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A group of "curileros" ride in a boat in the bay of Jiquilisco, in the Pacific Ocean off the Salvadoran coast, during the daily task of searching for "curiles", a locally prized mollusk. Two municipalities bordering the bay, Jiquilisco and Puerto El Triunfo, are working to keep a treatment plant that processes wastewater from these towns active, in order to avoid contaminating this important wetland and protect the health of local families and visitors. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
CHIRILAGUA, El Salvador , Oct 25 2023 (IPS)

Insufficient wastewater treatment systems in El Salvador have taken a toll on the environment and the health of the population for decades, but some municipalities are putting more attention on processing their liquid waste.

Various reports warned as early as 2014 that in El Salvador, a country of 6.7 million people, only 8.52 percent of wastewater receives some form of treatment, and the picture has not changed much since then."My job is to provide the proper maintenance so that the plant works well and we make sure that the environment is not polluted.” -- Eduardo Ortega

It is not surprising, then, that only 12 percent of the rivers have good quality water and that dozens of people die each year from diarrhea: this year, as of Sept. 30, 63 people had died from this cause, of a total of more than 164,000 reported cases.

Wastewater includes what is generated in domestic activities, such as the use of toilets, sinks, washbasins and laundry. Wastewater is also produced by industry, but due to its characteristics it requires more complex treatment.

With international assistance

Few municipalities and communities have their own wastewater treatment systems, in some cases created as collective efforts that included their own funds as well as financing from international institutions and from the central government.

“My job is to provide the proper maintenance so that the plant works well and we make sure that the environment is not polluted,” Eduardo Ortega, who runs one of the few treatment plants located in eastern El Salvador, told IPS.

Ortega works in maintenance in the plant located next to La Española, a rural settlement in the municipality of Chirilagua, which borders the Pacific Ocean, in the south of the department of San Miguel.

La Española, a village of 40 houses, was built with Spanish aid funds for 40 fishing families affected by Hurricane Mitch, which left a trail of death and destruction in Central America in October 1998.

The housing project, financed by the government of the southern Spanish region of Andalucía, included a basic sanitation system that is unusual in rural areas: a sewage network that transports wastewater, including human waste, to the treatment plant.

A nearby similar initiative of 278 houses built for 1,500 people, called Flores de Andalucía, in the vicinity of Chirilagua as well, was also financed by humanitarian aid from the regional government of Andalucia.

There are currently 196 “ordinary” treatment plants in the country, in other words, plants that treat wastewater from domestic activities.

Of these, 90 are private, 78 are public and 17 are community-run, among other categories, according to the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources.

Eduardo Ortega (L), in charge of the treatment plant located near Chirilagua, in the department of Usulután in eastern El Salvador, and Edwin Guzmán (R), head of the municipality’s Environmental Unit, are mainly responsible for ensuring that the liquid waste treatment plant is operating at 100 percent. The station was built with financial aid from Spain as part of a housing project to benefit victims of Hurricane Mitch, which devastated large areas in Central America in October 1998. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Bacteria and gravel filters

The process begins with a hydraulic structure that removes sand and other small particles which, before passing into a tank, are filtered through a screen, Edwin Guzmán, head of the environmental unit of the local government of Chirilagua, a municipality of 25,000 people, including the local capital and outlying villages, told IPS.

The liquid then runs into another tank containing bacteria that eliminate the organic matter that has been dissolved into particles before reaching the tank.

After this, the waste passes to the biofiltration areas: rectangular ponds two meters deep, filled with layers of volcanic rock and gravel.

Finally, everything goes to another pond with “percolator” filters, which contain more bacteria to eliminate any remaining organic matter.

“This treated water will not contaminate the San Román river, which is about three kilometers away,” Guzmán said.

He added: “If this treatment plant were not here, there would be terrible pollution of the river, which is one of the few in the area that always has a good flow of water.”

And if the river were polluted, it would also affect the waters of the Pacific, where it flows into from this small Central American country that only has coasts on that ocean.

A view of part of the infrastructure of the treatment plant set up next to Jardines de Andalucía, the second housing project built in 2003 mostly with Spanish aid near the Salvadoran municipality of Chirilagua, on the coastal strip of the eastern department of Usulután. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

A cleaner sea

The larger Flores de Andalucía plant also receives sewage from El Cuco, a beach located about two kilometers to the south, visited by tourists drawn by its kilometers of gray sandy beaches and the gentle waves of the sea.

The inhabitants of El Cuco have always been dedicated to fishing, but there are also businesses, small hostels and restaurants, whose wastewater no longer goes directly into the sea.

The wastewater is collected in a tank and, fueled by a gasoline engine, is pumped uphill through a pipeline to the plant, its final destination.

“Before, all that water went straight to the sea,” José Henríquez, one of the plant’s operators, told IPS.

“It is important to treat the water, because otherwise we are contaminating ourselves,” said Henríquez, while cleaning the plant’s pipelines.

But despite this initiative, it is estimated that only 60 percent of the wastewater from El Cuco and surrounding areas is treated, as there are people and businesses that, for some reason, bypass the regulations and continue the old practice of dumping their wastewater on the beach.

Moreover, the municipalities near Chirilagua do not have treatment plants and, consequently, much of their waste is discharged into the rivers, which carry it to the sea.

Official figures show that 61.5 percent of Salvadoran households throw gray water, from washing clothes, hands, dishes, etc., into the street or outdoors, 33 percent dispose of it through sewage systems and 2.3 percent through septic tanks. The remaining 3.1 percent discharge their gray water into rivers or use other means.

El Cuco beach, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador, is a community whose wastewater is pumped through a pipeline uphill to the treatment plant located in Jardines de Andalucía, near Chirilagua, to prevent contamination generated by the villlage’s shops, homes, restaurants and hostels from reaching the sea. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

A bay without pollution

Further west on the Salvadoran coast is Jiquilisco Bay, the country’s main wetland, a place of exuberant natural beauty covering more than 600,000 hectares, home to numerous marine-coastal plant and animal species.

The municipality of Puerto El Triunfo, population 20,000, is located on the edge of the bay’s estuary in the south of the department of Usulután. A treatment plant that has been processing the municipality’s wastewater since the end of 2009 is located nearby.

The Puerto El Triunfo plant was also partially financed by aid from Spain, which contributed approximately 50 percent of the cost of the work, which totaled 660,000 dollars.

The rest of the investment came from the municipal and central governments.

“The water used to be dumped untreated into the mangrove swamp and into the bay; now it is discharged treated, cleaner,” Evelio Álvarez, in charge of the Environmental Unit of the Puerto El Triunfo municipal government, told IPS.

Álvarez said that in 2010, due to financial problems, the municipality could no longer afford to run the plant and ceded control to the government’s National Aqueduct and Sewer Administration, which has managed it ever since.

The facility also processes liquid waste from Jiquilisco, a municipality of some 50,000 inhabitants located about eight kilometers north of Puerto El Triunfo, from where the wastewater is pumped down to the station.

In the past, the waste from Jiquilisco went directly into the El Paso River, which flows into the bay.

Only 8.52 percent of the wastewater generated in El Salvador receives some type of treatment, and much of the waste is dumped untreated into rivers and streams, which end up depositing it in important wetlands in the country, contaminating ecosystems and affecting people’s health. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

“Most of the families make their living from fishing, and all that pollution was going raw into the mangroves,” agro-ecologist Etelvina Pineda, head of the environmental unit of the Jiquilisco municipal government, told IPS.

From the mangrove swamp and its web of canals the pollution spread to the lowlands bordering the bay, and as a result the homemade wells that supplied the coastal communities in the area had high concentrations of Escherichia coli, a bacterium present in human feces.

In addition, in the mangroves, “we ended up contaminating the mollusks, crustaceans and all the marine fauna that live there, through feces and heavy materials,” said Pineda.

As a result, people got sick from eating improperly cooked seafood. The pollution also decimated the marine fauna, a source of income for local families.

However, as in Chirilagua, Pineda pointed out that the pollution has not been stopped 100 percent.

She stressed that this would require a broader and more comprehensive effort, including the other four municipalities with an impact on the bay: Usulután, San Dionisio, Concepción Batres and Jucuarán.

In addition to the lack of financial resources to carry out such a program, Pineda argued that there is an absence of political will on the part of local governments and the central government, which she said are not committed to solving the environmental problems of this area or the country as a whole.

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By Siti Sarah Abdul Razak and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 25 2023 (IPS)

Policy approaches relying solely on voluntary actions to address urgent needs are unlikely to succeed. Depending on optional compliance to address global warming will not fix things in time.

Regulation for transformation
Tariq Fancy, former Chief Investment Officer for Sustainable Investing at BlackRock, had created a storm with his criticisms of ESG (environmental and social governance) ‘greenwashing’, remaining wary of voluntary corporate-led reforms.

Sarah Razak

Nevertheless, judicious and effective regulation based on ESG principles, combined with changing incentives and increased public awareness, can incentivize companies to do better.

Fancy believes changing rules for better regulation is essential for better outcomes. Limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is essential to ensure responsible governance aligned with the long-term public interest.

Investment managers have several responsibilities – including fiduciary duties, legal obligations, and financial incentives – requiring them to prioritize short-term profitability rather than sustainability.

