Africa

Boxer Youness Baalla attempts to bite his opponent David Nyika during their last-16 fight at the Tokyo Olympics.

By Daud Khan and Leila Yasmine Khan
ROME and AMSTERDAM, Jul 27 2021 (IPS)

There is nothing honourable about murder. And murdering someone of your own family, your own child – a daughter, someone you held in your arms and rocked to sleep when they were babies? This is such a horrifying crime that there are no words to describe it – certainly not the word Honour. And yet it happens! It happens in Pakistan and to the shame of all of us in the diaspora, it has been brought to Italy.

Daud Khan

In recent years, in Italy, there have been several high profile murders of young girls of Pakistani origin by their relatives. Mostly, the killings were triggered by the girls’ wanting to choose their own partner, or their refusal to marry someone chosen by their family; someone they have never seen, often a cousin from their own village; someone with who they have nothing in common. Most likely they would even not be able to speak the same language. The cases most talked about in the press were the killings of Hina Saleem, Sana Cheema and most recently Saman Abbas (who is still officially missing but is presumed dead, killed by her uncle and two cousins, with the concurrence of her parents who have fled Italy to return to Pakistan).

There are about 150,000 Pakistanis living in Italy – the second largest Pakistani diaspora in Europe after the UK. Many of them came here in the late 1990s and early 2000s when there was a growing demand for cheap labour to work in farms and factories. At this time, the Italian Government also announced several amnesties for illegal immigrants. While this allowed Pakistanis living in Italy to regularise their status, it also brought about a new wave of immigrants from Pakistan who promptly “lost” their passports and claimed that they had been in Italy for some time. Similarly, substantial numbers of illegal immigrants from all over Europe moved to Italy to be able to get their legal stay permits which, inter-alia, allowed them to travel to and from Pakistan.

Leila Yasmine Khan

Most Pakistan immigrants in Italy are unskilled and do low paid manual jobs. They tend to live in close proximity to each other, do not speak Italian and have little or no interaction with the local community. The children of these first generation immigrants are now coming of age. Dealing with adolescents and young adults is never easy due to both physiological and cultural factors. From the physiology point of view, their frontal cortex, the part of the brain that contains the capacity to assess risk, make long term plans and postpone gratification, is still not fully developed before their early 20s . This means continuous conflicts, particularly with parents. But in the case of the “diaspora children” the problems are particularly complex. Italy is the only home these children have known and most of them have imbibed its values, norms and aspiration – values, norms and aspirations that are simply incomprehensible to their parents.

Quite naturally this means pain and unhappiness, and since every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, each family reacts differently. But there are two things in this conflict of generations that are deplorable. The first is the double standards applied between the sexes. Males are allowed to socialise, to make choices, and even to transgress. But woe betide any young female who tries does the same. Any sign of independence is seen as wilful mischief and any resistance to the wishes of parents as rebellion. The second deplorable thing is how quickly the demand for conformity – particularly for women – can descend into coercion, and psychological and physical violence.

And in those cases where violence does occur, often Islam is dragged in as a justification. Saman Abbas’ brother said “in the Quran it is written that if one stops being a Muslim, one is buried alive with the head outside the ground and then stoned to death. In Pakistan this is what we do”.

But Islam has nothing to do with murder. There is no concept of forced marriages; no concept of violated honour that needs to be punished by violence; no concept of killing female offspring to gain social status; and no provision for individuals or families to take the law into their own hands to act as judge, jury and executioner. Islamic organization and religious leaders in Italy, as in other diaspora, have repeatedly issued statements condemning such violence. Moreover, such events are rarely if ever seen in other Muslim diaspora communities such as Bangladeshis, Moroccans, Tunisians or those from African countries. And so the question arises – is this somehow part of Pakistanis culture?

Killing of women in the name of honour is a feature of ignorant and retrograde communities. In Pakistan much has been done to highlight this problem and laws have been enacted against it. But laws by themselves do not stop culturally embedded misogynist practices. And the killings continue and continue to haunt us.

To really make a difference we need to think about deep changes in how women live and work in our society. And this will require changes that range from school curricula to how women are portrayed in art and literature. The Prime Minister has done the right thing by launching a debate on Pakistaniat. What is that we want the word Pakistani to invoke in our own mind and in the mind of others? Unfortunately, Kaptaan Sahib has not made a great start to the discussion by talking about immodest dressing and vulgarity by women, and linking these to violence and rape.

However, the challenge of trying to define ourselves does exist and we should take it on. And as this debate moves forward, it is important to bring in the voices from the diaspora. Overseas Pakistanis contribute a lot to the country. Although numbers related to remittances are often cited and recognized, little is done to bring them into the wider political and ideological debate. Maybe first generation of immigrants focused mainly on work, but the second and third generation of overseas Pakistanis are brilliant, articulate and committed. In Italy we have intellectuals, entrepreneurs, businessmen and businesswomen, community leaders and journalists. Let’s find a way to harness this resource.

