers, she said. Works in the show range from oil and acrylic paintings on canvas to charcoal drawings on paper. In between, viewers can enjoy watercolours, collage, animation and digital art.

In fact, some of the illustrators do exhibit in art fairs as well, further blurring distinctions, Aguzzi said. They draw on a long tradition of Mexican artists working in various genres, as did renowned painters Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo – whose influence can be felt in the current show, alongside that of multi-genre Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, for instance.

‘Creciendo juntos’ by María Ponce, photo courtesy of Gran Salón México.

Picasso and his paintings of women are evoked with a twist in the illustrations of Rocca Luis Cesar (born in Guadalajara in 1986), while the more “veteran” Carlos Rodríguez (born in La Soledad, San Luis Potosí, 1980) draws upon images – such as the watermelon – that appear in the paintings of Tamayo.

Both illustrators convey a strong artistic sensibility, with Rodríguez in particular being inspired by “classical painting, mythology, naïve art and porn” – as his bio states. His two vibrant, erotic paintings in the show were created specifically to conjure a Latin American ambience in Paris, Aguzzi said.

Another notable aspect of the exhibition is its sense of humour or satire, in addition to the addressing of serious topics, such as climate change and language rights. One of the youngest illustrators, María Ponce, born in Oaxaca in 1994, exemplifies this with her colour drawings about daily life and with her “Creciendo juntos” piece, which conveys the message that we have to take care of the environment and trees if we too wish to keep thriving.

Meanwhile, illustrator and filmmaker Gabriela Badillo (born in 1979) uses her work to highlight Mexico’s indigenous languages through her 68 Voces project, a video series with stories told in these languages. Badillo co-founded audiovisual production company Hola Combo with a belief in the social responsibility of media, according to the exhibition, and she and her colleagues have worked with indigenous groups, including children, on creative initiatives.

Her videos, and other film clips and works of animation, add to the unexpected scope of the Gran Salón show.

“The work that illustrators are producing in Mexico includes numerous genres, and I really wanted to show this range,” Aguzzi told SWAN.

Additional information:

https://icm.sre.gob.mx/francia/index.php/fr/ & https://gran.salon/ 

Worshippers gathered to mark the eve of one of the country's biggest Orthodox Christian festivals.

Sheeba Aslam Fehmi at an event organized by Dhanak, celebrating couples who married under the Special Marriage Act.

By Mariya Salim
NEW DELHI, India, Sep 27 2021 (IPS)

When Ali (name changed) proposed to his best friend, little did he know that her parents would take six years to agree to their alliance because he was born into a Muslim family, and they were Hindus.

“Everything they had heard all their life pointed to Muslims being violent, conservative, forceful etc. The idea of me being Muslim and marrying their Hindu daughter was too much to fathom despite them thinking of me highly,” he said in an interview with IPS.

This story is one of the few where the end was ‘happy’, and the family did not bow to societal pressure. However, if one looks at recent propaganda and the increase of Islamophobia in India, one concept which has added fuel to this fire is the fictitious propaganda of ‘Love Jihad’.

Love Jihad is a term propagated by religious fundamentalist groups, alleging a conspiracy by Muslim men to convert non-Muslim girls in the guise of love.

The propagation of this concept is perhaps one reason why Ali had to struggle to convince his wife’s parents that his religion had nothing to do with his love for their daughter.

While it may be easy to counter such a narrative, socially, with more awareness, what has made this term popular and the hate associated with it resulting, in some cases, in violence is the support it has garnered from right-wing political parties and their success at turning such marriages into a criminal offence.

“Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, host hundreds of pages and handles which post unverified incidents as ‘real news’ of Hindu women being deceived by Muslim men into marrying them and ending up either dead or as captives forced to convert and live in the homes of their supposedly violent Muslim husbands,” says Ashwini KP, an academic and rights activist based in Bangalore.

Challenging the provisions of one such draconian state law passed in the state of Gujarat as Gujarat Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Act, 2021, Advocate Isa Hakim, one of the petitioners’ lawyers, argued: “Amendments (in the Act), read with the discourse around Love Jihad, it is clear that the impugned Act is enacted with nothing but a communal objective and is thereby opposed to the constitutional morality, basic features and fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 14, 19, 21, 25, and 26 of the Constitution.”

The Gujarat High Court, through an order on August 19, 2021, put a stay on the operation of several sections of the Act, including a provision that termed interfaith marriages as a means for forceful conversion. The order, the court stated, was being passed “to protect the parties solemnising inter-faith marriage from being unnecessarily harassed”. The state government soon after decided to challenge this order in the Supreme Court of India.