Fancy believes imposing financial costs will provide stronger incentives for corporations to pursue greener alternatives. After all, voluntary measures are rarely enough to ensure sufficient adoption of sustainable practices.

Changing regulations to incorporate sustainability considerations should require portfolio managers to prioritize social and environmental concerns, and make choices supporting long-term sustainability goals.

Profits not aligned with public interest
Fiduciary duties oblige company managers to always act in the best interest of shareholder profits. This means ESG initiatives will only happen if they help, or at least do not hurt, profitability.

Fancy noted managers are not allowed, by law, to sacrifice potential profits from shareholder investments. They are legally obliged to never sacrifice shareholder interests, especially profitability, for anything else.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Social, cultural and media shifts in the West have undoubtedly influenced transnational business behaviour. The popularization of ESG discourses reflects these trends, but there is no strong evidence of their efficacy and positive impact.

Fleeting episodes of public attention cannot even ensure long-term protection of the public interest. With managers constrained by their fiduciary duties, relying on corporations to do the right thing is neither reliable nor sufficient.

Relying on corporate social or environmental responsibility may well become a distraction, delaying urgent and much-needed efforts. This failure underscores the need for government regulation and corporate compliance to achieve vital social and environmental goals.

Quick fixes delay progress
Fancy found many people believe safeguarding investment portfolios from climate risks prevents global warming. But safeguarding finance from climate risks is not the same as mitigating climate change.

De-risking finance means protecting the financial value of an investment portfolio. This includes protecting against asset damage, or reducing the risk of lower investment returns, but certainly not climate change mitigation.

Mitigating climate change requires proactive measures to reduce GHG emissions. This includes measures to generate and use clean, especially renewable energy.

Financial protection is important for financial asset owners, but it cannot replace the efforts needed to fight climate change. Worse, believing such measures address the climate crisis serves to delay government interventions and other changes needed to do so.

Climate inequity
Climate change exacerbates inequality, which in turn delays progress. The intergenerational distribution of the burden of climate risks disproportionately affects younger and future generations.

This deters proactive measures, as older generations are less inclined to spend more now for future generations who will suffer more from global warming. Instead, they may prefer measures to better adapt to its contemporary effects.

Aside from younger and future generations, the more vulnerable will also bear its worst effects. Thus, for example, small farmers in developing nations will have to cope with increased droughts, floods and crop failures.

Thus, further progress on climate change is delayed due to financial short-termist thinking, business interests, limited contemporary accountability for future consequences, as well as political and cost considerations.

Developing nations, with much smaller per capita carbon footprints, typically lack resources, leaving them more vulnerable. Meanwhile, developed countries, the major historical greenhouse gas emitters, have more resources to slow and adapt to climate change.

Can ESG principles help?
Will businesses maintain commitments to ESG ‘principles’ over the long term? They are legally obliged to maximize shareholder interests, especially profits, and also know public interest, attention, sentiment and priorities are always changing.

Business leaders may only commit to ESG principles in the long term if compelled to embrace them owing to the pecuniary costs of ignoring them. Obligations to other stakeholders – including investors, customers and employees – can also help sustain ESG commitments.

Establishing clear governance arrangements for ESG oversight, setting measurable and achievable goals, reporting regularly, and ensuring comprehensive organizational accountability should also help.

But ultimately, regulation should appropriately advance social and environmental responsibility, with such commitments sustained despite shifting public attention, fads and profit concerns.

Are voluntary efforts enough?
The COVID-19 experience has also taught us to prioritize proactive, systemic and mandatory measures, rather than rely solely on voluntary efforts. While voluntary efforts can advance sustainability efforts, the pandemic experience suggests they will not be sufficient to achieve needed changes soon enough.

A systemic approach can induce businesses and individuals to do the needed. Policy interventions, especially regulation, are essential to drive systemic changes on a large scale, and to align businesses and individuals with ESG principles.

Clear communications, transparency and collaboration – among governments, businesses and civil society – are crucial for achieving long-term sustainability and progressive social change.

To control the pandemic, governments adopted ‘all of government’ and ‘whole of society’ approaches, imposing strict mandatory lockdowns, but also providing vaccinations to all, and support to the vulnerable.

Similar top-down approaches may be needed to effectively address social and sustainability challenges. This could involve implementing regulations, standards and incentives promoting, even requiring, sustainable practices.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Many young Ugandan patients stop free treatment as their families cannot afford other hidden costs.

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Oct 24 2023 (IPS-Partners)

Today, as we commemorate United Nations Day, more than 224 million children and adolescents are in need of quality education, and the hope, protection and opportunity it provides. Their numbers are increasing by the day. From Afghanistan and Sudan to Ukraine; from South Sudan, Latin America and across sub-Saharan Africa; and in Gaza, where 50% of the total population of 2.2 million are children under siege.

On United Nations Day, let us remember that the United Nations was born out of the unspeakable horror of World War II and the Holocaust. The world promised ‘never again’ for any human being. The preamble to the UN Charter in 1945 states:

“We, the Peoples of the United Nations determined

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brough untold sorrow to humankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of women and men and of nations large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained …”

On this United Nations Day, we must revive and act upon the promises enshrined in the UN Charter of 1945 and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. These eternal, universal principles were translated into international law and will never change – just as the Golden Rule has remained true throughout history. It is not our international law and values of humanity that need to change. It is we who must change.

We must change for the millions of young people in this world – the majority in the Global South – who have no access whatsoever to education and its protection, no access to mental health services for their battered souls, no chance of at least one hot school meal a day for their empty stomachs, and no protection from attacks against schools, students and teachers – all enshrined in International Humanitarian Law. We must change for the millions of children and adolescents to whom we made these promises. The world is failing them.

It is time to face the unacceptable horrors of today with our collective resolve for positive action and change. It is time to fully apply and respect Universal Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law and the UN Charter, not disregard them.

It is time to start serving as a role model for the younger generation who suffer because of the world’s collective fears and failures. We must show them that we have the capacity to show empathy for all of humanity, without any discrimination. This is what makes us civilized and humane.

We must deliver on the right to quality education and protection for the millions of girls and boys who today risk never experiencing the excited anticipation of attending their first day in school, who may never carry a backpack of books and pens, or ever access psycho-social services to deal with the dispossession and brutality in which they live.

Working within and around United Nations for 35 years, I believe that the United Nations has not failed, and we need it now more than ever. UN national and international staff are working with national and local partners and with civil society, risking their lives on a daily basis to alleviate human suffering. They do so amidst excruciating human pain in the most dangerous parts of the world.

Unacceptably, one in six people are estimated to be affected by conflict today and last year saw a 96% increase in conflict-related deaths. Forced displacement is also on the rise. In 2022, the number of people forcibly displaced by persecution, conflict, violence and human rights violations grew by 21%, with over 108 million people displaced by the end of the year.

The climate crisis is making matters worse. As people are forced from their homes by floods, droughts and other extreme weather events, we see further massive disruptions in education, impacting negatively on progress to economic and social stability. On our current trajectory, climate change will force 140 million people from their homes by 2050, disrupting continuous access to education for millions of school-aged children each year.

Today, as we commemorate United Nations Day, we must stand up for 1.1 million Palestinian children in Gaza who acutely need us and we must support all the national and international staff in UNRWA, UNICEF, WFP, UNHCR and WHO, and other aid organizations, living and working amongst them as I write this.

Education Cannot Wait has invested in 44 lower-income, crisis-affected countries across the globe. These are countries who cannot manage the needs alone. ECW has already reached 9 million children and adolescents with quality education. We have done so based on the imperatives of humanity and impartiality – without discrimination as to race, ethnicity, gender or religion. We have done so with an absolute commitment to the UN Charter, just like all our colleagues in the UN system and its civil society partners.

Education is one of the most critical tools we have in our global efforts to end violent conflict, breaches of international law and the erosion of our humanity. Today, we stand at a crossroad. We have choices to make. Do we choose ‘the will to power’ or the ‘will to humanity’, or finally a configuration of both? This is the choice we have to make, now.

In all that we dream to possess and achieve,
let us seek to remove the “I” and the “me”.
In all that we yearn to become and to be,
let us seek to merge the “them and we”.
Because for all that we crave and all that we want
there is a greater ‘What shall be?’
Humanity set free.

Let me conclude by stressing that my modest poem is not simply a wishful ideal. It represents hardcore international law. The United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all related conventions, along with International Humanitarian Law, provides us with the roadmap.

We can no longer walk blindly.

In the final analysis, when all else falls away during our short lifespan on earth, true power can only be measured by our collective capacity to feel for – and serve – all of humanity.

That’s the power of humanity.

Yasmine Sherif

 

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Excerpt:

United Nations Day Statement by Education Cannot Wait Executive Director

Incumbent George Weah will face Joseph Boakai, separated by around 7,000 votes in the first round.

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Cattle carcass in Kenya's Kitengela Maasai rangelands in the great drought of 2009. A new report shows that major river basis in Africa have become sources of conflict due to drying up thanks to climate change and environmental degradation. Credit: ILRI

By Maina Waruru
NAIROBI, Oct 24 2023 (IPS)

Almost all major river basins in Africa have become the epicentres for conflicts over the last 20 years, and agricultural yields on the continent could drop by up to 50 percent in the coming years owing to the drying up of ‘traditional’ water sources, thanks in part to effects climate change and degradation of the environment, the inaugural edition of the State of Africa’s Environment Report 2023 released in Nairobi finds.