Daud Khan works as consultant and advisor for various Governments and international agencies. He has degrees in Economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology. He lives partly in Italy and partly in Pakistan.

Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s degrees in Philosophy and one in Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric – both from the University of Amsterdam – as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre).

This story was originally published by The Express Tribune (Pakistan)

 

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An over-reliance on traditional activities such as farming has left all but a handful of least developed countries (LDCs) extremely vulnerable to the economic shock caused by COVID-19. Pictured here, a family farmer in Chad. Credit: UNICEF/Asselin

By Christian Mumssen and Seán Nolan
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 27 2021 (IPS)

Low-income countries have been hard hit by the pandemic. Their large financing needs are only likely to grow as they deal with the crisis and its economic aftermath.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a far-reaching package of support that would expand their access to financial assistance at zero-interest rates, while providing stronger safeguards against taking on debt they cannot handle.

For these efforts to succeed, economically stronger member countries will have to play their part.

A rapid, unprecedented response

The pandemic has dealt a severe blow to the economies of many low-income countries: output growth stopped or reversed, living standards declined, poverty increased, and a decade of solid progress is now threatened.

The IMF responded with unprecedented speed and scale. Financial assistance to 50 low-income countries reached $13 billion in 2020 compared to an average of $2 billion a year pre-pandemic: a more than sixfold increase. It also provided $739 million in grant-based debt service relief to 29 of its poorest and most vulnerable members.

Three-quarters of the new lending came from the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT)–the IMF’s vehicle for zero-interest loans to low-income countries. The lion’s share was in the form of emergency disbursements with limited conditionality focused on ensuring transparent use of the resources to address pandemic-related needs.

As they entered the pandemic with limited financial means, IMF assistance was crucial for many low-income countries to support lives and livelihoods.

Far-reaching reforms

Looking ahead, low-income countries will continue to require exceptional levels of external financial support as they recover from the pandemic, and boost investment to build more resilient and inclusive economies.

Against this backdrop, the IMF has approved a package of far-reaching reforms to the PRGT to allow it to better respond to the financing needs of low-income countries over the next few years. These include:

• Increased access to concessional financing for all low-income countries. Limits on normal access to PRGT resources have been raised by 45 percent.
• Uncapped access to concessional financing for the poorest countries. Access to concessional financing will no longer be subject to maximum levels for poorer countries with strong economic programs that meet the criteria for obtaining above-normal access levels.
• Retention of zero interest rates for all PRGT facilities. Interest rates on all PRGT loans, reviewed every two years, will be kept at zero until July 2023.
• Reinforced safeguards to protect low-income countries from over-indebtedness. High borrowing levels, even on concessional terms, can push countries into unsustainable debt positions; IMF program design will pay added attention to the debt levels of countries at risk.

With a challenging road to recovery ahead, we project that demand for IMF support will remain elevated. Total IMF lending to low-income countries is projected to reach around $48 billion during the pandemic and its immediate aftermath.

PRGT credit outstanding could peak at $32 billion in 2025-26 (chart, black line). However, there are significant uncertainties around the timing and strength of economic recovery, and the possible demand for Fund concessional support (blue shaded area).

But IMF loans will only meet a fraction of the external financing needs of low-income countries. Bilateral donors and multilateral development agencies must also step up to play their part, both through bilateral aid, and support for the IMF’s fund-raising efforts.

Moreover, if low-income countries are to maintain sustainable levels of debt, much of that financing will have to come through grants and highly concessional lending.

A two-stage funding strategy

Alongside the greater access to financing, the IMF has also approved a two-stage funding strategy to cover the cost of pandemic-related lending, and ensure the financial sustainability of its concessional support.

In the first stage, the Fund aims to mobilize a further $18 billion in PRGT loan resources and $3.3 billion in new bilateral contributions for subsidy resources to allow continued lending through the PRGT at zero interest rates.

Donors will be offered various, flexible mechanisms for providing subsidy resources. This will be complemented by use of IMF internal resources of about $0.7 billion.

In the second stage of the strategy, in 2024/25—by which time current economic uncertainties are expected to have receded—the IMF will decide on the size of the PRGT and associated funding mechanisms for the long term. Use of existing and new SDRs is expected to facilitate the funding effort.

The IMF continues to step up its response to the unprecedented and persistent needs of low-income countries. The result is greater access to financing and a long-term vision for its concessional lending. It has also opened the door for donors to play their part.

The sums required may sound large, but the cost of doing nothing—paid with human lives and livelihoods—will be far larger.

Christian Mumssen is Deputy Director of the IMF’s Finance Department; Sean Nolan is Deputy Director of the IMF’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department.

Source: IMF Blog

 

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Some 1,000 people are going to court after a fire destroyed 12,000 acres of land at a wildlife sanctuary.

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A Venezuelan family carrying a few belongings crosses the Simon Bolivar Bridge at the border into Colombia. Over the years, the migration flow has grown due to increasing numbers of people with unsatisfied basic needs. CREDIT: Siegfried Modola/UNHCR

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 26 2021 (IPS)

The exodus of more than five million Venezuelans in the last six years has led countries in the developing South, Venezuela’s neighbours, to set an example with respect to welcoming and integrating displaced populations, with shared benefits for the new arrivals and the nations that receive them.

