Africa

Credit: UN Women

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 17 2020 (IPS)

The United States and 18 other UN member states have come under fire for denying a woman’s legitimate right to “bodily autonomy”—the right to self-governance over one’s own body without coercion or external pressure.

The Executive Director of Women’s March Global, Uma Mishra-Newbery, told IPS the United Nations has worked towards progress in fighting for women’s rights.

But many countries on the Human Rights Council continue to negotiate women’s human rights off the table, she pointed out.

In Sept 2019, she said, the world watched as the US, in partnership with 18 other member states, put forth a statement saying there is no international right to abortion.

She said UN member states have also witnessed “the continued and grave human rights violations in Saudi Arabia”, including the continued torture of imprisoned women human rights defenders like Loujain al-Hathloul.

“Yet the UN and member states fail to hold Saudi Arabia truly accountable for its actions. The UN must hold these governments accountable as they work to strip women’s rights away without repercussions”, she declared.

Beside the United States, the 18 countries singled out include Bahrain, Belarus, Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Guatemala, Haiti, Hungary, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

The member states who deny women access to safe and legal abortion represent 1.3 billion people, according to Women’s March Global.

As part of a global campaign for women’s reproductive rights, Women’s March Global has called attention to the “dangerous and alarming repeal of women’s rights to bodily autonomy, bringing international attention to these pressing issues.”

The 45 marches—the fourth annual event, with the participation of millions of women and allies – took place in Africa, Canada, Central and South America, Europe and Asia.

Purnima Mane, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS the March on January 18 to protest the inadequate progress and sometimes downright rollback of women’s right to exercise bodily autonomy through the right to abortion, “comes at a critical juncture in our history.”

She said as many as 48 of the 58 existing UN countries, signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Nonetheless, the UN as a body, has been limited in its work on abortion, due to its exclusion as a right from human rights treaties as a result of significant opposition from many quarters, she added.

“Besides, these treaties are not legally binding and some countries specifically see these issues as covered by domestic law.”

For example, she said, the Programme of Action (PoA) of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), focuses on the obligation of governments to prevent unsafe abortion but does not refer to making abortion legal.

This obligation can of course open the door for national debates on how women’s overall health and bodily autonomy are linked. International human rights treaties which most governments have ratified, support the right of women to liberty and to health.

The UN often provides platforms to learn from examples of countries which have implemented these rights successfully, integrating women’s rights more broadly, including the right to bodily autonomy, said Mane, who is a former President and CEO of Pathfinder International.

Antonia Kirkland, a global lead at Equality Now, told IPS that UN Women, alongside the Mexican and French governments and feminists around the world, have chosen bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health rights as one of the Generation Equality Forum’s six Action Coalition themes to in the lead up to Beijing +25.

“This is a good sign that attention and resources are being focused in this direction and can hopefully help counteract moves towards greater restrictions on access to abortion in countries like the USA, as well as forced pregnancy and motherhood in Latin American countries”.

Kirkland said over the past few years, there has been an alarming and sustained rollback on women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights around the world.

Focusing the first women’s rights March of the new decade on bodily autonomy is about shining a much-needed spotlight on the systematic oppression that continues to prevent women and girls from exercising self-governance over their own body and reproductive choices, she noted.

Mane said abortion has, in fact, been available in many countries for years but it is heavily regulated with severe restrictions which make it difficult to access.

Over the last few years, these restrictions have grown rapidly almost globally. Animosity towards contraception complicates the situation even though there is ample evidence to show that preventing unintended pregnancies through access to modern contraception, reduces abortion rates in the first place, she added.

“The combination of restrictions in the practice of legal abortion and poor access to contraception for avoiding unintended pregnancies, lead to an increase in unsafe abortion and high rates of morbidity and mortality among women”, said Mane, who has served on boards of several international, non-profit organizations including as Governor of the Board of Governors, International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada.

Mane also pointed out that women’s right to access to contraception is the first and essential step advocated by UNFPA for enhancing women’s health and reproductive rights.

“If women receive the needed education and information, have access to appropriate services and commodities, and benefit from a conducive policy and programme environment, their ability and right to make decisions concerning their own bodies will be enhanced which will benefit their health and well-being”.

She said the UN assists national governments in the process of making all of the above happen through the supportive role they play globally and nationally.

Organizations like UNFPA need all the support and encouragement they can get to do their bit in moving the world towards the goal of ensuring that women are in a position to make decisions concerning their own bodies and ultimately their own lives.”

Kirkland said the United Nations has a vital role to play in the protection of women and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights, and this involves working in partnership with member states to ensure that everyone is free to make their own decisions about their body, and is able to easily access family planning support, healthcare services and information.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post Women Activists Escalate Demand for “Bodily Autonomy” as 19 Nations Dissent appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Seven African countries are meeting in Togo to tackle the issue of fake drugs.

Nelson Mandela's great-granddaughter says the former President wouldn't be '100% happy' with modern South Africa.

The oil-rich North African country has been beset by a civil war for nearly a decade.

A selection of the week's best photos from across the continent and beyond.

Kenenisa Bekele - the second-fastest marathon runner of all-time - will take on world record holder Eliud Kipchoge in at April's London Marathon.

Fifteen-year-old Donata Katai is breaking the age records of Africa's most decorated Olympian.

Yu Youhan, We Will Be Better, 1995.