Addressing a rally last year in Uttar Pradesh, the chief minister Yogi Adityanath openly proclaimed: “Govt will work to curb ‘Love-Jihad’, we’ll make a law. I warn all those who conceal their identities and play with the respect of our sisters if you do not mend your ways, your ‘Ram naam satya’ journey (a phase associated with people being taken to be cremated) will begin”. Therefore, it is not surprising that in a state whose chief minister makes such open threats, right-wing groups have used love Jihad to stoke communal tensions and rioting. A total of five states in India, where the BJP is in power, have laws based on the conspiracy theory of Love Jihad, without actually using the phrase.

“It is also to undermine the agency of 21st-century Hindu women. We are a society that is afraid of its own daughters, and to keep a check on them prohibiting them from making their own choices, they (current regime) have brought out very Islamophobic and communal legislation under the garb of a safety and security issue for ‘their’ women,” says Sheeba Aslam Fehmi, research scholar and journalist in an exclusive interview with IPS.

Fehmi, also the president of Dhanak, works to protect the couples’ right to choose marriage or relationship partners. The organisation supports couples in inter-faith and inter-caste marriages.

She told IPS they also try to assist interfaith couples with safe houses to ensure they do not become targets of right-wing attacks.

Popular Indian jewellery brand Tanishq withdrew this advert with a depiction of an inter-faith marriage. It said while the campaign was to celebrate diversity it had prompted reactions “contrary to its objective”.

It is perturbing that couples who want to marry under the ‘Special Marriage Act’ (an Act passed by the Indian Parliament allowing interfaith marriages without conversion) have a section, which is now being challenged, where a 30-day notice is publicly displayed, inviting objections, before the marriage is registered.

Shital (name changed), shared with IPS how she received threatening calls from some right-wing groups once she and her Muslim partner decided to register under the Act.

“My Aadhar card (national ID) details were made public on a Facebook group. My parents, who approved of our alliance, received calls where they were threatened with ‘dire consequences’ if they did not stop our marriage,” Shital said. She called the marriage off because of these security concerns.

Asif Iqbal, the co-founder of Dhanak, said in an exclusive interview to IPS that they started the organisation because there was no support system for interfaith couples trying to marry using the Special Marriage Act. The objective was to organise people against religious fanaticism.

“I was made to sit for six hours in a police station in Delhi. The investigating officer was trying to enquire about a possible conspiracy as I was the last person an interfaith couple spoke to before they eloped. The boy was Muslim, and the girl Hindu,” said Iqbal.

The fear of vigilante groups, in the online and in actual physical spaces, is so prevalent that even brands advertising using the idea of inter-faith marriages, particularly where the boy is Muslim, are targeted as promoters of Love Jihad. A recent example was a popular jewellery brand depicting a Hindu woman and a Muslim man getting married. The advert was trolled on social media, that the company removed the advertisement from all forums.

For couples looking to challenge the draconian laws, the only recourse is the courts. However, the worrying feature is that Love Jihad targets Muslims and criminalises its men in a society with frequent incidences of Islamophobia.

 

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Nigeria become only the second side to win three straight African women's basketball titles after beating Mali 70-59 in Sunday's final in Cameroon.

Young girls in Turkey use their digital devices. Over 30 years after the invention of the world wide web, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has laid out the ways that young people and children should be treated in the digital world, and how their rights should be protected. Credit: UNICEF/Olcer

By Hamid Mehmood
HAMILTON, Ontario, Canada, Sep 27 2021 (IPS)

In 2020, every human on Earth created an average of at least 1.7 megabytes of data per second, collectively amassing 2.5 quintillion data bytes. Some 90% of the world’s total data was created in the last two years alone.

Globally, companies are undergoing transformations including the use of digital technologies to create new or modify processes, culture and customer experience to meet changing business and market expectations.

The COVID pandemic has accelerated companies’ digital transformations, and by 2022 an estimated 70% of global Gross Domestic Product will have gone through some form of digitization, the result of an estimated $6.8 trillion in investments.

This exponential growth of big data availability is propelling disruptive technologies like those using artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and cloud computing, which all significantly alter how consumers, industries, or businesses operate.

Data-fueled artificial intelligence applications alone are projected to generate additional economic activity of around $13 trillion by 2030. Because of this value generation capability, data is considered the “new oil.”

However, the trend from the last decade shows that, just like oil, the hot spots to generate and create value from data are located just in a selected few countries. We are witnessing the creation of a data-impoverished Global South, which cannot reap the financial benefits or use data to address challenges like massive forest fires, water scarcity, floods, droughts, and other manifestations of the changing climate.

It is alarming that, despite the much talked-about explosion in data generation, critical high quality data for global, regional, and national development is lacking. Major gaps are opening between the data haves and have-nots.

Unfortunately, the have-nots include the majority of countries facing challenges like water scarcity, access to clean water, exposure to flood risk, and drought, which require quality data to be generated and processed to create actionable information and knowledge.

