Africa

Brentford midfielder Josh Dasilva, who was born in England, says he is open to playing for Angola if an opportunity comes around.

A UN meeting on the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. Credit: UN Photo/Kim Haughton

By Cora Weiss
NEW YORK, Feb 12 2020 (IPS)

75 years ago following the end of the Second World War and the first time any state has dropped an atomic bomb, not once, but twice, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 51 countries from all continents met to create the United Nations.

Its primary purpose, as stated in the Charter says: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…” Of course, it is also dedicated to human rights for all and equal rights for men and women and nations large and small and more…

But peace, prevention of war, is its ”most profound purpose,” Ambassador William vanden Heuvel said when he suggested we organize this conference on “War No More”.

It is to this purpose, to save humanity from war, that the Committee on Teaching About the UN with the co- sponsorship of the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the UN, has dedicated its conference which will convene on February 28, 2020. https://teachun.org/conference/2020-un/.

We honor the UN on its 75th anniversary and call for the full implementation of this purpose.

Cora Weiss

It is often said that as long as there are people there will be war. But it hasn’t always been that way and certainly war is not inevitable.

Indeed, not only has the UN called for saving succeeding generations, but the Charter also calls for “…the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources…” (Art 26); the First Committee is dedicated to Disarmament.

It goes on, “… (Art 2.3) All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means…” and (2.4) states, “All Members shall refrain from the threat or use of force…”

Some say that as long as there is a right of self-defense (Art 51) there shall be war. We will see what the lawyers and experts including Liechtenstein’s Ambassador Christian Wenaweser and James Ranney, international law professor, say in their conversation.

Have you heard of Bertha von Suttner, the young poor Princess who answered an ad from Alfred Nobel for a housekeeper. In short, she left his employ having persuaded him to turn the profits from his invention of dynamite to support a Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1905 Bertha became a Nobel Peace Laureate for writing the best-selling, “Lay Down Your Arms”, (Die Waffen Neider) probably the only novel written about disarmament, and for organizing the world’s first International Peace Congress.

It resulted in banning hot air balloons, mustard gas and dumdum bullets. Did she anticipate climate change?

Getting rid of war has been a hope for generations. Eleanor Roosevelt said that that, “the idea of war is obsolete”. Abolishing war has been a serious multinational effort.

A Hibakusha, one of the survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, speaks at a special event commemorating Disarmament Week in October 2011. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

Following the first World War and the League of Nations, the Kellogg Briand Pact, 1928, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/kellogg was signed by all “major states” including the foreign ministers of the US and France, who agreed not to… “resort to war to resolve disputes or conflicts of whatever nature.’’

The Pact could not prevent or stop wars of “self-defense” and had no enforcement capacity.

Lord Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, who said that nuclear weapons threaten the “continued existence of mankind”, also called for the end of war. War, in the age of atomic bombs, “is the most serious problem that has ever confronted the human race,” said Lord Russell. Thus, the Russell Einstein Manifesto of 1955 was signed by the world’s leading scientists including Marie Joliot-Curie.

www.theguardian.com › world › jul › russell-einstein-peace-manifesto…

In 1999, on the centennial of the world’s first Peace Congress, the Hague Appeal for Peace convened 10,000 people from over 100 countries in The Hague and called for Peace is a Human Right and it is Time to Abolish War. Archbishop Desmond Tutu told us, “If the world could get rid of Apartheid, why not war?” www.haguepeace.org

UN Secretary–General Kofi Annan addressed the HAP conference, urging everyone, “Don’t despair, don’t deny and by all means don’t ever give up”.

The Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century with 50 Articles going from a Culture of War to a Culture of Peace, became a UN document, A/54/98.

It created the Global Campaign for Peace Education which states, “A Culture of Peace will be achieved when citizens of the world understand global problems, have the skills to resolve conflicts, and struggle for justice non-violently.

“War No More” takes its name from the drawing, Nie Wieder Krieg, (War Never Again) 1924, by the German artist and peace activist, Kathe Kollwitz. Her son was killed in the first World War. https://archive.org/details/warnomorefinalitalics2

The apocalyptic twins, nuclear weapons and the climate crisis, are the existential threats destined, if not reversed, to cause the war no one survives. As long as there is armed violence between states, or groups, no amount of good governance, democracy, human rights or development can be sustained.

Positive Peace, says the Institute for Economics and Peace, not only looks at the risks of violence but at what builds peaceful and resilient societies.

We urge everyone to imagine what the Future they want looks like. What can you take away from this conference to work on to make your future happen? What can we ask of the Member States to make a World Without War?.

Footnote:

The “War No More” conference will be welcomed by the Chair of CTAUN Anne-Marie Carlson; the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea to the UN, Ambassador Cho Hyun; and Under-Secretary-General, Virginia Gamba, Representative of the Secretary-General for Children in Armed Conflict.

The conference is organized around 6 conversations: It starts with Nobel Peace laureate and Liberian activist and educator, Leymah Gbowee in conversation with author, activist Gloria Steinem facilitated by ERA Coalition CEO, Carol Jenkins. They will discuss the role of civil society and women in the prevention of war and in peace processes.