At the same time, environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity affect the continent the most, with a loss of 4 million hectares of forest cover each year, double the global average rate.

This, in part, has contributed to over 50 million people migrating from the degraded areas of sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe by 2020, according to the report compiled by India’s Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) released in Nairobi on October 13, 2023.

It finds that all the critical water basins on the continent were experiencing distress and turbulence due to, among other reasons, unsustainable use of resources besides climate, becoming hotspots for competition over water.

The basins include Lake Chad, shared by Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger, the river Nile shared by Egypt, Uganda, Sudan and Ethiopia; Lake Victoria, Shared by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania; and the river Niger used by communities in Niger, Mali and Nigeria.

Also on the list is the river Congo basin, a joint resource used by Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, and the Lake Malawi basin shared by Tanzania and Malawi. Also on the list is the Lake Turkana basin in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Examples show that the Lake Chad basin disputes started in 1980, and the water body has diminished by 90 percent since the 1960s due to overuse and climate change effects.

“For years, the lake has supported drinking water, irrigation, fishing, livestock and economic activity for over 30 million people; it is vital for indigenous, pastoral and farming communities in one of the world’s poorest countries. However, climate change has fueled massive environmental and humanitarian crises in the region,” the report notes.

It notes that international actors and regional governments have long ignored the interplay between climate change, community violence and the forced displacement of civilians.

“Conflict between herders and farmers have become common as livelihoods are lost, and families dependent on the lake are migrating to other areas in search of water,” the report says.

“In the Congo basin, disputes started in 1960. The basin witnesses multifaceted crises, including forced displacement, violent conflicts, political instability, and climate change impacts,” it concludes.

On the other hand, it traces conflicts in the Niger basin to 1980, blaming climate change for disagreements over “damage to farmland and restricted access to water, while in the Nile, disagreements began around 2011 stemming from the construction of the Grand Renaissance dam by Ethiopia, which Egypt fears will impact water flow.

Conflicts over Lake Turkana resources are fairly recent, traced to 2016 when it was observed that with 90 percent of its water from the Omo River in Ethiopia, rising temperatures and reduced rainfall have contributed to the lake’s ‘retreat’ into Kenya.

To survive, the Ethiopian herder tribes began following the water, resulting in inter-tribal conflict with their Kenyan counterparts. The construction of Ethiopia’s Gilgel Gibe III Dam on the river worsened matters.

It notes that in 2020, between 75 and 250 million people on the continent were projected to be “exposed to increased water stress” due to climate change, warning that in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could drop up to 50 percent due to drying up of traditional water sources including lakes, rivers, and wells.

“How Africa manages its water resources will define how water-secure the world would be. Africa’s aquifers hold 0.66 million KM3 of water. This is more than 100 times the annual renewable freshwater resources stored in dams and rivers.”

Take Ethiopia, for instance. Known as the continent’s water tower, the country is confronting huge challenges of disappearing lakes and rivers, it explains.

Africa, the world’s second-largest and second-most-populous continent, hosts a quarter of the planet’s animal and plant species, but the species extinction and general biodiversity loss rate in the continent are higher than in the rest of the world.

As a result, total deaths from extreme weather, climate or water stress in the world in the last 50 years, 35 percent of them were in Africa. Predictably, Africa will account for 40 percent of the world’s migration due to climate change.

“While the Global South will bear the maximum burden of internal migration, the reasons might vary from region to region, depending on climate change-related issues like water scarcity or rising sea levels. However, water scarcity will be the main driving force of the total migration, the report explains.

Citing the example of chimpanzees, the SOE 2023 reports that there are only 1.050 million to 2.050 million of the species on the continent, limited to Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon, with populations having disappeared in Gambia, Burkina Faso, Benin, and Togo.

On the brighter side, it says that African countries have some pioneering conservation models that, among other things, put communities at the centre of conservation efforts, noting that if Africa protects its biodiversity, the whole world will also gain.

Protected areas in Africa, if sustainably used, can eradicate poverty and bring peace, it asserts.

South Africa will be worst impacted by extreme weather events, making some areas inhospitable because of weather events, where already people are being forced to migrate within their own countries or regions in search of more hospitable and better living conditions, said Sunita Narain, CSE Director General.

Explaining the rationale behind the report, Narain said: “We can read and get the immediate story today, but often we do not get the big picture. The report will help us get that big picture. It will enable us to understand the different aspects of the environment by putting together a comprehensive picture that makes the links clearer between the environment and development. Environment and development are two sides of the same coin.”

She added that the report, produced with input from scientists and Africa-based journalists, also helped people appreciate the link between development and the environment.

According to Mamo Boru Mamo, director of Kenya’s National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), the issues raised in the report are important and pertinent to the environment in Africa.

Among other things, the SOE 2023 had captured the plight of East Africa’s agro-pastoral communities whose migration from arid and semi-arid areas of Africa to urban centres and out of the continent has risen over the recent years, thanks in part to accelerated degradation of the environment.

“The continent has a collective responsibility to manage the environment sustainably while giving direction on the position Africa should take in the upcoming UN’s COP28 in Dubai,” he said.

Citing the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), “Provisional State of the Global Climate 2022”, it finds that in East Africa, rainfall has been below average for four consecutive wet seasons, the most extended sequence in 40 years.

The region recorded five consecutive deficit rainy seasons by the end of 2022, with the rainy season of March to May 2022 being the driest in over 70 years for Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, partly due to the destruction of the environment and climate change.

Overall, the report confirms that the climate crisis in Africa was an existential problem facing millions of people who have endured the wrath of nature for years.

Over 100 journalists, researchers and experts from across Africa have contributed to the preparation of this annual publication.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Dozens of women environmentalists participated in Mexico City in the launch of the Voices of Life campaign by eight non-governmental organizations on Oct. 12, 2023, which brings together hundreds of activists in five of the country's 32 states. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 24 2023 (IPS)

The defense of the right to water led Gema Pacheco to become involved in environmental struggles in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, an area threatened by drought, land degradation, megaprojects, mining and deforestation.

Care “means first and foremost to value the place where we live, that the environment in which we grow up is part of our life and on which our existence depends,” said Pacheco, deputy municipal agent of San Matías Chilazoa, in the municipality of Ejutla de Crespo, some 355 kilometers south of Mexico City."We are in the phase of seeing how the Escazú Agreement will be applied. The most important thing is effective implementation. It is something new and it will not be ready overnight." -- Gisselle García

A biologist by profession, the activist is a member of the Local Committee for the Care and Defense of Water in San Matías Chilazoa, which belongs to the Coordinating Committee of Peoples United for the Care and Defense of Water (Copuda).

The local population is dedicated to growing corn, beans and chickpeas, an activity hampered by the scarcity of water in a country that has been suffering from a severe drought over the past year.

To deal with the phenomenon, the community created three water reservoirs and infiltration wells to feed the water table.

“Women’s participation has been restricted, there are few women in leadership positions. The main challenge is acceptance. There is little participation, because they see it as a waste of time and it is very demanding,” lamented Pacheco.

In November 2021, the 16 communities of Copuda obtained the right to manage the water resources in their territories, thus receiving water concessions.

But women activists like Pacheco face multiple threats for protecting their livelihoods and culture in a country where such activities can pose a lethal risk.

For this reason, eight organizations from five Mexican states launched the Voices of Life campaign on Oct. 12, involving hundreds of habitat protectors, some of whom came to the Mexican capital for the event, where IPS interviewed several of them.

Involvement in the defense of water led Gema Pacheco to become an environmental activist, participating in the Voices of Life campaign in Mexico, which seeks to bring visibility and respect to this high-risk activity in Mexico. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

 

The initiative seeks to promote the right to a healthy environment, facilitate environmental information, protect and recognize people and organizations that defend the environment, as well as learn how to use information and communication technologies.

In 2022, Mexico ranked number three in Latin America in terms of murders of environmental activists, with 31 killed (four women and 16 indigenous people), behind Colombia (60) and Brazil (34), out of a global total of 177, according to the London-based non-governmental organization Global Witness.

A year earlier, this Latin American country of almost 129 million inhabitants ranked first on the planet, with 54 killings, so 2022 reflected an improvement.

“The situation in Mexico remains dire for defenders, and non-fatal attacks, including intimidation, threats, forced displacement, harassment and criminalization, continued to greatly complicate their work,” the report says.

The outlook remains serious for activists, as the non-governmental Mexican Center for Environmental Law (Cemda) documented 582 attacks in 2022, more than double the number in 2021. Oaxaca, Mexico City and the northern state of Chihuahua reported the highest number of attacks.

 

Urban problems

The south of Mexico City is home to the largest area of conservation land, but faces growing threats, such as deforestation, urbanization and irregular settlements.

Protected land defines the areas preserved by the public administration to ensure the survival of the land and its biodiversity.

Social anthropologist Tania Lopez said another risk has now emerged, in the form of the new General Land Use Planning Program 2020-2035 for the Mexican capital, which has a population of more than eight million people, although Greater Mexico City is home to more than 20 million.

“There was no public consultation of the plan based on a vision of development from the perspective of native peoples. In addition, it encourages real estate speculation, changes in land use and invasions,” said López, a member of the non-governmental organization Sembradoras Xochimilpas, part of the Voices of Life campaign.

