Africa

The deputy commissioner is indicted in the US for allegedly taking a bribe from an influencer.

Boxer Samuel Takyi secures a medal for Ghana as Akani Simbine and Enoch Adegoke reach the men's 100m Olympic final.

Namibia's Beatrice Masilingi is excited to compete at the Olympics despite being forced out of the 400m due to high levels of testosterone.

Some farmers are growing sunflowers to boost their incomes after a ban on exports of the khat plant.

Artists from across East Africa have converged on Kenya's capital, creating a vibrant scene.

Three Nigerian women confront the prejudice they have faced on their fertility journeys.

The British and Irish Lions' series with South Africa will go to a decider after the Springboks win a fiery second Test 27-9 at Cape Town Stadium.

Ivorian Marie-Josee Ta Lou finishes fourth in the women's 100m final at the Tokyo Olympics as Ivory Coast and Egypt are knocked out of the men's football.

Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare is out of the Tokyo Olympics after being suspended for failing a drugs test.

Parents of schoolchildren abducted in Nigeria describe their trauma, and dilemma over the ransom demands.

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta says vaccine nationalism is why he wants his country to move towards vaccine production.

A girl from the Nat community performing – Credit: Department for Social Justice

By Mariya Salim
NEW DELHI, India, Jul 30 2021 (IPS)

Branded as being born ‘criminal’ 150 years ago under British colonial rule, De-Notified Tribes (DNTs) continue to bear the brunt of the various laws that stigmatised them since 1871.

Dakxin Chhara, the award-winning filmmaker and DNT activist, shared how the DNT community in India continues living an abysmal existence because of a centuries-old criminality stigma. Chhara calls his community an “invisible population” owing to their absence from government records, welfare schemes and a complete lack of political will to address their marginalisation.

“Even within a village in India, one can see the clear demarcation of localities based on caste, religion etc. One of the most marginalised, Dalits (former untouchables) also have an area where they stay, but for DNTs, there is no space within this structure,” Chhara said in an exclusive interview with IPS. “They are not considered worthy of being part of the village, and most end up living in jungles, moving from one place to another, isolated and stigmatised.”

In 1871, nearly 150 tribes were notified to be criminals by the ‘Criminal Tribes Act’ passed by the British, meaning, just being born into one of these tribes made one a criminal. The absurdity of the rationale behind this discriminatory law, introduced in 1871 in India, a society largely based on caste and caste-based discrimination, can be seen in the British official’s introduction to the bill. He said: “People from time immemorial have been pursuing the caste system defined job-positions: weaving, carpentry and such were hereditary jobs. So, there must have been hereditary criminals also who pursued their forefathers’ profession.”

Academics say the creation of these criminal tribes was a “colonial stereotype”. It was to justify the British to discipline or control a section of the population who did not fit into the colonial power’s moral order they were trying to enforce on rural society. Among the worst victims were communities like the DNTs, who did not have a sedentary lifestyle. This made it more difficult to demand their subservience.

The Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, was repealed on August 31, 1952, resulting in the former criminal tribes ‘de-notified’ of this discriminatory tag. However, this was only on paper.

As in most groups, the women from these communities bear many layers of marginalisation. Sakila Khatoon from the north Indian state of Bihar belongs to the Nat community. Married off at a very early age, Sakila pursued her education and worked within the development sector on issues concerning her community. Most women she works with, however, have not had that opportunity, she told IPS.

Women from the Nat community face prejudice and stereotypes because of their involvement in sex work, and those who wish to explore other avenues of livelihood are discouraged and not treated with dignity. Sex workers from the community not only face stigmatisation but also are targets of police excesses. Khatoon shared how children of these women are often discouraged from pursuing higher education and are recipients of undignified comments from people who know that their parents are sex workers.

“Encouraging and supporting women from our communities to pursue higher education is the key to their upliftment,” Khatoon says.

Vijay (name changed) from the ‘Pardhi’ community in the state of Madhya Pradesh shared how harassment by police led to many people belonging to his community commit suicide and how the authorities continue to ostracise them. Youth are arbitrarily arrested on mere suspicion because they are seen as habitual offenders.

