Africa

Many South Africans are outraged about the test in Afrikaans, because of its links to apartheid.

South African national Dinesh Joseph says he was forced to take a test in Afrikaans to board a Ryanair flight.

Delegates at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) summit debate the role of youth in narrowing the digital divide. Credit: ITU

By Juliet Morrison
Toronto, Jun 9 2022 (IPS)

“50 percent of the present, but 100 percent of the future,” was the refrain at the first-ever Generation Connect Global Youth Summit.

Held in Kigali, Rwanda, from June 2-4, the youth summit saw community activists, entrepreneurs, engineers, policymakers, and students from over 115 countries discuss the digital divide and youth engagement. Another 4,800 participants joined virtually from research centers, universities, and schools.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN agency on information and communication technologies, organized the summit. It served as a build-up to the ITU’s World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC), held two days after the conference, from June 6–16.

Participants at the summit emphasized the need for young people to be considered equal partners in decision-making, especially around problems concerning their future.

“We know that young people are going to be the most affected by problems like the climate crisis. That means that we must have a stake in what is decided and what is negotiated in these spaces,” climate activist Xiye Bastida said.

The discussion was also centered around bridging the digital divide. Like the later WTDC conference, the summit’s theme was “connecting the unconnected to achieve sustainable development.”

During the opening ceremony, Prime Minister of Rwanda Édouard Ngirente remarked upon the benefits of digital technologies being omnipresent in daily life. But the Prime Minister also noted that many were missing out on the advantages of technological innovation.

Globally more than 2.2 billion children and young people lack an internet connection at home. Of those, 350 million young people have never accessed the internet.

“The digital economy is growing rapidly, with almost every aspect of our lives moving online and massive economic opportunities being created. Opportunities ahead are indeed promising, but in order to fully tap into these opportunities, we must ensure that nobody is left behind,” he said.

Ngirente mentioned that the lack of uniform access to technology posed challenges for economic development and youth employment rates.

“The extent to which our economies can grow will depend on the ability to ensure equitable access to technology and upskilling and reskilling our populations, especially the young,” he said.

Currently, access to internet connectivity is inequitable. Accessibility depends on factors like income, demographic, and gender.

For example, only 15 percent of women and girls in the least developed countries use the internet, noted Heidi Schroderus-Fox, the UN Acting High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States.

“There’s a huge gap,” Schroderus-Fox said. “We need to make sure that the opportunities of the internet and the digital world are provided equally for everyone, women, girls, men, boys, everyone.”

Critical policy matters related to internet connectivity and technologies, such as cyber-safety, the future of work, and entrepreneurship, were also explored in summit sessions. The need for youth engagement to weigh in on these policy matters remained an essential thread throughout the event.

Twenty-six-year-old Emma Theofelus, the Namibian Deputy Minister of Information and Communication Technology, talked about how young people are best positioned to discuss regulations around online work and content creation due to their experience navigating online spaces.

“Policy should take center stage. But, beyond that, it is a policy that should be co-created by young people. We understand best the complexities and challenges of online platforms and the harms that can come with it,” she said.

The emphasis on youth engagement was central to the summit’s outcome document—the Generation Connect’s Call to Action. “Our Digital Future,” lists recommendations to foster better youth participation around decisions in governments, the UN, and the ITU for “a more inclusive, sustainable digital future.”

Situating the Call to Action, the Rwandan Minister of Youth Rosemary Mbabazi emphasized the document as a pivotal step for more digital inclusivity.

“The Call for Action embodies the call to the young minds, the global partners, the private sector, and the commitment to provide internet connectivity and make it accessible, available, and affordable through creating and enabling an environment as well as providing the prerequisite infrastructure for the young people to invent and innovate,” she said.

Although the Call to Action had been in the works since 2020 and had already undergone an extensive online consultation process, it was finalized during the summit. There, attendees reviewed the document and gave suggestions for improvement.