 

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for environmental defenders. In 2022, 31 activists were murdered, the third highest number in the region behind Colombia and Brazil. CREDIT: Cemda

 

Apart from the failure to carry out mandatory consultation processes, activists point out irregularities in the governmental Planning Institute and its technical and citizen advisory councils, because they are not included as members.

The conservation land, which provides clean air, water, agricultural production and protection of flora and fauna, totals some 87,000 hectares, more than half of Mexico City.

The plan stipulates conservation of rural and urban land. But critics of the program point out that the former would lose some 30,000 hectares, destined for rural housing.

The capital’s legislature is debating the program, which should have been ready by 2020.

Gisselle García, a lawyer with the non-governmental Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense, said attacks on women activists occur within a patriarchal culture that limits the existence of safe spaces for women’s participation in the defense of rights.

“It’s an entire system, which reflects the legal structure. If a woman files a civil or criminal complaint, she is not heard,” she told IPS, describing the special gender-based handicaps faced by women environmental defenders.

 

Social anthropologist Tania López is one of the members of the Voices of Life campaign, launched by eight non-governmental organizations on Oct. 12, 2023 to highlight the work of women environmental defenders in Mexico. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

 

Still just an empty promise

This risky situation comes in the midst of preparations for the implementation of the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the Escazú Agreement, an unprecedented treaty that aims to mitigate threats to defenders of the environment, in force since April 2021.

Article 9 of the Agreement stipulates the obligation to ensure a safe and enabling environment for the exercise of environmental defense, to take protective or preventive measures prior to an attack, and to take response actions.

The treaty, which takes its name from the Costa Rican city where it was signed, guarantees access to environmental information and justice, as well as public participation in environmental decision-making, to protect activists.

The Escazú Agreement has so far been signed by 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries, 15 of which have ratified it as well.

But its implementation is proceeding at the same slow pace as environmental protection in countries such as Mexico, where there are still no legislative changes to ensure its enforcement.

In August, the seven-person Committee to Support the Implementation of and Compliance with the Escazú Agreement took office. This is a non-contentious, consultative subsidiary body of the Conference of the Parties to the agreement to promote and support its implementation.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, the Escazú National Group, made up of government and civil society representatives, was formed in June to implement the treaty.

During the annual regional Second Forum of Human Rights Defenders, held Sept. 26-28 in Panama, participants called on the region’s governments to strengthen protection and ensure a safe and enabling environment for environmental protectors, particularly women.

While the Mexican women defenders who gathered in Mexico City valued the Escazú Agreement, they also stressed the importance of its dissemination and, even more so, its proper implementation.

Activists Pacheco and Lopez agreed on the need for national outreach, especially to stakeholders.

“We need more information to get out, a lot of work needs to be done, more people need to know about it,” said Pacheco.

The parties to the treaty are currently discussing a draft action plan that would cover 2024 to 2030.

The document calls for the generation of greater knowledge, awareness and dissemination of information on the situation, rights and role of individuals, groups and organizations that defend human rights in environmental matters, as well as on the existing instruments and mechanisms for prevention, protection and response.

It also seeks recognition of the work and contribution of individuals, groups and organizations that defend human rights, capacity building, support for national implementation and cooperation, as well as a follow-up and review scheme for the regional plan.

García the attorney said the regional treaty is just one more tool, however important it may be.

“We are in the phase of seeing how the Escazú Agreement will be applied. The most important thing is effective implementation. It is something new and it will not be ready overnight,” she said.

As it gains strength, the women defenders talk about how the treaty can help them in their work. “If they attack me, what do I do? Pull out the agreement and show it to them so they know they must respect me?” one of the women who are part of the Voices of Life campaign asked her fellow activists.

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Credit: Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Oct 24 2023 (IPS)

Brazil’s Supreme Court has delivered a long-awaited ruling upholding Brazilian Indigenous peoples’ claims to their traditional land. It did so by rejecting the ‘Temporal Framework’ principle, which only allowed for the demarcation and titling of lands physically occupied by the Indigenous groups who claimed them by 5 October 1988, when the current constitution was adopted. This excluded the numerous Indigenous communities who’d been violently expelled from their ancestral lands before then, including under military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985.

The case was brought in relation to a land dispute in the state of Santa Catarina, but the ruling applies to hundreds of similar situations throughout Brazil.

This was also good news for the climate. Brazil is home to 60 per cent of the Amazon rainforest, a key climate stabiliser due to the enormous amount of carbon it stores and the water it releases into the atmosphere. Most of Brazil’s roughly 800 Indigenous territories – over 300 of which are yet to be officially demarcated – are in the Amazon. And there are no better guardians of the rainforest than Indigenous peoples: when they fend off deforestation, they protect their livelihoods and ways of life. The best-preserved areas of the Amazon are those legally recognised and protected as Indigenous lands.

But there’s been a sting in the tale: politicians backed by the powerful agribusiness lobby have passed legislation to enshrine the Temporal Framework, blatantly ignoring the court ruling.

A tug of war

The Supreme Court victory came after a long struggle. Hundreds of Indigenous mobilisations over several years called for the rejection of the Temporal Framework.

Powerful agribusiness interests presented the Temporal Framework as the proper way of regulating article 231 of the constitution in a way that provides the legal security rural producers need to continue to operate. Indigenous rights groups denounced it as a clear attempt to make theft of Indigenous lands legal. Regional and international human rights mechanisms sided with them: the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples warned that the framework contradicted universal and Inter-American human rights standards.

In their 21 September decision, nine of the Supreme Court’s 11 members ruled the Temporal Framework to be unconstitutional. With a track record of agribusiness-friendly rulings, the two judges who backed it had been appointed by former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, and one of them had also been Bolsonaro’s justice minister.

As the Supreme Court held its hearings and deliberations, political change took hold. Bolsonaro had vowed ‘not to cede one centimetre more of land’ to Indigenous peoples, and the process of land demarcation had remained stalled for years. But in April 2023, President Lula da Silva, in power since January, signed decrees recognising six new Indigenous territories and promised to approve all pending cases before the end of his term in 2026, a promise consistent with the commitment to achieve zero deforestation by 2030. The recognition of two additional reserves in September came alongside news that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon had fallen by 66 per cent in August compared to the same month in 2022.

Agribusiness fights back

But the agribusiness lobby didn’t simply accept its fate. The powerful ruralist congressional caucus introduced a bill to enshrine the Temporal Framework principle into law, which the Chamber of Deputies quickly passed on 30 May. The vote was accompanied by protests, with Indigenous groups blocking a major highway. They faced the police with their ceremonial bows and arrows and were dispersed with water cannon and teargas.

The Temporal Framework bill continued its course through Congress even after the Supreme Court’s decision. On 27 September, with 43 votes for and 21 against, the Senate approved it as a matter of ‘urgency’, rejecting the substance of the Supreme Court ruling and claiming that in issuing it the court had ‘usurped’ legislative powers.

The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil’s (APIB) assessment was that, as well as upholding the Temporal Framework, the bill sought to open the door to commodity production and infrastructure construction in Indigenous lands, among other serious violations of Indigenous rights. For these reasons, Indigenous groups called this the ‘Indigenous Genocide Bill’.

The struggle goes on

As the 20 October deadline for President Lula to either sign or veto the bill approached, a campaign led by Indigenous congresswoman Célia Xakriabá collected almost a million signatures backing her call for a total veto. Along with other civil society groups, APIB sent an urgent appeal to the UN requesting support to urge Lula to veto the bill.

On 19 October the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said Lula should veto the bill on the basis that it’s unconstitutional. On the same day, however, senior government sources informed that there wouldn’t be a total veto, but a ‘very large’ partial one. And indeed, the next day it was announced that Lula had partially vetoed the bill. According to a government spokesperson, all the clauses that constituted attacks on Indigenous rights and went against the Constitution were vetoed, while the ones that remained would serve to improve the land demarcation process, making it more transparent.

Even if the part of the bill that wasn’t vetoed doesn’t undermine the Supreme Court ruling, the issue is far from settled. The veto now needs to be analysed at a congressional session on a date yet to be determined. And the agribusiness lobby won’t back down easily. Many politicians own land overlapping Indigenous territories, and many more received campaigns funding from farmers who occupy Indigenous lands.

While further moves by the right-leaning Congress can’t be ruled out, the Supreme Court ruling also has some problems. The most blatant concerns the acknowledgment that there must be ‘fair compensation’ for non-Indigenous people occupying Indigenous lands they acquired ‘in good faith’ before the state considered them to be Indigenous territory. Indigenous groups contend that, while there might be a very small number of such cases, in a context of increasing violence against Indigenous communities, the compensation proposal would reward and further incentivise illegal invasions.

But beneath the surface of political squabbles, deeper changes are taking place that point to a movement that is growing stronger and better equipped to defend Indigenous peoples’ rights.

The 2022 census showed a 90-per-cent increase, from 896,917 to 1.69 million, in the number of Brazilians identifying as Indigenous compared to the census 12 years before. There was no demographic boom behind these numbers – just longstanding work by the Indigenous movement to increase visibility and respect for Indigenous identities. People who’d long ignored and denied their heritage to protect themselves from racism are now reclaiming their Indigenous identities. Not even the violent anti-Indigenous stance of the Bolsonaro administration could reverse this.