Over the years, there haven’t been any genuine attempts to address the plight of the DNT communities, and commissions aimed at improving their condition have failed.

Shiney Vashisht, a PhD research scholar at the Jamia Milia Islamia in New Delhi, who worked as a researcher at the National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic tribes, confirms this.

“The National Commissions established and re-established over the years, have done nothing close to substantial for the DNTs except for half-heartedly recommending welfare steps, that are a mere compilation of suggestions from previous commission reports, based on population projections of decades-old data,” Vashisht says.

Based on her engagement with leaders from the community and field research, she argues that these communities deserve a designated commission, having a constitutional status on the lines of National Commissions for Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The commission should generate a database from a national survey of DNTs. The inquiries should have a strong mandate to recommend DNT specific welfare schemes.

Chhara adds that one of the demands of the DNT community is separate reservations. He gives the example of the state of Maharashtra, where within the OBC quota, there is a separate reservation for DNTs and says that a model similar to this should be applicable throughout the country.

Chhara remembers how as children, his sister eventually gave up going to school after the humiliation of being falsely called a thief in front of the entire class and teacher when a few marble balls went missing.

Years later, little has changed. Chhara had to remove his children from their school after the principal told him that because the school’s trustees belonged to the upper caste, the school had clear instructions of not admitting any children from communities that Chhara came from.

“It is not hard to guess that when something like this can happen to a man like me who has won national and international awards, what would the fate and plight of others belonging to our communities be.”

 

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Triple jumper Nadia Eke talks dance, jollof and wellbeing as she prepares to compete at Tokyo 2020.

South Africa captain Siya Kolisi says he "didn't feel respected at all" by the referee in the opening loss to the British and Irish Lions, backing claims made by Rassie Erasmus.

Civil society leading Covid-19 mask campaign in South Asia

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Jul 30 2021 (IPS)

Footage of flames engulfing bodies at makeshift funeral pyres and stories of people dying in cars as drivers desperately raced from hospital to hospital seeking a bed. These scenes marked the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India just months ago.

Nepal was similarly walloped: staff turned away people at intensive care units and patients attached to oxygen cylinders were being treated in parking lots. Other South Asian countries were less affected but overall Covid-19 has officially killed 450,000 people in the region since 2020.

 

 

With vaccines expected to arrive painfully slowly in coming months—India for example has fully vaccinated just 6% of its population, Nepal 4% and Pakistan 2%—mask wearing needs to be the priority, says the guest on today’s episode of Strive.

Maha Rehman is Policy Director at the Mahbub ul Haq Research Centre at Lahore University of Management Sciences, in Pakistan. She is also a leader of the NORM mask-wearing intervention taking place in four countries in the region, and beyond. She describes NORM’s early success in Bangladesh and how finding a way to embed the programme in local communities in each of these very different countries will be key.

If you enjoyed this first episode of Strive, please help spread the word by rating or reviewing the show on Apple podcasts. You can also subscribe, follow or favourite Strive on any podcast app.

Stay up-to-date with us between episodes on Twitter and Facebook. If you have something to say to me directly email me at mlogan@ipsnews.net.

Resources

• NORM mask initiative

 

Niger President Mohamed Bazoum says that his country must work hard to keep girls in school.

Ethiopia's Selemon Barega wins the first athletics gold of the Tokyo Olympics while in the pool there is a gold and a world record for South Africa's Tatjana Schoenmaker.

A platform or support network to champion women with entrepreneurial ambitions and facilitate the exchange of ideas, information, and capital needs to be set up. Credit: Unsplash

By External Source
Jul 30 2021 (IPS)

Muslims are the largest minority community in India, and yet, they are highly underrepresented both in public and private institutions. According to a study conducted by the Economic Times Intelligence Group in 2015, Muslims constituted approximately 2.7 percent of mid to senior executives in the private sector. As of April 2018, only 1.33 percent of officers in the central government, holding the rank of joint secretary and above, were found to be Muslims. 