In this region “there is a living laboratory, where insertion and absorption efforts are working. The new arrivals are turning what was seen as a burden into a contribution to the host communities and nations,” Eduardo Stein, head of the largest assistance programme for displaced Venezuelans, told IPS.

According to figures from the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 5,650,000 people have left Venezuela, mainly crossing into neighbouring countries, as migrants, displaced persons or refugees, as of July 2021.

“This is the largest migration crisis in the history of Latin America,” Stein said by phone from his Guatemala City office in the Interagency Coordination Platform for Venezuelan Refugees and Migrants (R4V), created by the UNHCR and IOM in partnership with 159 other diverse entities working throughout the region."This region is a living laboratory, where insertion and absorption efforts are working. The new arrivals are turning what was seen as a burden into a contribution to the host communities and nations." -- Eduardo Stein

Colombia, the neighbour with the most intense historical relationship, stands out for receiving daily flows of hundreds and even thousands of Venezuelans, who already number almost 1.8 million in the country, and for providing them with Temporary Protection Status that grants them documentation and access to jobs, services and other rights.

Colombia’s Fundación Renacer, which has assisted thousands of child and adolescent survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and other types of sexual and gender-based violence, is a model for how to welcome and help displaced persons.

Renacer, staffed by activists such as Mayerlin Vergara, 2020 winner of the UNHCR’s annual Nansen Refugee Award for outstanding aid workers who help refugees, displaced and stateless people, rescues girls and young women from places like brothels and bars where they are forced into sexual or labour exploitation, often by trafficking networks that capture the most vulnerable migrants.

“In Colombian society as a whole there has been a process of understanding, after the phenomenon was the other way around for several decades in the 20th century, of people displaced by the violence and crisis in Colombia being welcomed in Venezuela,” Camilo González, president of the Colombian Institute for Development and Peace Studies, told IPS.

When the great migratory wave began in 2014-2015, “many Venezuelans were taken on as half-price cheap labour by businesses, such as coffee harvesters and others in the big cities, but that situation has improved, even despite the slowdown of the pandemic,” said González.

Stein mentioned the positive example set by Colombia’s flower exporters, which employed many Venezuelan women in cutting and packaging, a task that did not require extensive training.

The head of the R4V, who was vice-president of Guatemala between 2004 and 2008 and has held various international positions, noted that in the first phase, the receiving countries appreciated the arrival of “highly prepared Venezuelans, very well trained professionals.”

Yukpa Indians from Venezuela register upon arrival at a border post in Colombia. The legalisation and documentation of migrants arranged by the Colombian government allows migrants to access services and exercise rights in the neighbouring country. CREDIT: Johanna Reina/UNHCR

“One example would be the thousands of Venezuelan engineers who arrived in Argentina and were integrated into productive activities in a matter of weeks,” he said.

But, Stein pointed out, “the following wave of Venezuelans leaving their country was not made up of professionals; the profile changed to people with huge unsatisfied basic needs, without a great deal of training but with basic skills, and nevertheless the borders remained open, and they received very generous responses.”

But, he acknowledged, in some cases “the arrival of this irregular, undocumented migration was linked to acts of violence and violations of the law, which created internal tension.”

Iván Briscoe, regional head of the Brussels-based conflict observatory International Crisis Group, told IPS that in the case of Colombia, “it has been impressive to receive almost two million Venezuelans, in a country of 50 million inhabitants, 40 percent of whom live in poverty.”

Colombia continues to be plagued by social problems, as shown by the street protests raging since April, “and therefore the temporary protection status, a generous measure by President Iván Duque’s government, does not guarantee that Venezuelan migrants will have access to the social services they may demand,” Briscoe said.

The large number of Venezuelans “means an additional cost of 100 million dollars per year for the health services alone,” said González, who spoke to IPS by telephone from the Colombian capital.

Against this backdrop, there have been expressions of xenophobia, as various media outlets interpreted statements by Bogotá Mayor Claudia López, who after a crime committed by a Venezuelan, suggested the deportation of “undesirable” nationals from that country.

There were also demonstrations against the influx of Venezuelans in Ecuador and Panama, as well as Peru, where the policy of President-elect Pedro Castillo towards the one million Venezuelan immigrants is still unclear, as well as deportations from Chile and Trinidad and Tobago, and new obstacles to their arrival in the neighbouring Dutch islands.

“Not everything has been rosy,” Stein admitted, “as there are still very complex problems, such as the risks that, between expressions of xenophobia and the danger of trafficking, the most vulnerable migrant girls and young women face.”

However, the head of the R4V considered that “we have entered a new phase, beyond the immediate assistance that can and should be provided to those who have just arrived, and that is the insertion and productive or educational integration in the communities.”