New technologies follow: Hypersonics, Artificial Intelligence, Drones, cyber warfare with Michael Klare, Senior Fellow, Arms Control Association, in conversation with Eleonore Pauwels, Senior Fellow, Global Center on Cooperative Security, Adaora Udoji, award winning journalist, expert in emerging technologies, and facilitator Mark Wood, graduate student Columbia University.

———

Tony Jenkins, Global Campaign for Peace Education, (GCPE.org) and Eunhee Jung, Founder and President. Intercultural Virtual Exchange of Classroom Activities, (IVECA)will be in conversation with Ramu Damodaran, UN Academic Impact (UNAI) serving as facilitator.

Women Peace and Security and Youth Peace and Security will be discussed by Mavic Cabrera Balleza, founder and chief of Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, Mallika Iyer and Dinah Lakehal and Heela Yoon with George Lopez, Notre Dame Univ professor, as facilitator.

UN Under-Secretary-General Izumi Nakamitso will discuss disarmament with Randy Rydell, former UN Senior Political Affairs Officer with George Lopez also facilitating. Camryn Bruno will perform a Spoken Word on small arms. World Peace through Force of law not Law of Force, will be discussed by Liechtenstein’s UN Ambassador Christian Wenaweser and James T Ranney. Their facilitator will be Jutta F. Bertram-Nothnagel.

*During the Vietnam War, Cora Weiss was co-chair of the Committee of Liaison which hand-carried mail to American pilots –POW’s– in North Vietnam and brought mail back to their families every month for 3 years. And she, with a few others, brought three former POW’s home as a peace gesture before the war ended.

The post War No More appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Cora Weiss* is an Honorary Patron of the Committee on Teaching About the UN (CTAUN), the UN Representative of the International Peace Bureau and President of the Hague Appeal for Peace. She was among the few women drafters of Security Council Resoluion 1325, Women, Peace and Security, and among the founders of the Global Campaign for Peace Education (GCPE).

The post War No More appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Women and girls put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work every single day in India. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Diya Dutta
DELHI, India, Feb 12 2020 (IPS)

Women’s unpaid care work is the hidden engine that keeps the wheels of our economies, businesses, and societies moving, yet it is not accounted for.

Inequality is writ large in our economies. Not only are the top one percent capturing greater wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the population, there appears to be significant gender disparity within billionaire wealth as well. Globally, roughly one out of ten billionaires today are women—and the same was true in 2010.

The situation is particularly telling in India—currently there is only one female billionaire for every 20—down from one in 12 in 2018.

In its annual Global Gender Gap Report (2020), India continues to be ranked poorly in terms of improving the gender gap. At a composite rank of 112 out of 153 countries, it has moved down four places from its previous rank of 108, and the economic gap has gotten significantly wider since 2006.

Women and girls put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work every single day in India—a contribution of at least 10 percent of GDP

The country fared poorly on three of the four measured segments: economic participation (149); health and survival (150); and educational attainment (112); while ranking fairly high for political empowerment (18). The composite rank puts India behind Bangladesh (50), Nepal (101), and Sri Lanka (102).

 

Women and work

The transfer of women’s work from household to commercial employment is among the most notable features of economic development. Yet, India is marked by abysmally low and falling female labour force participation.

The government of India’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) published by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) estimated female labour force participation at 23.3 percent in 2017-18. This means that three out of four women aged 15 years and above are not working nor seeking work.

This is worrisome, especially since unemployment rates are highest amongst women with advanced levels of education (24.6 percent) as compared to those with tertiary levels of education (16.2 percent) and basic level of education (2.9 percent).

A common explanation provided for this is that more numbers of girls are enrolled in education. However, PLFS data indicates a fall in workforce participation for older women—those between 30-50 years of age where two out of three women were reported as not working.

It is most pronounced in women aged between 35-39 years: 33.5 percent of them were reported as not working in 2017-18 as compared to nine percent in 2011-12. That is one in three women not working, versus the one in 11, six years prior.

There appears to be a mismatch between demand and supply—there is a lack of adequate decent jobs for the educated youth in this country especially women. Social norms also restrict the kind of jobs that women and young girls can take up, leaving them with few opportunities for paid employment.

Most women in the prime working age category (between 30-50 years) reported ‘attending to domestic duties only’, which refers to running of the household and taking care of children and/or elderly relatives.

Unpaid care work is the hidden engine that keeps the wheels of our economies, businesses, and societies moving.

Women and girls put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work every single day in India—a contribution of at least 10 percent of GDP. When calculated in actual terms this means women’s unpaid care work contributes INR 19 lakh crore of the GDP, which is twenty times the entire education budget of India in 2019, three times the revenue of Reliance Industries, and four times that of ONGC as per 2018-19 data.

 

But paid care isn’t working in women’s favour either

Women consistently earn less than men—the estimated earned income for women in India is just 20 percent of male income; and they are concentrated in the lowest paid and least secure forms of work. For example, women make up two-thirds of the paid care workforce.

Jobs such as nursery workers, domestic workers, and care assistants are often very poorly paid, provide scant benefits, impose irregular hours, and can take a physical and emotional toll.

