Africa

East African rivals Kenya and Uganda draw 0-0 in Nairobi as DR Congo are held to a draw by Tanzania in Thursday's African 2022 World Cup qualifiers.

Golden Monkey (Cercopithecus mitis ssp. kandti) Endangered in IUCN Red List. In Cameroon, 1999 bushmeat was openly on sale along the road as 100-year-old trees were illegally logged and transported. Today large primates face the same fate, even if not so openly. Credit: Steve Morgan / Greenpeace

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Sep 2 2021 (IPS)

As Arti Prasad rode the Kuala Lumpur Pavilion mall escalator up to the third floor, a pair of luscious lips pouted down at her. Next to the towering and oversized lips, the vibrant red shades of lipstick on the giant screen immediately caught the 36-year-old Indian tourist’s fancy.

Prasad headed straight to the cosmetic outlet and bought all four of the advertised lipsticks. She, like many others, is oblivious to a baby Orangutan’s plight – orphaned when its forest home was burned down to grow the palm oil that went into these beauty products. Primary forest losses mean that only 10% of gorilla habitat will remain in the Congo Basin by 2032.

Deforestation, a significant threat to biodiversity and climate change, is accelerated by global demand for commodities. However, a considerable share of this agro-commodity production is intended for export – driving massive deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems in the global south.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates global forest areas declined by 129 million hectares between 1990-2015, equivalent in size to South Africa.

Data from satellite imagery released on Global Forest Watch in June 2020 recorded 3.75 million hectares of tree cover loss in humid primary forests in the tropics in 2019, an almost 3% increase from 2018 and the third-largest tropical forest loss since 2000. 

Consumption patterns of G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, and the US) drive an average loss of 3.9 trees per person per year, over 15 years from 2001-2015, says a study published this year in Nature.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) will hold the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France, from 3-11 September 2021. This premier conservation event will address global deforestation. More importantly, Congress motion 012 – the fight against imported deforestation – was co-sponsored by numerous IUCN Members and voted on and approved before Congress.

The IUCN Congress meets every four years to tackle the most pressing issues impacting people and the planet. This IUCN Congress in Marseille will drive action on nature-based recovery, climate change, and biodiversity for decades to come.

Congress motion 012 calls on countries to stop imported deforestation through several ambitious strategies, including imposing additional taxes on imported products that generate deforestation.
The aim is to recommend that private companies establish concrete action plans to guarantee supplies that did not result in deforestation.

Red-faced spider monkeys (Ateles paniscus) are found in undisturbed primary rainforests, in northern Brazil, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana and Venezuela. Because of its ability to climb and jump, it tends to live in the upper layers of the rainforest trees and forages in the high canopy. With habitat loss and hunting it is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Credit: la Vallee des Singes

The list of imported agricultural products contains, first and foremost, soy, palm oil, cacao, beef and its by-products, rubber, timber, and derived products that do not come from sustainably managed forests. Others include coffee, tea, or even cane sugar, which impact the deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems.

“The most recent IPCC and IPBES reports show that we are now at the point where significant and permanent changes to consumption patterns and legislative regulation can no longer be delayed,” David Williams-Mitchell, Director of Communications, European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) told IPS via email. Netherlands-based EAZA, an IUCN member, is one of the co-sponsors of Congress motion 012.

More than 50% of global forest loss and land conversion is attributable to the production of agricultural commodities, and forestry products are driven by consumer demand, as shown by a 2020 WWF study on Switzerland’s overseas footprint for forest-risk commodities.

To end deforestation, companies must eliminate 5 million hectares of conversion from supply chains each year.

“The concept of imported deforestation is still quite new to the public in Europe. For EAZA, the key issue is to establish understanding globally that imported deforestation is one of the root causes of climate change and biodiversity loss,” Williams-Mitchell said.

He cited examples of a hugely expanded meat industry leading to increases in greenhouse gases, carbon sink capacity loss, and biodiversity loss through habitat conversion.

In 2017 alone, the international trade of agricultural products was associated with 1.3 million hectares of tropical deforestation emitting some 740 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – this is equivalent to nearly a fifth of the EU28’s total greenhouse gas emissions that year.

“We need countries all over the world to participate in the fight against imported deforestation. We need to learn to use local resources and establish sustainable sources for exported products, especially without harming the forests,” says Jean-Pascal Guéry of Primate Conservation Trust. This France-based IUCN member also co-sponsors Congress motion 012.

The world’s forests absorb 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, one-third of the annual CO2 released from burning fossil fuels. Forest destruction emits further carbon into the atmosphere, with 4.3–5.5 gigatons of total anthropogenic Green House Gas (GHG) emissions per year, generated annually mainly from deforestation and forest degradation, according to Cameroon-based NGO Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF).

IUCN Member ERuDeF, co-sponsor of Congress motion 012, estimates that half of the tropical forests worldwide have been destroyed since the 1960s. Every second, more than one hectare of tropical forest is destroyed or drastically degraded.

“Deforestation and conversion-free supply chains must protect not only forests, but all the terrestrial natural ecosystems threatened by the expansion of commodity production and trade including savannahs, grasslands, and peatlands among others,” Romain Deveze, WWF Switzerland’s senior manager, sustainable commodities & markets and co-author of the WWF 2020 study told IPS.
“It is vital that people understand that their choices and the frameworks that allow them to make those choices are at the heart of the solution,” Williams-Mitchell concurs.

“As governments, science engagement institutions, schools, and other providers and facilitators of education, we need to act to ensure this level of understanding at all levels of society,” Williams-Mitchell says, explaining why EAZA is sponsoring the motion.

Guéry is critical of some of the efforts to combat deforestation.

“There is awareness (too late, in our opinion) in certain European countries of the deleterious effects of this imported deforestation, and the French initiative to establish a national strategy to combat imported deforestation is commendable, but it lacks ambition and does not set binding and short-term goals,” he said.

“The assessments of companies including distributors, manufacturers, operators, rely too much on self-assessment rather than establishing an independent external certification,” Guéry said.

WWF also mentions that despite more initiatives to halt deforestation, including certification, corporate commitments, and market incentives, the rate of commodity-driven land use doesn’t appear to be declining. This means the negative impacts on local people and nature continue.