Migrants who have benefited from Operation Welcome in Brazil, where there are more than 260,000 Venezuelans, shop at a market in the largest city in the country, São Paulo. CREDIT: Mauro Vieira/MDS-UNHCR

Throughout the region “there are places that have seen that immigrants represent an attraction for investment and labour and productive opportunities for the host communities themselves.”

Another example is provided by Brazil, with its Operação Acolhida (Operation Welcome), which includes a programme to disperse throughout its vast territory Venezuelans who came in through the northern border and first settled, precariously, in cities in the state of Amazonas.

More than 260,000 Venezuelans have arrived in Brazil – among them some 5,000 indigenous Waraos, from the Orinoco delta, and a similar number of Pemon Indians, close to the border – and some 50,000 have been recognised as refugees by the Brazilian government.

Brazil has the seventh largest Venezuelan community, after Colombia, Peru, the United States, Chile, Ecuador and Spain. It is followed by Argentina, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Mexico.

Throughout the region, organisations have mushroomed, not only to provide relief but also to actively seek the insertion of Venezuelans, in some cases headed by Venezuelans themselves, as in the case of the Fundacolven foundation in Bogota.

“We are active on two fronts, because first we motivate companies to take on workers who, as immigrants, are willing to go the ‘extra mile’,” said Venezuelan Mario Camejo, one of the directors of Fundacolven.

As for the immigrants, “we help them prepare and polish their skills so that they can successfully search for and find stable employment, if they have already ‘burned their bridges’ and do not plan to return,” he added.

On this point, Stein commented that the growing insertion of Venezuelans “shows how this crisis can evolve without implying an internal solution in Venezuela,” a country whose projected population according to the census of 10 years ago should have been 32.9 million and is instead around 28 million.

Based on surveys carried out in several countries, the head of R4V indicated that “the majority of Venezuelans who have migrated and settled in these host countries are not interested in going back in the short term.”

Julio Meléndez is a young Venezuelan who has found employment in food distribution at a hospital in Cali, in western Colombia. Labour insertion is key for the integration of migrants in host communities. CREDIT: Laura Cruz Cañón/UNHCR

According to Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, they have benefited from the fact that the countries of the region “are an example, and the rest of the world can learn a lot about the inclusion and integration of refugees in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

In the north of the region, Mexico is dealing with a migration phenomenon on four fronts. On one hand, 12 million Mexicans live in the United States. And on the other, every year hundreds of thousands of migrants make their way through the country, mainly Central Americans and in recent years also people from the Caribbean, Venezuelans and Africans.

In addition, the United States sends back to Mexico hundreds of thousands of people who cross its southern border without the required documents. And in fourth place, the least well-known aspect: Mexico is home to more than one million migrants and refugees who have chosen to make their home in that country.

Major recipients of refugees and asylum seekers in other regions are Turkey, in the eastern Mediterranean, hosting 3.7 million (92 percent Syrians), and, with 1.4 million displaced persons each, Pakistan (which has received a massive influx of people from Afghanistan) and Uganda (refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo and other neighbouring countries).

In Sudan there are one million refugees, Bangladesh, Iran and Lebanon host 900,000 each, while in the industrialised North the cases of Germany, which received 1.2 million refugees from the Middle East, and the United States, which has 300,000 refugees and one million asylum seekers in its territory, stand out.

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In retelling their stories, women in Tigray describe their attackers as “armed men”. Credit: UNFPA

By Julitta Onabanjo
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 26 2021 (IPS)

The 2018 Nobel Laureate, Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynaecologist celebrated for his work with survivors of sexual assault in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Panzi Hospital once said: “Rape is a strategy of war – it is meant to destroy women and communities physically and mentally”.

Sadly, this destruction has become a daily reality for women and girls in the Tigray region in Ethiopia.
In recent weeks, women have come forward with the most devastating stories of sexual violation and physical abuse. Selam, 22, who found shelter in a safe house, is one of the survivors.

She recalls “running from place to place without food or shelter” and “constantly living in fear” after being displaced from her home and repeatedly facing harrowing incidents of sexual violence.

Persistent fighting, forced displacement, and dire living conditions over the past eight months in Tigray and the neighbouring regions of Afar and Amhara in northern Ethiopia, have created one of Africa’s most pressing humanitarian crises.

More than 5.2 million people in Tigray alone require humanitarian assistance; among them are 118,000 pregnant women and 1.3 million women of reproductive age. Amid the crisis, gross violations and abuses against civilians, including sexual violence, continue to be reported.

The health and well-being of women and adolescent girls are further threatened by food insecurity that is expected to worsen. The destruction and looting of health facilities – around a third are partially functioning, and a mere one per cent are offering clinical management of rape services – further complicates the situation amidst the threat of COVID-19.

Julitta Onabanjo

Selam’s experience is just one of the stories captured by health officials and UN agencies, but these testimonies likely represent only a fraction of the real prevalence.
Even under normal circumstances, given the high levels of stigma, among other factors, gender-based violence is largely unreported in Ethiopia. Only 24 per cent of survivors ever seek assistance, according to the 2016 Ethiopia Demographic Health Survey.