It is a vicious cycle where the high burden of unpaid care work inhibits women and girls from pursuing education and engaging in paid employment. With little or no education and low skills, women are left to collect the scraps of low paid, insecure, unskilled jobs. This explains why they account for only 30 percent of professional and technical workers, and 20 percent of leadership roles in the country.

Oxfam’s latest report, Time to Care, shows that the pressure on carers, both unpaid and paid, is set to grow in the coming decade as the global population grows and ages. Climate change could worsen the looming global care crisis—by 2025, up to 2.4 billion people will live in areas without enough water, and women and girls will have to walk even longer distances to fetch it. Eighty percent of indigenous people live in Asia and the Pacific, a region vulnerable to climate change.

 

Governments created the inequality crisis—they must act now to end it

Globally, governments are massively under-taxing the wealthiest individuals and corporations and failing to collect revenues that could help lift the responsibility of care from women and tackle poverty and inequality. At the same time, governments are underfunding vital public services and infrastructure that could help reduce women and girls’ workload.

For example, investments in water and sanitation, electricity, childcare, healthcare could free up women’s time and improve their quality of life.

The issue of unpaid care work is central to women’s economic empowerment, and not accounting for it in statistical systems and economic growth measurements is likely to impact policy interventions aimed at improving access to opportunities for women.

The four R’s of unpaid care work—recognise, reduce, redistribute, and represent—should be the framework guiding policies and programmes which seek to address the skewed distribution of unpaid activities among men and women.

The state plays an important role in reducing the skewed distribution of unpaid work between men and women, and the issue should be viewed as a shared responsibility between households and governments.

 

Know more

• To know more about the state of inequality in India read the India supplement of Time to Care.
• Read this IDR article that uncovers trends, identifies data gaps, and makes actionable recommendations for policy design through a meta-analysis of India’s female labour participation.
• Read this feminist comic which explains the mental load that women carry on a regular basis.

 

Do more

• Use the ‘Care Calculator’ to estimate the financial worth of the care work you do.

 

Diya Dutta is Research Manager at Oxfam India. She has been leading the inequality research work at Oxfam India for the past three years. She has contributed to Oxfam’s India Inequality Report 2019 and Oxfam India Inequality Report, On Women’s Backs. She has been working on the issue of unpaid care work for over a decade and has been a researcher for more than 15 years. Diya has a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University and an MPhil from Oxford University.

 

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

The post Are Economic Systems Sexist? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The UK's annual £4.7m contribution will be withheld until financial procedures are improved.

Nigerian Monica Dongban-Mensem campaigns for road safety after her son died in a hit-and-run accident.

The BBC's Mohanad Hashim has gained rare access to a refugee camp in western Sudan.

By Nina Suomalainen
GENEVA, Feb 11 2020 (IPS)

There has been a disturbing increase in violence perpetrated against children in conflicts worldwide, coupled with almost total impunity.

A crucial step towards stemming this deplorable trend is to strengthen accountability for child rights violations and to deter would-be perpetrators. This requires specialized child rights investigations, established and backed by the international community.

Child victims and survivors of human rights violations have unique needs and face different challenges than adult populations in achieving access to justice.

At Justice Rapid Response – a facility of more than 700 experts ready to be deployed to investigate international crimes – we have been building up our roster to include child rights experts to help bolster the ability of international justice mechanisms to address these needs.

A recent report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, focusing on child rights violations, highlights the need for investigations that deliver accountability.

The report documents the devastating consequences of the conflict in Syria on children. They have been killed and maimed, and subjected to myriad violations by warring parties since 2011. Rape and sexual violence have been used repeatedly against men, women, boys and girls as a tool to punish, humiliate and instill fear.

While there have been significant advances in the development of international legal instruments and standards to uphold child rights, much still needs to be done to ensure these obligations are enforced.

But as the conflict rages on in Syria, recommendations from the Commission of Inquiry risk falling on deaf ears.

Nina Suomalainen

The Commission, in its report, urges all parties in the conflict to respect the special protection to which children are entitled under international humanitarian and human rights law, and to ensure accountability for violations that have already occurred.

It also makes a series of recommendations on increasing the support for children who have suffered abuses.

In the context of Syria, there are limited avenues for bringing justice to the conflict’s victims. And even when those do exist, there are several barriers blocking children from participating safely in justice processes.

Child rights expertise was, however, central to the Commission of Inquiry’s documentation, analysis and reporting of crimes against children and its subsequent child-specific recommendations. This is helping to lay the foundations for evidence that can be used by future international justice mechanisms.

The findings of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria reveal part of a global crisis of child rights violations in conflict. According to a Save the Children report released last year, more than 420 million children worldwide – nearly one in five children – were living in ‘conflict zones’ or ‘conflict-affected areas’ in 2017, an increase of nearly 30 million children over the previous year.

The number of children living in conflict-affected areas has increased drastically since the end of the Cold War, states the report, due to increased incidence of armed violence in more urban settings, as well as numerous long-running conflicts.

Children are known to suffer disproportionately from the effects of conflict, yet there are still massive gaps in the availability of child-specific data to paint a clearer picture of their plight.

Fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry – established by the Human Rights Council or General Assembly to investigate human rights violations – rarely include a specific focus on child rights violations in their mandate or team composition.