By Vijay Prashad
Jan 16 2020 (IPS-Partners)

On Wednesday, 15 January, China and the United States agreed to suspend their full-scale trade war. From February 2018, the United States placed tariffs on Chinese goods that entered the US market, and then China retaliated. This tit-for-tat game continued for almost two years, causing massive disruption in the global value chain. In October 2019, the International Monetary Fund’s G-20 Surveillance Note reported that the global GDP suffered by a 0.8% drop merely because of the tariffs on goods such as aluminium, steel, soybeans, and car parts between the United States and China. Western attacks on Chinese 5G technology – and on the tech firm Huawei – are part of the pressure on China to buckle before the US-led order. But China did not bend. As a prelude to the ‘phase one’ deal, the United State Treasury Department stopped calling China a ‘currency manipulator’, a term that has haunted China’s for decades.

The suspension of the trade war comes with a ‘phase one’ deal whose text includes nine chapters on topics such as intellectual property rights to financial services. Most significantly, China has agreed to stop asking firms that invest in China to share their technology; this is a major departure for the Chinese model of development. The ‘phase one’ deal is merely the first stage in an ongoing process of negotiations and confrontations, which will be expected to continue for a long time yet. If ‘phase one’ goes well, and if the implementation and dialogue mechanisms work, then the two countries will move to ‘phase two’. Chinese diplomats say that they do not anticipate an immediate return to the pre-confrontation period, namely before the trade war began in February 2018.

News of a potential trade deal immediately moved the International Monetary Fund to revise its 2020 growth forecast for China from 5.8% to 6%. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the GDP numbers for the United States would be boosted to 2.5% for 2020 (though the IMF continues to predict a 1.9% GDP for the United States). It is likely that the low expectations for the global economy (at 2.5% GDP growth for 2020) might also be revised upwards for the year, although predictions for a severe global contraction remain intact; Deloitte’s CFO Signals for the fourth quarter of 2019 suggests that US companies have begun to further constrain investment in anticipation of a serious downturn – but not a recession – of the economy. US firms lost at least $46 billion as a consequence of the trade war started by US President Donald Trump in February 2018. Pressure from US firms on the White House and Trump’s need to make his ‘victory’ in the trade war an election issue drove the US to the table. By the fourth quarter of 2018, China’s economic growth rate was the slowest it has been since 1990, which is why China had been willing to discuss outstanding issues since February 2018.

Shi Guorui, The Yangtze River, 2013.

In the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Dossier no. 24 – The World Oscillates Between Crises and Protests – there is an important section on the new ‘bipolar world’. It is widely recognised that US power has dwindled since the illegal attack on Iraq in 2003 and since the world financial crisis of 2007-08; at the same time, it is hard to deny the rapid growth of China’s economy and of China’s growing importance on the world stage. A decade ago, when China and Russia joined Brazil, India, and South Africa to form the BRICS, it appeared as if the global architecture was shifting from US unipolarity (with its allies as the spokes around the US hub) to multipolarity; but, with the deepening crisis in countries like Brazil and India, the new global architecture – according to Tsinghua University’s Institute for International Relations – will be one of bipolarity, with the US and China as the two poles of the global order.

China’s growth rates since the reform era began in 1978 remain perplexing. The attempt to explain this has spawned an enormous literature, some of it only partially explanatory but most of it petrified in clichés. Professor Wang Hui of Tsinghua University suggests that China’s policy framework is not along orthodox neoliberal lines, but that it has emerged out of the Chinese Communist Party’s commitment to sovereignty, out of the immense advances in health and education in the first decades of the revolutionary period, out of the enhancement of China’s economy by the socialist commodity economy of that period, out of the sustained struggles in the countryside to transform land relations, and out of the deep pragmatism of the Communists (‘cross the river by feeling for the stones’). Professor Hui warns that the stresses of market society have begun to engender new – and dangerous – contradictions for China. One of the overwhelming contradictions is the threats from the United States.

Zhang Xiaogang, Bloodline – Big Family no. 4, 1995.

The United States – which has the habit of dominance – tried its best to both manage and to prevent the growing global role of China. To manage China means to intimidate it to remain subordinate to US economic interests: Washington accused Beijing of currency manipulation and tried to get China to revise its currency to the benefit of the United States; this did not happen, and its failure to happen is a sign that China will not bow to US authority.

Accusations about the currency were quickly followed by claims that China had forced technology transfers or had stolen intellectual property, that China prevented access to financial services, and that it would not cut its industrial subsidies. Each US President over the course of the past decade – George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump – has accelerated the accusations against China and portrayed China as having advanced entirely by deceit.

When China refused to accept the US’ demands, and when it continued to develop its economic project – the Belt and Road Initiative – the United States moved to politically and militarily threaten China along several axes, some of these developed by Wu Xinbo, Dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University.

Indo-Pacific Strategy. In 2017, the United States and India began to develop an ‘Indo-Pacific’ strategy that would bring these two countries together against China’s Belt and Road Initiative (along the land of Eurasia) and its String of Pearls Initiative (in the Indian Ocean). The first Indo-Pacific Strategy document, produced by the US Department of Defence in June 2019, points its finger at China, which it says ‘seeks to reorder the region to its advantage by leveraging military modernisation, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce other nations’. The United States and India – alongside Japan and other smaller states – are to create a bloc to prevent the emergence of China as a continental and global power. It is with no irony that the US defence department complains about ‘influence operations’ and ‘predatory economics’, both of which are closely understood to be US policies (including the Indo-Pacific Strategy itself).