The lack of women leaders is even starker, and Indian Muslim women are practically invisible in the country’s workforce. There are approximately 70 million educated Muslim women in the country. Given that India’s female Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is falling, bringing educated Muslim women into the workforce could, according to one study, account for approximately USD 770 billion of the country’s GDP. Unfortunately, Indian Muslim women face the double disadvantage of being female and Muslim.

Indian Muslim women are practically invisible in the country’s workforce. There are approximately 70 million educated Muslim women in the country.: bringing educated Muslim women into the workforce could, according to one study, account for approximately USD 770 billion of the country’s GDP
Any conversation around Indian Muslim women in India needs to take into account the larger, external ecosystem as well as certain internal factors. External factors include systemic issues, such as the slew of legislations passed by the government, that are leading to further marginalisation of the community as a whole.

Internal to the Muslim community are factors that are in the immediate environment of its women. These include lack of education, social norms, and more, that keep women out of the public space and away from leadership roles in the workforce. Additionally, narratives around Muslims in India tend to focus on poverty, illiteracy, and conviction rates.

And, reportage on Muslim women in India is inextricably linked to either the triple talaaq law or Kashmir. This further enforces certain stereotypes and prejudices that act as roadblocks for the community and leads to discrimination.

Muslim women have always been caught between political considerations and personal marginalisation. Internal factors, too, require systemic changes and are limited until external factors are corrected. However, certain shifts in existing structures can help create space for young Indian Muslim women.

 

What will it take to change this?

1. Increasing enrollment in educational institutions

A report from the National Statistical Office reveals the extremely poor literacy rate among Muslims and the severity of their academic marginalisation in India. It points out that Muslims have the highest proportion of youth (ages 3-35 years) who have never enrolled in formal education.

The report also states that the Gross Attendance Ratio (people attending a level of education as a proportion of the population of the group) of Muslims is the lowest—100 percent in primary education—among various social and religious groups in India, and drops to a mere 14 percent in above-higher secondary courses. One step in the right direction would be to expand the scope of the Right to Education Act of 2009—which ensures compulsory primary education—to include secondary and higher education as well.

While the overall literacy rates for Muslims are abysmal, the report reveals a visible gap between male and female percentages as well. According to the report, the male literacy rate in India is 81 percent whereas the female literacy rate is 69 percent. An unpublished study1 draws parallels between Muslim and Hindu women, stating that women from both communities tend to have lower levels of enrollment as compared to men in Indian society because of various economic and cultural factors.

However, Muslim women also face discrimination in schooling because of their religious affiliation and are less likely to enrol in school compared to Muslim men. Policy changes for the community to encourage Muslims, especially women, to continue their studies and eventually seek employment, therefore, require rigorous and sustained efforts.

2. Ensuring equal opportunities in a professional space

Levelling the playing field for women professionals is key. It becomes essential, therefore, for organisations to follow the Equal Opportunities policy. The Indian Constitution mandates the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth, and mandates equal opportunity in matters of public employment. In India, companies like Nestlé India and DELL, have committed themselves to create a work environment free of discrimination and harassment for their employees.

3. Building a support network of like-minded women

A platform or an informal, inclusive support network to champion women with entrepreneurial ambitions and facilitate the exchange of ideas, information, capital, and counsel needs to be set up. This should include local women-only networking programmes at a village, panchayat, and city-level to spur entrepreneurial engagement and participation. In addition to this, private and public partnerships that are government-led should help provide direct access to technical and business counselling.

4. Celebrating female entrepreneurs

Celebrating women role models through cross-media campaigns by national and state governments can help eliminate stereotypes, build community, and celebrate the successes of Indian Muslim women. This can also be translated to the private sector through a sectoral campaign that brings female professionals and entrepreneurs into the mainstream. This would help young Indian Muslim women identify potential mentors and empower them to continue on their journey, from education to employment.

In order to implement this broad framework, women leaders in the public and private sectors will need to come together to change the current situation. Recognising the need to create a formal network for Indian Muslim women is what led us to establish Led By Foundation—a leadership incubator for Indian Muslim women, to help them be gainfully and meaningfully employed, while also providing them with an ecosystem of support and recognition.