A full truck loaded with 60-70 Mukula logs at Katanga Province, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2016. Around 8-10 trucks transported out Mukula logs every day. Mukula is a rare and slow-growing hardwood unique to southern and central Africa, illegally logged and traded from Zambia and DRC. Credit: Lu Guang / Greenpeace

In a study earlier this year, Greenpeace said that “certification is a weak tool to address global forest and ecosystem
destruction.”

By certifying their products as ‘sustainable,’ some certification schemes can help guide consumption choices and have a positive impact locally, “but it is (largely) greenwashing destruction of ecosystems and violations of Indigenous and labour rights.”

So, while buyers think they are making the right ethical choice, they might still buy products linked to abuse and destruction.

However, WWF’s Deveze says, “certification and legality are critical to halt deforestation at scale. A hectare of conversion is just equally as harmful to people and nature whether or not it is done legally.”

Ranece Jovial Ndjeudja, Greenpeace Africa’s campaign manager in Cameroon, told IPS in a Zoom interview, “the limitations to the policy effectiveness for the IUCN Congress motion on imported deforestation is increased taxation aimed at deterring forest clearing. This, however, cannot always prevent deforestation.”

“Companies would just increase production to compensate for the tax hikes,” Ndjeudja said, speaking from Yaoundé, where Cameroonians rallied in early August to demand EU stop deforestation for rubber production.
“It is industrial logging and industrial agriculture which is the problem. Are these industrial productions really bringing in a large revenue to the exporting governments? No. If it did, Cameroon and Congo would not be so poor. A small group gets rich. While Cameroon’s natives lose access to food, health, and their culture,” Tal Harris, Greenpeace Africa’s international communications coordinator, told IPS from Dakar, Senegal.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) hosts the second-largest contiguous tract of tropical forests globally, including roughly 60 percent of the Congo Basin rainforest. It is home to plants and animals found nowhere else on earth.

“A government cannot work out of a capital city thousands of miles distant from such extensive forests,” Harris said. “Devolution of power to the local population is necessary.”

Local communities play a vital role in wildlife conservation and environment protection. Comprising less than 5 percent of the world’s population, indigenous communities protect 80 percent of global biodiversity, says ERuDeF.

Cameroon’s Ndjeaudja echoes this. To ensure trees are not cut, there is the need to work with local communities because, for generations, they have been living with forests and have the knowledge of their sustainable management.

“We have a lot to learn from them and must allow indigenous communities to share this knowledge,” he said.

Deveze concluded: “Economic and technical incentives are required to shift producer behaviour. At an international policy level, go for differentiated custom tariffs based on sustainability requirements and due diligence processes. Compensation mechanisms to support farmers in protecting high conservation value areas should be amplified.”

 

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A guest was asked to simulate a sexual assault using a mannequin live on Ivory Coast TV.

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By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, Sep 2 2021 (IPS)

Joe Biden provided a stirring soundbite days ago when he spoke from the White House just after suicide bombers killed 13 U.S. troops and 170 Afghans at a Kabul airport: “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

But the president’s pledge was a prelude to yet another episode of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.”

The U.S. quickly followed up on Biden’s vow with a drone strike in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province that the Pentagon said killed two “high-profile” ISIS-K targets.

Speaking to media with standard reassurance, an Army general used artful wording to declare: “We know of zero civilian casualties.” But news reporting told of some civilian deaths. And worse was soon to come.

On Sunday, another American drone attack — this time near the Kabul airport — led to reliable reports that the dead included children. The Washington Post reported on Monday that family members said the U.S. drone strike “killed 10 civilians in Kabul, including several small children.”

According to a neighbor who saw the attack, the newspaper added, “the dead were all from a single extended family who were exiting a car in their modest driveway when the strike hit a nearby vehicle.”

Words that Biden used last Thursday night, vowing revenge, might occur to surviving Afghan relatives and their sympathizers: “We will not forgive. We will not forget.” And maybe even, “We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

Revenge cycles have no end, and they’ve continued to power endless U.S. warfare — as a kind of perpetual emotion machine — in the name of opposing terrorism. It’s a pattern that has played out countless times in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere for two decades. And it should not be a mystery that U.S. warfare has created still more “enemy” combatants.

But neither the U.S. mass media nor official Washington has much interest in the kind of rational caveat that retired U.S. Army Gen. William Odom offered during a C-SPAN interview way back in 2002: “Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic. It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism.”

By any other name, the “war on terror” became — for the White House, Pentagon and Congress — a political license to kill and displace people on a large scale in at least eight countries, rarely seen, much less understood.

Whatever the intent, the resulting carnage has often included many civilians. The names and faces of the dead and injured very rarely reach those who sign the orders and appropriate the funds.

Amid his administration’s botch of planning for the pullout, corporate media have been denouncing Biden for his wise decision to finally withdraw the U.S. military from Afghanistan. No doubt Biden hopes to mollify the laptop warriors of the Washington press corps with drone strikes and other displays of air power.

But the last 20 years have shown that you can’t stop on-the-ground terrorism by terrorizing people from the air. Sooner or later, what goes around comes around.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

 

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Malaria still kills 400,000 people every year, most of them African children under five years old. RTS,S is the first malaria vaccine shown to reduce malaria and life-threatening severe malaria in young children. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Kesete Admasu
Sep 1 2021 (IPS)

In the midst of the tragedy and turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s gratifying to see work continuing in Africa to find new ways of fighting malaria, a very old disease that has been a formidable foe for thousands of years and still kills 400,000 people every year, most of them African children under five years old.

Scientists from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and their colleagues at the Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé in Burkina Faso and the University of Bamako in Mali published results
from a phase 3 trial that involved the world’s first and only malaria vaccine.

The new evidence from Mali and Burkina Faso shows that RTS,S—which is also being introduced in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in a landmark pilot introduction —could be an even more valuable tool than originally expected. And those of us involved in the fight against malaria are certainly eager for good news.