As a result, grave violations involving children can occur untracked. This makes it challenging to respond in time to protect child victims and survivors, and harder still to hold perpetrators to account.

Exposing patterns of crimes involving children paves the way to accountability. However, the process of documenting and investigating these crimes presents unique challenges to avoid inflicting further trauma or harm to children.

Frequently deep-rooted gender biases against women and girls can also further impede the effectiveness and sensitivity of investigative and judicial authorities.

The limited international capacity for investigating conflict-related violence must not continue to block justice for child victims. Impunity for crimes involving children is a grim prospect for humanity. It not only has a destructive effect on individual child victims, but it also fuels grievances that inflame and perpetuate conflicts across generations.

In Syria, the situation is so dire that humanitarian organizations have trouble keeping count of the exact number of child casualties amid the chaos. While it is too late to bring back lives and years of childhoods lost, together we still have a chance to salve a collective and festering wound by bringing some amount of justice for child survivors.

The international community must not miss this opportunity.

The post Investigation a Crucial Tool for Preventing Child Rights Violations in Armed Conflicts appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nina Suomalainen is Executive Director, Justice Rapid Response

The post Investigation a Crucial Tool for Preventing Child Rights Violations in Armed Conflicts appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Ladysmith Black Mambazo founder, who helped introduce Zulu music to the world, has died aged 78.

IITA Director General Nteranya Sanginga told IPS that Africa should build capacity to research and innovative its food systems to beat hunger and poverty. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 11 2020 (IPS)

Africa needs to invest in agriculture by putting more resources into innovative research and development that can boost food and nutritional security, according to leading scientist, Nteranya Sanginga.

Sanginga, Director-General of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), based in Ibadan, Nigeria, says Africa comes short on leveraging its huge resources when it comes to transforming agriculture for economic growth.  

“Investment in research in Africa is poor, less than one percent and when it comes to agriculture, it is worse because the leaders do not understand the importance of research,” Sanginga told IPS.

“Today if you kill IITA in Africa then you have killed agriculture research in Africa.”

Sanginga, a national of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has specialised in agronomy and soil microbiology. He has been involved in agricultural research and development, particularly in applied microbial ecology, plant nutrition and integrated natural resources management in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Africa, Sanginga says, should build capacity for research in order to innovative its food systems to beat hunger and poverty.

Young people hold the key to the continent’s food future, says Sanginga who launched a Youth agriprenuers programme at IITA to help young African create profitable agribusinesses.

Farmers weeding a wheat field outside Accra, Ghana. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Speaking at a meeting of the African Leaders for Nutrition in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last week, African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina said Africa should invest in skills development for the youth so the continent’s entrepreneurs can leverage emerging technologies to transform Africa’s food system to generate new jobs.

• Africa’s population is projected to double to 2.5 billion people in 40 years putting pressure on governments to deliver more food and jobs in addition to better livelihoods.
• The good news is that Africa’s economic growth is rising and expected to register 3.9 percent in 2020 and 4.1 percent in 2021, according to the AfDB’s 2020 African Economic outlook report.
• According to the World Bank, African agriculture and agribusiness could be worth $1 trillion in the next ten years. But Africa must overcome several barriers to agricultural development from poor infrastructure, limited credit access for farmers and low use of improved inputs and mechanisation.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has estimated that Africa needs to invest up to $400 billion in agriculture over the next ten years to meet its food needs.

To date, 44 African countries have signed the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Compact to spend 10 percent of their budgets on agriculture and increase their productivity by at least 6 percent. This follows the Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security made by African Heads of State in 2003.

Under Sanginga’s leadership, the IITA won the 2018 Africa Food Prize for its cutting-edge agricultural research and innovations that have boosted nutrition and incomes. Since its founding 50 years ago, IITA has developed new, improved and high-yielding varieties of cassava, cowpea, maize, banana, soybean and yam. Overall, for Africans, the value of the crops developed by IITA and its partners now stands at over $17 billion, underscoring its contribution to Africa’s agriculture and economy.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): How is IITA leveraging its successful research to push for greater investment in agriculture research?

Nteranya Sanginga (NS): Our legacy is starting a programme to change the mindset of the youth in agriculture. Unfortunately [with] our governments that is where you have to go and change mindsets completely. Most probably 90 percent of our leaders consider agriculture as a social activity basically for them its [seen as a] pain, penury. They proclaim that agriculture is a priority in resolving our problems but we are not investing in it. We need that mindset completely changed.

Akinwumi Adesina, a colleague we worked together with at IITA, and I had a discussion that one day we would change the way agriculture has gone. This happened when I became DG and when he became Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria. We managed to change the way agriculture was perceived in Nigeria but he never succeeded in getting the government to invest more that 3 percent in agriculture in Nigeria. So agriculture is to be considered an investment and two countries in Africa have made that happen: Ethiopia – which is investing about 20 percent of its budget in agriculture – and Rwanda. 

