Africa

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Africa's most populous country is set to mark 60 years of independence from British rule.

The health body's says a "robust" investigation will cover claims against aid workers tackling Ebola.

More than 30 elephants were found lying on their stomachs, according to wildlife officials.

The loss of 2.2 million jobs is unprecedented since recording the figure began in 2008.

South Africa’s former president has repeatedly refused to testify at the corruption commission.

A Cameroonian footballer is arrested in Mauritius for attempting to illegally obtain a Mauritian passport.

Following an almost unanimous 97.7 percent referendum vote in November of last year for Independence from PNG, the people of Bougainville returned to the polls last month to decide on a new government. Bougainville's main town of Buka. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia, Sep 29 2020 (IPS)

Ishmael Toroama, a former revolutionary leader and fighter during the decade long civil war which engulfed the remote islands of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the 1990s, has been elected the autonomous region’s new President ahead of high-level talks about its political future.

“I, as your mandated President, am ready to take Bougainville forward, focussing on law and order, anti-corruption policies, the [referendum] ratification process and improving the fiscal self-reliance of Bougainville,” Toroama said in a public statement on the occasion of his swearing in as President in the region’s main town of Buka on the Sept. 25. He will be supported in a caretaker government for the next two weeks by his new Vice President, Patrick Nisira, MP for Halia constituency in North Bougainville, and Therese Kaetavara, Women’s Representative for South Bougainville.

Toroama, who defeated 24 other presidential candidates, is a strategic choice. Following an almost unanimous 97.7 percent referendum vote in November of last year for Independence from PNG, the people of Bougainville returned to the polls last month to decide on a new government. It is now tasked with carrying the autonomous region on a challenging political journey toward the long held local aspiration for nationhood.

“The referendum was a turning point…looking at all the 25 candidates, people were looking for who could deliver and successfully talk about Independence [with the PNG Government],” Aloysius Laukai, Manager of the local New Dawn FM radio station, told IPS. Laukai claims that “the election was conducted well” and widely accepted as free and fair. The campaigning and voting periods were reported as organised and peaceful, in spite of some alleged cases of misplaced voting papers.

The islands of Bougainville, with a population of about 300,000 people, are located more than 900 kilometres east of the PNG mainland. Bougainville hit the world headlines in 1989 when an indigenous landowner uprising against the then Rio-Tinto majority owned Panguna copper mine on Bougainville Island escalated into a civil war which raged on until a ceasefire in 1998. The peace agreement, signed in 2001, provided for establishing an autonomous government, which occurred in 2005, and a referendum on the region’s future political status.

Despite having only one recorded case of COVID-19, to date, the Bougainville government declared a state of emergency in March, which led to the delay of the general election, originally planned during the first half of this year.

Former President John Momis, who has led Bougainville for the past 10 years and been a prominent local political leader and figure of stability for more than four decades, bowed out of the race, having served the maximum two terms in office.  The field then mushroomed into an unprecedented more than 400 candidates vying for 40 parliamentary seats and 25 hopefuls for the presidency.

Alluding to the stakes ahead, Momis called for unity as voters turned out to cast their ballots from Aug. 12 to Sept. 1. “Let us all walk this journey together as one people and one voice to decide our leaders for this next government that will lead us to our ultimate political future that is within the confines of democratic values and international best practice standards,” Momis stated on Aug. 17.

While also a pro-Independence advocate, Momis, a former Roman Catholic priest with extensive experience in peacetime politics, is a contrasting figure to Toroama. His achievements include serving in the national parliament, playing a major role in the region’s peace negotiations and serving as Bougainville’s governor after the conflict from 1999 to 2005.

The new President was a commander in the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, a guerrilla force which instigated an armed uprising following grievances about the environmental devastation and economic inequity associated with the foreign-owned Panguna mine. He has not been a political leader or served in government administration, although he played a vital role in the peace talks which ended the conflict. More recently, he has been a successful cocoa farmer.

Geraldine Valei, Executive Officer of the Bougainville Women’s Federation, offered another perspective on the overwhelming support Toroama received at the ballot box. “The reason why we say that he is the right person is because, in our Melanesian way of resolving conflicts, if you start the war then you are the one to resolve it,” Valei told IPS, adding that, “he [Toroama] will, of course, need support from very good advisors to lead as President.”

Toroama’s rivals for the top office included James Tanis, who held the office of President briefly from 2008 to 2010, another former rebel ex-combatant, Sam Kauona, and local businessman, Fidelis Semoso. There were also two female candidates in the running: Ruby Miringka, a healthcare professional who has also worked for the Bougainville Referendum Commission, and Magdalene Toroansi, a former Bougainville Minister for Women.

Bougainville’s fourth government will face enormous challenges in the next five-year term to build a weak economy, improve governance and the capacity of institutions, all still in need of reconstruction and development following widespread destruction on the islands during the conflict. 

Valei told IPS that she would like to see the new President “strengthen good governance, have zero tolerance of corruption, strengthen law and order and advocate for the ratification of Independence from Papua New Guinea”.

Toroama also faces huge public expectations to bring about the region’s long held dream of Independence.  Aspirations for self-determination in the region pre-date both the civil war and PNG’s Independence. The islands of Bougainville were brought under the umbrella of the new Papua New Guinean nation in 1975. But they are geographically located far from the PNG mainland and the islanders trace their ethnic and cultural kinship instead to the Solomon Islands, an archipelago to the immediate southeast of Bougainville.

However, the decisive result of last year’s referendum is non-binding. Long and complex negotiations between the PNG and Bougainville governments to agree the region’s new political status will occur over the coming months and years. Talks at the national level will be informed by input from local forums in Bougainville, comprising representatives of communities, ex-combatants, business leaders, women and youths. The final decision will then be ratified by the PNG Parliament. There is no deadline for this process, but Toroama has indicated he would like a decision reached within two to three years.