Today the Brazilian Indigenous movement is stronger than ever. President Lula owes his election to positioning himself as an alternative to his anti-rights, climate-denying predecessor. He now has the opportunity to reaffirm his commitment to respecting Indigenous peoples’ rights while tackling the climate crisis.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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Missile attacks on Gaza. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba

By Purnaka L. de Silva
NEW YORK, Oct 24 2023 (IPS)

“God Is Truth” – Mahatma Gandhi.
The bloodletting in Israel-Palestine is nothing new, perhaps the ferocity and intensity has become much worse and more frenetic. Ever since the Zionist project to establish a Jewish nation took hold in 1948, and flourished thereafter, the local inhabitants, mostly Arab Muslims and Christians, were displaced in the power equation and became dispossessed in every sense of the word.

Leading to wars between Arab neighbors and Israel, most notably in 1948-1949, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and 2006. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has remained the predominant military in Israel-Palestine.

In the 1980s Israel played a significant role in the creation and promotion of Hamas as a counter to weaken Fatah/PLO. Retired IDF Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev who was the Israeli military governor of Gaza in the early 1980s confessed that the government gave him a budget to engage fringe Palestinian Islamists.

For more details see Mehdi Hassan and Dina Sayedahmed, February 18, 2018, in the Intercept “Blowback: How Israel Went from Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It: Hamas wants to destroy Israel, right? But as Mehdi Hassan shows in a new video on blowback, Israeli officials admit they helped start the group”.

In fact, Hamas was originally viewed as a religious and charitable organization and Sheikh Yassin its founder was feted – a potential rival to Yasser Arafat it was thought at the time by Israeli pundits. For more details see Lorrie Goldstein October 18, 2023, in the Toronto Sun “Goldstein: Israel’s enormous blunder – it helped to create Hamas”.

Today, Hamas has become a veritable monster. Israel is not the first country to engage in such fruitless, disastrous, and ultimately counterproductive dalliances. History is replete with examples of blowback.

In the late 1970s, Indira Gandhi attempted to co-opt Bhindranwale and the Khalistan movement by allowing it to flourish to split Sikh votes and weaken the Akali Dal party, her chief rival in Punjab. After the Khalistan movement reached its pinnacle, it was too late to contain them, as in the case of Hamas today.

Indira Gandhi authorized Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw the Chief of Staff of the Indian Army to plan the 1984 Operation Blue Star, which was executed by LTG Kuldeep Singh Brar, killing Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers holed up in Sikhism’s holiest house of worship the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab – akin to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem.

For more details see Smita Prakash’s podcast on ANI reported in the Economic Times of India “Indira Gandhi let Jarnail Bhindranwale to become Frankenstein monster, claims Operation Blue Star commander”. Sadly, on October 31, 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated at her residence in New Delhi by her two Sikh bodyguards.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used Operation Cyclone to provide weapons (including stinger manpads to bring down Soviet Hind D helicopter gunships) and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979-1992 to defeat the USSR’s military.

For more details see Steve Coll February 24, 2004 Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, New York: The Penguin Press. On February 15, 1989, the last Soviet military column occupying Afghanistan withdrew, under the leadership of Colonel-General Boris Gromov.

The mujahideen veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War including Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, Muhammad Atef, and Ayman al-Zawahiri created Al Qaeda, following a series of meetings in Peshawar, Pakistan in 1988. As the whole world knows, Al Qaeda launched four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, against the United States.

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, well before the Festival of Sukkot ended at sundown Hamas launched a vicious, well-planned dawn raid into southern Israel from the Gaza enclave, where Palestinians have been hemmed in for decades in what has been referred to as the world’s largest open-air prison.

The attack was heralded by launching over 5,000 rockets, many likely 122mm Chinese WS-1E design (used as early as August 2008 – 15 years ago). For more details see the report of December 31, 2008, in WIRED “Hamas Fires Long-Range Chinese Rockets at Israel”. According to a report shared privately by a retired senior Indian Army officer (which needs to be independently verified by Israeli sources):

As IDF (Israel Defense Forces) publishes names of KIA (Killed in Action) in Hamas assault, IDF losses are clearer. IDF signals intelligence losses in the first 24 hours was nothing short of catastrophic. Unit 414, the Neshar (Vulture) Battalion, a pivotal piece of the IDF Combat Intelligence Collection Corps, lost 19 personnel KIA and its base infrastructure was heavily damaged during Hamas assault on Camp Urim. Gaza Division Signals Battalion commander was KIA at Camp Re’im, along with the Multidimensional “Ghost” unit commander.

Perhaps even more dramatic were the heavy losses of IDF special forces. All SOF (Special Operations Forces) units which responded to the attacks suffered heavy casualties, both to ambushes prepared by Hamas and also during clearing operations of the Hamas-occupied bases and kibbutzim (civilians had to be rescued despite casualties). Israel’s premier SOF unit Sayaret Matkal suffered 11 KIA, which is 5-10% of its total number of operators. Shayetet 12 naval special forces (another tier 1 unit) lost its unit commander.

The airborne Shaldag special operations unit lost 5 KIA and at least as many heavily injured in multiple engagements. Other losses: 933rd Nahal infantry brigade suffered 23 killed in action at Kerem Shalom checkpoint, including the brigade commander and the commander of the brigade reconnaissance battalion and his deputy. More or less the entire Nahal brigade command cell suffered very heavy losses. Overall, it is clear why IDF command is very, very annoyed, and not just because of the civilian casualties.

The combat losses it suffered on October 7 including from among its most elite units, represents a humiliating defeat for the IDF. Under the pressure of the assault and especially the loss of its HQ at Re’im, IDF Southern Command’s Gaza Division collapsed. SOF units were unable to compensate and were hammered badly. SIGINT personnel and infrastructure were destroyed, key unit commanders were killed. It was a Mess.

So where do we go from here? How do Israelis and Palestinians retain their collective humanity? There are no “good guys and bad guys” in the Israel-Palestine imbroglio. All parties to varying degrees are complicit in the utter savagery visited upon civilians, since the ethnic cleansings of 1948. The last real chance for peace that Israelis and Palestinians had was snuffed out 28 years ago on November 4 when Yitzhak Rabin was murdered in an internecine killing by a fellow Israeli Jew. Yitzhak Rabin had the gravitas and vision to make peace happen. From that time on it has been a downward spiral into the depths of hell, most times willfully.

Successive Israeli governments ratcheted up the pressure by making conditions in Gaza and the West Bank unlivable for the inhabitants – despite withdrawing from the entire Gaza Strip on September 22, 2005. The Israeli settler movement added further misery. We forget Voltaire’s wise words from centuries ago when denouncing the Catholic Church, which is applicable today in Israel: “If we believe in absurdities, we shall commit atrocities”. In June 2007 Hamas took over the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority and the dye was cast with Israel pitted against its monstrous creation from the 1980s.

It has also laid Israel open to external interference. In the case of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, Russia’s fingerprints are all over as British, European, and American top brass and security experts will confirm. Many of Hamas’s leadership studied in Russia and speak Russian. The Israel-Gaza war is a perfect diversionary tactic for Mr. Putin whose War of Aggression in Ukraine is bogged down, taking huge losses. Diverting American and European attention and war fighting men and material to aid Israel is of huge benefit to the Russians and detrimental to the freedom of Ukraine.

In Israel-Palestine, matters became compounded during the last decade that Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party and their far-right allies have been at the helm of Israeli government, security, politics, and discourse. Hubris and braggadocio are the hallmarks of a less-than-intelligent approach to dealing with Palestinians in Israel-Palestine. And rather than strengthening the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s most reliable partner to date, efforts were made systematically to undermine it. Leaving the field clear for Hamas to capture imagination of the youth.

It is ironic that Binyamin Netanyahu is still Prime Minister in all but name with mounting Israeli public pressure calling for his resignation. Guest Essay of October 18, 2023, in The New York Times “Netanyahu Led Us to Catastrophe. He Must Go.” Unlike his more famous and honorable predecessor Prime Minister Gold Meir who took responsibility and resigned after the surprise Egyptian attack in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, a similar momentous event like the attacks that unfolded on October 7, 2023, in southern Israel.

Non-stop aerial bombing of northern Gaza will not solve the crisis. It is not a solution; in fact, it strengthens Hamas in many unintended ways. The only immediate move must be to walk back from the brink, call a ceasefire and halt the planned ground assault of Gaza, and look outside the box that Israel-Palestine in trapped inside.

Israel’s stalwart allies the United States, and the European powers must act as good friends and not provide bad advice in supporting the launch of a ground assault on Gaza. Revenge and counter-revenge lead to a never-ending spiral of bloodletting with no end in sight, generation after generation.

Israel has claimed that after this most recent war in Gaza it will cut ties with the territory. Israel’s custodianship of the occupied territories has been far from ideal, and they have created hellish conditions for Palestinians and Israelis alike – which in all accounts is an unmitigated failure. Egypt ruled Gaza for 250 years and for a short time under President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1949.

As an immediate stopgap measure, maybe the reluctant Egyptians could be persuaded by the United State and European allies and through the provision of requisite resources to take over Gaza as a protectorate, where civilians can go about their daily lives without the threat of aerial bombardment or fear of medieval sanctions denying water, food, electricity and other basic needs – which is absolutely prohibited under the laws of war, and the Geneva Conventions. Time is fast running out and Israel-Palestine must step back from the brink of hell in the name of humanity.