One suggestion was to refer to sexual minorities alongside gender minorities. Another was to swap the phrase “digital rights” for “human rights” to leverage the issue’s urgency for policymakers and use established language for international documents.

The Generation Connect Call to Action was to be presented to leaders at the WTDC.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Hindou Ibrahim, SDG Advocate and Indigenous Rights Activist. Credit: Africa Renewal, United Nations

By Devi Palanivelu
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2022 (IPS)

Thirty years ago, the Earth Summit, which took place in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, paved the way for the establishment of three major conventions on the environment – specifically on biodiversity, climate change and desertification.

As countries meet on all three conventions in 2022, SDG Advocate and indigenous rights activist Hindou Ibrahim talks about the indispensable role that indigenous communities around the world play in protecting life on our planet – its biodiversity, land and climate.

“As indigenous peoples, we say, we are not different than the rest of the species, we are only one species of nature, so we cannot harm the rest of them. So that’s why living in harmony, it’s connecting each other, respecting each other and trying to keep the balance without harming the rest of the species – species of nature,” says Ms. Ibrahim.

She is no stranger to international climate change, human rights and sustainability processes. In 1999, at just 15 years of age, she founded the Association of Indigenous Peul Women and Peoples of Chad, a community-based organization that promotes the rights of girls and women in Chad’s Mbororo community which she belongs to.

In the years following, she became the co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, and today she is one of the 17 eminent global leaders known as the SDG Advocates.

For centuries, indigenous communities like hers have protected our environment. They care for more than 20 per cent of our planet’s land and 80 percent of its biodiversity.

Devi Palanivelu

“For centuries and centuries, my great grandparents have always used the ecosystem. They know the ecosystem, they move from one place to another one to find work in pastures, but in this way of living, it is giving back to nature; it is helping nature to get regenerated in a natural way”.

“So, for all the indigenous peoples around the world, this is the deeper connection we have. And that’s also why we are protecting 80 per cent of the world’s biodiversity. Because for us, it is not a passion, or a job. It is our way of living. And that’s what we have done for all generations.”

Their way of life – rich with traditional knowledge and respect for nature – and their ability to manage natural resources sustainably supports the lives and livelihoods of 2.5 billion people or about 1 in 3 people in the world.

“We are very happy that now – from the private sector to the public, to UN agencies, all people are saying how important are indigenous peoples and their role to protect the biodiversity but to fight climate change, they are finally recognizing that indigenous peoples are a solution, we are not only a victim of the climate change,” says Ms. Ibrahim.

Indigenous communities have historically been at the margins of formal global negotiations on climate change. They were finally given a voice alongside governments in 2015 when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform.

“When we talk about nature, when we talk about the climate, most of the time people talk a lot, but they do not act, maybe it is difficult for them to find the way to act. This is where the role of indigenous peoples [should be] in the centre of each discussion because we are not only talking, we are acting. We want the people who are talking to follow us and act. If we [have] acted all those years, we won’t be in this pathway of climate impact every single day.”

At the 2021 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, governments pledged $12 billion to stop and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. $1.7 billion was earmarked to support indigenous communities’ efforts to conserve tropical forests.

However, the world’s nearly 480 million indigenous peoples living in at least 90 countries need support to protect a diversity of ecosystems – from the glaciers in the Arctic to the steppes in Central Asia and the savannahs in Africa – that are threatened by climate change.

“Imagine when you come in country like mine, in Chad. In the north, you have the desert 100 per cent; you come a little bit down, you have the Sahara regions; you go a little bit further you have the savannah. And after the savannah, you have the tropical forests. What is happening with climate change?”

“ [With] desertification advanced, the people from the desert moved to the Sahel, the people from the Sahel moved to the savannahs, those from savannah moved to tropical forests. And that’s also how the peoples are using the ecosystem that exists. So, you cannot choose to protect only the tropical forests. When you place money, you must think about all the rest of the ecosystem that interconnects – from the oceans to the glaciers,” stresses Ms. Ibrahim.