PNG’s Prime Minister, James Marape, has voiced his support and respect for the process ahead and the wishes of the Bougainville people. “I look forward to working with President-Elect Toroama in progressing consultations on the outcome of the recent referendum and securing long term economic development and a lasting peace for the people of Bougainville,” Marape said in a statement issued soon after the election results were announced.

Yet, the PNG Government is known to not favour full secession, preferring the region to remain within a ‘united’ PNG under a form of greater autonomy.

Looking ahead, economic experts claim that, with a weak economy and heavy dependence on international aid and funding from the national government, Bougainville would face a long period of transition to being an economically viable state, potentially up to 20 years.

Related Articles

• Post-War Truth and Justice Still Elusive in Bougainville
• Bougainville Women Turn Around Lives of ‘Lost Generation’
• A Peaceful Decade but Pacific Islanders Warn Against Complacency

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Arranging sliced tomatoes to dry in the sun in Bangar el Sokor, Nubaria, Egypt. Rahma is a. Credit: Heba Khammis/FAO

By Juan Carlos García y Cebolla
MADRID, Sep 29 2020 (IPS)

Most cultures have created taboos and norms that prevent food waste. At the same time, social mores have reserved for occasions of celebrations or hospitality a code associating the abundance of food, in quantities much higher than normal, with concepts such as generosity and honour. 

In the last century, along with technical and productive advances and social transformations, taboos have gradually disappeared or lost their effectiveness, and the notion of celebration has led to increasingly common and unconscious manifestations of opulence and neglect.

On the other hand, the food chain has been transformed, multiplying the number of operations and actors, and becoming much more complex. In many cases, the resulting search for ever lower costs has led to a reduced workforce and the assuming of a higher percentage of loss and waste, as occurs with fruit that is damaged by careless handling in self-service retail.

One third of the food grown is lost or wasted every year. This amounts to a staggering 1.3 billion tons of food, which would be enough to feed 2 billion people in the world, and negatively affects climate change, poverty and trade

In the last decade, there has been growing concern about the scale this unsustainable behaviour has reached.

One third of the food grown is lost or wasted every year. This amounts to a staggering 1.3 billion tons of food, which would be enough to feed 2 billion people in the world, and negatively affects climate change, poverty and trade. In turn, this has an important impact on the right to adequate food of broad sectors of the population.

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly disrupted our dynamics. In addition to the damage it has caused to daily life, it has exposed these systemic problems and the need for urgent changes in the way we manage the planet and its fruits, including food loss and waste.

Although disruptions to the food supply chain are – for now – relatively minor overall, measures imposed by States to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus have generated obstacles typical of distant times: from cultivation and harvesting, through transport and storage, up to consumption.

Mobility restrictions (closure of roads and borders, and delays due to mandatory controls) prevent or delay the transport and distribution of goods, resulting in agricultural products that spoil or are not sold due to their low quality. Changes in demand reduce the income of producers, especially small farmers or those living in remote rural areas.

On the consumer side, families with lower purchasing power find it even more costly to access fresh and more perishable foods, such as fruits or fish (leading to unhealthier diets and long-term health costs).

During the pandemic, access to food is not only a problem for the poorest, but also in many cases for people with greater resources who have traditionally been able to afford fresh products of high nutritional value and healthy diets. Among them, the at-risk population, or elderly or chronically ill people, who have to stay at home.

The pandemic has taught us that in times of crisis, it is not only essential to ensure the flow of non-perishable food, but also the linkages between consumers and producers. This facilitates access to fresh foods and healthy diets for all, as well as maintaining demand and sustaining local production, and in turn combating food loss and waste.

To date, we have witnessed the rapid implementation of initiatives to address these challenges.

In Spain, the municipality of Valladolid helped to set up safe home delivery of ‘zero kilometre’ or local foods that have not travelled far after production. The Government of Oman has transformed the fish auction markets from a physical marketplace to a digital platform, where market workers upload photos of the catch and wholesalers, retailers and restaurants can view the daily offer and place their orders online.

Even before the pandemic, the South African “Second Harvest” program, led by a non-profit organization, allowed commercial farmers to donate to vulnerable people the post-harvest surplus produced directly from the farms and distributed with refrigerated vehicles, preserving their quality and nutritional value.

The 2021 Food Systems Summit, convened by the United Nations Secretary General, will be a great opportunity to rethink how to improve access to healthy diets and income for small producers, as well as reducing loss and waste.

In the face of future crises, responses cannot be improvised. We have to be prepared and incorporate a vision of prevention and risk reduction. Political measures should quickly restore market access, so that the knots in the food chain are not broken.

They must also prioritize the well-being and livelihoods of all people, especially those who live in fragile contexts. Only in this way can we mitigate the impact of the crisis, reduce food loss and waste and contribute to the realization of the adequate right to food.

 

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Excerpt:

Juan Carlos García y Cebolla is Leader of the Right to Food Team of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

The post Less Food Loss and Waste, More Right to Food appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: SPC technical and geodetic surveying team at the Majuro tide gauge station in the Marshall Islands (RMI)

By External Source
Sep 29 2020 (IPS-Partners)

As the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC-UNESCO) reported earlier this year, COVID-19 has caused massive disruptions to ocean observing systems around the globe, as research cruises, maintenance visits, and sensor deployments have been postponed or cancelled.

According to IOC-UNESCO, “COVID-19 created an ocean data blindspot that could disrupt weather forecasts and hamper our understanding of climate change.”

When borders closed around the Pacific in March as part of COVID-19 restrictions, it provided an opportunity to test the agility of the infrastructure maintenance program supporting 13 permanent sea level observation stations across the Pacific.

These stations form the backbone of one of the world’s most important ocean-monitoring networks. They provide an indispensable record and near-real time data for meteorological agencies, emergency services, shipping operators, and all coastal communities concerned with the rate of sea-level rise and climate change.