We must invest in agriculture in the same way we invest in mining. For example, Nigeria imports $5 billion worth of food per year, buying food from outside such as rice from Thailand and wheat from the U.S. You know the significance of this is that we are exporting jobs instead of creating jobs here, we are creating jobs in Thailand for rice [producers/farmers] and the U.S. for wheat [producers/farmers]. We have proven that we can produce rice and wheat. Again and again that mind-set of the leaders who basically do not understand that all the other continents developed through agriculture. We have to make the case for agriculture.

IPS: IITA has places a strong emphasis on approaching agriculture as a business. What are the policies needed that will create an opening for this?

NS: I think we are not going to create a miracle in Africa. We have to follow what other people have done. Adesina started smart subsidies in Nigeria and instead of giving money like you would do in the U.S. or Europe, he started buying equipment and fertilisers and other inputs for the farmers, that is working.

I do not see another way of helping agriculture in Africa if we do not facilitate and subsidise. Mind you, in the U.S. or Europe if you stop subsidies all those farmers will leave agriculture so you need to ensure that you find some way of helping our farmers invest in agriculture. It is leadership and policies that are needed.  Why would we allow someone to steal $10 billion from a country and not make an effort to invest this in something useful?

Besides, most banks in Africa consider agriculture risky but some have started initiatives to help farmers. In Kenya, Equity Bank has understood that agriculture is a business. In Nigeria, there has been a programme to put some money and de-risk lending for agriculture. In fact Equity Bank in Kenya lent to farmers and who had less than one percent default in their repayment rate. So really agriculture is a good business but still banks are reluctant.

Related Articles

• Does Africa’s Food Future Really Lie with Young Farmers?
• Using Climate-Smart Solutions to Promote Peace in South Sudan

The post Q&A: Africa Must Innovate its Food Systems in Order to Beat Hunger and Poverty appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Leading scientist and director general of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), NTERANYA SANGINGA, speaks to IPS correspondent Busani Bafana about how the institute is leveraging its successful research to push for greater investment in agricultural research.

The post Q&A: Africa Must Innovate its Food Systems in Order to Beat Hunger and Poverty appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The former strongman is accused of genocide and war crimes over killings in Darfur.

Cameroon winger Paul-Georges Ntep ends his contract with German Bundesliga side Wolfsburg by mutual consent.

About 30,000 people packed a stadium for the state funeral of the country's longest-serving president.

By Claire Lim and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 11 2020 (IPS)

Many medicines and medical tests are unaffordable to most of humanity owing to the ability of typically transnational pharmaceutical giants to abuse their monopoly powers, enforced by intellectual property laws, to set prices to maximize profits over the long-term.

Most basic research is funded by government grants, and in recent years, by philanthropic initiatives. When a profitable opportunity presents itself, venture capitalists fund ‘last leg’ efforts to patent an innovation and ‘take it to market’, as the patent holder ‘takes all’.

Claire Lim

Patents, a form of intellectual property rights (IPRs), are believed by many to be necessary to incentivise innovation, and to recover research and development costs, by creating a temporary legal monopoly.

IPRs are monopoly rights
After securing patents, patent holders typically take additional measures to deter and undermine potential competitors, and to consolidate and extend their monopoly position for as long as possible by any means available. Private companies have then used their monopolies to charge exorbitant prices.

In 2015, Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to Daraprim—a drug used by cancer and HIV patients to fight deadly parasitic infections—raising its price 50-fold from USD13.50 to USD750! The ‘price gouging’ company was controlled by Martin Shkreli, dubbed ‘Pharma Bro’ by the US media and once deemed ‘America’s most hated man’.

Private companies eager to extend their monopolies try to ‘evergreen’ them, by registering ‘follow-on’ patents involving minor variations closely linked to the original invention. By ‘evergreening’, the patents system has been used by companies to create long term monopolies.

Others engage in ‘patent trolling’, obtaining many patents to profit from litigation or licensing, without inventing anything or making products of their own. Trolling enables patent owners to blackmail those in need to their patents, sometimes by creating ‘patent thickets’—webs of overlapping IPRs—and related bottlenecks, limiting utilization of patented knowledge and effectively hindering further innovation.

Before the US withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in January 2017, TPP provisions would have extended IP protections to cover ‘biologics’, i.e., naturally occurring substances, such as insulin for diabetes patients.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

These onerous TPP provisions have been suspended in the successor Comprehensive and Progressive TPP (CPTPP) following US withdrawal, but can easily be reinstated, e.g., to induce the US to rejoin the TPP.

Tripping up public health
Through various means, US-style IPR regimes have spread worldwide since adoption of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

Under TRIPS, all WTO members have to provide a minimum level of IPR protection which includes, among other things, patent protection for a minimum of 20 years, including for imported IPRs registered in other countries.

TRIPS also stipulates conditions for using the ‘compulsory licence’ concession allowing governments to license the use of a patented invention to a third party or government agency without the consent of the patent-holder.

There is moot evidence that TRIPS benefits developing countries by attracting foreign investment, promoting technological transfer and increasing innovation. Instead, TRIPS has imposed substantial, avoidable costs on developing countries.