The Use of Taiwan. The Indo-Pacific document promotes the defence of Taiwan as an essential pillar in US strategy. China has long insisted on pushing for the diplomatic isolation of Taiwan and for its eventual incorporation into China. Since it does not have an embassy in Washington, Taiwan has had – since 1971 – a Coordination Council for North American Affairs and then the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office; Trump changed it to the Taiwan Council for US Affairs, a name that has incensed Beijing. Not only have Trump and his officials said that they would like to increase US-Taiwan relations; the US has sold Taiwan F-16 fighters and fully backed the re-election of Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party – which asserts Taiwan’s independence from China – in the January 2020 presidential elections.

Liu Bolin, Hiding in New York No. 9 – Gun Rack, 2013.

Hong Kong and Xinjiang. The Indo-Pacific document of the US Defence Department says that the US – and India – express ‘deep concern’ about the fate of the Muslim population in China; at the same time, the US has said that it stands with the protest movement in Hong Kong. The concern about Chinese Muslims is not credible coming from the US, where Trump’s Muslim Ban defines his own attitude, and from India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi has driven a citizenship and refugee policy that is clearly anti-Muslim. The United States and its allies use the Hong Kong and Xinjiang cases to put pressure on China; people in Hong Kong and Xinjiang would be delusional if they believe that the US actually cares about democracy and Muslims.

In 1965, at the urging of several national liberation movements and governments in eastern Africa, the People’s Republic of China began to work with them to build the Tanzam Railway or the Great Uhuru Railway. This railway cut through old colonial boundaries that isolated Zambia and kept Tanzania from the interior of the continent. Mao told Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere that – despite China’s own poverty – as a national liberation project, the Chinese Revolution was ‘duty bound’ to assist their comrades in Africa to build the longest railroad on the continent. This is what they did.

China in Africa. For the past decade, the US and the Europeans have complained that China is the new colonial power in Africa. It is true that Chinese investment into Africa has increased astronomically, but in many countries the main economic partner remains the old colonial adversary. Nonetheless, this narrative of China as a colonial power is not about facts, but it is to serve a purpose – to disparage China’s commercial strategy in the Global South and the challenge that it poses to the hegemony of the US and its allies. The actual procedure from China is well-described in the 2013 Human Development Report: ‘China is providing preferential loans and setting up training programmes to modernize the garment and textile sectors in African countries. China has encouraged its mature industries such as leather to move closer to the supply chain in Africa and its modern firms in telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, electronics and construction to enter joint ventures with African businesses’. A few years ago, I asked Tanzania’s former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Kaduma what he thought of Chinese commercial interests in Africa. ‘African states need to come up with their own assessment of their path forward’, he said; they should not be guided by Western fearmongering.

Ta Men, Snow, 2016.

From February 2018, various dispute settlement mechanisms – including the Strategic Economic Dialogue – set up by the US and China have failed to operate. The most recent ‘phase one’ deal creates new platforms for discussion and debate and provides a roadmap to settle the chaos unleashed by this trade war. But this agreement is a ceasefire – not a peace treaty. The contests will continue; instability will remain. ‘Chaos and disorder’, as the Tsinghua University scholars write, will be the way ahead.

The post Your Arrow Can Pierce the Sky, But Ours Has Gone into Orbit appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By PRESS RELEASE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 16 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The United Nations Country Team in Kenya is deeply distressed by the rising cases of terrorist attacks on schools, teachers and learners, especially in the north-eastern regions of Kenya. While we stand in solidarity with the affected communities, we reiterate that acts of terror and hate are even more egregious when they target innocent, unarmed civilians including children.

The bombings of schools and the killing of civilians violate international humanitarian law. We wish to remind all armed groups that whatever their grievances, they must uphold their obligations and cease targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, including schools. Key services and programmes, delivered by the government and other partners, for children and communities should not be targets of armed combat.

It is especially troubling that the most affected regions are already lagging behind in school attendance rates. We recognize that school staff who are traumatised by such incidents face the agonising dilemma of whether they should continue in the job under such threats. Acts of terrorism should not be another reason for the children in those regions to slip further behind.

As the UN Country Team in Kenya, we are determined to entrench our engagement with National and County Governments to implement the pillars of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, including addressing the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism, building capacity to prevent and combat terrorism and ensuring respect for human rights and the rule of law as the fundamental basis for the fight against terrorism.”

We commit to working with other stakeholders as we pursue the UN value of making children’s human and civil rights a lived reality for all children in Kenya.

The post Terror Attack appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Isabel Dos Santos, the daughter of Angola's former leader, is embroiled in a $1bn financial scandal.

Protesters forming the Hong Kong Way hold up their cell phone lights while standing on a busy road in Sham Shui Po, where double decker buses often passed through, on Aug. 23. Human Rights Watch has blasted China’s government for undermining global interests and interventions with regards to human rights issues. Credit: Laurel Chor/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 16 2020 (IPS)

China is currently under heavy scrutiny for its massive human rights violations across different sections, Human Rights Watch (HRW) head Kenneth Roth said on Wednesday. 

At the launch of World Report 2020, which focuses largely on China’s record of violating human rights for both its citizens domestically as well as abroad, Roth blasted the country’s government for undermining global interests and interventions with regards to human rights issues.