Pacific sea level monitoring

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) manages the tide gauges in partnership with the Pacific Community (SPC) and Geoscience Australia (GA) through the Pacific Sea Level and Geodetic Monitoring (PSLGM) project. As one of the region’s oldest continuing aid investments, this project has provided continuous, high-quality climate, sea-level, and land movement data since 1991, and currently operates under the Climate and Oceans Support Program in the Pacific (COSPPac).

Pre-COVID-19, technicians from BOM, SPC, or GA would travel monthly throughout the region to undertake maintenance, calibration, or levelling of each sea-level monitoring site and attend to any emergency issues that might arise.

But COVID-19 has accelerated a process already underway to build in-country capacity to maintain and troubleshoot these sites. Following are a few success stories that have emerged from the project over the last six months.

6-monthly infrastructure maintenance

SPC team members have trained in-country technicians to conduct routine maintenance of the sea level monitoring stations over the last two years.

“The maintenance of this essential measurement equipment is a crucial component for the continuity of quality data collection,” said Adrien Laurenceau-Moineau, the Technical Team Leader at SPC’s Geoscience, Energy and Maritime Division.

Once trained, technical staff of the Meteorological Office and Lands and Survey Department conduct this basic maintenance every six months, following a purpose-designed checklist. Sea-level observing stations and sensors are cleaned and any damage or deterioration are noted and reported to SPC and BoM.

Fiji Met Service technician, Amori Nabanivalu, at the Lautoka tide gauge station, Fiji.

Since March, maintenance has been completed at ten sites in the Cook Islands, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

In August 2020, the Fiji Meteorological Service (FMS) technical team worked alongside SPC to perform the 6-monthly maintenance check at the sea-level observing station at the Queen’s wharf in Lautoka.

FMS technician, Amori Nabanivalu said, “the tide gauge station provides valuable data for the work we do at FMS and it was a great opportunity to work with the SPC team to better understand the maintenance of the equipment and the processes involved.”

Return to Service

When Tropical Cyclone Harold struck Tonga in April 2020, the old tide gauge on the Queen Salote wharf in Nuku’alofa was damaged by waves. At the new station on Vuna Wharf, waves washed away the gravel protecting the station conduits and the station was off-line due to a power and communication failures.

The technical team in Tonga repaired the tide gauge station conduits at Vuna Wharf, Nuku’alofa, damaged during TC Harold in April

The in-country teams took the lead to implement established Return to Service procedures set up under the project.

Viliami Folau of Tonga’s Land and Survey Department conducted a site visit and provided BoM with pictures, updating the status of both tide stations in Nuku’alofa.

“Post-disaster assessment of the tide gauges is critical. It documents damages, if any, to the infrastructure and ensures the quick return to service of this important source of real-time data collection,” he noted.

Tonga Meteorological Service technician, Enisi Maea, was assisted remotely by BoM to investigate and identify the fault causing the system to go offline. In partnership with Tonga Power and the Ports Authority, Enisi was able to resolve the issue and bring the station back online.

Similarly, Solomon Islands Met Service technical officer, Barnabas Tahoo, took the lead in getting the Honiara tide gauge station back online. Contractors had removed the main power to the station for a wharf extension project back in March when the contractors were suddenly required to return to Australia due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

Barnabas worked with BoM to troubleshoot a solution and was able to install a temporary power extension from a nearby shed until the permanent main can be restored.

Station upgrades

Inspecting the upgrade work conducted at the Port Vila tide station, Vanuatu

Inspite of COVID-19 challenges, planned upgrades to a number of stations have been able to go ahead as planned with remote support and supervision.

In Port Vila and Rarotonga a dual radar sensor platform was installed by local contractors with assistance from the Vanuatu Meteorological Service and the Cook Islands Meteorological service with remote oversight from BoM. The new platform will provide the stations with an additional sensor to monitor the sea level as well as a GNSS receiver antenna.

Likewise, the Suva and Lautoka stations in Fiji were refurbished and a dual sea level radar sensor mount was installed by local contractors and SPC supervision.

Remote capacity building

While the situation presents many challenges, Jeff Aquilina, the PSLGM Team Leader at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has embraced the shift to remote support for the project where feasible. He notes, “This infrastructure maintenance work is building a stronger relationship between us and the technical staff of the Pacific Island countries, building equipment knowledge, technical capacity and a sense of ownership of the tide station in each country.”

“This is a positive outcome of the investment in training, mentoring, in-country visits and the establishment of strong networks in the Pacific,” adds Jeff. “At the end of the day, the aim is to ensure the stations are fully operational, recording crucial datasets.”

“This really drives home the importance of investing in local capacity building,” says Molly Powers-Tora, COSPPac Coordinator and Team Leader for Ocean Intelligence at SPC. “And the fact that overworked national staff are committed to the upkeep of these stations is a reflection of just how valuable this data is to the Pacific.”

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

 

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UN Staff Day with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (left). Credit: United Nations

By Prisca Chaoui and Ian Richards
GENEVA, Sep 29 2020 (IPS)

As the United Nations prepares to celebrate its 75th anniversary we have been made aware of an extremely worrying development concerning the future of UN staff contracts.

It seems that UN management is bringing forward plans that, if implemented, will rip up long-established, secure standards of employment and replace them with a model that follows much of the ethos and practices of the ‘gig’ economy, famously characterized by Uber and its contractor drivers.

On Tuesday 29th September, managers from across the UN system will hold a meeting to look at a report on the ‘Future of the United Nations System Workforce’. The report, prepared under the guidance of International Labour Organization (ILO) Director-General Guy Ryder and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, contains much to alarm us.

Instead of understanding the importance of stable, secure contracts of employment to staff during these difficult times, the report recommends a drive to ‘a more agile model contractual modality’, a move that we believe is designed to move staff to short, limited duration contracts.