RTS,S is the first malaria vaccine shown to reduce malaria and life-threatening severe malaria in young children. Approximately 2.1 million doses of the vaccine have been provided and more than 750,000 children have received their first vaccine dose through the pilot programme where malaria risks occur year-round

Working in areas where malaria surges during the rainy season, the researchers report a dramatic reduction in malaria illness and deaths among young children who received the RTS,S vaccine just before the rains began. They found the vaccine worked as well as the standard prevention practice in these regions, known as seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), which involves administering treatment doses of common antimalaria drugs monthly during the rainy season, usually through a door-to-door campaign.

This is an important finding. SMC is a resource-heavy intervention, and in some settings an annual pre-season single dose of a vaccine could be an attractive alternative.

However, the most striking results occurred in the group of some 1700 children who received both interventions—the medications and the vaccine. They experienced a 60% – 70% additional reduction in severe disease and hospitalizations compared to the already impressive stand-alone interventions—the prevention drugs or the RTS,S vaccine—and also more than a 70% reduction in deaths from malaria. Equally important: the combination was found to be safe and well tolerated.

I was one of a group of African Ministers of Health in June 2016 who served on the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and passionately supported the funding for a RTS,S pilot to learn more about its public health potential. These new results are heartening.

RTS,S is the first malaria vaccine shown to reduce malaria and life-threatening severe malaria in young children. Approximately 2.1 million doses of the vaccine have been provided and more than 750,000 children have received their first vaccine dose through the pilot programme where malaria risks occur year-round. Results from the pilot programme indicate strong community demand for the malaria vaccine as well as the capacity of childhood vaccination to deliver it. This new study in Burkina Faso and Mali provides additional evidence of RTS,S safety and effectiveness.

Just before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, Africa’s fight against malaria was stalling at what the World Health Organization (WHO) called an “unacceptably high level” of deaths. Regaining momentum in the malaria fight will require new tools, especially with existing preventive interventions threatened by emerging insecticide resistance.

New tools to fight malaria are especially needed in countries like Mali and Burkina Faso, located in a region known as the African Sahel—a semi-arid ribbon of land that spans the continent from Senegal to Sudan. There, the danger of malaria flares dramatically with the arrival of the rainy season. Today, six of the ten African countries singled out by the WHO as requiring “high impact” malaria interventions are in the Sahel, where malaria remains a primary cause of childhood death despite substantial reductions in malaria achieved through a combination of SMC and insecticide treated nets (ITNs).

Through the development of the RTS,S vaccine over the last 30 years, scientists have discovered that the protective efficacy of RTS,S is particularly high in the first months following vaccination. This feature prompted researchers to study whether RTS,S could be provided strategically, just before the peak malaria season, to fight seasonal malaria transmission.

Giving the RTS,S malaria vaccine seasonally was found to be safe and effective—and combining SMC with the vaccine was especially powerful—and could expand the options available for fighting malaria.

In October, global advisory bodies for immunization and malaria will convene to review available RTS,S evidence and consider a potential WHO recommendation for wider use of the vaccine across Africa.

If WHO recommends the vaccine for wider use, African governments should be prepared to seize on the life-saving opportunity. They must be ready to make smart and strategic decisions to deploy this vaccine while continuing to promote the use of other proven malaria interventions to maximise impact.

We have seen in COVID-19 what the global health community can accomplish when it comes together to fight a killer disease. It would be a welcome turn of events to see Africa emerge from the pandemic with a new tool to take on the old foe of malaria with renewed vigour to get progress in malaria control back on track.

Dr Kesete Admasu, CEO of Big Win Philanthropy, former CEO of the RBM Partnership to End Malaria, and former Minister of Health of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

The 31-year-old from Hartlepool was making a documentary in Africa for a Muslim television network.

UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem, KOICA President Lee Mikyung and UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (from left) launched a partnership in 2018 that Ms. Lee characterized as “a key foundation and platform for solidarity and collective engagement for gender equality.” The new tripartite agreement-- between UNFPA, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and UN Women—has combined the strengths of the three partners to improve the lives of women and girls and accelerate the achievement of gender equality, as expressed in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5. Credit: UNFPA/Tara Milutis

By Hawon Jung
SEOUL, South Korea, Sep 1 2021 (IPS)

A strong movement of feminism is sweeping South Korea. While women feel empowered to stand their ground, the men are retaliating.

When South Korean archer An San won two gold medals in just two days during the recent Tokyo Olympics, the response the 20-year-old received at home was a mixed. Some men were angered and said her medals should be taken away. Why? Because her short hair was a sign that she was a ‘man-hating’ feminist.

As bizarre and surreal as it may sound, the attack on An is a bleak reminder of the deep-rooted gender stereotypes in the economically advanced, yet deeply sexist South Korea – and the enormous pressure on women and girls to look and act ‘feminine’. It’s also another episode of the escalating culture war between the country’s increasingly outspoken feminists – and antifeminists seeking to silence their voices.

Lowest in the ranks

South Korea is the world’s 10th largest economy, a tech giant that is home to Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone maker, and a cultural powerhouse whose K-pop stars like BTS enjoy global followings. But despite all the economic and technological advances, the deep-seated patriarchy and gender discrimination remained little changed.

South Korea is ranked at the 102nd in the world in terms of gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum. The gender pay gap in the country is the widest among the advanced economies of the OECD member nations.

It has consistently ranked as the worst place to be a working woman in the Economist magazine’s Glass Ceiling Index. Women account for 19 per cent of parliamentary seats, almost on par with North Korea.

Hawon Jung

Women are under enormous pressure to look perfect at all times and all costs – as shown in the country’s reputation as the world’s capital of plastic surgery. On the busy streets of Seoul, it’s not difficult to find plastic surgery adverts screaming ‘being pretty is everything!’ and rail-thin K-pop starlets presented as role models for teenage girls and young women. The stars’ extreme diet regimens are widely shared on social media and avidly followed by many.

Typical beauty ideals in South Korea for women include pale yet glowing skin, a youthful ‘babyface’, long and luminous hair, wide eyes, a thin nose, and pin-thin body (nearly 17 per cent of South Korean women in their 20s are underweight, compared to less than 5 per cent for their male counterparts, according to a study in 2019).

The pressure begins early: more than 40 per cent of female elementary school students wear makeup, and the number goes up to over 70 per cent for middle schoolers.