Roth, who was denied access to Hong Kong over the weekend, said at the launch that China is “using diplomatic clout to silence global institutions”. He also heavily criticised the United Nations Secretary General for not holding China accountable for its human rights abuses. 

“At the U.N. headquarters, a major Chinese government priority has been avoiding discussion of its conduct in Xinjiang,” he said. “U.N. Secretary General António Guterres has been unwilling to publicly demand an end to China’s mass detention of its Muslims.”

On Wednesday, Stéphane Dujarric, Guterres’ spokesperson told reporters during a briefing that the Secretary General had previously spoken out on this issue on a number of occasions and raised a number of issues with his Chinese counterparts. He reiterated the Secretary General’s position which is based on principles surrounding “full respect for the unity and territorial integrity of China,” protection of human rights in the “fight against terrorism” and the importance of “each community to “feel that its identity is fully respected.”  

He was unable to respond to specific allegations by Roth that China continues to “avoid discussion of its conduct in Xinjiang” at the U.N.  In September HRW released a report of the “Chinese government’s mass arbitrary detention, torture, and mistreatment of Turkic Muslims”. 

Suu Kyi’s ‘appalling’ efforts 

Meanwhile, Roth also echoed thoughts from experts who have previously said that one of the reasons the Security Council had not been able to take steps against Myanmar is because of pressure from China. 

In November, on the heels of a lawsuit being filed against Myanmar by the Gambia, Akila Radhakrishnan of the Global Justice Center expressed similar concerns to IPS.

“Security council has consistently failed to act because of China — there’s no possibility of any strong action,” Radhakrishnan had said, reiterating why it’s important for states to directly take action against Myanmar.  

In that regard, especially with Roth’s concerns about China “intimidation of other governments” with threats, one issue of concern would be China’s relations with the Gambia, which has grown in the past few years. 

When asked, Roth told IPS he wasn’t aware if the Gambia was going to suffer any threats from China given its actions against Myanmar, but he said Aung San Suu Kyi leading the defence in the case is “appalling.” 

“One element of this that is not generally appreciated is the initial hearing that took place a few weeks ago was actually not about the merits of the genocide case, it was about the provisional measures,” he said. 

Provisional measures in the case of international law ensures that the main concern at the centre of the suite is not destroyed while the case is pending, which in this case would mean Myanmar imposes measures to refrain from any acts of genocide against the Rohingya community, and would ensure protecting the Rohingya community still in Myanmar. 

“It was about protecting the roughly 450,000 Rohingyas who are still in Rakhine state, still within Myanmar,” Roth said. “So these are the people who are living terrified, displaced…unable to move. They are extremely at risk of the same violence that sent 730,000 compatriots fleeing to Bangladesh a couple years ago.”

He said Suu Kyi’s move implies that she isn’t just defending the past atrocities of Myanmar against Rohingya people. 

“It’s not just defending past action that she was there for,” he said, “she was defending the future.”

The post Human Rights Watch Blasts China for Rights Violations at Home and Abroad appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The initial accord eases tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia over control of vital water supplies.

Zimbabwe needs urgent economic and political reforms to transform its economy amidst a growing national crisis, researchers say as more than 7 million Zimbabwean are food insecure owing to a projected 50 percent fall in the 2019 cereal harvest. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Jan 16 2020 (IPS)

Zimbabwe needs urgent economic and political reforms to transform its economy amidst a growing national crisis, researchers say in a new study that urges swift policy changes and a sound financial framework to attract investment.

The country has been reeling from one of the worst droughts in decades, with the United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) identifying Zimbabwe as one of the 15 critical emergencies around the world at risk of crisis without rapid intervention.

• More than 7 million Zimbabwean are food insecure owing to a projected 50 percent fall in the 2019 cereal harvest. This month the WFP is doubling its assistance to reach 4.1 million people who are hardest hit in rural areas.

But the study, G20 Compact with Africa: No Reformers, No Compact- The Zimbabwean Case Study,  states that the G20 Compact with Africa (CwA) investment framework, initiated by the G20 countries in 2017, could support Zimbabwe’s economic transformation only if Zimbabwe was committed to undertaking reforms.

• The voluntary compact has been signed by 12 African countries to date, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia. Zimbabwe is not a signatory.
• The compact seeks to stimulate economic growth, create employment and nurture investment. Through this partnership, African governments are responsible for spearheading reforms that will make their countries attractive to international investors.
• The focus of the CwA is to promote a sustainable development framework in those African countries that accepted the invitation to be part of the initiative, in an attempt to attract private investors. The framework is a three-tiered approach to reforming three economic fundamentals – macroeconomics, business and finance.

“As a reform strategy, the CwA framework has the potential to support Zimbabwe’s economic transformation agenda,” the study published last week by the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), an independent public policy think tank, stated. It further noted that the compact was relevant to Zimbabwe’s re-engagement agenda and the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP), which was introduced in 2018 as a blue print to turn around the economy.

But a crisis of governance and financial stewardship has long been stalking Zimbabwe, a Southern African nation that was once a model of economic success and democracy in Africa. Life has become difficult for its citizens who have to battle with a high cost of living and many things are in short supply from water to electricity to monetary currency, jobs, food and even political freedoms.  

The report pointed out that Zimbabwe’s economic woes are multi-faceted — a result of a combination of factors, including economic mismanagement, chaotic land reform, indigenisation policies, political instability and fiscal mismanagement driven by corruption.