One crucial section of the report speaks of a new model contract supporting ‘a more agile organization that can rapidly adapt to changing needs and opportunities and scale up and down as needed’. The report notes that these so-called agile contracts could progressively apply to all staff, replacing fixed term and continuing contracts.

The way agile contracts work is that staff would be hired for fixed periods for specific tasks, after which they would be forced to leave and return to their country. They would then have to reapply for a new job and start again from scratch.

There would be no pension scheme and the UN would wash its hands of any long-term obligations towards its loyal staff, many of whom have sacrificed their personal lives in isolated and dangerous locations.

These types of employment arrangements are already controversial when it comes to delivering pizzas in the neighbourhood. So, it’s surprising that the ILO and UN would think they are the future when it comes to delivering humanitarian aid in war zones, providing peacekeeping and defending human rights.

We saw something similar before with contracts called appointments of limited duration, under which staff received a fixed amount with no additions for post adjustment, dependency or education allowance, and no salary scale to ensure equal pay by gender. (Interestingly, Ban Ki-moon abolished them because they were seen as contrary to fair labour standards).

This is revealing as it points to a deliberate ending of career appointments, in particular continuing appointments, an area of concern that we have already brought to your attention.

The rationale for the plans is that the UN needs to have greater agility and responsiveness in dealing with challenges and world events and deliver this in the context of funding constraints and a downturn in the global economy.

We recognize this situation, but are hugely disappointed to see the solutions proposed by the organization, which singularly fail to appreciate the critical importance of the established contracts that sit at the heart of the relationship between staff and employer.

We also believe that if managers want agility, then this is better achieved by investing in training, empowering staff to try different roles, and re-establishing the link between performance and promotion.

Lastly, we are concerned that management’s plans ignore the main reason that UN staff have contract security. It is to be able to act independently from pressures that may be exerted by member states and ensure they are not put in the position of doing the bidding of whichever country or corporation donates the most money to ensure their next job.

We have seen during the pandemic how even the perception of such influence can create huge problems for a UN organization.

For this reason, we call on management to drop their plans for Uber-style contracts at the UN.

 

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Excerpt:

Prisca Chaoui is Executive Secretary of the 3,500-strong Staff Coordinating Council of the UN Office in Geneva (UNOG) and Ian Richards is former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, and an economist at the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Sep 29 2020 (IPS)

Milton Friedman’s libertarian economics advocating shareholder capitalism has influenced generations trying to understand the economy, not only in the US, but all over the world.

He was not just an academic economist, but an enormously influential celebrity conservative ideologue who legitimized ideas for the like-minded, including the belief that ‘greed is good’. Now, shareholder capitalism’s consequences haunt the world and threaten humanity with stagnation and self-destruction.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Friedman’s lasting influence
In 1962, Friedman published his most influential book, Capitalism and Freedom. In September 1970, the New York Times Magazine published his essay, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits.

The article — reiterating the Friedman Doctrine, presuming perfectly functioning markets that only exist in the minds and writings of some economists — is a manifesto for American shareholder capitalism. It inspired the counter-revolution against Keynesianism, development economics and other state interventions.

The word ‘competition’ appears only once, in the last sentence. Yet, some supporters insist that Friedman was not ‘pro-business’, but rather ‘pro-market’. But, unlike capitalism, the market has been with us for several millennia and has happily co-existed with unfreedoms of various types.

Perfect competition rarely exists due to inherent tendencies undermining it. Hence, various challenges to Friedmanite wisdom. For half a century, information and behavioural economics have challenged his many assumptions, certainly much more than the Austrian School advocacy and defence of capitalism.

Thus, Friedman conveniently ignored ‘market imperfections’ in the real world, although or perhaps because they undermined the empirical bases for his reasoning. So, even if Friedman’s logic was true, reality prevents profit-maximizing firm behaviour from maximizing societal welfare, if not cause the converse.

Meanwhile, Friedman’s monetarist economics has been discredited, and has little practical influence anymore, especially with the turn to ‘unconventional monetary policies’, particularly after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. Yet, his ideological sway remains strong, as it serves powerful interests.

Greed is good
Hence, Friedman’s 1970 essay remains influential in the world, and has long served as the mainstream manifesto on corporate governance. Even then, Friedman denounced dissenting CEOs as “unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society”.

Generations of Friedmanites have insisted that ‘the only business of business is business’, and their sole responsibility to society is to make money. He emphasized, ‘‘there is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.’’

When Friedman insisted “make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society”, he may have presumed that market imperfections do not exist, or were fully addressed by the ‘minimal’ state, although it is well-known that the rule of law has never been adequate to the challenge.

His singular focus on maximizing profits for shareholders justified ignoring all problems due to corporate practices. The doctrine thus absolved the firm of social responsibility. It justified and encouraged generations of corporate leaders committed to the primacy of ‘shareholder value’. Almost like religion, this thinking became the hegemonic ideology, legitimizing ‘greed-is-good’ behaviour.

Government the problem?
Friedman’s ideology spread throughout the world with the ‘neoliberal’ counter-revolution from the 1980s.

Unsurprisingly, neoliberal economists’ claims have been discredited by their policies’ failure to significantly increase investments in the real economy in recent decades.

And without sufficient investments to enhance productivity, growth has declined, if not stagnated, while dimming future economic prospects. With labour incomes declining relatively, if not absolutely, consumer spending has declined, reducing aggregate demand while feeding a vicious circle of stagnation.

Meanwhile, deregulatory initiatives have not increased real investments and output growth. Market finance ideology claims that the stock market can best allocate investment resources among companies. But share buybacks imply that US corporations have no better investment options than to further raise already high, over-valued financial asset prices, thus reducing resources for real investments and future growth.