In recent years, the world’s leading scientists have recognized indigenous communities as “some of the best environment stewards” stressing their central role in safeguarding life on our planet.

Their traditional knowledge – which is closely linked to their lands, territories and resources – can help end food insecurity, combat climate change and reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss.

“Around the world, we are facing a lot of crises – from the environment to health and to wars. But when we think about the impact of all that, it is based on human survival and planet survival, so we must all act to fight climate change, and

Source Africa Renewal, United Nations

The interview was first published here as part of the climate thought leader series.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Through collaboration we can build on the foundations of our knowledge to bring forward innovative ways to address health challenges that benefit all of humanity. Credit: WHO

By Quarraisha Abdool Karim
DURBAN, South Africa, Jun 8 2022 (IPS)

Africa is plagued by many epidemics — from tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS to malaria and wild polio — but the continent has also worked for decades to fight these threats. The key to beating these deadly diseases is turning inward to existing expertise and finding locally driven solutions.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has placed public health back in the global spotlight and has also served as a reminder that science is not undertaken in an ivory tower. Science shapes humanity because it takes place among us. COVID-19 has also showcased that no epidemic takes place in isolation. Through collaboration we can build on the foundations of our knowledge to bring forward innovative ways to address health challenges that benefit all of humanity.

This is not a new idea. In fact, it is something that we became all too familiar with during the AIDS pandemic.

Africa has the scientific leadership and intellectual capital to develop new technologies and interventions. This is something we have shown time and time again. If there is a problem, then local research is surely the best path toward finding a solution

Despair, pain, and loss were rampant during the 1980s and early 1990s, at the beginning of South Africa’s HIV epidemic. Every weekend, white funeral tents in rural KwaZulu-Natal seemed to mushroom up and multiply, signifying the growing toll the virus was taking on the country.

Witnessing this helped catalyse me to undertake one of the earliest population-based studies that looked closely at this emerging health issue in South Africa. HIV prevalence was low at the time, with less than 1% of the population having been infected.

But lurking within the data was a shocking revelation: young women (15-24 years old) were six times more likely to be infected compared to their male counterparts.

We knew something had to be done. That meant understanding what had led to this striking disparity in risk. So, we began speaking to women from all parts of society to try and get a better sense of what they were experiencing.

Here’s what we learned: power dynamics of relationships and sex were disrupting disease prevention. Women didn’t have the ability to protect themselves because of the limited options available to them — options like condoms, that placed the responsibility of reducing risk in the hands of men.

Meanwhile, cases continued to surge in South Africa at an alarming rate, doubling annually in the general population.

Existing methods to prevent HIV infection weren’t going to cut it. Approaches designed in the global North were never going to be able to fully account for the needs of women in Africa. That’s why new solutions had to be brought forward instead.

One way that we sought to empower women was through a gel that contained Tenofovir, an antiretroviral (ARV) medication. This innovative approach, shown in the CAPRISA 004 trial, enabled HIV-negative women to protect themselves from the virus. CAPRISA’s research on PrEP was recently recognised by the VinFuture Prize as a lifesaving innovation from the global South.

Today, Tenofovir is taken daily as a pill for HIV prevention, a solution also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). It has been adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a key prevention option for both women and men.

And it hasn’t stopped there — a range of new anti-retroviral drugs and long-acting formulations, delivered as injections and implants, are currently being evaluated to expand prevention choices.

AIDS is no longer a fatal condition, instead it is chronic yet manageable. But we still see too many deaths and new HIV infections, particularly in marginalized populations. Two-thirds of all people living with HIV/AIDS are in sub–Saharan Africa and the region accounts for 60% of all new infections.

As we turn our focus towards other pandemics, such as COVID-19, we cannot afford to lose the gains made in HIV. It is a trap we fell into before — when early HIV work overshadowed TB efforts — and it is not one we can afford to be caught in again.

Even now, COVID-19 continues to draw on lessons from the decades of work that have been poured into our HIV/AIDS response. This includes leveraging existing testing tools to detect COVID, utilising clinical trial infrastructure to expedite vaccine development, calling on community engagement processes to educate the public, and relying on scientific expertise to guide governments in their response.