Purnaka L. de Silva, Ph.D., is Faculty and University Adjunct Professor of the Year 2022, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, New Jersey; and Director, Institute for Strategic Studies and Democracy (ISSD) Malta. He was previously Senior Advisor, United Nations Global Compact in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General (EOSG) of Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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On residential streets of Caracas with little traffic it is possible to see cars that have been abandoned by their owners for years. They probably migrated from Venezuela or cannot afford to repair and sell their vehicles. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Oct 23 2023 (IPS)

Diego has just enrolled to study journalism at a university in the Venezuelan capital and, with 2,000 dollars that his family members managed to gather, has bought his first car, a small 2007 Ford that can take him to class from his home in the neighboring Caribbean port city of La Guaira.

Tomás, an experienced physiotherapist who sold Diego the car, is leaving for Spain where a job awaits him without delay, “so I’m quickly selling off things that will give me money to settle there, such as furniture, household goods and appliances, but for now I sold only one of my two cars,” he told IPS."The vehicle fleet in Venezuela - a country that now has 28 million inhabitants - is about 4.1 million vehicles, with an average age of 22 years, and 25 percent of them are out of service. The loss of purchasing power of the owners has caused most of them to delay the maintenance of their vehicles and the replacement of the spare parts that suffer wear and tear, such as tires, brakes, shock absorbers and oil." -- Omar Bautista

“This Ford Fiesta was my first car, I loved it very much, but it doesn’t make sense for me to hold on to two vehicles. I’m keeping a 2011 pickup truck that is in good condition, just in case I don’t do well and I have to return,” added the professional who, like other sources who spoke to IPS, asked not to disclose his last name “for safety reasons.”

The migration of almost eight million Venezuelans in the last 10 years, and the general impoverishment of the population, have led to the deterioration of what was once a shiny fleet of vehicles, with one out of every four vehicles left standing now due to lack of maintenance and leaving much of the rest aging and on the way to the junkyards.

In the basements of parking lots, and in the streets of towns and cities, thousands and thousands of vehicles are permanently parked under layers of dust and oblivion, because their owners have left or because they do not have the money to buy spare parts and pay the costs of repairs.

Along the streets of any Venezuelan city can be seen old rundown vehicles with no sign that the necessary repairs will be made. The impoverishment of the population is at the root of this decline. CREDIT: RrSs

Aging vehicle fleet

Omar Bautista, president of the Chamber of Venezuelan Automotive Manufacturers, told IPS that “the vehicle fleet in Venezuela – a country that now has 28 million inhabitants – is about 4.1 million vehicles, with an average age of 22 years, and 25 percent of them are out of service.”

“The loss of purchasing power of the owners has caused most of them to delay the maintenance of their vehicles and the replacement of the spare parts that suffer wear and tear, such as tires, brakes, shock absorbers and oil,” Bautista said.

Moreover, in contrast to the immense oil wealth in its subsoil, gasoline in Venezuela is scarce and, after more than half a century being the cheapest in the world, it is now sold at half a dollar per liter, a cost difficult to afford for most owners of private vehicles or public transportation.

The country needs some 300,000 barrels of fuel per day and for several years it has had less than 160,000 barrels, according to oil economist Rafael Quiroz, who added that interruptions in the work of Venezuela’s refineries are frequent.

There is almost no residential building that does not have at least one vehicle in storage waiting for its owners to return from abroad. They are part of the 1.5 million vehicles that are permanently parked in the country. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

Not enough money

The minimum wage in Venezuela is four dollars a month. Most workers receive up to 50 dollars in non-wage compensation for food, and the average income according to consulting firms is around 130 dollars a month.

Luisa Hernández, a retired teacher, earns a little more giving private English classes, but “the situation at home is very difficult. I can’t afford to pay for the repair of my Toyota Corolla, but a mechanic friend agreed to do the work, and I can pay him in installments,” she told IPS.

Mechanics have their finger on the pulse of the situation. “People leave and the cars often sit idle for years, and then the owners end up selling them, from abroad. Quite a few of those I have gone to pick up and have fixed them, to sell them,” Daniel, who runs a garage in the capital’s middle-class east side, told IPS.

He said that “many people do not sell their cars before leaving the country, thinking that they’re just going abroad to ‘see how it goes’. But they stay there and then decide to sell their vehicle before it further deteriorates and depreciates.”

Another mechanic, Eduardo González, told IPS that “There are people who go away and leave their cars in storage and from abroad they contact us so that from time to time we can check them and do some maintenance. Or they entrust their vehicle to a relative. There are people who travel and come back, but most of them end up selling.”

This situation “has favored buyers, who can get cars at a low price. But the problems come later, because that very used car will require spare parts and maintenance, and that is expensive and often the parts are difficult to get,” added González.

The same difficulty is also a concern for owners of cabs, buses and private vans that transport passengers, as well as cargo trucks.

“At least half of the truck fleet in the region is affected by the shortage and scarcity of spare parts,” said Jonathan Durrelle, president of the Chamber of Cargo Transportation of Carabobo, an industrial state in the center of the country.

Large and small buses for passenger transport in Venezuelan cities, including Caracas, as well as cargo vehicles, also suffer from the lack of sufficient revenue, as well as spare parts, to keep them in proper working condition. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

Industries have closed down

Elías Besis, from the Chamber of Spare Parts Importers, attributed this to the closure of companies that “years ago manufactured 62 percent of the spare parts needed in the country, and now that production has plunged to two percent.”

Thousands of manufacturing companies closed down in Venezuela during the eight years (2013-2020) in which the country was in deep recession, suffering a loss of four-fifths of its GDP according to economic consulting firms.

Financial and banking activity has also declined, as has the vehicle loan portfolio, which peaked at 2.3 billion dollars in 2008 and plummeted to just 227,000 dollars by late 2022, according to economist Manuel Sutherland.

Vehicle assembly plants, of which there were a dozen until recently, also closed their doors. In addition to selling to hundreds of dealerships, they used to export vehicles to the Andean and Caribbean markets.

Their production peaks were recorded in 1978, with 182,000 new vehicles – Venezuela then had 14 million inhabitants and 2.5 million vehicles – and in 2007, when 172,000 cars were assembled.

In 2022 only 75 vehicles – trucks and buses – were assembled, and in the first six months of this year just 22.

Newer vans and cars drive through middle and upper class neighborhoods, but are part of the “bubble,” the small segment of the population less impacted by the deep economic crisis that Venezuela has suffered over the last decade. CREDIT: Motorpasión

Farewell to the bonanza

The result of this scenario is the aging and non-renewal of the vehicles circulating on Venezuela’s roads.

The new ones, Daniel pointed out, “are SUVs, crossovers and off-road vehicles that cost a lot of money and can only be bought by those who live in the bubble,” the term popularly used to refer to the segment of high-level officials and businesspersons whose finances are still booming in the midst of the crisis.

In addition, in view of the almost total closure of automotive plants, individuals are opting to import new vehicles directly from the United States, favored by the elimination of tariffs for the importation of most models.

For that reason, said Bautista, “there is no shortage of new vehicles, what there is is a shortage of consumers with the necessary purchasing power and conditions to buy new vehicles.”

These consumers were part of the hard-hit middle class – nine out of 10 families in that socioeconomic category had fallen below the middle class by 2020 according to the consulting firm Anova – and they no longer buy new or newer cars because they have swelled the legion of migrants, selling or leaving behind their main assets.

Since the days of the oil boom (1950-1980), Venezuelans developed a sort of sentimental relationship with their vehicles, associating them with comfort and enjoyment that favored cheap gasoline and a network of paved roads that made it easier to travel to places of recreation.

In middle class and even lower middle class families, it was quite common to change cars every two years and to give one to their children when they turned 18. They were helped by credit facilities, and were encouraged to buy cars in cities where public transportation has always fallen short.

They have had to say goodbye to their easy past on wheels, like migrants have said farewell to their country and homeland. Or at least “see you later”.

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By an IPS Correspondent
NEW YORK, Oct 23 2023 (IPS)

Amnesty International (AI), one of the leading human rights organizations, has accused Israeli forces of continuing “to intensify their cataclysmic assault on the occupied Gaza Strip.”

AI says it has documented unlawful Israeli attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian casualties and must be investigated as war crimes.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said Israeli forces, in their stated intent to use all means to destroy Hamas, have shown a shocking disregard for civilian lives.

“They have pulverized street after street of residential buildings killing civilians on a mass scale and destroying essential infrastructure, while new restrictions mean Gaza is fast running out of water, medicine, fuel and electricity”.

Testimonies from eyewitness and survivors highlighted, again and again, how Israeli attacks decimated Palestinian families, causing such destruction that surviving relatives have little but rubble to remember their loved ones by, said Callamard.

Families sheltering in an UNRWA school. Credit: UNICEF/Hassan Islyeh

AI said it spoke to survivors and eyewitnesses, analysed satellite imagery, and verified photos and videos to investigate air bombardments carried out by Israeli forces between 7 and 12 October, which caused horrific destruction, and in some cases wiped out entire families.

Here the organization presented an in-depth analysis of its findings in five of these unlawful attacks. In each of these cases, Israeli attacks violated international humanitarian law, including by failing to take feasible precautions to spare civilians, or by carrying out indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, or by carrying out attacks that may have been directed against civilian objects.