The Friedman doctrine also celebrated and justified short-termism, and undermining protection for employees and the environment to maximize shareholder value by increasing corporate profits. This type of capitalism has spread throughout the world with the ‘neoliberal’ counter-revolution since the 1980s.

‘Getting government out of the way’, the neoliberal ‘free market’ mantra, was supposed to boost private investments. But more handsome corporate profits due to cost savings – from weaker anti-trust and other regulations, lower wages and taxes – have not significantly increased real investments in the US.

The 2007-2009 US financial crisis exposed some problems of short-termism, particularly related to financialization and ‘shareholder value extraction’. The crisis cast doubt on Friedman’s legacy and its implications, encouraging new challenges to corporate governance norms and regulations.

Business and politics
Friedman would have us believe that power and politics are not exercised in free markets. But this ostensible insulation of politics from supposedly power-free markets is a fiction which thoughtful Friedmanites knew only too well, not least from their own advocacy, behaviour and conduct.

All markets are shaped by various historical and contemporary influences, economic, cultural, social and political. These are often driven by business and other lobbies. Thus, politics, collective action and advocacy shape policies, in terms of design, implementation and enforcement.

To be fair, Friedman’s view of politics and business seems contradictory. His writings argue that business should stay out of politics, and not use shareholder money to influence politics. But he is remarkably understanding when it happens:

“I can’t blame a businessman who goes to Washington and tries to get special privileges for his company”. “If the rules of the game are that you go to Washington to get a special privilege, I can’t blame him for doing that. Blame the rest of us for being so foolish as to let him get away with it.”

Neoliberal inequality
Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has argued that larger US corporations have acquired so much influence over government, undermining US democracy. Instead, he argues for public financing of electoral campaigns while curbing corporate influence, e.g., via lobbying and campaign spending.

He cites an old study of 1,779 policy issues during 1981-2002 which found lawmakers acceding to the demands of big businesses with the most lobbying capabilities while the average American had “only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy”.

With the Citizens United ruling in the new century, the US Supreme Court has legally enabled powerful corporate interests to lobby politically. Unsurprisingly, corporate taxation has been dramatically reduced, while social protection and public investments, e.g., in health and education, have declined further.

Instead of gains being shared by top executives and shareholders with workers, as during the post-Second World War Golden Age, benefits have become increasingly skewed to the very wealthy in the past four decades, thanks to Friedman’s increased influence.

From 1948 to 1979, US worker productivity more than doubled while wages fell slightly behind as the stock market grew over six-fold. But from 1979 to 2018, worker productivity rose 70 per cent, as worker pay rose by only 11.6 per cent, while CEO compensation rose almost ten-fold and the stock market 22-fold!

 

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A new book highlights the "sapeurs" in the twin Congolese capitals of Brazzaville and Kinshasa.

Today when children are under serious threat from Covid-19, the 30th anniversary of the Children's Summit is a highly appropriate time for countries to renew and update the vows they made then. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Richard Jolly
BRIGHTON, United Kingdom, Sep 28 2020 (IPS)

On the eve of the UN’s 75th anniversary, Antonio Guterres, the UN’s Secretary-General has declared that the coronavirus pandemic is the world’s top security threat. He has called for action – for greater international co-operation in controlling outbreaks and developing an affordable vaccine, available to all. Such action is needed and possible -even in the absence of a large gathering of world leaders in New York to celebrate the anniversary.  But children today in every country need more.

Richard Jolly

Thirty years ago, on 29/30 September 1990, the largest gathering of world leaders that had ever taken place, met at UN Headquarters under the auspices of the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF. This was The World Summit for Children. It was an enormous success, gathering headlines around the world-and leading to worldwide action for children.

The Summit set goals for improving the situation of children everywhere, in health, education and their needs in especially difficult circumstances. Every country in the world adopted and agreed to these goals and, since then, all but the United States has– ratified the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The World Summit for Children was the brainchild of the American James P. Grant, the charismatic head of UNICEF. After initial doubts about whether more than a handful of presidents or prime ministers would come for a high -level meeting on children – as opposed to one on trade or the economy – The World Summit for Children took place with 71 heads of State, including President Bush and Prime Minister Thatcher.

Though children are much less likely to suffer direct effects from the virus, the indirect effects are already serious -in disrupted education, in neglect of essential medical care, in disturbed relations with family, relatives and friends

Such was the success of the event that the idea of holding Summit meetings soon caught on – the Earth Summit in 1992, the World Summit for Social Development in 1995, the Millennium Summit in 2000, and the Summit for Sustain able Development in 2015.  agreed at the Summit for children.

More importantly, following the goals, child survival has improved dramatically: the number of children dying under five has been reduced by 60%, from 12 million in 1990 to well under 6 million today. Immunization, growth monitoring and other actions have improved the health and life expectancy of millions of children in the developing world, and all countries have accepted that “the best interests of a child shall be a primary consideration.”

Today when children are under serious threat from Covid-19, the 30th anniversary of the Children’s Summit is a highly appropriate time for countries to renew and update the vows they made then.

Though children are much less likely to suffer direct effects from the virus, the indirect effects are already serious -in disrupted education, in neglect of essential medical care, in disturbed relations with family, relatives and friends.

Many are also suffering the consequences of domestic violence and child abuse. Countries are turning away from collective national and international action just when it is needed most.

Today’s COVID crisis could be an opportunity -for a new impetus to invest in our children and in the next generation of doctors, nurses, scientists, statisticians and carers, who will need to be well prepared to deal with future crises and emergencies.

Though a collective meeting is not possible, every country needs to consider and plan for its children, both to recover from the immediate effects of the virus and to set new paths for the next five and ten years.

Prime ministers and heads of state should take the lead, citizen’s assemblies should add to the specifics and communities and governments should make the commitments. A World Summit is not possible nor necessary, -but every country needs to consider the new priorities for its children and make serious plans and policies to respond to them.