Escape the Corset

But women started to fight back. A powerful wave of feminist movement has taken the country by storm in recent years, allowing many women to speak up against sexual discrimination, assault, and objectification like never before.

Since 2018, women have rallied together to bring down many sexual predators, including a popular presidential contender, in one of the most successful cases of #MeToo in Asia.

Tens of thousands took to the streets for months in 2018 to call for tougher crackdown on the so-called ‘spycam porn’ crimes that secretly film women in public space from workplaces to public toilets and share the footage on the internet.

They successfully campaigned to end the abortion ban. The so-called ‘Escape the Corset’ movement was part of that awakening, meant to defy the pressure to follow the rigid beauty ideals.

Women and girls who joined the campaign cut their hair short, destroyed their makeup, refused to wear tight, revealing, or uncomfortable clothes to instead opt for something more comfortable and practical. Since then, short hair has become something of a political statement among many young feminists.

The wave of awakening, however, has also drawn a strong pushback by men who thought – like many around the world – that the women had gone too far, and many labelled feminists as ‘man haters’ who should be punished.

More than 40 per cent of female elementary school students wear makeup, and the number goes up to over 70 per cent for middle schoolers.

The backlash has reached a fever pitch since May when members of many online forums popular among men started to cry ‘misandry’ over a adds that use an image of a pinching finger, a universal gesture to indicate something small.

Online crusade

In a campaign likened by many as a McCarthyian witch-hunt, they claimed whoever created the image must be feminists and out to ridicule the size of their genitals. Despite having no possibility of any political plot, many of the accused companies and government institutions – including the national police agency and the defense ministry – bent down quickly, apologized for hurting the men’s feelings and removed the images from their posters.

These online mobs even enjoyed political backing; Lee Jun-Seok, a young member of the rightwing People’s Power Party, rose to prominence by amplifying the conspiracy theory over the ‘misandrist’ finger gesture, and eventually became the leader of the party in July.

Feeling supported by a powerful politician and emboldened by groveling apologies from companies and the government, the online mobs moved on to their next target—the star Olympian whose appearance didn’t fit into their ideal of traditional femininity.

‘Why did you cut your hair?’ An was asked on her social media, to which she replied, ‘’coz it’s convenient’. The answer was not enough.

A campaign to extract an apology from An for being a feminist began, with some even demanding that the Korea Archery Association take away the gold medals from the ‘man hater’.

But women fought back again. Lawmakers, activists, entertainers, and thousands of ordinary women rallied behind An, many sharing the photos of their short hair on social media as a show of support.

And as the cyber-bullying targeting An raged on, many women across the country watched as An won yet another gold – becoming the first archer in Olympic history to win three golds at a single Game.

Hawon Jung is a journalist and former Seoul correspondent for the AFP news agency. She is the author of ‘Flowers of Fire,’ a book about South Korea’s #MeToo campaign.

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

 

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Will the Taliban aspire for a seat in the UN General Assembly?. Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 1 2021 (IPS)

When the Taliban captured power back in 1996, one of its first political acts was to hang the ousted Afghan President Mohammed Najibullah in Ariana Square in Kabul.

The newly-installed government played a triple role: judge, jury and hangman, all three rolled into one.

Fast forward to August 15, when the Taliban, in its second coming, assumed power ousting the US-supported government of Ashraf Ghani, a former official of the World Bank, armed with a doctorate in anthropology from one of the most prestigious Ivy League educational institutions: Columbia University.

In a Facebook posting, Ghani said he fled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) seeking safe haven because he “was going to be hanged” by the Taliban.

If that did happen, the Taliban would have earned the dubious distinction of being the only government in the world to hang two presidents. But mercifully, it did not.

Ghani, however, denied that he had bolted from the presidential palace lugging several suitcases with millions of dollars pilfered from the country’s treasury.

Meanwhile, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan during 1996-2001, only three countries recognized its legitimacy: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and UAE.

But now 20 years later, the first four countries most likely to provide legitimacy to a Taliban government may include China and Russia (two permanent members of the Security Council), along with Iran and Pakistan, while others could follow.

At a meeting of the 15-member Security Council on August 30, a resolution condemning the “deplorable” terrorist attack on the Kabul airport, was backed by 13 countries, with two abstentions: China and Russia. But since they didn’t exercise their vetoes, the resolution was adopted 13-2.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres briefs an emergency Security Council meeting on the situation in Afghanistan. “The world is watching. We cannot and must not abandon the people of Afghanistan,” he implored. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

Predictably, Taliban has now pledged a new era and a promise to cooperate with the Americans, perhaps as part of a strategy to gain international legitimacy– and eventually a seat in the UN General Assembly, a seat now held by the ousted Ghani government.

Still, its sordid past—including public floggings and executions, enforced disappearances and violations of basic civil liberties—may come back to haunt the Taliban.

Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), told IPS there is no evidence that Taliban version 2.0 will be any different from the original Taliban, despite their attempts to convince the world that this time around they will be more user-friendly.

For decades, he pointed out, the Taliban have been responsible for war crimes, and when they last ruled Afghanistan, they perpetrated crimes against humanity.

Last time they were in government, Taliban forces systematically persecuted the country’s vulnerable Hazara minority and stripped millions of women and girls of their universal human rights. The Taliban have not changed, he argued.

Beyond the glare of TV cameras and press conferences, Taliban fighters are already carrying out summary executions and evidence has already emerged of a recent massacre of Hazara men, said Dr Adams.

As an armed extremist group, as perpetrators of atrocities and as a state power, the Taliban stand in direct opposition to everything that the United Nations stands for.

“They belong in handcuffs, not sitting in the UN General Assembly hall”, he declared.

James M. Dorsey, Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute, told IPS there is no doubt that the Taliban will claim Afghanistan’s UN seat once they form a government.

They cannot do so before that. In terms of the International Criminal Court (ICC), there is equally no doubt that the Taliban have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“The problem is they are in good company: China, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, just to name a few”.

“Why the Taliban and not also others?, asked Dorsey, author of the syndicated column and blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Asked why the US wants to deal with a Taliban government that is not legally recognized by Washington, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the US has been “engaged with the Taliban for some time diplomatically going back years in efforts, to try to advance a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan”.