“The five cases presented barely scratch the surface of the horror that Amnesty has documented and illustrate the devastating impact that Israel’s aerial bombardments are having on people in Gaza. For 16 years, Israel’s illegal blockade has made Gaza the world’s biggest open-air prison – the international community must act now to prevent it becoming a giant graveyard”.

“We are calling on Israeli forces to immediately end unlawful attacks in Gaza and ensure that they take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects. Israel’s allies must immediately impose a comprehensive arms embargo given that serious violations under international law are being committed.”

Since 7 October Israeli forces have launched thousands of air bombardments in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 3,793 people, mostly civilians, including more than 1,500 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. Approximately 12,500 have been injured and more than 1,000 bodies are still trapped beneath the rubble.

In Israel, more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, have been killed and some 3,300 others were injured, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health after armed groups from the Gaza Strip launched an unprecedented attack against Israel on 7 October. They fired indiscriminate rockets and sent fighters into southern Israel who committed war crimes including deliberately killing civilians and hostage-taking. The Israeli military says that fighters also took more than 200 civilian hostages and military captives back to the Gaza Strip.

“Amnesty International is calling on Hamas and other armed groups to urgently release all civilian hostages, and to immediately stop firing indiscriminate rockets. There can be no justification for the deliberate killing of civilians under any circumstances,” said Callamard.

Hours after the attacks began, Israeli forces started their massive bombardment of Gaza. Since then, Hamas and other armed groups have also continued to fire indiscriminate rockets into civilian areas in Israel in attacks that must also be investigated as war crimes.

Meanwhile in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, at least 79 Palestinians, including 20 children, have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers amid a spike in excessive use of force by the Israeli army and an escalation in state-backed settler violence, which Amnesty International is also investigating.

Amnesty International is continuing to investigate dozens of attacks in Gaza. This output focuses on five unlawful attacks which struck residential buildings, a refugee camp, a family home and a public market. The Israeli army claims it only attacks military targets, but in a number of cases Amnesty International found no evidence of the presence of fighters or other military objectives in the vicinity at the time of the attacks.

Amnesty International also found that the Israeli military failed to take all feasible precautions ahead of attacks including by not giving Palestinian civilians effective prior warnings – in some cases they did not warn civilians at all and in others they issued inadequate warnings.

“Our research points to damning evidence of war crimes in Israel’s bombing campaign that must be urgently investigated. Decades of impunity and injustice and the unprecedented level of death and destruction of the current offensive will only result in further violence and instability in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” said Callamard.

“It is vital that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court urgently expedites its ongoing investigation into evidence of war crimes and other crimes under international law by all parties. Without justice and the dismantlement of Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians, there can be no end to the horrifying civilian suffering we are witnessing.”

The relentless bombardment of Gaza has brought unimaginable suffering to people who are already facing a dire humanitarian crisis. After 16 years under Israel’s illegal blockade, Gaza’s healthcare system is already close to ruin, and its economy is in tatters.

Hospitals are collapsing, unable to cope with the sheer number of wounded people and desperately lacking in life-saving medication and equipment.

Amnesty International is calling on the international community to urge Israel to end its total siege, which has cut Gazans off from food, water, electricity and fuel and urgently allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

They must also press Israel to lift its longstanding blockade on Gaza which amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, is a war crime and is a key aspect of Israel’s system of apartheid.

Finally, the Israeli authorities must rescind their “evacuation order” which may amount to forced displacement of the population.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Families flee their shattered neighbourhood, Tal al-Hawa, to seek refuge in the southern Gaza strip. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 23 2023 (IPS)

The widespread use of American weapons by Israel, which has killed thousands of civilians in Gaza, has triggered accusations of war crimes against the United States.

But US has always escaped these charges in contemporary military conflicts –particularly in the killing fields of Afghanistan and Iraq –and also in the use of American weapons in Yemen where thousands have been killed.

The United Nations once described the deaths and destruction in the eight-year-old civil war in Yemen as “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster”.

The killings of mostly civilians have been estimated at over 100,000, with accusations of war crimes against a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), whose primary arms supplier is the US.

And now, the killings of Palestinians in Gaza have come back to haunt the Americans in a new war zone. But still, the US is unlikely to be hauled before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“If U.S. officials don’t care about Palestinian civilians facing atrocities using U.S. weapons, perhaps they will care a bit more about their own individual criminal liability for aiding Israel in carrying out these atrocities,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an American non-profit organization that advocates democracy and human rights in the Middle East.

“The American people never signed up to help Israel commit war crimes against defenseless civilians with taxpayer funded bombs and artillery,” she noted.

According to DAWN, U.S. law requires that United States monitor and ensure that weapons and munitions it provides to Israel are not used to commit war crimes in Gaza.

The advocacy group reminded both Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in a letter sent last week.

“Failure to comply with end-use monitoring requirements not only breaches U.S. laws but also could expose U.S. officials to prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for aiding and abetting war crimes,” warned DAWN.

In a separate letter to ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, DAWN asked the Prosecutor urgently to issue a public statement reminding the parties to the conflict of the ongoing investigation there and send an investigative team to the Gaza region of Palestine to document and investigate potential crimes under the Rome Statute.

Mouin Rabbani, Co-Editor, Jadaliyya, an independent ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute, told IPS the United States is in violation of international law, as well as its own domestic legislation, by providing weapons to Israel in the full knowledge that these are being used for the express purpose of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

www.jadaliyya.com

“I would go further and state that it is providing them to Israel for precisely this reason. This is because the US is determined to see Israel achieve its objectives in the Gaza Strip; Washington recognizes that Israel does not have the military capacity and political will to physically occupy the Gaza Strip for a prolonged period and eradicate Hamas and other groups, and has instead — with unqualified US support — adopted as its primary objective the systematic destruction of the Gaza Strip and mass killings of Palestinian civilians”, he pointed out.

As for international law and domestic US legislation, these are as irrelevant as Palestinian lives in this context. That’s how the US-designed rules-based international order works and was designed to work, he said.

“US legislation, the laws of war, and international law more generally, are rigorously applied to rivals and adversaries, while the US and its partners are free to violate them with total impunity, Rabbani argued.

It would be fair to say that ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan is the personification of this system — fearlessly prosecuting official enemies and adversaries with rabid zeal, but more docile than a dead canary when similar or greater crimes are committed by states his government and its Western partners support without qualification, said Rabbani.

If there’s one thing US officials complicit in Israel’s war crimes don’t have to worry about, it is prosecution by the ICC, he declared.

Asked about US weapons in killings in Gaza, Matthew Miller, Spokesperson for the State Department told reporters last week that American weapons cannot be deliberately used against civilians.

“Of course – and one of the tragedies of war –is that there are always civilian deaths. It is one of the great tragedies of war, and what we try to do is work to minimize civilian deaths to the greatest extent possible,” he said.

Asked if there is “any concern among the administration that by supplying this military assistance, the US might be involved in any possible war crimes against civilians”, Miller said: “No, I would say that we have made very clear that we expect Israel to conduct its operations in compliance with international law.”

“That is the standard we hold – uphold – that’s the standard we hold ourselves to; it’s the standard we hold our partners to; it’s the standard every democracy ought to be held to. And we will continue to work with them and continue to deliver messages to them that they should conduct their military operations in – and to the maximum extent possible to protect civilians from harm,” he declared.

According to the Washington-based Stimson Center, Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. military assistance since the Second World War, amounting to more than $158 billion over the past seven decades– not adjusted for inflation.

In recent years, U.S. assistance to Israel has been outlined in a 10-year memoranda of understandings, the most recent of which was signed in 2016 and pledges $38 billion in military assistance between FY2019-FY2028.

Dr Ramzy Baroud, Palestinian journalist and author, told IPS asking the US to clarify the End Use Monitoring (EUM) measures, or Israel’s compliance with the use of American weapons in its war against Gaza, may give the impression that Washington lacks awareness of how US weapons, and US tax payers money are being used.

https://ramzybaroud.net/

“Never before in the history of the US’s relationship with the Middle East has Washington been so directly involved in an Israeli war. The closest was the 1973 war, and even then, the US involvement arrived a week later, and was hardly as direct,” he said.

Every statement made by top US officials, starting with Biden, to Blinken to Sullivan, to all others, indicate that the US is a party in the war, not an outsider, a benefactor, and certainly not a mediator. They even sat in on meetings to discuss Israeli war plans on Gaza. They cannot claim ignorance, Dr, Baroud pointed out.

“In the past, Israel has violated the US’s rules on the use of US arms against civilians, and repeatedly so. Much has been written about this subject, particularly in terms of Israeli violation of the Lehy Laws.”

But what is happening right now is a whole different reality. By sending massive arm shipments, aircraft carriers, and even soldiers to Israel, the US has become a party in the world, therefore it is responsible for the unprecedented war crimes in Gaza, he argued.

“The fingerprints of US weapons are on the body of every Palestinian killed in Gaza, from the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, to UN schools, to every house and every street.

We don’t demand clarification regarding the use of these weapons. We know precisely how they are being used. We demand accountability from war criminals, whether in Tel Aviv or Washington,” he noted.