Where developing countries have made use of TRIPS concessions, they have faced international pressure from pharmaceutical giants and their governments to limit, if not eliminate the scope of these exceptions

Malaysia is the first country to use ‘compulsory licencing’ under TRIPS to produce sofosbuvir for Hepatitis C treatment. The drug, from patent owner Gilead, costs almost RM300,000 (USD68,000) for the full course, while generic substitutes cost just over RM1000. US ‘big pharma’ has applied pressure on Malaysia to stop using its ‘compulsory licence’.

IP for intellectual piracy
Developing countries are generally unable to check the monopolistic practices of transnational pharmaceutical conglomerates due to underdeveloped antitrust regimes, weak law enforcement capacities and their influential partners.

Such companies may ‘re-package’ medicinal products and processes from developing countries’ ‘traditional knowledge systems’ to secure patents on them, including naturally occurring substances known as ‘biologics’.

Turmeric is widely used in India for medicine, food and dye among other things. In 1995, the US granted the University of Mississippi Medical Center a patent for the use and administration of turmeric powder to heal wounds, granting it an exclusive right to sell and distribute turmeric.

The Indian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) objected, arguing that turmeric had been so used in India for centuries, providing historical references in Sanskrit, Urdu, Hindi and other languages. The US patent was eventually revoked because it lacked the ‘novelty’ element, but it required herculean efforts.

Alternatives
Developing countries are now no longer able to require technology transfer, further limiting their ability to develop their own technological capacities and capabilities. Hence, many developing country governments are told they have no other way to industrialize except by generously inducing transnational companies to locate parts of their ‘value-adding’ activities in their economies.

Innovation, Intellectual Property and Development, by Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker and Arjun Jayadev, suggests alternatives to incentivise innovation, especially relevant for developed economies. These include: centralized direct R&D financing; decentralized funding through tax breaks for research spending; using prizes to recognize and reward innovative research; and establishing open source platforms to promote free knowledge flows.

Without the strong private monopolies enabled by current IP rules, the currently unaffordable prices of medicines and other products can be significantly reduced while developing countries will have much better prospects for developing internationally competitive industrial capacities and technological capabilities.

Claire Lim is a lawyer who used to practice in England. Jomo Kwame Sundaram was a university professor and senior UN official. Both work with the Khazanah Research Institute, whose views are not expressed here.

The post Intellectual Property Raises Costs of Living appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The East African state's longest-serving president, who died aged 95, leaves a mixed legacy.

By Pedro Conceição
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 2020 (IPS)

Inequalities. The evidence is everywhere. And although they may be hard to measure and summarize, there is a sense in many countries that many are approaching a precipice beyond which it will be difficult to recover.

Not all inequalities are harmful, but those that are perceived as being unfair tend to be. Under the shadow of sweeping technological change and the climate crisis, those inequalities hurt almost everyone.

Pedro Conceição

They weaken social cohesion and people’s trust in government, institutions, and each other. They are wasteful, preventing people from reaching their full potential at work and in civic life, hurting economies and societies. And when taken to the extreme, people can take to the streets.

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) 2019 Human Development Report, opens a new window to understand and address inequalities in human development. “Beyond income, beyond averages, beyond today: Inequalities in human development in the 21st Century” asks what forms of inequality matter and what causes them.

It recognizes that pernicious inequalities are generally better thought of as a symptom of broader problems in a society and economy. It also asks what policies can tackle the underlying drivers—policies that can simultaneously help nations to grow their economies sustainably and equitably expand human development.

There is far too much in the report to cover in this short post so let me focus on two important points.

1. A NEW GENERATION OF INEQUALITIES IS EMERGING, EVEN IF MANY 20TH CENTURY INEQUALITIES ARE DECLINING

It is common knowledge that some basic inequalities are slowly narrowing in many countries, even if much remains to be done. The indicators of basic achievements in the figure below all show narrowing inequalities between countries in different human development groups, though the gaps are still wide.

In life expectancy at birth (driven mainly by survival to age 5), in access to primary education, and in access to mobile phones, countries with lower human development are catching up with more developed countries.

In contrast, and much less well known, inequalities in more advanced areas are widening. Countries with higher human development have longer life expectancy at older ages, higher tertiary education enrollment and more access to broadband—and they are increasing their lead.

Figure 1. Slow convergence in basic, rapid divergence in enhanced capabilities

Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

These new inequalities may be one reason behind an apparent increase in concern about inequality: These are the inequalities that will shape people’s ability to seize the opportunities of the 21st century and function in a knowledge economy, and to meet challenges, including the ability to cope with climate change.

2. INEQUALITIES IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT CAN ACCUMULATE THROUGH LIFE, FREQUENTLY HEIGHTENED BY POWER IMBALANCES

Understanding inequality—even income inequality—means looking well beyond income. Different inequalities interact, while their size and impact shifts over a person’s lifetime.

Inequalities start before birth, and the gaps can increase over a person’s life if they are not counteracted, creating self-perpetuating engines of privilege and disadvantage. This can happen in many ways, and the report looks in detail at one set of linkages: the nexus between health, education, and parental income.

Parental incomes and circumstances affect the health, education, and incomes of children. Health gradients—disparities in health across socioeconomic groups—can start before birth and may accumulate.

When that happens, inequalities compound and spiral: Children born to low-income families are more prone to poor health and lower education. Those with lower education are less likely to earn as much as others, while children in poorer health are more likely to miss school.