“Going forward, we will judge our engagement with any Taliban-led government in Afghanistan based on one simple proposition: our interests, and does it help us advance them or not?”.

“If engagement with the government can advance the enduring interests we will have in counterterrorism, the enduring interest we’ll have in trying to help the Afghan people who need humanitarian assistance, in the enduring interest we have in seeing that the rights of all Afghans, especially women and girls, are upheld, then we’ll do it,’ said Blinken, leaving the door open for a political relationship with the Taliban government.

He said if a future Taliban government upholds the basic rights of the Afghan people, if it makes good on its commitments to ensure that Afghanistan cannot be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks “directed against us and our allies and partners, and in the first instance, if it makes good on its commitments to allow people who want to leave Afghanistan to leave, that’s a government we can work with”

“If it doesn’t, we will make sure that we use every appropriate tool at our disposal to isolate that government, and as I said before, Afghanistan will be a pariah,” he declared.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General, who served under five different secretaries-generals, told IPS: “I do not recall (the former) Taliban government seeking recognition or claiming a seat during the 1996 General Assembly session, attended by U.S. President Bill Clinton”.

But he did remember the former Permanent Representative of Afghanistan seeking a U.N. job.

“If the Taliban decides to claim the Afghan seat, the UN’s Credentials Committee will have to review that claim”.

Sanbar said the Taliban delegation would also need U.S. visas to visit New York, which would require the blessings of the Biden administration.

He also pointed that the UAE may not recognize the current Taliban, as it did in 1996, because it is now hosting the ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Sanbar said it will be interesting to watch what happens at the upcoming 76th session of the General Assembly which opens on September 21.

Thalif Deen, Senior Editor 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.” Published by Amazon, the book is mostly a satire peppered with scores of anecdotes– both serious and hilarious. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

 

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Africa's second round of qualifying for the 2022 World Cup kick offs on Wednesday, with Mohamed Salah among some notable absentees.

Members of Africa's Rural Women's Assembly are among the farmer and civil society organizations demanding a shift away from Green Revolution programs in the face of rising hunger. Credit: Rural Women's Assembly

By Timothy A. Wise
BOSTON, Aug 31 2021 (IPS)

As the United Nations gears up for its Food Systems Summit September 23, the urgent need for structural changes in how we grow, harvest, distribute, and consume food has never been more apparent.

According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO) annual hunger report, released July 12, the world experienced a nearly unprecedented one-year rise in severe hunger from 2019 to 2020. The agency’s annual estimate of “undernourishment” showed an increase of up to 25% over 2019 levels, to between 720 and 811 million people.

Sub-Saharan Africa saw as many as 44 million more people suffer severe undernourishment, leaving 30% of the continent’s residents struggling to feed their families. A stunning 66% of the continent faced “moderate or severe food insecurity” in 2020, according to FAO estimates, up from 51% in 2014. That is an increase of 244 million food-insecure people in just six years.

You wouldn’t know it to listen to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which released its 2020 Annual Report the same day the FAO sounded its alarms. After noting the challenges of COVID-19 and climate change, the report gushes about the “evidence of improved productivity, better crop quality, higher incomes, and more months of food from [farmers’] surplus.”

In stark contrast to the well-researched data from the FAO, AGRA’s “evidence” was a sloppy set of hastily compiled data presented with examples carefully chosen to show progress. (See my analysis of AGRA’s report here.)

AGRA seems to be living in a different world from poor, rural Africans, oblivious to the documented shortcomings of its technology-focused approach to agricultural development. AGRA leaders and donors seem unaware that the number of severely undernourished people in Sub-Saharan Africa has risen nearly 50% since AGRA was founded in 2006.

That is why African farmer, faith, and community organizations are now challenging AGRA’s failing model, calling on donor agencies and foundations to stop funding the 15-year-old initiative.

Business as usual at the Food Systems Summit

The COVID-19 pandemic was of course largely to blame for the steep rise in hunger in 2020, but climate change and conflict also contributed. So did misguided agricultural policies.

It was the sixth straight year of increases in undernourishment, a trend that last year prompted U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutierres to call for this year’s Food Systems Summit. The world was clearly not on track to achieve the core Sustainable Development Goal of eliminating severe hunger by 2030.

The summit has been mired in controversy from the outset. Gutierres was widely criticized for his partnership with the World Economic Forum, the corporate elites who gather each year in Davos to discuss the poor world’s problems, sidelining the Rome-based U.N. agencies that generally take the lead on such matters. He compounded the legitimacy crisis by naming AGRA President Agnes Kalibata as Special Envoy to lead the summit.

Major civil society networks and organizations boycotted the summit preparations, which were denounced for favoring technological solutions offered by corporations while failing to put the right to food – and COVID and climate change – at the center of the agenda. U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri recently issued a blistering critique.

The business-as-usual approach of the summit, with its Nairobi-based staff organizing virtual “dialogues” and vetting “game-changing solutions” to food systems failures, seemed deaf to the loud alarms from the FAO. The worst hunger remains in rural areas in developing countries.

Africa’s failing Green Revolution

For the last 15 years, the Green Revolution has been the dominant approach in Africa. AGRA has led the charge from its Nairobi headquarters, with $1 billion in funding, overwhelmingly from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation but also with support from the Rockefeller Foundation a small number of bilateral donors. African governments have chipped in with waves of subsidies to farmers – as much as $1 billion per year altogether – to purchase what the Green Revolution is selling: commercial seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs.

The Green Revolution’s “theory of change” is as simple as it is flawed: put seeds and fertilizers in the hands of small-scale farmers. They will see their yields double, so too their incomes from the sales of surplus crops. And they will become food secure from the food they grow and can now afford to buy.

The evidence suggests that none of that has come to pass. Adoption rates for the expensive new seeds and fertilizers remain low, even with governments subsidizing farmers’ purchases. Many of those who adopt have not achieved large yield increases, even in favored crops such as maize. Few have seen rising incomes from sales of growing surpluses; some have ended up in debt after a bad harvest. And food insecurity has grown from its already alarming levels.