The AIDS pandemic has taught us that scientists, policy-makers, and civil societies cannot work in a vacuum. There must be a unity of purpose that galvanises the steadfast support of global leaders in governments and funding agencies across the world.

Africa has the scientific leadership and intellectual capital to develop new technologies and interventions. This is something we have shown time and time again. If there is a problem, then local research is surely the best path toward finding a solution.

Pursuing this path of innovation requires funding that will support and promote the growth and expertise of Africa’s scientists. Our inter-dependency and shared vulnerability underscores the importance of collaboration and resource-sharing both globally and regionally that must be used for the benefit of humanity. There is no time for complacency. We must ensure that solutions are tailored by local research to best benefit those in need.

Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim, PhD is an infectious diseases epidemiologist and Associate Scientific Director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA). She was a 2021 Laureate of the VinFuture Prize, in the ‘Innovators from developing countries’ category.

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Jun 8 2022 (IPS)

It has been over 100 days since Russia first invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, turning the country into a slaughterhouse. The United Nations (UN) in this report says that, as of 1 June, 2022, more than 6.9 million refugees have left Ukraine and 2.1 million have returned, while eight million people are displaced inside Ukraine itself. War in Ukraine has caused the fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II.

In a statement, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the conflict which began in February has since then taken thousands of lives, caused untold destruction, displaced millions of people, resulted in unacceptable violation of human rights and is inflaming a three-dimensional global – food, energy and finance – that is pummeling the most vulnerable people, countries and economies.

Maria Dmytriyeva

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who are choosing to stay and fight back are demonstrating unity and resilience and say they are ready for the resistance. Maria Dmytriyeva, a long-time women’s rights activist and national gender expert with Democracy Development Center, an NGO based out of Ukraine is one amongst them who chose to stay back, has been working on the ground aiding civilians since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

In an interview given to IPS News Dmytriyeva says that areas that were affected directly by the hostilities that have been liberated by the Ukrainian army are now rapidly rebuilding. “Local people and visiting builders are cleaning up the street, debris, mines and restoring infrastructure, where there are no Russians, life goes on.”

“We do have major problems with fuel as Russians deliberately destroyed our petroleum hosting areas, so transportation is a problem. We don’t have food scarcity; the problem is how to deliver it into areas controlled by Russians or heavily bombarded by Russians,” Dmytriyeva said.

Human rights organizations have been watching the impact of the war in Ukraine on women and children. The Rapid Gender Analysis, put together by UN Women and CARE International says that 90% of those fleeing Ukraine and 60% of those displaced are women – both which comes with increased safety risks, gender-based violence, poor hygiene, lack of basic supplies and safety concerns in shelters or across borders.

“I have visited three border checkpoints, in Romania, Moldova and Slovakia, we don’t enough information about what to do once anyone crosses the borders – how to manage your passport, how to find the right people, which shelter to go to and how to stay safe,” says Ella Lamakh, a social policy expert and Head of Democracy Development Center in Ukraine who too stayed back in Ukraine to help women and children impacted by the war.

Ella Lamakh

“There are a lot of women and children crossing these borders, and when I asked them where they are going, their reply is – ‘oh we are just going across the border, we will ask some volunteer, or we will figure it out’. While I am thankful for all the help these women are getting, there are a lot of posters on the walls across the border or at these checkpoints, but nobody has the time or mind to stop and read any of them. What would be useful for these women is if they are given information, handed over to them in the form of posters or booklets,” Lamakh says.

As of 3 June, the Human Rights Monitoring Team of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had received reports of 124 alleged acts of conflict-related sexual violence across Ukraine.

“Allegations of sexual violence by Russian troops in Ukraine are mounting. A national hotline on domestic violence, human trafficking and gender-based discrimination has been set up, and has received multiple shocking reports ranging from gang rape, to coercion, where loved ones are forced to watch an act of sexual violence committed against a partner of a child” stated this report.