Through our work, we’ve interacted with numerous women who have the ambition, aptitude and aspiration to succeed. However, they lack the avenues—platforms to learn, share and encourage, access—the network, agency, and role models who have paved the path to success.

While we understand that the journey to changing this status quo may be slow and arduous, it is certainly not impossible. In our end state, racial equity—equal representation, economic, social, and political empowerment—will be achieved, and Muslim women will have multiple seats in boardrooms, in mid-level executive positions, in educational institutions, and more.

 

Deepanjali Lahiri is an experienced project management professional with more than 13 years of experience across IT, retail, and FMCG. With a degree in hotel management, she has spearheaded large-scale business projects to establish strategic directions for companies in the growth and acceleration stages. She is passionate about working with organisations and individuals to create a seat at the table for those who need a voice of support and to be a champion of change.

Dr Ruha Shadab graduated from Harvard Kennedy School as a Harvard Public Service Fellow. She has worked as a doctor in low-income neighbourhoods in Delhi, as well as with the Government of India, on systemic issues of healthcare. She established Led By Foundation, a social enterprise that provides professional training and mentorship to Muslim women college students, to inspire the next generation of female change-makers. She believes that for a community to be heard, it first needs to speak up.

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

Fifty percent of vaccine-hesitant Americans believe the message that “Getting the COVID-19 vaccine is the best way to prevent COVID-19 and its potential long-term complications”. Credit: UNICEF/Nahom Tesfaye

By Ifeanyi Nsofor
ABUJA, Jul 30 2021 (IPS)

A new survey on public awareness of long COVID by ‘Resolve to Save Lives” showed that among the 40% of Americans who were not vaccinated, seeing testimonials of those who suffer from long COVID inspired nearly two-thirds to consider the vaccine. A representative sample of nearly 2,000 Americans 18 and older took the survey between May 21 and June 10, 2021.

While most people who recover from COVID-19 get better within a few weeks, some people have health problems for a long time. Even people who were initially asymptomatic can start exhibiting them. Examples of the symptoms include difficulty thinking or concentrating, headache, difficulty breathing, cough, joint or muscle pain, fatigue, loss of smell, lightheadedness, and depression or anxiety.

Trying to avoid long COVID is a good reason to try to not catch COVID-19. This is especially true with the emergence and spread of the highly infectious Delta variant. Long COVID devastates lives, occupations, and incomes

Even though some people may not take precautions or get vaccinated because they think COVID symptoms would be mild if they contract it, long COVID shows that even people with mild or asymptomatic cases can suffer long-term. Trying to avoid long COVID, then, is a good reason to try to not catch COVID-19. This is especially true with the emergence and spread of the highly infectious Delta variant.

Long COVID devastates lives, occupations, and incomes. For instance, Paul Garner, a professor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Co-ordinating Editor of the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group has documented his long COVID experience for the British Medical Journal.

After being diagnosed with COVID-19, receiving treatment and recovering, he had bouts of long COVID symptoms. His symptoms included acutely painful calf, upset stomach, tinnitus, pins and needles, aching all over, breathlessness, dizziness, arthritis in the hands.

A breakdown of the recent survey result shows that learning about these kinds of stories can motivate unvaccinated Americans. In the long COVID survey, 64% of Americans became more concerned about contracting COVID-19 from watching the testimonials.

Thirty-nine percent of those who were unvaccinated, including 31% who were vaccine hesitant, were motivated to consider getting the vaccine. The testimonials were most effective among 18 to 29-year-olds, Hispanics and urbanites.

Fifty percent of vaccine-hesitant Americans believe the message that “Getting the COVID-19 vaccine is the best way to prevent COVID-19 and its potential long-term complications”.

As a public health physician and COVID-19 vaccine advocate, I found the survey findings promising. They provide the evidence base to increase vaccine uptake and counter misinformation. What can public health officials do with this information? Here are four steps.

First, engage willing long COVID sufferers and survivors as vaccine advocates. A misleading aspect of this pandemic is that about 80% of those infected do not have any symptoms. This gives the false impression that COVID-19 is not as infectious, harmful or as fatal as it actually is.