Cold reception for compact

Yet despite its relevance, the compact has failed to raise enthusiasm among Zimbabwean policymakers, and few economic stakeholders are aware of it, the study found, pointing out that the Zimbabwe government is desperate and preoccupied with finding a quick solution to the economic crisis.

The study also made a note that there is no reform culture among the custodians of reforms in Zimbabwe.

Besides, the country’s multilateral debt, estimated at over $8,2 billion, has prevented any potential inroads with the international organisations involved with the compact.

“Clearance of multilateral debt arrears: the sanctions rhetoric seems to have taken the centre
stage ahead of reform implementation,” noted the study, adding that, “This behaviour has promoted corruption and stands in the way of reforms; hence there is no CwA for Zimbabwe.”

Economic analyst, John Robertson, said nobody agrees with the government on the point of economic sanctions imposed by the Western countries on individuals accused of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

“The sanctions are not applied to the country; the sanctions did not cause the country’s failure. The failure is caused by our decision to close down our biggest industries,” Robertson told IPS, referring to the destruction of the agriculture sector and the collapse of the manufacturing sector.

Poor policy choices

“The policy choices that we made have caused so much damage to our productive sectors starting with agriculture,” said Robertson, adding, “We imposed upon ourselves a serious handicap when we said the land in the country no longer has market value land so [people with] land can no longer borrow against ownership rights to that land because the land is now the property of the state.”

David Moore, researcher and political economist at the University of Johannesburg, told IPS that if the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) party had maintained its neo-liberal and white-farmer-friendly economic promises it might have kept the “west” on its side.

But cabals and corruption cannot be dismantled – they are the pillars of the party, he said. And so the military-party complex so tight that it cannot be untied: they are integral parts of the country’s political economy.

Academic and social commentator, Rudo Gaidzanwa, concurred saying it will take pushing to get ZANU (PF) ruling party and its military allies to undertake political and social reforms.

“The types of political and economic reforms that the civilians want will undermine the interests of the militarist elements in the state and the security sector,” Gaidzanwa, a Sociology Professor at the University of Zimbabwe, told IPS.

“ZANU won’t stand for anything that undermines their hold over the state and the society. It is not likely that any meaningful reform will occur unless dramatic social and political changes occur in Zimbabwe,” she said, adding that the ZANU PF led-government and elites have used economic sanctions as a convenient excuse to evade responsibility for economic and social crises.

Sanctions have not prevented the president and his cohorts from pillaging mineral resources. The current chaos was ideal for pillaging resources and undermining the rule of law and democracy, she said.

• Zimbabwe’s late president Robert Mugabe, who was ousted from power in November 2017, is believed to have looted hundreds of millions of dollars, though no exact figure has been given.
• Tendai Biti, Zimbabwe’s finance minister between 2009-2013, told Deutsche Welle that Mugabe and his family where not the only ones responsible for looting the state and that during his term of office some $15 billion had “disappeared through other channels”.
• Last July the country’s auditor general released a report that since Mugabe’s ouster, executives at state-owned enterprises had mismanaged millions of dollars, spending the money to their personal benefit.

“Rigged elections are an issue because they prevent the will of the people from prevailing,” Gaidzanwa told IPS. “The present situation over contested presidential elections between (Nelson) Chamisa and (Emerson) Mnangagwa is symptomatic of that struggle…These issues have dogged our elections for decades and remain unresolved hence our dire economic and political situation.”

• After Mugabe was ousted from power Zimbabweans went to the polls in July 2018 to elect a new leader, with Mnangagwa winning 50.8 percent of the voted compared to Chamisa’s 44.3 percent.
• The results were disputed.

Economist and former parliamentarian, Eddie Cross sees the situation differently, saying Zimbabwe, despite its current challenges, has a good start to turn around its economic fortunes.

“We have a fiscal surplus, government salaries are down to a third of the budget from over 95 percent, we have a balance of payments surplus and nearly $1 billion in bank accounts,” Cross said, adding that Zimbabwe’s domestic debt has been devalued and exports are highly profitable.

“[Political] Stability is no longer an issue – it’s a done deal, what is a problem is financing and this is going to be a challenge because we really have to look after ourselves,” Cross, a member of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s Monetary Committee, told IPS in an interview. “A couple of billion dollars would be useful. Perhaps we can persuade Mrs. [Grace] Mugabe to bring some money back from abroad.”

Cross believes Zimbabwe can benefit from the G20 CwA even though the country is a pariah state.

“I think Brexit is important and also the IMF and if we play our cards right and get on with reforms I see no reason why we cannot be in a very different place in 2021.”

Related Articles

• Zimbabwe’s Inflation Makes it Hard to Keep Track of Cost of Living
• Zimbabwe’s ex-President Robert Mugabe Leaves a Mixed Legacy
• Zimbabwe’s Resettled Farmers Hawking Cigarettes to Survive

The post Genuine Reform Culture Lacking in Zimbabwe appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Pierpaolo Grippa, Jochen Schmittmann, and Felix Suntheim
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 16 2020 (IPS)

Climate change is already a reality. Ever-more-ferocious cyclones and extended droughts lead to the destruction of infrastructure and the disruption of livelihoods and contribute to mass migration.

Actions to combat rising temperatures, inadequate though they may have been so far, have the potential to drive dislocation in the business world as fossil fuel giants awaken to the need for renewable sources of energy and automakers accelerate investments in cleaner vehicles.