Devastating impact

Rape and other forms of sexual abuse have a devastating impact on women’s physical and mental well-being, rights and choices, and affect their ability to care for their children, support their families and contribute to their societies.

A social worker at the UNFPA-supported safe house where Selam now resides described the women as arriving “traumatized and depressed due to prolonged suffering, distress and horrendous violence”.

Even when women have not experienced sexual violence, the fear of rape or insecurity prevents them from accessing food distributing centres, critical health-care services for themselves or their children, and adolescent girls may stay away from school.

In the long-run, hiding from potential attacks contributes to malnutrition, poor health outcomes, and a lack of educational attainment among women and girls.

UN Member States have recognized the disproportionate and unique impact of armed conflict on women and girls. The UN Security Council-adopted Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security, calls on all parties in hostilities to take special measures to “protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, in situations of armed conflict”.

The African Union also committed to “Silencing the Guns” by “ending all wars, civil conflicts, gender-based violence, violent conflicts and preventing genocide on the continent by 2020”.

Women’s bodies must not be the object of war or the collateral in conflict. Rather women must be the central subject and partner in peacebuilding.

In retelling their stories, women in Tigray describe their attackers as “armed men”. These serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law must be swiftly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice.

Call to end hostilities

We urge the government of Ethiopia and the international community to step up efforts to end hostilities and all forms of violence in the country, including gender-based violence, to ensure the health and safety of women and girls.

As part of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) system-wide scale up for the Tigray region activated in April 2021, UNFPA is expanding and accelerating support in its areas of responsibility — protection, prevention and response to sexual and gender-based violence (GBV) and delivering quality sexual and Reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

Safe houses

Women-friendly spaces, safe houses and one-stop centres in the conflict-affected regions have been set up to provide clinical management of rape and psychosocial counselling. These spaces connect women to a wide range of sexual and reproductive health services and legal services.

What transforms a rape victim into a rape survivor is justice. UNFPA is working with partners to ensure effective referral and prosecution systems are available.

We are working with the Ministry of Women, Children and Youth of Ethiopia to enable the capacity-building of armed personnel and the constitution of a Gender-Based Violence Task Force, in collaboration with the Ethiopian Police University and the Federal Police Commission.

UNFPA is also providing medical supplies, helping to restore health system services, and cumulatively, has distributed hundreds of Emergency Reproductive Health kits and thousands of Dignity Kits.

Additionally, to prevent COVID-19 infections among key staff providing SRH and GBV services and information in government and partner-run health facilities and one-stop centres, nearly 11,000 Personal Protective Equipment items have been distributed since November 2020.

Funds needed urgently

Providing adequate levels of these kinds of life-saving services requires urgent funding. We are calling on all that can help, including government and development partners, to assist us in addressing the immediate needs of women and girls and help us avert the medium to long-term repercussions of sexual violence. The immediate funding requirements for the next six months is $15 million.

The women and girls of Tigray have told us their stories, and we continue to hear them out. Our actions to deal with their trauma and rebuild their lives must be our urgent response.

For women to participate equally in society, they need to make decisions about their bodies freely and without fear. Rape and other forms of gender-based violence destroy the ability of women and girls to make choices and fulfil their sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Even in times of conflict, we must continue to defend and protect the rights of women and girls and devote the necessary attention and resources to prevent sexual violence and decisively ensure justice.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is UNFPA Regional Director for East and Southern Africa.

Africa Eye investigates the cycle of death, violence and corruption in Mali's military.

By Barbara Wells
ROME, Jul 26 2021 (IPS)

Back-to-back droughts followed by plagues of locusts have pushed over a million people in southern Madagascar to the brink of starvation in recent months. In the worst famine in half a century, villagers have sold their possessions and are eating the locusts, raw cactus fruits, and wild leaves to survive.

Barbara Wells

Instead of bringing relief, this year’s rains were accompanied by warm temperatures that created the ideal conditions for infestations of fall armyworm, which destroys mainly maize, one of the main food crops of sub-Saharan Africa.

Drought and famine are not strangers to southern Madagascar, and other areas of eastern Africa, but climate change bringing warmer temperatures is believed to be exacerbating this latest tragedy, according to The Deep South, a new report by the World Bank.

Up to 40% of global food output is lost each year through pests and diseases, according to FAO estimates, while up to 811 million people suffer from hunger. Climate change is one of several factors driving this threat, while trade and travel transport plant pests and pathogens around the world, and environmental degradation facilitates their establishment.

Crop pests and pathogens have threatened food supplies since agriculture began. The Irish potato famine of the late 1840s, caused by late blight disease, killed about one million people. The ancient Greeks and Romans were well familiar with wheat stem rust, which continues to destroy harvests in developing countries.

But recent research on the impact of temperature increases in the tropics caused by climate change has documented an expansion of some crop pests and diseases into more northern and southern latitudes at an average of about 2.7 km a year.

Prevention is critical to confronting such threats, as brutally demonstrated by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on humankind. It is far more cost-effective to protect plants from pests and diseases rather than tackling full-blown emergencies.