And when children grow up, they typically partner with someone having similar socioeconomic status, reinforcing the inequalities across generations. It is a cycle that is often difficult to break, not least because of the way inequalities in income and political power co-evolve.

When the wealthy shape policies that favor themselves and their children—as they often do—that drives further accumulation of income and opportunity at the top. Unsurprising, then, that mobility tends to be lower in more unequal societies.

A NEW TAKE ON THE GREAT GATSBY CURVE

The positive correlation between higher income inequality and lower intergenerational mobility in income is well known. This relation, known as the Great Gatsby Curve, also holds true using a measure of inequality in human development instead of income inequality alone (see Figure 2).

The greater the inequality in human development, the lower the intergenerational mobility in income—and vice versa. These two factors go hand in hand, but that does not imply that one causes the other.

In fact, it is more likely that both are driven by underlying economic and social factors, so understanding and tackling these drivers could both promote mobility and redress inequality.

Figure 2. Intergenerational mobility in income is lower in countries with more inequality in human development

Note: Inequality in human development is measured as the percentage loss in Human Development Index value due to inequality in three components: income, education, and health. The higher the intergenerational income elasticity, the stronger the association between parents’ income and their children’s income, reflecting lower intergenerational mobility.

Source: Human Development Report Office using data from GDIM (2018), adapted from Corak 2013.

WHERE TO NEXT?

The report has a template framing a rich set of policy suggestions for governments wishing to act, but stresses that there is no silver bullet. Tackling inequalities requires addressing the drivers, not just the symptoms. Two arguments are central to this.

The first is that inequalities do not always damage a society, nor do they always reflect an unfair world. Some inequality is productive in rewarding talent and effort, and some is probably inevitable, such as the inequalities from diffusing a new technology.

Preventing anyone from access to a new health treatment until everyone can have it makes no sense. But some inequalities—especially in opportunities—are unjust and damaging. They have deep roots, and we focus on these inequalities and their drivers.

The second argument is that the sorts of inequalities that concern us most are not so much a cause of unfairness as a consequence of an unfairness deeply embedded in our economies, societies, and politics. That sense of unfairness can lead to alienation and become a wellspring of anger.

The human development lens—placing people at the heart—is central to approaching inequalities and asking why they matter, how they manifest themselves and how best to tackle them.

This is a conversation that every society must have for itself, and that should begin today. The 2019 Human Development Report is a contribution to inform and to help shape those conversations.

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Water falls through these enormous pipes to activate the 20 turbines of the Itaipu hydroelectric plant on the Brazilian-Paraguayan border. Caring for the water in the reservoir, as well as reducing the pollution in the rivers that run into it, help make this binational plant one of the most efficient in the world, with a projected useful life of 184 years. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
FOZ DO IGUAÇU, Brail, Feb 10 2020 (IPS)

Fomenting biogas production among agricultural producers may seem at first glance to be a distraction from the purpose of Itaipu, the giant hydroelectric power plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay, but in fact it is part of their energy business strategy.

“Protecting the quality of the water (in the reservoir) is essential for power generation,” explained General Luiz Felipe Carbonell, coordination director in Itaipu Binacional, the company that manages the power plant on the Paraná River, which forms part of the border between the two countries.

The efficiency of Itaipu, the second largest hydroelectric power plant in the world in terms of potential, has been proven by the record amount of electricity generated: 103 million megawatts/hour in 2016, which exceeds the best performance of China’s Three Gorges power plant, whose installed capacity is 60.7 percent higher.

While the Brazilian-Paraguayan plant has a potential of 14,000 MW, the potential of Three Gorges is 22,500 MW. But generation depends on water flow, turbine efficiency and demand.

Biogas production in southwestern Brazil is on the rise, mainly due to the use of livestock manure. In the west of the state of Paraná, part of whose rivers flow into the Itaipu reservoir, there were 4.2 million pigs, according to the 2017 agricultural census.

Sedimentation is a risk that can shorten the life of a hydroelectric plant, which in Itaipu’s case is estimated at 184 years. In addition to the quantity, it is necessary to consider “the quality of the sediments,” noted Marcio Bortolini, adviser to the coordination director.

Organic waste, like the manure from pig farming, drives the proliferation of especially harmful species, like the golden mussel (Limnoperna fortunei), an invasive species that appeared in the Itaipu reservoir in 2001, he explained.

The mussel from Southeast Asia often clogs pipes and brings turbines to a halt when it latches onto hard surfaces.

Bortolini described this situation when he took part in a Jan. 27-29 workshop on biogas for Brazilian journalists, organised by IPS and the International Center for Renewable Energy (CIBiogás), with support from the U.S.-based Mott Foundation.

General Luiz Felipe Carbonell, Itaipu Binacional’s coordination director, says that caring for the environment is vital for the power plant’s productivity and longevity because it reduces sedimentation, among other things. Using organic waste to produce biogas helps eliminate invasive species in the reservoir that damage the dam and equipment. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

“Without good water quality, several species of fauna will settle in and affect our reservoir and the machinery,” said Carbonell, one of the army officers appointed to Itaipu and the Brazilian government under President Jair Bolsonaro, who himself retired from the army as a captain in 1988.