This is less a theory of change than a proven route to continued hunger.

Fiddling in Nairobi

AGRA is set to unveil what it will no doubt present as a bold new strategy. But AGRA will likely do little more than fiddle with its current strategy, just as it has before. Unchanged is the failing premise that commercial seeds and fertilizers can dramatically reduce hunger and poverty in rural Africa through a productivity revolution.

Emperor Nero famously fiddled while Rome burned. AGRA should stop fiddling in Nairobi while more Africans go hungry. And donors should listen to African civil society leaders and say no when AGRA claims to speak for Africans and asks for millions more dollars for its failing strategy.

Timothy A. Wise is senior advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food.

 

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South Africa's Pieter du Preez is overcome by emotion as he wins Paralympic gold in men's road cycling.

Dominican Farmer and Vendor Ayma Louis has COVID restrictions and the hurrricane season to contend with. Credit: Alison Kentish (IPS)

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Aug 31 2021 (IPS)

Around 2 pm on August 18, 89-year-old farmer Whitnel Louis and his wife Ayma began packing up their unsold produce, hoping to leave the capital of Roseau and get home way ahead of the 6 pm curfew recently put in place to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Their pickup was among dozens that lined the Dame Mary Eugenia Charles Boulevard, known by locals simply as ‘the Bayfront,’ a wide street near the ocean with a cruise ship berth, sea defense wall and a docking port that pre-COVID would receive passenger vessels from neighboring islands.

During the three-week curfew period, farmers were permitted to sell their produce along the Bayfront for a few hours every day.

“The curfew was necessary but it was rough. Look at the sun, the heat we are taking. When it’s raining and windy it’s worse. It’s a challenge. We can’t ship our produce overseas like before. The vendors who buy from us to resell want to give us next to nothing for the produce, forgetting all the hard work that goes into farming,” Louis told IPS.

While the farming couple is dealing with the impacts of measures to curtail the spread of COVID-19, the present hurricane season is anxiety-inducing. The Louis were hard hit by two weather systems in the last six years. In 2015, during Tropical Storm Erika, a river burst its banks and raged through their home, destroying all their belongings. In 2017 category five hurricane Maria destroyed their farm.

“Everything was down. Pears, mangoes, coconuts. I had five sheds and the hurricane ripped them apart. Wood was flying everywhere. Today, I still don’t have a single shed on my farm, because I do not have the money to rebuild,” Louis told IPS.

Ahead of the annual hurricane season, the country’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit referenced the dual challenge facing small island states in the Caribbean.

“Hurricane Season is here amid a COVID-19 pandemic. To be safe during the season, I suggest you all prepare a COVI-CANE supply kit,” he stated in a social media post.

Residents were urged to follow guidelines that included having a traditional hurricane preparedness bag with adequate supplies to last at least three days, along with a COVID-19 kit with gloves, masks, hand sanitizers and rubbing alcohol.

The messaging, tailored for a time when the country might have to deal with two major crises, mirrored the instructions and operations of the Office of Disaster Preparedness.

“Where we were at this time last year to where we are now, we have a lot more information and we have made some advancements, so all notices and public announcements have included current COVID-19 messaging, reminding Dominicans that even as we prepare for hurricanes, remember that COVID-19 is still around and we must take all necessary precautions to protect lives,” Programme Officer at the Office of Disaster Management Mandela Christian told IPS.

The pandemic has spared no sector and the disaster preparedness official said the department is using technology to continue its work.

“A lot of the old preparations were done face to face including meetings and training to prepare for upcoming hurricane seasons. With this pandemic, one of the key management protocols is physical distancing. It changes things, for example, if we get impacted, we would have had to convene the National Emergency Operation Centre and bring people into a central location. This has to be reformed and restructured. As far as possible we have transitioned to virtual sessions,” Christian said.

“There are some limitations for example in rescue operations. You can’t remotely rescue somebody and there will be times to deliver relief supplies to the population. What we have been doing is reviewing protocols, informed by health systems, not just nationally, but also regionally and internationally,” the disaster official told IPS.

Dominica, like countries the world over, has been promoting vaccination as one of the best safeguards against the pandemic and to avoid a mass outbreak of COVID-19 in the event of a natural disaster.

The country has seen a recent surge in positive cases and in August, recorded its first COVID-19 related death.

“I am confident. For myself, for my family and everyone that vaccination works. I am not saying that it is 100 percent effective, or bulletproof, but it works in reducing transmission and the severe disease form of COVID-19. I am appealing to those still waiting and deciding – it’s time to get vaxxed,” National Epidemiologist Dr Shalauddin Ahmed told an August 24 press briefing.

It is a plea that health officials throughout the hemisphere continue to make.

Director of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), Dominican Dr Carissa Etienne has expressed concern over the slow vaccine uptake in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Just about 18 percent of people in the hemisphere have been fully vaccinated against COVID 19.

“What we are seeing now is persons totally relaxing on the public health measures and a high level of vaccine hesitancy,” Etienne  told a press briefing. “Even when vaccines are available, persons are not coming forward. We are seeing vaccine hesitancy in healthcare workers.”

“I don’t know the sources of the information that is triggering this level of vaccine hesitancy. I can tell you that they are not scientifically proven, and I want to appeal to you to listen to the sources where you have truthful, scientifically based information and evidence,” she added.

PAHO’s suggested measures for a ‘COVICANE’ season include evacuation and emergency shelter plans that factor in physical distancing and rigorous sanitization – along with mass vaccination campaigns.

Dominica’s curfew has been lifted and farmers like Whitnel Louis can sell their produce for longer hours – as long as they adhere to the strict public health and safety protocols.

But with an average of 80 cases a day over the past week and continued appeals for thousands more people to embrace vaccination, COVID-19 concerns are far from over.

“There is no good sign in sight,” said Mr Louis, as he reflected on his series of losses to natural disasters and the present challenges in a pandemic that has left no sector untouched.

“I’m hoping the Lord spares us this hurricane season.”

 

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By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Aug 31 2021 (IPS)

Do you know if midwife services are available at the Saupia Health Centre in Paunangisu, on the island of Efate in Vanuatu, in the Pacific Islands? I do, and I’ve never been within 1,000 kilometres of the facility — I found the information online within seconds thanks to a data platform called Tupaia.