Moreover, even those who are asymptomatic can still develop long COVID and that fact needs to be better publicized. The long COVID survey has shown the power of testimonies by sufferers. Governments, national public health institutes, civil society organizations, community-based organizations should leverage this.

This should begin by identifying long COVID sufferers willing to share their testimonies. COVID:Aid, the UK-based long COVID Charity set up to support and give a voice to individuals affected by Covid-19 across the UK, is a great organization to work with. Partnering with COVID:Aid will help identify sufferers and support them to share their stories.

Second, use findings of this survey to create targeted advocacy messaging for all demographics. Such messaging must be aspirational. It should not be designed to make the target groups feel unworthy. Rather, the messaging should be to make them aspire to be vaccinated. It should make the unvaccinated know the importance of being vaccinated and ending the pandemic. Health advocates must seize this opportunity to end the pandemic.

Third, prioritize social media as the medium for communicating the testimonials and targeted advocacy messaging. Vaccine hesitancy is quite common among the youths who use social media since they do not think they will suffer much if they contract it. Using social media in this way should involve working closely with social media firms and involving them in designing the messaging.

Already Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are involved in countering COVID-19-related misinformation and disinformation. Their involvement should include sharing videos of long COVID sufferers talking about their symptoms, how they cope and the benefits of being vaccinated.

Fourth, and related, use influencers to deliver long COVID social media testimonials. Globally, there are billions of social media users ruled by influencers. There are examples of social media influencers countering misinformation.

In Nigeria, the FactsMatterNG used Nollywood celebrity Actor Kate Henshaw (2.3 million Instagram followers). In Indonesia, social media influencers were among the first to receive COVID-19 vaccine. The Indonesian government took this route in world’s largest Muslim country due to the belief that influencers will post their experience online and help convey that vaccines are safe, effective, and allowed under Islamic law.

Celebrity TV star, Raffi Ahmad (54 million Instagram followers) shared his video of being vaccinated and it has been viewed more than 3.7 million times. In the U.S., American pop star Olivia Rodrigo (14.4 million Instagram followers) is supporting the plan by President Biden’s Administration to encourage young people to get vaccinated.

In a White House video, Olivia and Dr. Fauci read tweets and answered questions by young people on COVID-19 vaccination.  The first tweet they read was, “If Olivia Rodrigo tells you to get vaccinated, you get vaccinated“. This tweet shows the power of social media influencers.

Long COVID will be around for a long time. The survey shows that hearing testimonials from sufferers and survivors can help reduce vaccine hesitancy, so we must capitalize on that and work to reduce the likelihood of more people suffering from long COVID.

 

Dr. Ifeanyi McWilliams Nsofor is a graduate of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He is a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University. Ifeanyi is the Director Policy and Advocacy at Nigeria Health Watch.

A Somali resident sells meat at a market in Hudur, where food shortages continue to cause suffering. Meanwhile, between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020 – some 161 million more than for 2019 – the UN Secretary-General said July 12; “new, tragic data”, which indicates the world is “tremendously off track” to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Credit: UN Photo/Tobin Jones

By Jan Servaes and Muhammad Jameel Yusha'u
BRUSSELS, Belgium / JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Jul 30 2021 (IPS)

A short answer to this question is yes, but it is obvious and predictable failure was visible for some time. This debate started before 2015, the year in which the Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs) were adopted as successors to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed in 2000. The 8 MDGs were expanded to 17 massive goals and 169 targets.

Using projections from international organizations such as the World Bank, the OECD and the WHO, the British Overseas Development Institute (ODI) already quantified in 2015 how much the world would need to accelerate current trends to achieve the SDGs by 2030.

The targets were given a ‘grade’, based on the expected progress. An ‘A’ rating meant that current progress is sufficient to meet the target, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’ and ‘E’ numbers need to go up a notch. An “F” number indicates that the world is going in the wrong direction.