 

Richard Jolly is Honorary Professor at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. From 1982-95 he was Deputy-Executive Director of UNICEF when Jim Grant was Executive Director. Among the books he has written are “UNICEF- Global Governance that works” and “UN Ideas that Changed the World”, which he co-wrote with Tom Weiss and Louis Emmerij.

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The president says pupil safety has to be guaranteed before Covid-19 school restrictions can lift.

Militants from an Islamic State-linked group strapped explosives to the animal to target a governor.

The show "Kings of Kin" - brings together the work of Chéri Samba (pictured above), Bodys Isek Kingelez and Moké, known affectionately as the kings of Kinshasa, as their art is closely linked with the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, their home and work base. Credit: AD McKenzie

By SWAN
PARIS, Sep 28 2020 (IPS)

Chéri Samba has a sly sense of humour, both in person and in his work. Standing in front of his 2018 painting “J’aime le jeu de relais” (I Love the Relays) – which criticizes politicians who cling to power instead of passing the baton – Samba is asked about the resemblance of one of his subjects to a famous statesman.

“Oh, I was just portraying a politician in general. I didn’t really have a particular person in mind because they all have certain characteristics,” he responds. Then he adds mischievously, “Isn’t it me though? Doesn’t it look like me?”

In this case it doesn’t, but the Congolese artist sometimes depicts himself in various guises in his paintings. Visitors to the current exhibition in Paris featuring his work and those of two of his equally acclaimed countrymen will have fun trying to spot him on canvas.

The show – Kings of Kin – brings together the work of Samba, Bodys Isek Kingelez and Moké, known affectionately as the kings of Kinshasa, as their art is closely linked with the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, their home and work base. All three have participated in numerous exhibitions around the world, in group and solo shows, but this is the first time they’re being shown together in galleries.

Kings of Kin is being held jointly at the MAGNIN-A and the Natalie Seroussi galleries (running until Oct. 30) and features some 30 works, including Samba’s latest paintings. He is undoubtedly the star attraction with his bold, massive canvases commenting on social and political issues in Africa and elsewhere, but the others command attention as well.

Samba also is the only surviving “king” as Moké died in 2001 and Kingelez in 2015.

On a recent unseasonably hot afternoon, the artist is present at the MAGNIN-A gallery, speaking with a visitor who’s wearing a mask, although he himself is without one. He says he came to Paris in January, then got caught in the lockdown as the Covid-19 pandemic spread in France. He has used the time to complete several paintings for the current show.

Asked if he doesn’t miss the “inspiration” that Kinshasa provides, Samba replies that all artists should be able to produce work wherever they find themselves.

“I live in the world, and I breathe as if I’m in Kinshasa,” he says. “In my head, I want to live where I can speak with people and where they understand me. I travel with the same brain. I would like to be in Kinshasa, but this doesn’t prevent me from creating. The world belongs to all of us.”

His new paintings fill the entry and the main hall of the MAGNIN-A gallery, with bright greens, reds, blues – inviting viewers into his mind or current state of world awareness. 

The first work that strikes the eye is “Merci, merci je suis dans la zone verte” (Thank you, thank you I’m in the green zone), which depicts a man – the artist – seemingly caught in a vortex of some sort. Painted this year, the painting reflects the current global upheavals with the Covid-19 and other ills. It could also be referencing the DRC’s past under brutal colonialism and the difficulties of the present.

Another equally compelling work features the faces of six girls of different ethnicities, produced in acrylic with particles of glitter, and titled: “On Est Tout Pareils” (We’re All the Same). Samba says that his daughter served as the model and that the painting is a call for peace, equality and the ability to live together without discord.

The oldest of his paintings on display dates from 1989 and reveals a very different style, with softer colours and intricate workmanship, as he portrays a Congolese singer – the late feminist performer M’Pongo Love – wearing an attractive dress. Here the broad strokes are absent, and the designs on the dress are meticulously captured.

He says that although viewers may notice variations between his earlier output and the new works, he tends not to take note of such differences.

“All the paintings are like my children,” he says. “I can’t make distinctions between them.”

In contrast to Samba, the paintings by Moké comprise softer hues and have a more earthy feel, but they also compel the viewer to see into the lives of those depicted. Moké’s subjects nearly always elicit a certain empathy, a certain melancholy, and sometimes hope – whether these subjects are performers or an older couple simply having dinner together.

Moké lived for only 51 years, but his output was impressive – dating from the time he arrived in Kinshasa as a child and began painting urban landscapes on cardboard. He considered himself a “painter-journalist” and portrayed the everyday life of the capital, including political happenings. One of his paintings from 1965 depicts then-general Mobutu Sese Seko waving to the crowds as he came to power in Zaire (the previous name of the DRC).

In the Paris show, Moké’s paintings depict boxers, performers, frenetic city scenes, and portraits of women staring out with expressions that are both bold and solemn.

Meanwhile, the work of Kingelez takes viewers into a sphere of colourful towers and other “weird and wonderful” structures with a utopian bent, as he imagines a world that might possibly rise from the ravages of colonialism, inequity and bad urban planning.

The first Congolese artist to have a retrospective exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (“City Dreams” in 2018), Kingelez used everyday objects such as paper, cardboard and plastic to produce his first individual sculptures before creating whole fantastical cities.

His futuristic urban settings, which also address social issues, thus form a perfect companion to the “surreal earthliness” of Samba and Moké in Kings of Kin.

“These are artists who worked because of deep necessity, because they had something to say. It wasn’t about the art market or commerce,” said French gallery owner and independent curator André Magnin, who first encountered their work in the 1980s in Kinshasa.

The author of several books on Congolese art, Magnin said he hoped visitors to the exhibition would discover the unique “artistic richness” of the Congo region as exemplified by the “kings”. As for “queens”, he said that there weren’t many women artists working at the time, but that more are now becoming known and should be the focus of coming shows.