Efforts to combat the golden mussel and protect water quality managed to reduce the population of the invasive shellfish and keep it under control, said Itaipu administrators during the workshop held at the CIBiogás facilities in Foz do Iguaçu, the main city where the power plant is located.

“Besides the golden mussel, a danger to our maintenance service, we have the freshwater hydroid (Cordylophora caspia), an invasive species that corrodes concrete, and therefore represents a physical danger to the dam,” said the general.

The main cause of these threats is organic waste, which is why “we use it to produce biogas and at the same time to improve the environment and the quality of life of the populace,” Carbonell told IPS at the plant’s facilities.

Therefore, disseminating biogas as a source of heat, biomethane and bioelectricity, and promoting other energy alternatives, such as solar, hydrogen and less polluting batteries, does not distract Itaipu from its business of generating hydroelectricity, he said.

Ademir Eischer produces biogas using the manure from the 1,200 pigs on his farm. He is one of the 18 farmers who supply the mini biogas power plant in the municipality of Entre Rios, in the west of Paraná state. The main benefit, he said, was the elimination of the stench of the raw manure that fertilises his hay crop next to his home, because biodigestion removes the strong odour by making use of the gases. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The same is true with regard to the reforestation of the surrounding area, where 44 million trees have been planted, because it protects the environment and the reservoir by reducing erosion and maintaining the water table. These are measures that support water security, an indispensable factor for the business.

The general also mentioned the plant’s efforts to boost the well-being of the surrounding population, and said health conditions have improved as a result of the projects.

Itaipu runs several social, economic development and technological programmes. Electric vehicles, a biodiversity corridor, tourism, local development and child protection are part of this focus, as is the Federal University of Latin American Integration, installed within the Itaipu area.

“Cultivating Good Water” stands out as a wide-ranging programme, initiated in 2003, in which more than 2,000 public and private entities have been involved in more than 60 social, economic and environmental actions, including fish farming, medicinal plants, garbage recycling and recovery of more than 200 micro-watersheds.

The programme is based on the principle of caring for water in order to generate more electricity for longer periods and to produce biogas for energy, environmental and water quality purposes.

Biofuel production was increased at the initiative of Itaipu, in a mission transferred to CIBiogas, founded in 2013 as an autonomous, non-profit entity. Itaipu is one of its 27 partners, which include the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

From a biogas producer’s point of view, the environmental benefits have more to do with the air than with the water.

For example, the stench of “raw” manure has almost disappeared on the farm where Ademir Eischer uses manure to grow hay, his main source of income.

With just three hectares of land that runs up against the highway in the small municipality of Entre Rios, Eischer – who also fattens 1,200 hogs – can’t expand his pig farming operation, and the field planted with hay almost reaches his house.

“I’ve been working in haymaking for a long time and decided to start producing biogas because of the smell. When the manure goes through the biodigester, it loses 70 to 80 percent of its odour and we gain a lot in terms of quality of life,” Eischer told IPS during a visit to his farm.

Biodigestion consists of extracting methane (CH4), hydrogen sulphide (H2S, mainly responsible for the bad smell) and carbon dioxide (CO2), which make up the biogas, from the manure that can then fertilise the soil without the pollution and smell of the gases.

The production of biogas from the manure of pigs like these ones on Ademir Eischer’s farm is a new business with great potential in the western part of the state of Paraná, in southern Brazil, an area where there are more than four million hogs. Biogas also eliminates the waste that pollutes local rivers and leads to sedimentation in the Itaipú reservoir created by the dam built for the giant hydroelectric plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Methane, which is removed in much greater proportion than the other gases, is 21 times more aggressive than carbon as a greenhouse gas that warms the planet, which is why its extraction and use as a source of energy contribute greatly to mitigating the climate crisis.

Eischer is one of the 18 pig farmers whose biogas generate almost all the electricity consumed by the municipal government of Entre Rios do Oeste, population 4,600, which inaugurated its own mini power plant in July 2019.

Another local pig farmer and biogas producer, Claudinei Stein, highlighted other benefits: the “reduction to almost zero of mosquitoes” that used to pester him and his employees on the farm, while posing the risk of transmitting diseases.

In addition, the manure minus the gases has improved the fertilisation of the soil where he grows soybeans and corn on his 12 hectares.

Pedro Colombari says that with the bio-fertiliser resulting from biodigestion he has managed to improve his pastures to the point of fattening 10 cattle per hectare per year – quite a feat in a country where, on average, farmers only raise a little more than one cow per hectare.

“Now I’m trying to double that productivity on an experimental two hectares,” with more intensive fertilisation and irrigation, he told IPS.

His 400-hectare farm, where he raises 5,000 pigs and 400 head of cattle and grows soybeans and corn, generates its own electricity using biogas, in a microgrid in which several generators, using varied sources and batteries, can operate together and outside the main grid, offering greater energy security.

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• Combining Biogas and Solar, the Best Energy Deal in Brazil
• Biogas Makes Pig Farming More Sustainable in Southern Brazil
• Producing Energy from Pig and Poultry Waste in Brazil

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