The United Nations has warned that the war in Ukraine has also helped stoke a global food crisis, and “what could follow would be malnutrition, mass hunger and famine, in a crisis that could last for years, urging Russia to release Ukrainian grain exports.”

Before the war began in February, Ukraine exported 4.5m tonnes of agricultural produce per month through its ports – 12% of the planet’s wheat, 15% of its corn and half of its sunflower oil. As Russian warships cut off the ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and others, the supply has been gravely impacted.

More than a month into Russia’s invasion, the Ukrainian military fared better than expected, where Russia has numerical superiority with 900,000 active personnel in its armed forces, and 2 million in reserve, Ukraine has 196,000 and 900,000 reservists, stated this report. Ukraine managed to bring the asymmetric power of pervasive inexpensive commercial technology, especially citizen-empowering social networks and crowdsourcing. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy through his various appeals managed to tap into its western allies demanding weapons and sanctions to fight back.

Several countries have reached out to help Ukraine by sending military aid to Kyiv. The United States will be sending Ukraine advanced rocket systems and munitions as part of a new $700 million package of military equipment, “promised only after direct assurance by Ukraine’s leader that they would not use it against targets within Russian territory.”

Britain is to supply long-range rocket artillery to Ukraine, UK will be sending a handful of tracked M270 multiple launch rocket systems. Spain is to supply Ukraine with anti-aircraft missiles and Leopard battle tanks in a step up of its military support.

In its latest attempt to punish Russia, the European Union, along with countries such as the UK and the US have introduced a series of measures to weaken key areas of the Russian economy, such as its energy and financial sectors. The EU has imposed a ban on all imports of oil from Russia that are brought in by sea. The US is banning all Russian oil and gas imports, and the UK will phase out Russian oil imports by the end of 2022. Germany has put on hold the final approval of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. These western sanctions on Russia are like none the world has seen.

Only time will tell what Russia’s overestimation of its own capabilities and underestimation of the capacity of Ukraine to fight back will result in, but history is a proof that ‘wars of aggression’ have not always ended well for aggressor states, and as seen in Ukraine, it’s already united western allies, rallied Ukrainians against common enemy and united them with a sense of purpose and collective sacrifice, keeping them going stronger for the last 100 days. Ukraine is showing the world how to fight back.

Sania Farooqui is a New Delhi based journalist, filmmaker and host of The Sania Farooqui Show where she regularly speaks to women who have made significant contributions to bring about socio economic changes globally. She writes and reports regularly for IPS news wire.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Not only is Ferdinand Omanyala Africa’s fastest man, he is also the inspiration for a new wave sprinters in Kenya.

By Mark Lowcock
LONDON, Jun 8 2022 (IPS)

This is what happens when you starve. With no food, the body’s metabolism slows down to preserve energy for vital organs. Hungry and weak, people often become fatigued, irritable and confused.

The immune system loses strength. As they starve, people—especially children—are likelier to fall sick or die from diseases they may have otherwise resisted. Cholera, respiratory infections, malaria, dengue, and diphtheria kill more people in famines than starvation itself.

For the lucky (or unlucky?) ones who escape disease but still have nothing to eat, their organs will begin to wither and then fail. Eventually, the body starts to devour its own muscles, including the heart.

Many will experience hallucinations and convulsions before, finally, the heart stops. It is a terrible, agonizing, and humiliating death. It is nearly as terrible to watch – as I know from my own experience over nearly 40 years in Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere.

When I was young, many people—including researchers and scientists—thought famine was a permanent feature of the human experience. Famines are shocking, scarring events, the most extreme form of humanitarian disaster. They involve large-scale loss of life with a slow but visible prelude, a tipping point beyond which prevention is no longer possible, and then an explosion.

As an undergraduate, I went to Nobel-prize-winner Amartya Sen’s lectures on poverty and famine, and I wrote a masters’ dissertation on the use of food grain prices as an early warning of food crises.