Developed in 2017 as a system for tracking items on the extremely lengthy supply chains of health materials in the Pacific Islands, today Tupaia is aggregating data about health, education and the environment from a number of unrelated sources, analysing it, and presenting it in an interactive online map.

“You can look at the national level and see how many people have accessed health services within a specified time frame or you can zoom into a province or a district and see more specifically details about where there are maybe gaps to people accessing the health system, or where people are doing really well, and that allows a country to set up different responses”

“If you want to see how many people a country has had in respect to a Covid outbreak, or a dengue outbreak, that sort of information will be displayed in Tupaia,” says Erin Nunan, director of Beyond Essential Services, the company that created the platform.

“You can look at the national level and see how many people have accessed health services within a specified time frame or you can zoom into a province or a district and see more specifically details about where there are maybe gaps to people accessing the health system, or where people are doing really well, and that allows a country to set up different responses,” adds Nunan in a video interview ahead of the Small Islands States (SIDS) Solutions Forum taking place online and in person 30-31 August 2021.

Tupaia is one of the innovations being featured at the event, which aims to kickstart SIDS’ efforts to reach the global development goals by 2030. Organised by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in partnership with the UN International Telecommunications Union and co-hosted by the Government of Fiji, the forum gathers representatives of the 38 SIDS worldwide, UN agencies and civil society.

The economies of many SIDS have been battered by COVID-19 restrictions, which have smothered the key tourist trade. Many were also already struggling with monumental challenges like rising sea levels and growing numbers of extreme weather events as a result of climate change. The forum, which ends Tuesday, is meant to “incubate, promote and scale-up home-grown and imported solutions to accelerate the achievement of the agriculture, food and nutrition related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” says the website.

The makers of Tupaia believe that the platform has moved countries closer to the targets for SDG3 (health and well-being), SDG6 (water and sanitation for all) and SDG 17 (strengthen implementation and partnership for sustainable development). Their company, Beyond Essential Systems, has also released Tamanu, a medical records system.

Today, Tupaia operates in six Pacific Island countries, and beyond, collecting data in real time from nearly 800 facilities using a variety of sources including its own app, MediTrak, and creating visualizations that health systems, workers and even patients can use for decision-making. In Fiji, it is helping to track Covid-19 swab samples.

Open source and free, thanks to funding from the Government of Australia and others, Tupaia’s data collection, management, and visualization tools can also be used to collect environmental data to manage resources such as water stations and for disaster response. In Papua New Guinea, the platform is used to track the incidence of malaria.

“It might be a nurse in a clinic, it might be an administrator in a single province, those are the people that we really consider to be the customers of the software, the actual end users,” says Michael Nunan, CEO of Beyond Essential Systems, in another video interview for the SIDS Solutions Forum.

For example, in 2018 an order for cold chain medicines for the island of Kiribati was delayed. As a result, a busy facility ran out of several items, including insulin and Hepatitis B vaccine. But the facility nurse was able to log on to Tupaia and instantly see which nearby facilities had a functioning fridge and stock of the needed medicines. She contacted one of them and was able to organise a quick delivery of stock so there was little interruption to patient care.

Named after a Polynesian navigator who joined the crew of Captain James Cook in 1769, Tupaia takes data that is often siloed in specialised software designed for specific purposes and integrates it in dashboards that are customisable for a variety of user groups.

Tupaia’s data sources, supply chain software for vaccines and other medicines, health information software, and data collection applications, deliver information about health infrastructure including cold-chain, critical medical equipment, staff, and service provision.

“Whatever it is you want to do with data, whether it’s data collection, data aggregation, analysis, visualization, or dissemination, we want you to be able to do that with Tupaia,” says Michael Nunan in the video interview.

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Aug 31 2021 (IPS)

With elections right round the corner in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently said that a re-elected Liberal government would spend billions in the coming years to hire family doctors. This report says, Justin Trudeau promised that the Liberals would spend $3 billion over four years starting in 2022 to hire 7500 family doctors and nurses as well as tax and student loan incentives for health professionals who set up shop in rural or remote communities and also pledges an extra $6 billion to wrestle with wait lists.

Dr. Shafi Bhuiyan

A 2019 report states that there were 91,375 physicians in Canada, representing 241 physicians per 100,000 population. According to the Canadian Medical Association, around five million Canadians don’t have a primary care physician, or family health care team.

Canada’s overburdened healthcare system is yet to tap into its advantage all the untapped talent and skills available to it, as seen during the significant role Internationally Trained Medical Doctors, ITMDs played in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting the vaccination clinics, working as contact tracing managers and mental health advisors.

Canada is losing out by not involving and including ITMDs, says Dr. Shafi Bhuiyan, a health professional and Chair of ITMDs Canada Network (iCAN). “Over 4.5 million Canadians are not able to find their family physician, as a result the wait time to see a doctor has been increasing continuously, which is also resulting in social peace and justice disruption.”

Canada currently has more than 13,000 ITMDs, and the visa process, Bhuiyan says, has “a very thorough and rigorous screening program by the Canadian CIC, where medical experience plays a key role along with other requirements to enter the country, but once they come to Canada, due to multiple reasons, they lose out on securing a residency position”.

Saida Azam

Saida Azam is one such ITMD who moved to Canada almost three years ago with her husband for better career opportunities. Azam, a medical professional with experience working in India and Oman, says, “I have performed a number of surgeries and deliveries, I worked as a family physician for three years, but right now I am waiting to be able to do that here.

“The knowledge that I have in this field is really good, the only difference in relation to the Canadian context, with medicine, is that when I move from one territory or one country to another, things will be different, from the patients to the region and other such things. That doesn’t mean that I have less knowledge or the local doctors here have more. What would help people like me is, if there were a training program in place for Internationally Trained Medical Doctors to integrate us better into the Canadian healthcare system.

“Canada is home now, I wouldn’t say I am completely disappointed, but I hope that I will be able to share my expertise and pursue my career, ” says Azam.