But measuring economic costs of climate change remains a work in progress. We can assess the immediate costs of changing weather patterns and more frequent and intense natural disasters, but most of the potential costs lie beyond the horizon of the typical economic analysis.

The economic impact of climate change will likely accelerate, though not smoothly. Crucially for the coming generations, the extent of the damage will depend on policy choices that we make today.

Policymakers and investors increasingly recognize climate change’s important implications for the financial sector. Climate change affects the financial system through two main channels (see Chart 1).

The first involves physical risks, arising from damage to property, infrastructure, and land. The second, transition risk, results from changes in climate policy, technology, and consumer and market sentiment during the adjustment to a lower-carbon economy.

Exposures can vary significantly from country to country. Lower- and middle-income economies are typically more vulnerable to physical risks.

For financial institutions, physical risks can materialize directly, through their exposures to corporations, households, and countries that experience climate shocks, or indirectly, through the effects of climate change on the wider economy and feedback effects within the financial system.

Exposures manifest themselves through increased default risk of loan portfolios or lower values of assets. For example, rising sea levels and a higher incidence of extreme weather events can cause losses for homeowners and diminish property values, leading to greater risks in mortgage portfolios. Corporate credit portfolios are also at risk, as highlighted by the bankruptcy of California’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric.

In what The Wall Street Journal called the first “climate-change bankruptcy” (Gold 2019), rapid climatic changes caused prolonged droughts in California that dramatically increased the risk of fires from Pacific Gas and Electric’s operations.

Tighter financial conditions might follow if banks reduce lending, in particular when climate shocks affect many institutions simultaneously.

For insurers and reinsurers, physical risks are important on the asset side, but risks also arise from the liability side as insurance policies generate claims with a higher frequency and severity than originally expected.

There is evidence that losses from natural disasters are already increasing. As a result, insurance is likely to become more expensive or even unavailable in at-risk areas of the world.

Climate change can make banks, insurers, and reinsurers less diversified, because it can increase the likelihood or impact of events previously considered uncorrelated, such as droughts and floods.

Transition risks materialize on the asset side of financial institutions, which could incur losses on exposure to firms with business models not built around the economics of low carbon emissions.

Fossil fuel companies could find themselves saddled with reserves that are, in the words of Bank of England Governor Mark Carney (2015), “literally unburnable” in a world moving toward a low-carbon global economy.

These firms could see their earnings decline, businesses disrupted, and funding costs increase because of policy action, technological change, and consumer and investor demands for alignment with policies to tackle climate change.

Coal producers, for example, already grapple with new or expected policies curbing carbon emissions, and a number of large banks have pledged not to provide financing for new coal facilities.

The share prices of US coal mining companies reflect this “carbon discount” as well as higher financing costs and have been underperforming relative to those of companies holding clean energy assets.

Risks can also materialize through the economy at large, especially if the shift to a low-carbon economy proves abrupt (as a consequence of prior inaction), poorly designed, or difficult to coordinate globally (with consequent disruptions to international trade).

Financial stability concerns arise when asset prices adjust rapidly to reflect unexpected realizations of transition or physical risks. There is some evidence that markets are partly pricing in climate change risks, but asset prices may not fully reflect the extent of potential damage and policy action required to limit global warming to 2˚C or less.

Central banks and financial regulators increasingly acknowledge the financial stability implications of climate change. For example, the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), an expanding group that currently comprises 42 members, has embarked on the task of integrating climate-related risks into supervision and financial stability monitoring.

Given the large shifts in asset prices and catastrophic weather-related losses that climate change may cause, prudential policies should adapt to recognize systemic climate risk—for example, by requiring financial institutions to incorporate climate risk scenarios into their stress tests.

In the United Kingdom, prudential regulators have incorporated climate change scenarios into stress tests of insurance firms that cover both physical and transition risks.

Efforts to incorporate climate-related risks into regulatory frameworks face important challenges, however. Capturing climate risk properly requires assessing it over long horizons and using new methodological approaches, so that prudential frameworks adequately reflect actual risks.

It is crucial to ensure that the efforts to bring in climate risk strengthen, rather than weaken, prudential regulation. Policies such as allowing financial institutions to hold less capital against debt simply because the debt is labeled as green could easily backfire—through increased leverage and financial instability—if the underlying risks in that debt have not been adequately understood and measured.

Climate change will affect monetary policy, too, by slowing productivity growth (for example, through damage to health and infrastructure) and heightening uncertainty and inflation volatility.

This can justify the adaptation of monetary policy to the new challenges, within the limits of central bank mandates. Central banks should revise the frameworks for their refinancing operations to incorporate climate risk analytics, possibly applying larger haircuts to assets materially exposed to physical or transition risks.

Central banks can also lead by example by integrating sustainability considerations into the investment decisions for the portfolios under their management (i.e., their own funds, pension funds and, to the extent possible, international reserves), as recommended by the NGFS (2019) in its first comprehensive report.

Carbon pricing and other fiscal policies have a primary role in reducing emissions and mobilizing revenues (see “Putting a Price on Pollution” in this issue of F&D), but the financial sector has an important complementary role.

Financial institutions and markets already provide financial protection through insurance and other risk-sharing mechanisms, such as catastrophe bonds, to partly absorb the cost of disasters.