For many of my friends and me, the Ethiopia famine of 1984 was a lightbulb moment. In previous eras, famine was a feature of the fragility of agriculture against the ever-increasing pressure of higher populations.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, in which he predicted that by the 1980s, four billion people would have been killed by famines. His opening sentences set the scene: “The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines in which hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.”

Ehrlich predicted that England would cease to exist by 2000 because the country would be consumed by hunger. Historical experience gave these dark warnings a degree of credence. Researchers think that famines may have taken more lives than war over the course of human history.

More than 120 million people are believed to have died in famines in the hundred years after 1870, a larger number even than those killed in that period’s uniquely bloody wars.

The doom mongers, though, were wrong. In fact, in the past 50 years, famine has become much rarer and much less lethal. So far this century, there has just been one real famine. That was in Somalia in 2011, when a quarter of a million people died.

Ehrlich and his ilk were wrong because they failed to see how the world was changing. Three main factors have combined to produce unprecedented advances in reducing large-scale loss of life through starvation over the last 50 years.

First was an exponential increase in agricultural output and productivity. Improvements in plant breeding, protection, storage, irrigation, harvesting, transporting, and marketing have contributed to a 300 percent increase in food grain production, using only 12 percent more agricultural land around the world.

The global spread in the use of nitrogen-based artificial fertiliser and the development through the Green Revolution of improved seed varieties for major crops explain most of the improvements.

Second, a spectacular reduction in global poverty has increased people’s ability to afford food. In the 60 years after 1960, the extreme poverty rate globally dropped from more than 50 percent of the total human population to less than 10 percent. In particular, the 25 years from 1990 to 2015 saw a reduction from 35 percent to less than 10 percent, even while the global population continued to grow dramatically.

So not only was there a lot more food available, but most people now had enough income to be able to buy it. Food security has been enhanced by the entitlements created by social safety net schemes established in dozens of the poorest countries over the past 20 years, including ones I have seen myself in countries including Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malawi, Pakistan, Uganda, Yemen, and Zambia.

Third, when famine does threaten, the response is now much more effective than it was 30 years ago. My first job was on the famine in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s. Then, the overwhelming focus of the relief effort was on food, water, and shelter. Now we understand that in a famine, starvation is not the main cause of death.

The real killers are those diseases that a healthy person can generally fight off but a starving one cannot. As a result, today’s famine responses include comprehensive immunisation programmes, primary healthcare, and nutrition interventions as well as food and clean water.

The result of all this scientific, technological, and economic progress is that modern-day famines are manmade – the result either of deliberate attempts to stave a population, or of wilful negligence.

That was true to a degree in the past: Mao Zedong’s Great Famine in China in the 1960s, generally believed to be the worst famine in history in terms of the total number of lives lost, arose largely from the authorities’ policy choices.

And the famine that some people claim took three million lives in North Korea in the mid-1990s—a repetition of which remains a risk, as I saw during a visit to Pyongyang and the south of the country in 2018—could have been forestalled had the regime been willing to accept the international help on offer.

Despite all the progress famine is now back. But so far in the 21st century, ignorant policy choices have not been what generated famine threats. Deliberate, concerted attempts to prevent aid reaching the starving, as part of the military or political strategy of states or armed groups, are now the only explanation for the failure to have eradicated famine from the human experience. In every single case of famine or near famine in the last ten years – including those I dealt with at the UN from 2017-21 – the fine line between, on the one hand, acute suffering and chronic hunger and, on the other, mass death through starvation and related causes, was policed by the men with guns and bombs. Pressure on them has meant the worst has been avoided.

The world now faces its most serious food crisis for many decades. It arises from the cumulative effects of a decade of spreading conflict, the repeated undermining by climate change of livelihoods based on increasingly volatile rainfall, and the economic crunch on the most vulnerable countries from the COVID pandemic.

And then on top of all that has come Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, disrupting global grain markets and taking the food exports of Russia and Ukraine – enough food for 400 million people – largely off the table this year.