Today in the Global South water data collection tends to focus on individual development projects, spawning a patchwork of data sets of short time duration, restricted spatial coverage and limited availability.

This decline is most evident in Africa, where the density of water-data collection networks has been declining over time and falls far below World Meteorological Organization guidelines.

In the last two decades alone, the majority of new stations established to report to WMO’s Global Runoff Data Center are located in “new oil” rich countries. According to the WMO database, gauging stations in North America outnumber those in the 20 most water-stressed countries by more than 10-1. Similar data inequality exists for water-quality and water-related disasters.

In the last decade, remote sensing data coupled with cloud computing has shown promise to address the water-data inequality in the Global South and is successfully used to monitor various parameters of surface water bodies over a period of time.

However, the lack of traceable ground truth observations against which to validate the satellite observations is a key challenge, essentially making the remote sensing data unfit to be used as part of water-related decision support systems. Also, the remote sensing data has failed to accurately quantify parameters like precipitation and river flows where the data gaps are most prominent in the Global South.

In addition to the lack of water data faucets, the uncoordinated and unmonitored data generation efforts in the Global South are leading to the creation of data wastelands, where more than 80% of data created is unstructured and random.

Converting this unstructured data to actionable information is expensive; cleansing and deduplicating a record can cost as much as $10. This poor quality and sparse data also impacts AI and blockchain adoption, essentially shutting out the Global South from the economic activity, social and climate change mitigation benefits these technologies provide.

Given the rise in the severity and frequency of water-related challenges, it is essential to address the data inequality-related issues to achieve the water-related Sustainable Development Goals in this decade.

The solution includes Global North leadership in the new world data order to share their data and information-related technologies with the Global South to help generate quality and actionable data at a global and national scale.

The Global North must also commit to water science capacity building by funding operation monitoring, data rescue and update, and training of water scientists. Given the international nature of emerging water resource issues, the commitment and support of the entire global community is required to reverse the ongoing decline of critical water data sets.

Hamid Mehmood is a Senior Researcher, Hydro-informatics and Information Technology, at the UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment, and Health, which is supported by the Government of Canada and hosted at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. The Institute marks its 25th anniversary in 2021.

 

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Members of the Cangrejera Drinking Water Association in the Desvío de Amayo village, La Libertad municipality in central El Salvador, stand at the foot of the tank from which water flows by gravity to the nine villages that benefit from this community project. There are an estimated 2,500 rural water boards in the country, which provide service to 1.6 million people. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
LA LIBERTAD, El Salvador , Sep 27 2021 (IPS)

After climbing a steep hill along winding paths, you reach a huge water tank at the top that supplies peasant farmer families who had no water and instead set up their own community project on this coastal strip in central El Salvador.

“It wasn’t easy to carry out our project; building the tank was tough because we had to carry the materials up the hill on our shoulders: the gravel, cement, sand and iron,” José Dolores Romero, treasurer of the Cangrejera Drinking Water Association, told IPS.

The association is located in the village of Desvío de Amayo, in the canton of Cangrejera, part of the municipality and department of La Libertad.

The system, which began operating in 1985, provides water to 468 families in this and eight other nearby villages.

This is what hundreds of rural communities and villages have done to gain access to drinking water, as the government has failed to provide service to every corner of this impoverished nation of 6.7 million people.

Faced with the lack of service, families have organised in “juntas de agua”: rural water boards that are community associations that on their own manage to drill a well and build a tank and the rest of the system.

In El Salvador there are about 2,500 rural water boards, which provide service to 25 percent of the population, or some 1.6 million people, according to data from the non-governmental Foro del Agua (Water Forum), which promotes equitable and participatory water management.

The boards receive no government support, despite the fact that they provide a public service that should fall to the National Administration of Aqueducts and Sewers (Anda).

María Ofelia Pineda, 58, washes a frying pan and other dishes she used to prepare lunch at her home in the village of Las Victorias in Cangrejera on El Salvador’s coastal strip. Families like hers benefit from the water provided by the Cangrejera Drinking Water Association, which has been operating for 36 years. For seven dollars a month, the residents of this rural town receive 20 cubic metres of water. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

A community project

In the village of Desvío de Amayo, located at the centre of the country’s coastal strip, families used to dig their own wells in their backyards, but the water was not potable, and caused health problems as a result.

“It’s true that when you drill a well here you find water, but it isn’t drinkable, and the springs in the coastal area are contaminated with feces,” said Romero, who along with several other members of the water board met with IPS for a tour of the area.

The water in the tank is made potable by adding chlorine, a task carried out by José Hernán Moreno, 66, who described himself as the “valvulero”, responsible for the tank, which has a capacity of 200 cubic metres.

When there is a mishap with one of the pipelines running to one of the communities, it is Moreno who is in charge of closing the necessary valves.