One way to protect food production is with pest- and disease-resistant crop varieties, meaning that the conservation, sharing, and use of crop biodiversity to breed resistant varieties is a key component of the global battle for food security.

CGIAR manages a network of publicly-held gene banks around the world that safeguard and share crop biodiversity and facilitate its use in breeding more resistant, climate-resilient and productive varieties. It is essential that this exchange doesn’t exacerbate the problem, so CGIAR works with international and national plant health authorities to ensure that material distributed is free of pests and pathogens, following the highest standards and protocols for sharing plant germplasm. The distribution and use of that germplasm for crop improvement is essential for cutting the estimated 540 billion US dollars of losses due to plant diseases annually.

Understanding the relationship between climate change and plant health is key to conserving biodiversity and boosting food production today and for future generations. Human-driven climate change is the challenge of our time. It poses grave threats to agriculture and is already affecting the food security and incomes of small-scale farming households across the developing world.

We need to improve the tools and innovations available to farmers. Rice production is both a driver and victim of climate change. Extreme weather events menace the livelihoods of 144 million smallholder rice farmers. Yet traditional cultivation methods such as flooded paddies contribute approximately 10% of global man-made methane, a potent greenhouse gas. By leveraging rice genetic diversity and improving cultivation techniques we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance efficiency, and help farmers adapt to future climates.

We also need to be cognizant that gender relationships matter in crop management. A lack of gender perspectives has hindered wider adoption of resistant varieties and practices such as integrated pest management. Collaboration between social and crop scientists to co-design inclusive innovations is essential.

Men and women often value different aspects of crops and technologies. Men may value high yielding disease-resistant varieties, whereas women prioritize traits related to food security, such as early maturity. Incorporating women’s preferences into a new variety is a question of gender equity and economic necessity. Women produce a significant proportion of the food grown globally. If they had the same access to productive resources as men, such as improved varieties, women could increase yields by 20-30%, which would generate up to a 4% increase in the total agricultural output of developing countries.

Practices to grow healthy crops also need to include environmental considerations. What is known as a One Health Approach starts from the recognition that life is not segmented. All is connected. Rooted in concerns over threats of zoonotic diseases spreading from animals, especially livestock, to humans, the concept has been broadened to encompass agriculture and the environment.

This ecosystem approach combines different strategies and practices, such as minimizing pesticide use. This helps protect pollinators, animals that eat crop pests, and other beneficial organisms.

The challenge is to produce enough food to feed a growing population without increasing agriculture’s negative impacts on the environment, particularly through greenhouse gas emissions and unsustainable farming practices that degrade vital soil and water resources, and threaten biodiversity.

Behavioral and policy change on the part of farmers, consumers, and governments will be just as important as technological innovation to achieve this.

The goal of zero hunger is unattainable without the vibrancy of healthy plants, the source of the food we eat and the air we breathe. The quest for a food secure future, enshrined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, requires us to combine research and development with local and international cooperation so that efforts led by CGIAR to protect plant health, and increase agriculture’s benefits, reach the communities most in need.

Barbara H. Wells MSc, PhD is the Global Director of Genetic Innovation at the CGIAR and Director General of the International Potato Center. She has worked in senior-executive level in the agricultural and forestry sectors for over 30 years.

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 26 2021 (IPS)

Undoubtedly, the world needs to reform existing food systems to better serve humanity and sustainable development. But the United Nations World Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) must be consistent with UN-led multilateralism.

For the first time ever, the World Economic Forum (WEF), a partnership of some of the world’s most powerful corporations, is partnering the UN in launching the Summit, now scheduled for September, with its ‘Pre-Summit’ beginning today.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Food insecurity is primarily due to inequalities and deprivations as victims lack the means to obtain the food they need. The UN should not serve those who cynically use hunger, starvation and deprivation to advance private commercial interests.

UN-led multilateralism threatened
The collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and seemingly unchallenged US dominance in the 1990s posed new threats to UN-led multilateralism. The World Trade Organization was set up in 1995 outside the UN system. Later, ‘recalcitrant’ Secretary-General (SG) Boutros-Ghali was blocked from a second term.

The four UN Development Decades from the 1960s ended with the lofty, Secretariat-drafted Millennium Declaration, bypassing Member State involvement. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were then elaborated by the UN Development Programme with scant Member State consultation.

Growing corporate sway in the UN system got a big boost with the UN Global Compact. Such influences have affected governance of UN agencies, now better known as the World Health Organization struggles to contain the pandemic.

Difficult negotiations followed growing developing country disappointment with the MDGs, not delivering on climate finance as promised in 2009, and failure to better address the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath.

Hence, the negotiated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) compromise enjoys greater legitimacy than the MDGs. However, achieving Agenda 2030 was undermined from the outset as rich countries blocked needed funding at the third UN Financing for Development summit in mid-2015.