One of the key challenges for ITMDs remains cost associated with licensing examinations, the CaRMS application process is often a barrier for newcomers. According to this report, 47 % of foreign-educated health professionals are either unemployed or employed in non-health related positions that require only a high school diploma.

The on-going Pandemic has been a time of crisis all over the world, and with shortage and with the under-utilization of health-care workers in Canada, the country is only creating a strain on its health care system by not including and leveraging on its ITMDs.

The 2020 OECD Policy Responses of Coronavirus (COVID19) report says, “by encouraging the creation of new jobs in the health sector globally, the report suggested a unique opportunity both to respond to the growing global demand for health workers and to address the projected shortages. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many OECD countries have recognised migrant health workers as key assets and introduced policies to help their arrival and the recognition of their qualifications.”

In 2020, Canada, where annual immigration amounts to around 300,000 new immigrants, announced its 2021-2023 Immigration Levels Plan, saying it would target the highest level of immigration in its history by welcoming 401,000 immigrants in 2021, 411,000 immigrants in 2022, 421,000 immigrants in 2023.

“The only time Canada welcomed over 400,000 immigrants in a year was in 1913, when it admitted 401,000 newcomers. It has never come close to this figure again,” this report states.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) says developing countries host more than one-third of international migrants in the world and most immigrants are migrant workers and are employed either formally or more often informally in their countries of destination.

This report by the ILO states the importance of immigrants and how “immigration plays a key role in the destination countries development and public policies can play an important role in enhancing its contribution to the development of destination countries. Excluding immigration from development strategies can represent missed opportunities for host countries.”

“The Canadian government is missing out by not including a pool of talent it has to its access, if these hurdles can be removed, and instead replaced by a more simpler and transparent process towards obtaining approved medical licence, it would be a win-win situation for all,” says Bhuiyan.

If Canada is able to overcome these systemic barriers and inequity towards its ITMDs, with a pool of talented immigrants, it has the potential that will not only impact the countries economic prosperity, immigrants alter the country’s income distribution and influence investment priorities and as taxpayers contribute to the public budget and benefit from public services.

The author is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi. She hosts a weekly online show called The Sania Farooqui Show where Muslim women from around the world are invited to share their views. You can follow her on Twitter here.

Credit: Frank Dejongh / UNICEF

By Annalena Oppel
HELSINKI, Aug 31 2021 (IPS)

How can we ensure a resilient and inclusive recovery from COVID-19? How can we hold on to the target of eradicating poverty and hunger by 2030, with the pandemic still ongoing?

I recently had the opportunity to participate as a lead discussant at the UN DESA expert group meeting with many distinguished speakers sharing their insights on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2030 despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of sessions discussed future pathways for social protection. Discussants evaluated a set of policies that are gaining significant interest as a tool for recovery but also in building more resilient, adaptive, and inclusive social protection systems going forward.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increased number of social protection measures to help people cope with economic challenges. A total of 4,648 policy measures that addressed the economic and health challenges of the pandemic were identified worldwide.

Most of them fall into the field of social assistance (for example cash or in-kind transfers), with 955 policies receiving fiscal support from a government (UNESCWA, 2021).

However, many of these programmes are temporary, and it is not yet evident whether they will remain an integral part of social protection in the long run.

Annalena Oppel

Many of the challenges that have gained greater visibility during the pandemic have existed long before the pandemic started. As evidenced by the Sustainable Development Goals, the international community and policy makers were still in the pursuit of ending poverty and hunger, and establishing good health and well-being.

Yet as many as 115 million people might be pushed into extreme poverty by the end of 2021 — a major setback in the progress already made. Hence, challenges that continued to exist before can worsen if they remain unaddressed.

Social protection can constitute a tool to address multiple challenges, including poverty, food insecurity or inequalities.

A major concern or point of debate is fiscal space or fiscal prioritization. In other words, to what extent can countries afford and sustain social protection programmes.

This is an ongoing debate, with parties providing various funding solutions, but the most sustainable is often considered to be that of domestic revenues. An initiative in 2015 showed that countries do not need to invest an unreasonable amount in order to implement Social Protection Floors – a framework that captures basic provisions in the area of income and health. In 103 countries, the required resources would amount to less than 5 percent of GDP.

There are then only 12 countries which would require international assistance to implement Social Protection Floors as required resources exceed 10 percent of GDP.

Already in 2012 – the same year that ILO proposed the Social Protection Floor (Recommendation 202), two UN experts proposed a Global Fund for Social Protection (GFSP) for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to ensure financial feasibility and enable countries to put ambitious social protection schemes into place.

In light of COVID-19, there is a growing momentum to revisit this proposal (for example, see here and here).

Another important aspect that was discussed during the expert forum is the availability of data. Data enables evidence-based policy making or to assess the design and feasibility of social policies.

Regarding fiscal capacity, the Government Revenue Dataset (with a newly released version in August 2021) can provide a valuable source on domestic revenues. It covers tax and revenue collection in 196 countries since the 1980s and can provide some insights into how previous crises may have affected fiscal space.

Band-aids or pathways to sustainable development?

Overall, the GFSP and current discussions provide examples of opportunities to propel social protection forward in order to address poverty and inequality.

Ongoing debates, political will, fiscal space, and prioritization will show whether we are on a pathway towards more adaptive, inclusive, and sustained social protection systems, or whether the current expansion of programmes remain short-lived initiatives.

As we move forward, research can support this process by providing timely insights and advice on the effectiveness of current programmes in addressing persistent challenges, e.g., poverty, hunger, and inequality.

At UNU-WIDER, the GRD project, as part of the Domestic Revenue Mobilization programme, is working on different aspects of revenue collection, which can support developing countries to make social protection a lasting solution towards sustainable development.

It is also important to gain a better understanding of the current political climate to see whether public support is aligned with a global mission of building back better, within which social protection can play a crucial role.

*The UN University- World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) provides economic analysis and policy advice with the aim of promoting sustainable and equitable development for all. The institute began operations over 30 years ago in Helsinki, Finland, as the first research centre of the United Nations University.

The writer is a Research Associate at UNU-WIDER* working on the World Income Inequality Database and the Government Revenue Dataset. She obtained her PhD from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or the United Nations University, nor the programme/project donors.

 

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