But the financial system can play an even more fundamental role, by mobilizing the resources needed for investments in climate mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation (building resilience to climate change) in response to price signals, such as carbon prices.

In other words, if policymakers implement policies to price in externalities and provide incentives for the transition to a low-carbon economy, the financial system can help achieve these goals efficiently.

Global investment requirements for addressing climate change are estimated in the trillions of US dollars, with investments in infrastructure alone requiring about $6 trillion per year up to 2030 (OECD 2017). Most of these investments are likely to be intermediated through the financial system.

From this point of view, climate change represents for the financial sector as much a source of opportunity as a source of risk.

The growth of sustainable finance (the integration of environmental, social, and governance criteria into investment decisions) across all asset classes shows the increasing importance that investors attribute to climate change, among other nonfinancial considerations.

Estimates of the global asset size of sustainable finance range from $3 trillion to $31 trillion. While sustainable investing started in equities, strong investor demand and policy support spurred issuance of green bonds, growing the stock to an estimated $590 billion in August 2019 from $78 billion in 2015.

Banks are also beginning to adjust their lending policies by, for example, giving discounts on loans for sustainable projects.

Sustainable finance can contribute to climate change mitigation by providing incentives for firms to adopt less carbon-intensive technologies and specifically financing the development of new technologies.

Channels through which investors can achieve this goal include engaging with company management, advocating for low-carbon strategies as investor activists, and lending to firms that are leading in regard to sustainability. All these actions send price signals, directly and indirectly, in the allocation of capital.

However, measuring the impact that sustainable investments have on their environmental targets remains challenging. There are concerns over unsubstantiated claims of assets’ green-compliant nature, known as “greenwashing.”

There is a risk that investors may become reluctant to invest at the scale necessary to counter or mitigate climate change, especially if policy action to address climate change is lagging or insufficient.

The analysis of risks and vulnerabilities—and advising its members on macro-financial policies—are at the core of the IMF’s mandate. The integration of climate change risks into these activities is critical given the magnitude and global nature of the risks climate change is posing to the world.

An area where the IMF can especially contribute is understanding the macro-financial transmission of climate risks. One aspect of this is further improving stress tests, such as those within the Financial Sector Assessment Program, the IMF’s comprehensive and in-depth analysis of member countries’ financial sectors.

Stress testing is a key component of the program, with these stress tests often capturing the physical risks related to disasters, such as insurance losses and nonperforming loans associated with natural disasters.

Assessments for The Bahamas and Jamaica are recently published examples, with a scenario-based stress test analyzing the macroeconomic impact of a severe hurricane in the former and a massive natural disaster in the latter.

More assessments of this kind are in progress or planned for other countries. The IMF is also conducting an analysis of financial system exposure to transition risk in an oil-producing country.

The IMF has recently joined the NGFS and is collaborating with its members to develop an analytical framework for assessing climate-related risks.

Closing data gaps is also crucial. Only with accurate and adequately standardized reporting of climate risks in financial statements can investors discern companies’ actual exposures to climate-related financial risks. There are promising efforts to support private sector disclosures of such risks.

But these disclosures are often voluntary and uneven across countries and asset classes. Comprehensive climate stress testing by central banks and supervisors would require much better data.

The IMF supports public and private sector efforts to further spread the adoption of climate disclosures across markets and jurisdictions, particularly by following the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (2017). Greater standardization would also improve the comparability of information in financial statements on climate risks.

The potential impact of climate change compels us to think through, in an empirical fashion, the economic costs of climate change. Each destructive hurricane and every unnaturally parched landscape will chip away at global output, just as the road to a low-carbon economy will escalate the cost of energy sources as externalities are no longer ignored and old assets are rendered worthless.

On the other hand, carbon taxes and energy-saving measures that reduce the emission of greenhouse gases will drive the creation of new technologies. Finance will have to play an important role in managing this transition, for the benefit of future generations.

*This article draws on Chapter 6 of the October 2019 Global Financial Stability Report and was prepared under the guidance of Martin Čihák and Evan Papageorgiou of the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department.

The post Climate Change and Financial Risk appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Pierpaolo Grippa is a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Jochen Schittmann is the IMF’s resident representative in Singapore and Felix Suntheim is a financial sector expert in the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department*.

The post Climate Change and Financial Risk appeared first on Inter Press Service.

They are minnows located 6,000 miles from France but former Blackpool player Elliot Grandin hopes his Reunion side can continue their run in the French Cup.

Kenyan Mary Wambui's daughter and grandson died after being hit crossing a major highway.

"Mina the Veiled" is a Senegalese hip-hop artist who is often mocked because of her passion for rap.

The Cameroon Football Federation announces that the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations will kick off in January due to the weather conditions.

Planeta Hatuleke, a small scale farmer of Pemba District in Southern Zambia, stands in a maize field. This year, she hopes that she will not be one of the country’s 2.3 million food insecure people thanks to the climate smart agriculture techniques she implemented while planting her crop in November. Courtesy: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
LUSAKA and PEMBA DISTRICT, Zambia, Jan 15 2020 (IPS)

It is early Saturday morning and Planeta Hatuleke, a small scale farmer of Pemba District in Southern Zambia, awakens to the comforting sound of rainfall. As the locals say, the “heavens have opened” and it is raining heavily after a prolonged dry spell. 

“This is welcome after two weeks of a dry spell,” says Hatuleke with a sigh of relief. “The rainfall pattern has not been consistent so far; we could be headed for a repeat of last season” she adds pessimistically.