Summit bypasses UN processes
In the last dozen years after the 2008 world food price spike, the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has become an inclusive forum for civil society and corporate interests to debate how best to advance food security. Unsurprisingly, CFS has long addressed food systems.

CFS’s High-Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) is widely acknowledged as competent, having prepared balanced and comprehensive reports on matters of current and likely future concern. In the UN system, CFS is now seen as a ‘multistakeholder’ engagement model for emulation. Yet, the Summit bypassed CFS from the outset.

Nominally answering to the UNSG, Summit processes have been largely set by a small, largely unaccountable coterie. UNFSS organisers initially moved ahead without representative stakeholder participation until his intervention led to some consultative processes.

Mainly funded by the WEF and some major partners, they remain mindful of who pays the piper. Hence, they mainly promote supposedly ‘game-changing’, ‘scalable’ and investment-inducing solutions claiming to offer technological fixes.

Agroecology innovation
An HLPE report has approvingly considered agroecology or ‘nature-based solutions’. Many scientists have been working with food producers for decades to increase food productivity, output, diversity and resilience through better agroecological practices, thus cutting costs and enhancing sustainability.

The evidence is unambiguous that agroecology has delivered far better results than ‘Green Revolution’ innovations. A survey of almost 300 large ecological agriculture projects in more than fifty poor countries reported rising farmer incomes due to lower costs and a 79% average productivity increase.

This contrasts with the record of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) launched in 2006. With funding from the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, it promised to double yields and incomes for 30 million smallholder farm households by 2020. Despite much government spending, yields hardly rose as rural poverty grew.

Agroecological innovations have proved effective against infestations. Thus, safer, more effective biopesticides that do not kill useful insects and microbes, and non-toxic alternatives to agrochemical pesticides have been created.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hosted its first International Agroecology Symposium in 2014, before committing to ‘Scaling Up Agroecology’. But for Kip Tom, President Trump’s representative, FAO was no longer “science-based”.

Demonising agroecology
The Gates Foundation has been funding the Cornell Alliance for Science, ostensibly to “depolarize the GMO debates” by providing training in “advanced agricultural biotechnology communications”. Why traditional agricultural practices can’t transform African agriculture is only one instance of such sponsored propaganda masquerading as science.

Well-resourced lobbyists are using the UNFSS to secure support and legitimacy for commercial agendas. With abundant means, their advocacy routinely invokes ‘public-private partnerships’ and ‘science, technology and innovation’ rhetoric.

Forced to be more inclusive, Summit organisers are now using ‘solution clusters’ for advocacy. They then build broad ‘multi-stakeholder’ coalitions to advance purported solutions with the UNFSS mark of approval.

With strong and growing evidence of agroecology’s progress and potential, propaganda against it has grown in recent years. Agroecology advocates are caricatured as ‘Luddite eco-imperialists’, ‘Keeping Africa on the Brink of Starvation’, and condemning farmers to ‘poverty, malnutrition and death’.

A public relations consultant has accused agroecology advocates of being “the face of a ‘green’ neocolonialism” “idealizing peasant labour and retrograde subsistence farming” and denying “the Green Revolution’s successes”.

Agroecology solutions are the main, if not only ones consistent with the UN’s overarching commitment to sustainable development. But the propagandists portray them as uninformed barriers to agricultural and social progress. Such deliberate deceptions block needed food system reforms.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri alerted UNFSS Special Envoy Agnes Kalibata that agroecology is being dismissed as backward when it should be central to the Summit. Concurrently President of AGRA, with its particular commitment to needed food system reform, she is in an impossible position.

Best Summit money can buy?
Investing in the Summit is securing legitimacy and more resources from governments, the UN system, private philanthropy and others to further their commercial agendas. Meanwhile, many are working in good faith to make the most of the UN Summit.

Nevertheless, it is setting a dangerous precedent for the UN system. It has rashly opened a back door, allowing corporate-led ‘multi-stakeholderism’ to undermine well-tested, inclusive ‘multi-stakeholder’ arrangements developed over decades under multilateral Member State oversight.

UNFSS Science Days on 8 and 9 July indicated the Summit is being used to push for a new food science panel. This will undercut the HLPE, and ultimately, the CFS. Hence, the UNFSS seems like a Trojan Horse to advance particular corporate interests, inadvertently undermining what UN-led multilateralism has come to mean.

As both CFS and HLPE are successful UN institutions, the Summit will inevitably undermine its own achievements. Hence, for many Member States and civil society, UNFSS represents a step backward, rather than forward.

 

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Trusteeship Council. Credit: UN Photo/CCOI

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 26 2021 (IPS)

As a wisecracking cynic once remarked: “The sun would never set on the British empire because God wouldn’t trust an Englishman in the dark“. Perhaps it was an uncharitable remark because most of the British colonies have long gone.

But when i quoted this witticism to a British journalist, he countered: “I am sure it was told by a Scotsman.“

Since Scotland is not a colony, its demand for independence is not a matter of decolonization, which is virtually dead on the UN’s political agenda.