None of the 17 SDGs was rated A. Only three SDGs, — SDG1 (no poverty), SDG8 (economic growth and decent jobs) and SDG15 (biodiversity) — were rated B. SDG 3 (health for all), 4 (quality education), 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions), 17 (partnerships for the goals), 2 (no hunger), 6 (water and sanitation), 7 (energy), 5 (gender) and 9 (industrialization) all received an average C grade. SDGs 10 (inequality), 11 (cities), 12 (waste), 13 (climate change) and 14 (oceans) were all unsatisfactory.

In other words, only 3 of the 17 SDGs were on track to achieve a reasonably acceptable outcome by 2030. This score was developed in 2015, long before COVID-19 hit.

With the devastating effect of COVID-19 on nearly every sector of the global economy, it is clear that achieving the SDGs by 2030 is virtually impossible. Moreover, addressing development goals by nation states is more difficult than was recognized by the authors of the 2030 Agenda for Development.

For example, a study by Lin and Monga (2017) concluded that between 1950 and 2008, only 28 countries managed to reduce their gap with the United States by 10 percent or more. That is a period of 58 years, while the 2030 agenda must be realized within 15 years. Of the 28 countries listed by Lin and Monga, only 12 were non-European or non-oil economies.

According to Lin and Monga, the challenge of renewing developing countries’ economies is inseparable from some of the intellectual and policy errors imposed by the Washington consensus in the 1970s to 1990s, the years described as the lost decade for developing countries.

Banerjee and Duflo (2019), who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for their work on poverty alleviation, in fact emphasized how economists designing development policies are out of touch with the realities of ordinary people.

In a more recent analysis, published in the authoritative World Development, Moyer and Hedden (2020) also question how feasible the SDGs are under the current circumstances. They highlight difficulties for some SDG indicators (access to safe sanitation, high school completion, and underweight children) that will not be resolved without a significant shift in domestic and international aid policies and prioritization.

In addition, Moyer and Hedden cite 28 particularly vulnerable countries that are not expected to meet any of the nine human development targets. These most vulnerable countries should be able to count on international aid and therefore financial support.

In our view, the realization of the 2030 agenda can only be achieved on the basis of three factors.

The first is financing. The critical question that is posed in various forums about the SDGs invariably ends with the question: who is going to fund it? Where will the money come from? How can low- and middle-income countries generate sufficient resources to finance the 2030 development agenda.

Although each country has its own priorities, paying the bills for the SDGs remains a delicate matter. The Asia-Europe Foundation calculated (2020: 6) that “the total investment costs to achieve the SDGs by 2030 are between USD 5 and USD 7 trillion per year at the global level and between a total of USD 3.3 and USD 4.5 trillion per year in developing countries.

This implies an average investment need of USD 2.5 trillion per year in developing countries. To better understand the real financial needs of the SDGs, these countries should prepare their own estimates, at least for their priority objectives”.

A significant effort must be made through the private sector and philanthropists. While governments and ordinary people have been hit hard by the health and economic impact of COVID-19, in a way it has been good news for billionaires, many of whom have seen their wealth grow astronomically.

A report from the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) shows that US billionaires have seen their wealth grow by $1 trillion between March and November 2020. Amazon’s owner Jeff Bezos’ net worth increased 61 percent between March and November 2020, from $113 billion to $182.4 billion.

The report added that just three years ago, there was not a single multi-billionaire, that is, a person with a net worth of more than $100 billion. Since November 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are now at least 5 multi-billionaires; namely Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Bernard Arnault, president of Louis Vuitton; Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook; and Elon Musk of Tesla (Huffington Post 2020).

These billionaires, along with the more than 2,000 billionaires from around the world, are wealthy enough to help make substantial progress in some of the SDGs.

The second important factor that can help achieve the SDGs is political will. Many countries have drawn up ambitious national development plans that look great on paper. How many of those plans end up being realized?

When one sees that the fortunes of a country have been successfully changed through the effective implementation of national plans, one cannot separate such achievements from the strong political will of the leaders. The example of China speaks for itself.

The crucial question to be asked is whether that political will is there. UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, responded to a mid-term review of the Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2020): “It is inevitable that one crucial ingredient is still missing. Political will. Without political will, neither the public opinion, nor the stakeholders take sufficient action”. This is where the challenge to achieve the SDGs lies, i.e. a real political will.