Meanwhile, a report on Cable News Network (CNN) October 22 said the death toll in Gaza since October 7 has risen to 4,651, with more than 14,245 wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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England flanker Tom Curry reported that South Africa hooker Bongi Mbonambi used a racial slur towards him during the Springboks' Rugby World Cup semi-final win.

Christian citizens bury victims of Israel's bombing of the Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza. Credit: Hany Al-Shaeir/IPS

By Hisham Allam and Naureen Hossain
CAIRO & UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 2023 (IPS)

The ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip has resulted in a humanitarian crisis described as “catastrophic” – and even as aid arrived, strikes intensified.

According to the health ministry in Gaza, Israeli attacks have killed 4,385 Palestinians and wounded 13,650 more since October 7. The victims include 3,983 children and 3,300 women. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, another 64 Palestinians have been killed and 1,230 injured by Israeli forces in the same period, as reported by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Palestinian rockets and other attacks have claimed the lives of 1,300 Israelis and injured 4,562 more, while nearly 200 remain captive, according to OCHA. The conflict has also forced about one million Palestinians in Gaza to flee their homes, more than half of whom are staying in UNRWA facilities across the territory.

A convoy with aid entered Gaza for the first time on October 21 since the outbreak of hostilities on October 7.

Martin Griffiths, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, welcomed aid and said he was confident that this would be the start of a “sustainable effort to provide essential supplies – including food, water, medicine, and fuel – to the people of Gaza, in a safe, dependable, unconditional and unimpeded manner.

Trucks carrying 60 metric tons of World Food Programme emergency food were among the first humanitarian convoys to cross the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza. Credit: WFP

“Two weeks since the start of hostilities, the humanitarian situation in Gaza – already precarious – has reached catastrophic levels. It is critical that aid reaches people in need wherever they are across Gaza and at the right scale.

“The people of Gaza have endured decades of suffering. The international community cannot continue to fail them.”

UNRWA, the United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees, says that more than half a million people are staying in crowded shelters in Gaza, especially in the south. They have left their homes because of the war and have nowhere else to go.

The shelters do not have enough food, water, hygiene, and cleaning items, and they are not clean enough. The UNRWA says that this is a health problem, and it makes the people who live there feel more stressed and scared. Some of them have gone back to where they came from, even though it is still dangerous.

The water crisis in Gaza is also affecting the UNRWA shelters, as many of them do not have any water supply at all. The agency says that fuel is urgently needed to operate water pumps and desalination plants, but it is scarce and expensive due to the blockade and the war.

UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma noted during a UN briefing last week that the organization was concerned about shortages of water.

“We are very concerned about the spread of water-borne diseases,” Touma said. The influx of people in shelters and facilities such as hospitals means that the latter have been over-extended to accommodate them while resuming regular operations.

“We call for the siege to be lifted so that UNRWA and other sister and humanitarian agencies can bring in much-needed supplies,” Touma said.

On October 20, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited the gate to Gaza (Rafah Crossing) and spoke about the humanitarian crisis in the enclave. He said, “We have a situation where trucks carrying vital supplies are stuck at the border while the people in Gaza are suffering from a lack of water, electricity, food, and medicine. We need to end this deadlock urgently.”

The next day, several trucks entered Gaza with aid, following a previous agreement between the USA, Egypt, and Israel.

Guterres praised the efforts of the Egyptian Red Crescent and other Egyptian entities that are helping the people in Gaza, along with the United Nations. He said, “It’s important that we have consistent support, with a sufficient number of trucks allowed to cross every day.”

A large convoy of humanitarian aid from Egypt is waiting to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing, according to a volunteer from the National Alliance for Civil Development Work. The convoy consists of 120 trucks carrying 1,000 tons of food and meat, 40,000 blankets, 80 tents, 46,000 pieces of clothing, and 290,000 boxes of medicines and medical supplies.

A volunteer, Ahmed Magdy, said that the convoy had been delayed for days and that only limited trucks were allowed to pass. He expressed his disappointment and frustration at the situation, especially after the bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza and the shortage of medical resources in most of the hospitals in the Strip. He said that the Egyptian civil society organizations are eager to deliver their aid to the people of Gaza, who are suffering from Israeli aggression.

According to the Palestine Red Crescent, 20 trucks of humanitarian aid have arrived in Gaza and will be distributed according to the Emergency Committee’s lists. However, the organization warned that the supplies are not enough to meet the needs of the region and that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues.

While IPS was interviewing Hisham Mahna, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, the Jerusalem Hospital affiliated with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society received a notice of immediate evacuation from the Israeli army and a threat of shelling. More threats continued over the weekend, with Palestinians saying they had received renewed new warnings from Israel’s military to move from north Gaza to the south of the strip.

According to Hisham, the hospital houses more than 400 patients, including critically ill patients and others in the intensive care unit, in addition to 12,000 displaced civilians who have taken refuge in the hospital as a safe place, in addition to the medical staff.

“We appealed to the Israeli authorities at all levels to stop the repeated attacks on hospitals, to highlight the dire humanitarian situation inside the hospital for patients and displaced people, and to avoid a repeat of the Al-Ahli Hospital tragedy,” Mahna told IPS.

Ahmed El-Beriem, a Palestinian journalist and volunteer coordinator at UNRWA shelters in the Gaza Strip, tells IPS that most of the population of Gaza has been displaced to the south, which is what Israel had planned from the beginning of the war to force Gazans to leave through the Egyptian border.

“The tents provided by UN agencies are no longer enough. There are more than half a million displaced people without shelter. As for schools, the classrooms are full to the brim, with most of them reaching a density of 70 people in a room that does not exceed 25 square meters.”

El-Beriem says that the cemeteries in the Gaza Strip are filled to the brim. There is no more room, which forced the municipality to dig mass graves, each of which contains between 100 and 200 dead.

“Since the beginning of the war, the people of Gaza have been living without water or electricity. The water provided by aid organizations is limited, and diseases are widespread in the refugee camps.”

He says, “You can barely breathe clean air. The displaced people are scattered in schools, in gardens, in the courtyards of mosques, and in the corridors of hospitals.

Security has become a rare commodity. People here do not have the luxury of sleeping. You never know when the shelling will come. Israel is firing shells over the heads of civilians day and night. They are shelling hospitals, mosques, churches, residential towers, crossings, and everything.”

On the other side of the border, a field coordinator with the Egyptian Red Crescent, Mohamed Jamal, said they have received hundreds of tons of aid for Gaza at El-Arish Airport in Egypt’s northern Sinai. However, he said they are still waiting for the border to open to deliver the aid. “We are still waiting for any breakthrough in the situation and the opening of the crossing,” Jamal told IPS.

He said the international aid includes medical equipment, medicines, food, blankets, and clothing from various countries and organizations. Jamal said the Egyptian Red Crescent was coordinating with other countries and the Palestinian Red Crescent to assess the needs of the people in Gaza and provide them with the necessary relief supplies.

According to UN Women, the recent outbreak of violence and destruction in Gaza has forced nearly 493,000 women and girls to flee their homes. The violence has also left many women without their male partners, as about 900 women have become widows and heads of households.

Sarah Hendriks, UN Women Deputy Executive Director, ad interim, said: “UN Women urges an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and unrestricted access to humanitarian aid, including food, water, fuel, and health supplies, which are vital for the survival of women and girls in the Gaza Strip.”

The World Food Programme (WFP) has been providing food and cash assistance to 522,000 Palestinians each day since the start of the crisis, even as stocks run dangerously low. Due to the widespread destruction and insecurity, the replenishment of supplies has proven to be difficult, nigh impossible.

The call for an end to the siege has been made more pertinent and urgent after the bombings of a UNRWA school in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp and the Al Ahli Anglican Episcopal Hospital on October 17, resulting in casualties in the hundreds. Guterres condemned the strikes in a statement issued that same day, also emphasizing that under international law, hospitals and medical clinics are protected under international law.

Since the start of the crisis, 26 healthcare facilities have been damaged by the fighting, according to the World Health Organization. Facilities such as hospitals have already been overwhelmed with the patient care they provide during such crises, as well as serving as shelters for displaced peoples.

The UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths spoke at the Security Council to call for the involved parties to respect international humanitarian law. He also called for a ceasefire so that humanitarian efforts could step in. Following the hospital bombing on Tuesday, he noted that medical personnel and facilities are protected under international law.

“It’s imperative that the wounded and the sick receive the medical care they need,” he said. “It is imperative that the parties respect their obligations under international humanitarian law, and it is our collective responsibility – we are all involved in this, we are not observers, we are all involved – in using all our influence to ensure that this is the case.”

Some Member States have extended their support to the people of Palestine and the relief effort. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia contributed USD 20 million and USD 2 million, respectively, to UNRWA’s relief funding. Contributions have also come from Jordan, Ireland, and Iceland.

There have also been statements that call out or even condemn the Israeli military forces in their operations against Hamas.

A spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the continued attacks and siege of Gaza have demonstrated “daily indications of violations of the law of war and international human rights law.”

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, has warned that the Palestinians face the “grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing” should the war continue and has stated that Israeli forces’ military operations go “well beyond the limits of international law.”

In the 15-member council, a resolution that would have condemned all violence against civilians in the Hamas-Israel conflict was vetoed by the United States. Russia and Britain, two other permanent members of the Security Council, abstained during the voting process – the rationale being that more time was needed for diplomacy.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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