The United Nations, at its very inception 76 years ago, created a Trusteeship Council, one of its main organs, with a mandate to supervise the administration of trust territories as they transitioned from colonies to sovereign nations.

But as colonialism and trusteeships gradually came to an inglorious end, the Council suspended its activities in 1994, when Palau, the last of the original 11 trust territories, gained its independence.

With the start of the fourth International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism in June 2021, however, the UN’s Special Committee on Decolonization approved draft resolutions reaffirming once again the right of territories to self determination.

But this was confined to peoples of the remaining 14 Non-Self-Governing Territories, including New Caledonia, American Samoa, Tokelau, Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, French Polynesia, Guam, Monserrat, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, Turks and Caicos, and the US Virgin Islands.

However, it may be a long way off before the administrative powers overseeing these territories would concede independence—if they ever do.

But is there still a need for a Trusteeship Council, which has remained inactive for nearly 27 years?

Interestingly, there is an attempt to revive a longstanding proposal to re-purpose the Trusteeship Council to address issues relating to the environment, climate change and population.

The recent changing weather patterns worldwide– including the devastation caused by forest fires in 13 states in the US and Siberia, heavy rains and severe flooding in central China and Germany, severe droughts in Iran and Madagascar and a drought that has ravaged southern Angola– have once again put the spotlight of climate change which has taken added significance at the United Nations.

Originally designed by Danish architect Finn Juhl in 1952, the Trusteeship Council was revamped in a close collaboration between the UN and the Government of Denmark, with new furniture by Danish designers Kasper Salto and Thomas Sigsgaard. Credit: UN Photo/Andrea Brizzi

Adam Day, Director of Programmes at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, told IPS there have been proposals for a range of initiatives to address issues related to future existential risks like climate change, and to represent the needs of future generations more directly in the multilateral system.

One such proposal, he said, was to repurpose the Trusteeship Council, which has been inactive for some time, to address issues of the environment and/or future generations.

“This would be a significant move and could require action by the General Assembly, so it remains to be seen whether that will materialize.”

Another idea, he said, is to create an envoy or commissioner tasked with representing future generations. Like the Envoy on Youth, or thematic envoys across the UN, this would be the kind of role that could be created by the Secretary-General without action by the General Assembly.

“I think this is more likely to be taken up. The bigger issue, however, is how this might affect how the broader system works,” said Day.

Will Member States be willing to rethink big concepts underlying economic growth models, potentially moving away from GDP as the sole indicator of success, and offering global wellbeing and sustainability as an equally important indicator?

Will wealthy countries be willing to take seriously the fact that future generations will overwhelmingly be born in lower income countries, which will require major shifts of resources if we are to take their needs seriously?

“Those are the challenges facing the multilateral system, and I’m hopeful that the Secretary-General’s Common Agenda will help to advance this discussion,” declared Day.

But the lingering question remains: is the Trusteeship Council, and its empty chamber, ready to be converted into a special UN political body on climate change, population and the global environment— despite the existence of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)?

Joseph Chamie, a consulting international demographerand a former director of the United Nations Population Division, told IPS as climate change and the environment are matters of great and urgent concern worldwide, redesigning the UN Trusteeship Council to address those two vital issues is certainly a worthwhile, timely and a necessary undertaking.

Given their intimate relationship, he argued, discussions of climate change/environment should not avoid world population.

He said thousands of scientists worldwide have included among their urgently needed actions the stabilization of world population. While reducing high rates of population growth alone would not resolve climate change and environmental degradation, it clearly plays a critical role in mitigating the many negative consequences.

“In brief, a redesigned UN Trusteeship Council to address climate change and the environment must not leave population out in the cold”, said Chamie, author of numerous publications on population and related issues, including climate change and the environment.

The proposed new UN body on climate change, environment and population should deal with political dimensions given that existing UN agencies are focused on social and economic aspects, he noted.

Without global political decisions on those critical issues, achieving meaningful and effective progress will be unlikely, he cautioned.

Moreover, there’s no time to waste in making those necessary global political decisions to address climate change, environmental degradation and population growth, Chamie declared.

Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said last week that water-related hazards dominated the list of disasters in terms of both the human and economic toll over the past 50 years, triggered by climate change.

Of the top 10 disasters, the hazards that led to the largest human losses during the period have been droughts (with 650,000 deaths), storms (577,232 deaths), floods (58,700 deaths), and extreme temperature (55,736 deaths).

With regard to economic losses, WMO said, the top 10 events include storms and floods. The data shows that over the 50-year period, weather, climate and water hazards accounted for 50 per cent of all disasters, 45 per cent of all reported deaths and 74 per cent of all reported economic losses at the global level.

WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said that “no country – developed or developing – is immune. Climate change is here and now. It is imperative to invest more in climate change adaptation, and one way of doing this is to strengthen multi-hazard early warning systems.

Thalif Deen, Senior Editor and Director at the UN Bureau of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, is the author of a newly-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment -– and Don’t Quote Me on That.” Peppered with scores of anecdotes-– from the serious to the hilarious-– the book is available on Amazon worldwide. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

 

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