• The 2018/19 farming season was characterised by drought and prolonged dry spells, which, according to the government Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU), left 2.3 million people severely food insecure and in need of humanitarian food assistance.

Hatuleke along with her 8-member family members are part of the hunger stricken population. Last farming season, the family harvested only five 50Kg-bags of maize, 10 short of their annual food requirements.

“It has not been easy to feed my family since the five bags finished. I am grateful to government for relief food support but for big families like mine, we have to supplement through other means,” says the 55-year old widow. “As a family, we have been surviving on sales from our gardening activities.”

• Statistics from DMMU show that at least 70,000 metric tonnes of relief food (maize grain and maize meal) has been distributed to the affected people between September 2019 and January 2020.
• According World Food Programme (WFP) country director for Zambia, Jennifer Bitonde, the United Nations’ food agency “requires $36 million to effectively support the government in responding to the crisis.”
• WFP is currently supporting the government’s response by delivering government-supplied maize meal, as well as by procuring and delivering pulses to ensure a nutrition-sensitive food basket. WFP is also working closely with partners to monitor food distributions and guarantee that resources reach those most in need.
  • In a statement after receiving a contribution of $3.39 million from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to help meet the immediate food needs of drought-affected people in Zambia, Bitonde added that “USAID’s contribution represents approximately 10 percent of the total needs and will allow WFP to ensure that drought-affected people will not go to bed hungry during this year’s lean season.’’
  • Other partners who have made a contribution to WFP Zambia include the Swedish government, which has contributed $2 million, and the Italian government with a contribution of $ 610,000.

Last October, the three U.N. food agencies—the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and WFP—called for urgent funding to avert a major hunger crisis and for the international community to step up investment in long-term measures to combat the impact of climate shocks and build the capacity of communities and countries to withstand them.

They warned that a record 45 million people across the 16-nation Southern African Development Community would be severely food insecure in the next six months starting from October 2019.

At the time, they reported that there were more than 11 million people experiencing “crisis” or “emergency” levels of food insecurity (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Phases 3 and 4) in nine countries: Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Namibia, Eswatini and Lesotho. 

“Late rains, extended dry periods, two major cyclones and economic challenges have proved a recipe for disaster for food security and livelihoods across Southern Africa,” said Alain Onibon, FAO’s Sub-Regional Coordinator for Southern Africa.

“As it could take many farming communities at least two to three growing seasons to return to normal production, immediate support is vital.  Now is the time to scale up agricultural emergency response. We need to ensure farmers and agro-pastoralists take advantage of the forecasted good rains, assuming they happen, as this will be crucial in helping them rebuild their livelihoods.”

While Southern Africa has experienced normal rainfall in just one of the last five growing seasons, persistent drought, back-to-back cyclones and flooding have wreaked havoc on harvests in a region overly dependent on rain-fed, smallholder agriculture.

Interestingly, Zambia is experiencing both climate extremes at the same time. While farmers in the southwestern parts of the country are anxious about the rainfall pattern that has been erratic so far, their counterparts in the northeast are battling flash floods, adding pressure on the already overstretched resource base.

Over 300 families have been reported as being affected by floods in the Mambwe and Lumezi districts of Zambia’s Eastern Province.

And Zambian President Edgar Lungu, continues to urge government technocrats to work at finding a lasting solution to the climate problem.

“So as we provide relief, I think that we should put our heads together. My Permanent Secretaries are here so we can work together to find a lasting solution,” said Lungu when he toured and interacted with flood victims on Jan 9.  

• It is unanimously agreed globally that climate change is due to human activities that cause damage (either directly or indirectly) to the environment. Such activities include overexploitation of natural resources, pollution and deforestation, among others.

Experiencing a critical energy deficit, with over 2 million food-insecure people to feed due to a climate-induced droughts and flash floods in a single year, are key lessons for leaders and ordinary people alike.

This December, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25), Zambia’s Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources Ndashe Yumba highlighted the adverse effects of climate change on his country’s natural resource-sensitive sectors, such as energy and agriculture, and how the country was moving away from a business-as-usual approach.

“There is still increasing evidence that climate change is negatively impacting critical sectors of our country,” said Yumba during a high-level event at COP25.

“In the recent past, drastic reduction in precipitation and rising temperatures in Zambia has led to a reduced agricultural productivity by about 16 percent and subsequently slowed down our economic growth. While Zambia is still pursuing her aspirations on socio-economic development, it is mindful of the need to maintain a healthy environment in order to achieve sustainable development…a recipe to a healthy climate is a healthy environment,” he added.

Back in Pemba District in Southern Zambia, Hatuleke is hoping that climate smart agricultural principles which are routed in sustainable environmental management, and which she has recently implemented, will bring her a better harvest this year. 

“I ripped my field and planted early; just after the first rains in mid-November and as you can see, my maize is at tussling stage,” she says. “I am hopeful of a good harvest, provided it consistently rains in the remaining half of the season.”

Related Articles

• Improving the Lives of Millions of Mothers and Children
• Running from the Storm – How Bangladesh’s Climate Migrants are Becoming Food Secure
• Net Food Importer Turkey Grapples with Challenges of Food Self-sufficiency

The post Climate Change: A Tale of Weather Extremes with Mixed Fortunes for Zambia appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Caroline talks to her granddaughter about living through the Biafran conflict, 50 years on.