With a quiet chuckle, he recalled that on one occasion he “killed” some fish that a local resident was raising in a pond, hinting that he may have put in more chlorine than he should have.

“They got mad at me, they blamed me, but my duty is to pour in the necessary chlorine,” Moreno said.

The well drilled by the association is 60 metres deep, and the water is pumped four km uphill to the tank from the village using a pump driven by a 20-horsepower engine.

From there, it is gravity-fed to the nine villages it serves.

“We have water all day and all night, and what we pay depends on how much we use,” one of the beneficiaries, Ana María Landaverde, a 62-year-old mother of five, told IPS.

Carlos Enrique Rosales stands in front of the lighting panel of the community water system. He is in charge of maintaining the well, pump, motor and other parts of the system, located in the Desvío de Amayo village in Cangrejera, in the Salvadoran municipality of La Libertad. The project provides water to 468 families in this and eight other villages, which the government does not supply. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Each family pays seven dollars for 20 cubic metres a month, the equivalent of about 20 barrels or 20,000 gallons. If they consume more than that, they pay 50 cents per cubic metre.

But water was not always available 24 hours a day.

Years ago they received only a couple of hours a day of service because, as there were no metres to measure water consumption, many families wasted water, while others received little.

Some used it to irrigate home gardens and even small fields where they grow corn, beans and other crops.

“Before there was a lot of water waste, that’s why the micro-metres were installed,” said Landaverde. The 20 cubic metres are enough to cover the needs of her family, which now has six members, including several grandchildren.

Since these devices were installed to measure consumption, families have used water more rationally and now there is enough for everyone, 24 hours a day.

“We know that we have to take care of it, with or without metres we have always taken care of it,” Ana Leticia Orantes, 59, told IPS.

She lives in the village of La Ceiba, which is also in Cangrejera. She and one of her sons grow crops like corn, beans, yucca and chili peppers on a 2.7-hectare plot of land.

“This little piece of land gives us enough to live on,” she said.

However, not everyone was happy when the metres were installed. People who were using it irrationally, to irrigate crops for example, were furious, said Romero, the treasurer.

“We had serious problems because they were used to wasting water and suddenly we restricted their water use with the metres, measuring consumption,” he said. “I made a lot of enemies, they almost killed me.”

With the money received for the water service, the association has managed to become self-sustainable, and has the necessary financial resources to pay for repairs and equipment maintenance.

This is important because the system has been operating for 36 years and, as with a car, breakdowns can happen at any time.

The well of the community water system in Cangrejera, in central El Salvador, is 60 metres deep, and a 20-horsepower motor drives the pump that directs the liquid to a tank four kilometres uphill. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Strength through unity

The Cangrejera project initiative is part of the Association of Autonomous Drinking Water and Sanitation Systems (Asaps), a group of 15 water boards located in four municipalities in the department of La Libertad.

The four municipalities are La Libertad, Huizúcar, Villa Nueva and Santa Tecla. The idea is to support each other when technical or other problems arise.

“There are problems that we can’t solve on our own, we need other people to lend us a hand,” said Romero.

Asaps is also part of a cooperative in which two other community water associations participate, one located in Suchitoto, in the department of Cuscatlán, in the centre of the country, and another in Chalatenango, in the north.

The aim is that through the cooperative, materials and equipment can be acquired at a lower cost than if the associations were to purchase them on their own.

The boards are also part of the Water Forum, a nationwide citizens’ organisation that, among other questions, is pushing for a water law in the country to achieve equitable and sustainable use.

The draft law has been debated in the legislature for more than a decade, but it has stalled over the issue of who should control the governing body: whether only state agencies or representatives of the business community should be included as well.

The latter would include members of the powerful industry of producers of carbonated beverages, juices, beer and bottled water.

The government of Nayib Bukele, in power since June 2019, introduced a new proposal in the legislature last June, and has enough votes to pass it: the 56 out of 84 seats held by the ruling party, New Ideas.

Social organisations and the water boards themselves see the government proposal as a sort of veiled privatisation, since one of the articles grants exploitation rights to private entities for 473,043 cubic metres per year, for periods ranging from 10 to 15 years.

Experts say this amount could supply an entire town.

“How much profit will those barbarians who bottle and sell it make from the water?” complained Romero.

The water boards are demanding to be included in the government proposal, arguing that they play an important role in providing a service not offered by the State.

“We are doing a job that should fall to the government, and what does it give us in return? Nothing,” he added.

María Ofelia Pineda, a 58-year-old native of the village of Las Victorias, also in Cangrejera, said the service received from the community water system changed their lives forever.

“It’s a great thing to have the water right here in the house, we don’t have to go to the river anymore. When it rained we couldn’t go, we were in danger because of the floods,” she told IPS, while washing a frying pan and other dishes she used to make lunch.

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