The third factor is the need for robust communication for development and social change, so that political will can be conveyed to all stakeholders. Leaders who inspire change do so with the communication tools available in their time.

While the digital age disrupts social systems and drives transformation at a scale and pace unparalleled in history, the SDGs remain quite silent on the subject. Indeed, today digital technologies determine what we read and consume, how we vote and how we interact with each other and the world around us.

Many risks and uncertainties are emerging, including threats to individual rights, social justice and democracy, all amplified by ‘the digital divide’ – the differential speed of internet penetration and access to digital technologies around the world.

None of the SDGs can be achieved unless people are able to communicate their dreams, concerns and needs – locally, nationally, regionally, globally. We therefore propose to supplement the list with SDG 18: Communication for all.

Communications for social change in the era of COVID-19 must also consider the challenge of misinformation when initiating communication strategies. Therefore, the communication strategies of the World Bank, UNICEF or WHO are not comprehensive enough.

First, they failed to take into account the challenges of infodemics and fake news in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. The second shortcoming is that the strategies contain little scientific communication to make the public aware of how health professionals make decisions and advise the public about its safety. Disinformation is a critical factor that exacerbates the challenges that communication for development and social change must address.

For all these reasons, the UN and the rest of the international community need to be realistic and review the 2030 Agenda for Development by shifting the timeline from 2030 to 2050.

Some regional organizations, such as the African Union, have already set the date for achieving their development goals to 2063 (https://au.int/en/agenda2063/sdgs).

The SDGs should be prioritized with SDG1 on the eradication of extreme poverty as the main objective for the next 10 years. Eradicating extreme poverty is likely to have implications for other SDGs, in particular SDGs 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Efforts to eradicate extreme poverty should not be based on slogans, but should be supported by governments, funding agencies, donors and philanthropists are seen as the best chance to save humanity. The intellectual errors and policies imposed on low- and middle-income countries, which plunge them further into the abyss of underdevelopment, must be avoided.

Serious thought should be accorded to the post COVID19 world due to the impact of the lockdown on the global economy. Some governments, multinational institutions and private sector are hastening to institutionalize remote work before the pandemic ends.

As an interim major, working from home has contributed significantly in reducing the impact of the pandemic, but what is the impact of working from home on the future of work in a post-COVID-19 World?

Will the closure of offices, firms and other businesses for remote work accelerate or reduce the chances of achieving the SDGs? Is there sufficient data to back the policy decisions on a permanent remote work culture? How does this affect the employability of low and unskilled workers?

These are questions that policy makers must think through. The SDGs are meant to promote social inclusion and reduce inequality, not to save money and increase profitability.

Setting the timeline for the achievement of the SDGs to 2050 will allow sufficient time to re-evaluate progress made so far, complete missing objectives, such as SDG 18 on communication for all, and bridge the lost ground of the SDGs.

It will also give the global community ample time to strategize on how to deal with the potential rise of right-wing, populist and nationalist governments such as Bolsonaro, Duterte or Trump’s, which may impose limits on the SDGs through their disdain for multilateralism. And plans must also be made in advance to mitigate the next disasters that could impair the achievement of the SDGs.

Jan Servaes was UNESCO-Chair in Communication for Sustainable Social Change at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He taught ‘international communication’ and ‘communication for sustainable social change’ in Australia, Belgium, China, Hong Kong, the US, Netherlands and Thailand, in addition to short-term projects at about 120 universities in 55 countries.

Muhammad Jameel Yusha’u is an international development expert and former journalist with the BBC World Service, London. He was the Managing Editor of Africa Policy Journal at Harvard Kennedy School, USA and one-time Senior Lecturer in Media and Politics at Northumbria University, UK; he has taught Mass Communications at Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria.

This text is based on Muhammad Jameel Yusha’u & Jan Servaes (eds.).
The Palgrave Handbook of International Communication and Sustainable Development, Palgrave MacMillan, 2021, ISBN 978-3-030-69769-3, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030697693

 

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