The new global food crisis affects us all. Everyone going to a supermarket for weekly shopping is aware of prices rising. For most of us, the impact is manageable. Buying food is not the biggest call on our incomes. We can tighten our belts and adjust.

But for about 10% of the world’s population, mostly in the poorer countries of the Middle East (like Syria and Yemen) and sub-Saharan Africa, it’s different. Tens of millions of them are falling back into extreme poverty, where they barely have enough calories and nutrients to nourish their bodies properly and their children suffer stunting and life-long cognitive impairments.

However, it is the roughly 1% of the world’s population who faced acute hunger even before the Ukraine crisis, those who cannot survive at all without help from aid agencies, who will be the victims if today’s food crisis is allowed to deteriorate into multiple simultaneous famines.

They are mostly concentrated in relatively few countries, including in particular Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen and parts of the Sahel. Millions may starve to death. That is what policy makers should be really focused on.

So, what can be done? Simultaneous actions are needed in four areas.

First, a real effort needs to be made to get more grain onto the market in the very short term. There is plenty of food to feed everyone this year. Diplomatic efforts, which have become increasingly visible over the last month, to find a way to access the grain silos in the Black Sea ports and export the 20 million tonnes of wheat they contain should be intensified.

They may not work; if they don’t, those holding large stocks of grain for strategic reserves should be prevailed upon to release a modest proportion of them. That would ease the market and take the edge off price increases.

Second, because it seems unlikely that the underlying causes of this year’s crisis will be solved quickly, reducing medium term reliance on Russia and Ukraine is now a practical necessity.

Farmers around the world need greater help and encouragement to plant more wheat, maize, sunflower and other food crops, as well as better access to inputs, above all seeds and fertiliser. Diversification in the fertiliser market, in which Russia and its allies are dominant, is a particular priority.

Third, many low-income countries which do not produce enough food for their populations but do have the administrative capacity and institutions to run effective safety net programmes are constrained from importing food by fiscal problems and indebtedness.

Macroeconomic management matters, but some accommodation from the shareholders of international financial institutions led by the World Bank and IMF is necessary in the current circumstances.

And fourth, and most important of all in the next weeks and months, a substantial increase in emergency humanitarian aid to populations in clear and present danger of mass starvation is essential.

The Biden administration and US Congress package agreed a package of $5 billion for this in May. That shows the way. Others, especially the UK and the EU, should follow suit. The G7 summit in Bavaria this month would be a good time to do that.

Footnote: This article is adapted in part from Relief Chief: A Manifesto for Saving Lives in Dire Times, out now from the Center for Global Development.(CGD).

Mark Lowcock was appointed UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator in May 2017 and served in that role until June 2021. He was previously Permanent Secretary of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. As one of the most distinguished international public servants, Lowcock has spent more than 35 years leading and managing responses to humanitarian crises across the globe.

He has authored opinion articles for The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, Le Monde, CNN, and others. He was twice awarded medals by Queen Elizabeth II for services to international development and public service, including Knighthood in 2017. He is a Visiting Professor of Practice in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics, and a Distinguished Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development.

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, standing with Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, at the 75th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland in May 2022. Sasakawa was honored at the Global Health Leaders Awards.

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Jun 7 2022 (IPS)

When Yohei Sasakawa visited a remote village in South America, he found 23 people living there. It was no ordinary village because all the residents had been stigmatized and shunned by society because they were affected by leprosy.

Yet this is not a unique story, says Sasakawa, the WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination. This is the story of persons affected by leprosy, where there are more than 100 laws globally that discriminate based on the disease.

In his journey to at least 122 countries in Africa and South America, he found that the story of persons affected by leprosy is characterized by stigma, discrimination, and ostracization.

Against this backdrop, Sasakawa had a message of hope and encouragement during the sixth ‘Don’t Forget Leprosy’ campaign webinar series titled, Elimination of Leprosy: Initiatives in the Americas and Africa.

Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination during one of his many visits to communities where people affected by leprosy live. Credit: Joyce Chimbi

He said that eliminating leprosy was “in its last mile. A sustained push is much needed in spite of and because of ongoing challenges including COVID-19 pandemic as well as the myths and misconceptions around leprosy”.

“India has the highest number of leprosy cases, but they have also targeted to eliminate leprosy by 2030. This is an ambitious goal. I am encouraged by ongoing efforts, commitment, and passion to eliminate leprosy.”

With the universality of leprosy’s challenges in mind, under the Sasakawa Leprosy Initiative, the WHO Goodwill Ambassador, the Nippon Foundation, and Sasakawa Health Foundation work in a coordinated approach to achieve a leprosy free world.

Dr Carissa Etienne, Director, Pan American Health Organization, regional office for the Americas of WHO, stressed the need to sustain the fight to achieve zero leprosy cases by 2030. She called for a doubling of efforts. The Global Leprosy Strategy 2021 to 2030 is both a health and economic strategy because it aims at promoting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The webinar provided a platform for health officials, NGOs, and representatives of organizations of persons affected by leprosy. Participants heard how countries in the Americas and Africa are stepping up prevention initiatives in keeping with WHO guidelines to accelerate the annual decline in new leprosy cases.

Experts stressed that innovative approaches are much needed to sustain leprosy case detection, contact tracing, and treatment, especially against the backdrop of COVID-19, which continues to shift attention from the disease.

Speakers stressed that a WHO-recommended regimen of timely screening and treating eligible contacts with single-dose rifampicin was vital. When the single dose is given as post-exposure prophylaxis to contacts of newly diagnosed patients, it results in a 50 to 60 % reduction in the chances of developing leprosy over the next two years.

WHO recorded a total of 202,185 new leprosy cases globally in 2019. India, Indonesia, and Brazil register the highest number of new leprosy cases – more than 10,000 cases each.

Worldwide, 13 other countries reported 1,000 to 10,000 cases each. The Americas recorded 29,936 new cases, with Africa following closely with 20,205.

The webinar was held in line with the Global Leprosy Strategy for 2021-2030, on track with the new road map on neglected tropical diseases. To eliminate leprosy, new cases must reduce to about 63,000 globally.

Dr Carmelita Ribeiro Filha Coriolano from the Brazilian Ministry of Health spoke extensively about the spread of new cases in the Americas in 2020. department of chronic conditions and Sexually Transmitted Infections health surveillance secretariat

Coriolano provided a detailed sociodemographic profile of new leprosy disease cases and physical disability indicators picked up by the Department of Chronic Conditions and Sexually Transmitted Infections Health Surveillance Secretariat. She noted that Brazil recorded the highest new cases of leprosy in 2021.

In Africa, too, the cases remain a cause of concern.

“In 2015, leprosy was eliminated as a public health concern in Angola. But the disease is still very much a priority because the most recent data shows 797 new cases were detected,” says Dr Ernesto Afonso, National Leprosy Program Coordinator, Ministry of Health in Angola.

Dr Joseph Ngozi Chukwu, medical advisor, German Leprosy Relief Association in Nigeria, updated the epidemiological situation, leprosy case management, achievements, and lessons learned.

“Over 30,000 persons are estimated to be living with leprosy-related disabilities across Nigeria,” he said.

Lucrecia Vasquez Acevedo, President, Felehansen-National Federation of the Associations of the Persons Affected by Leprosy in Colombia, said the stigma continued.

“We cannot forget about leprosy because of the myths, misconceptions, and lies created around leprosy. It is important to teach other people the truth about leprosy. During the pandemic, we learned how to use technology to teach and overcome the challenges of access to information presented by the pandemic,” says Acevedo, suggesting that the same should apply to leprosy.

Professor Takahiro Nanri, Executive Director, Sasakawa Health Foundation, facilitated a question-and-answer session, providing an opportunity to respond to questions from the participants. During the session, issues of myths, misconceptions, and stigma arose as they remained an obstacle to eliminating leprosy.

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