Dorine, a French art student of African descent who visited the exhibition, said she admired the artists and particularly Samba because he “speaks of African reality”.

“Their work is very interesting, and the message is extremely strong,” she told SWAN.

 

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Former Sierra Leone captain Mohamed Kallon wants to change the perception of black coaches after earning his Uefa Pro Licence.

The UN estimates that 74% of Africans cannot afford healthy diets. That is nearly 1 billion Africans. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Dr Lawrence Haddad and Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 28 2020 (IPS)

One of the biggest revelations of the COVID-19 pandemic has been that people with pre-existing, diet-related conditions such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, are more at risk of suffering severe forms of the disease leading to a need for intensive hospitalization.

In Kenya, for instance, the Ministry of Health in July reported that 16 percent of seriously ill COVID-19 patients had diabetes, while diabetes and hypertension alone accounted for 47 percent of the COVID-19 deaths linked to pre-existing conditions.

According to WHO data, these chronic diet-related conditions were among the main risk factors for illness and mortality in Africa prior to COVID-19. The current crisis is simply throwing fuel on the fire. It has highlighted the criticality of diet as the key determinant of health of individuals and populations, particularly in urban areas, where an increased uptake of highly-processed and unhealthy foods is increasingly undermining regional nutrition goals.

In fact, data from countries in East and Southern Africa published in the Journal of International Development show that highly-processed foods now account for more than one third of the purchased food market. Not all of these foods are unhealthy, but many are, and combined with the availability of cheap, convenient and tasty street foods, the result is cheap food that is high in saturated and trans fats, salt and sugar.

Long-term solutions must be sought, a process that demands the involvement of all the world’s leaders from communities, governments, civil society and the private sector. The challenge is clear: how to incentivize food producers, processors, distributors and marketers to make nutritious food more available and affordable? 

To change these devastating trends fresh foods such as vegetables, fruits, high-protein legumes, nuts, eggs and fish must become more widely available and much more affordable in Africa’s food markets. Healthy diets are often inaccessible to most of Africa’s population.

The UN estimates that 74% of Africans cannot afford healthy diets. That is nearly 1 billion Africans. This is shocking and unacceptable. These numbers are only likely to rise during this time of a pandemic, where job cuts have greatly reduced people’s spending power and lockdowns have broken food supply chains, further increasing food prices, especially the prices of perishable fresh foods.

Temporary and very partial workarounds include the expansion of social protection programmes such as in Nigeria providing targeted transfers to poor and vulnerable households. These financial packages help the vulnerable to meet their minimum dietary and nutritional needs, but they are not a complete or sustainable solution.

Long-term solutions must be sought, a process that demands the involvement of all the world’s leaders from communities, governments, civil society and the private sector. The challenge is clear: how to incentivize food producers, processors, distributors and marketers to make nutritious food more available and affordable?

First public policy needs to be aligned with this goal. Too many policies are working against this aim. For example too few food production and consumption subsidies are going to nutritious foods; too little public agricultural research development and farmer extension focuses on these foods; too often public food procurement disfavours these items and infrastructure development ignores cold chain development.

Agriculture in Africa is a key economic driver and supporter of livelihoods. Productivity needs to be increased, biodiversity promoted and climate resilience attained. Is this possible? Yes. Already, farmers in countries like Zambia are recording up to a 60 percent increase in yields through the application of ecosystem-based adaptation techniques.

Elsewhere, in Burkina Faso, farmers have reclaimed 200,000 to 300,000 hectares of degraded lands by digging shallow pots in barren land and filling them with organic matter. The reclaimed land now produces an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 additional tonnes of cereal for the Burkinabe. The challenge is to replicate these successes throughout the continent.

Second, private investment into these more nutritious foods needs to be incentivised. Of the $200 billion impact investment fund industry, GAIN estimates less than 0.3% goes to nutritious foods in Africa. Fund facilities that stimulate private investment in small and medium sized companies that produce nutritious foods for low income populations need to be established that offer loan rates that are lower than market while targeting nutrition outcomes.

Institutional investors such as pension funds need to signal to the bigger companies with extensive value chains in Africa that they will favour companies producing more nutritiously beneficial foods.

Third, consumer demand needs to be shifted towards healthy foods. Too often healthy food campaigns pale in comparison to private sector campaigns for highly processed foods: they lack imagination, humour and flair.

Healthy eating campaigns must be engaging, aspirational and memorable. Food environments—where consumers come face to face with food—are stacked against the consumption of healthy foods which are often consigned to unattractive spaces in markets and stores. This needs to change too.

Fourth, civil society campaigns can hold businesses and governments accountable for promoting healthy foods. Civil society activism is particularly essential to focus attention on silent crises such as unhealthy diets.

Together these four levers can incentivize businesses and other stakeholders to innovate and develop business models, products and services that make nutritious and safe foods more available, affordable, desirable, and sustainable. Africa cannot move ahead smoothly if 1 billion of its people cannot afford a healthy diet.

The approaches defined above are not exhaustive, but if well implemented will bring the continent closer to better nourishment, further improving the prospects of properly fighting emerging health challenges such as COVID-19, both from a health and economic perspective.

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Excerpt:

Dr. Lawrence Haddad is the Executive Director, GAIN and H.E. Ambassador Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko is Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture of the African Union Commission

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Fast fashion consumes vast resources, often polluting and devastating the natural world. Pictured here are garment workers in Bangladesh. Credit: Obaidul Arif/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2020 (IPS)

Racism “keeps the global north oblivious to the effect of fast fashion addiction on the global south” say environmental and gender justice experts.

Organisers and activists came together last week to discuss how the fast fashion industry sits at the intersection of environmental and gender justice. The industry, which discriminates against women from the production cycle to the consumption of it, contributes to environmental degradation as two million tonnes of textile are discarded every year.

Beyond that, fashion also plays a crucial role for people of different genders to express themselves, panelists said at the United Nations General Assembly event “Subversive Catwalk: Women, Fast Fashion & Climate Justice”.

“We hoped to encourage people to look at the connection between women’s oppression – the pressure to look good, to be fashionable, that their bodies are not good enough – and the oppression of women worldwide in the garment sweatshops of the world,” Su Edwards, organiser of the panel, told IPS.

“We wanted to raise awareness of the vast resources consumed by fast fashion and the resulting pollution and devastation of the natural world,” she added.

The panel shed light on the importance of women from the global north creating a bridge to work in solidarity with women in the global south.

“We are very keen to emphasise the unity between groups that are often seen as having divergent interests,” Edwards said. “Fashion is a good place for women to find common interests and to begin to understand that their life choices may impact on their sisters in other places.”

The panel, however, lacked the presence of any Bangladeshi representative on the conversation of the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,100 garment workers. Scores of garment workers were injured in the disaster, sparking off a massive global conversation on garment workers’ rights.

The only representative invited to speak about the issue was Sumedha Shivdas, a fashion designer  from India.

“We wanted to include at least one woman from the global south in our panel and Sumedha is part of our organisation,” Edwards said when this issue was addressed. “The point was that she had heard about the Rana Plaza disaster but was numb about it.”

On environment, panelists stated that it takes 12 years to get rid of waste that fast fashion makes in 24 hours.

Beyond environmental concerns, fashion also has a large role to play in one’s identity. One of the highlights of the panel was Josephine Carter, a queer artist-activist and panel member who spoke about the role fashion plays on the intersection of environmental justice, human rights, and identity. 

For Carter, identity is at the center of her activism. She is currently working on a poetry project honouring black men for Black History month in the United Kingdom.

“This work feels deeply relevant at the moment, as we’re once again reminded of how endangered black lives are, and of the particular forces of white supremacy which work to endanger black men particularly,” she told IPS.

This relevance is further deepened by the environmental concerns around the world.

“I am thinking, writing and working my way towards climate activism, and finding a way to make this inextricable with the activism work I already do, on race, gender, sex and class,” she said.

For the panel talk, her aim was to have her message reach women and have them engaged in the conversation on climate crisis, and for them to realise how urgent and relevant it is to their lives.
Another goal for her, as well as that of the workshop’s, was to convey the message that for activists, their emotions are very intricately linked with doing the work of climate justice. Understanding that link, and figuring out which measures work and what needs improvement, can help unlock opportunities for climate justice initiatives that are effective.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Inter Press Service (IPS): What role has fashion played for you in your identity?

Josephine Carter (JC): As a queer woman of colour, I got to explore how people with my identities get pushed in two different directions – to use fashion and dress as self-expression, or to use fashion and dress as a way to conform to a heteronormative and cisnormative society. Not only do big feelings about ourselves and our bodies come up as a result, there are also real-world consequences to conforming or not conforming.

IPS: The intersection of fast fashion, environment and the queer community aren’t usually examined together. What does this intersection tell society?

JC: The reality is that over consuming fast fashion clothing, either to stand out or to fit in, doesn’t come without environmental consequences. Once we accept that the ecologically degrading and exploitative fast fashion industry can’t be allowed to continue, for the sake of the planet and its people, we then have to reconsider our relationship to clothes and reckon more closely with the presence of homophobia and transphobia in our lives.

As mentioned in the workshop, a part of the work of achieving climate justice is the elimination of all oppressions. Bringing together the topics of fashion, environment and queerness (or other identities) shows that the climate crisis actually permeates all areas of our lives and experiences, even areas that might seem unrelated at first glance. It goes, I hope, a little way towards demonstrating that there are a thousand reasons for every person alive to be active in the fight for climate justice, including people who usually get left out of the climate movement.

IPS: What role do you believe fashion plays a role for queer and gender non-conforming communities?

JC: Experiences with fashion in queer and gender non-conforming communities are as diverse as the communities themselves. While I can’t speak for these communities as a whole – especially as a cisgender queer woman – I notice that fashion provides an opportunity for self-creation, for queer and trans people to reclaim their bodies from oppression and dysphoria. Because clothing is so gendered, it can be a useful tool for exploring and subverting the gender binary. It can also be an outlet for creativity, self-expression and sheer joy in queer lives which are so often marred by interpersonal and systematic homophobia and transphobia – from workplace discrimination to homelessness, from medical mistreatment to hate-motivated violence.

IPS: What other roles does fashion play in this conversation?

JC: Conversely, fashion can also play a role in keeping queer and trans identities hidden, especially when individuals have to conform to heteronormative and cisnormative gender roles because of an oppressive family environment, community or government. The necessity to stay hidden and the harshness of the punishment of visibly queer and trans people increases as homophobia and transphobia overlap with other systems of discrimination such as race, class and disability.

IPS: How has your identity as a queer person shaped your relationship with fashion?

JC: I use clothing to announce my queer identity and to hide it. Some of the pressure that is put on heterosexual women to look “feminine” and attractive according to our culture’s norms actually passes me by, and I love putting myself out in public as a weird, fat, butch, boxy, short, black queer woman when I wear dungarees, Doc Martens, men’s clothing, and the rainbow flag. It works as a way to signal to other people in the LBGTQ community that I’m here, that we see each other, that I stand in solidarity with a queer aesthetic and heritage.

I also sometimes get slurs yelled at me on the street, have disparaging comments made about my body by strangers, and am generally made aware that I don’t look how a woman “should” look. It’s interesting that the defining aesthetic categories for queer women, butch and femme, separate us out into who “looks like a woman” and who doesn’t. I remember many occasions as a teenager and young adult where I have tried and failed to look feminine, attractive and acceptable.

I use fashion as a way of constructing my queer identity, and fashion constantly reminds me that society’s idea of what’s acceptable for women’s lives is still very narrow.

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