Africa

The feud between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the ruling party in the Tigray region is escalating.

An investigation has been launched by the Egyptian FA after the original Africa Cup of Nations trophy it was awarded in 2010 goes missing in Cairo.

By PRESS RELEASE
PARIS, Sep 4 2020 (IPS-Partners)

New research by the Global Education Monitoring Report at UNESCO shows an increase in the annual funding gap for education in the poorest countries to as much as US$200 billion a year. These findings are published in the new paper, Act Now: Reduce the impact of COVID-19 on the Cost of Achieving SDG4.

The paper calls for the immediate introduction of emergency remedial programmes, which could reduce the potential cost of COVID-19 on education by 75%. This could also reduce the social cost of failing to meet the Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4) which calls for the provision of inclusive quality education for all by 2030. It is therefore imperative for leaders to prioritize investment in education for low and middle-income countries and avoid the higher cost of catching up on lost education later.
Before the pandemic, UNESCO estimated the annual spending requirement to meet SDG4 at US$504 billion, of which US$148 billion were unavailable. Under plausible school closures and present GDP growth scenarios, COVID-19 looks set to increase this funding gap by up to a third.

COVID-19 is pushing countries’ educational costs up due to the need to re-enrol students and to offer remedial programmes to support the return to school of the most marginalized learners, help them catch up and maximize their chances of staying in school. Additional costs are needed to ensure children are safe in the classroom, with access to hygiene facilities and more space to enable physical distancing. These programmes and actions imply costs of up to US$35 billion. Immediate action is, however, far cheaper than having to roll out second chance programmes later.

With less than a decade to go before the SDG deadline, the world is facing a funding crisis that threatens to unravel progress in education so far. An entire generation is at risk due to the pandemic. An estimated 11 million children of primary and secondary school age may not return to school. But while education is clearly a victim of the pandemic, it is also the solution to longer-term recovery. To #SaveOurFuture, investment in education must become an urgent priority.

Actions to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on children’s education:

• Governments in low- and middle-income countries must resist pressure to cut their budget for education because of the downturn of their economies. Governments must also direct a significant part of their education budget to the most marginalized, groups, regions and schools;
• International donors must protect their share of international development aid to global education and use equitable funding to support countries and regions with chronic inequalities. At present, only 47% of aid to basic and secondary education goes to low- and middle-income countries where it is most needed;
• This health crisis has exacerbated the effect of intersecting inequalities on education opportunities. Countries will need additional funding for COVID-19 responses that were previously not programmed. Donors must ensure flexibility so that existing programmes can be restructured and realigned to help countries ensure that COVID-19 is only a temporary setback;
• Ministries of education and social protection need to work together and target their policies towards the most disadvantaged. Social protection such as conditional cash transfers and child grants with an education component and gender dimension are particularly important. Such policies could ensure that fewer children drop out of school.

Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report added: “The uncertainty about when schools will reopen means reduced participation and prolonged learning loss, particularly for the most marginalized children. We know from previous research that poorer learners are least likely to catch up, which will affect their future ability to earn a living. Urgently needed long-term planning for recovery from the pandemic must include increased funding for education in the form of remedial programmes, rather than waiting to pay for second chance classes many will not be able to join or afford.”

Filling a finance gap that risks rising to $200 billion per year due to COVID-19 requires systemic change- and is only possible if leaders respond to the ongoing global education emergency.

UNESCO has warned that total aid to education is likely to decline by 12% by 2022 due to the economic consequences of COVID-19. This poses a threat to the recovery of education from the disruption of the pandemic.

The international community urgently needs to mobilize additional funding for education if there is any hope of achieving the SDG 4 targets made all the more difficult by the pandemic.

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Protests have been taking place in cities across the United States. Credit: UN News/Shirin Yaseen

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Why, in the United States, where change is the most pronounced hallmark, do some aspects never change? Why do many bad habits resist giving way to novelties that prove to be the basis of the success of the most developed country on earth and still the leading power?  Why is the explanation for that leadership due to a few factors? Why does Trump profess a visceral opposition to immigration, knowing that it is the key to the country’s success? Because millions of his compatriots interpret the sinew of American DNA as a threat to their comparative social advantage.

Meanwhile, in this drama, blacks continue to bear the brunt of it all. The explanation for their endemic discrimination is the contrast between their implantation in the United States and the way the rest of the public settled in the “American dream.” Almost everyone came to this idea that is the United States of free will.

No one can say that their grandparents were forced to change residence. Although it can be argued that hunger, religious persecution, and the desire for economic improvement were important factors in driving emigration from Europe, Africa, or Asia, it is also true that voluntary americanization is the key to the success of the United States.

Joaquín Roy

This country is the most genuine example of national construction opposed to that based on ethnicity, religion, race. America is the most definite specimen of the nation of choice, based on personal conviction.

It is not by chance that theorists of nationalism call this alternative “liberal.” The “American dream” explains its survival. As long as millions of citizens of other continents answer Ernest Renan’s question with a negative vote every night in his imaginary “daily plebiscite”, and decide to opt for the residency trick, the United States will exist.

The day a majority of Americans vote negative for residency, the country would be deserted. There is nothing that unites Americans, except their desire to be. Their religion is summarized in the offer provided by the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He does not give them a guarantee, but a promise. And it is enough for them.

However, the absence of a residency obligation has two crucial exceptions: black and indigenous minorities. These two sectors contrast in their implementation in what for them is, more than a dream, an “American nightmare.”

Although it can be argued that hunger, religious persecution, and the desire for economic improvement were important factors in driving emigration from Europe, Africa, or Asia, it is also true that voluntary americanization is the key to the success of the United States.

The original owners of the immense territory, although their immemorial ancestors crossed the Straits of Alaska at the dawn of North America, have been reduced to their reservations, marginalized, eaten away by poverty and alcoholism. Even in the sporadic mythos in Hollywood movies, Sitting Bull and his imitators do not overcome the mystique of Buffalo Bill.

The blacks were unfortunately marked by the original sin of not having booked a ticket for the forced trip to the United States. Their implantation has been resisted from the beginning by themselves and by the descendants of the merchants who deposited them in America.

With their emancipation and its disastrous execution, the peculiarity of their residence became more apparent. When they were stripped of the benefits that they had given away to their owners for free, their value was lost in Wall Street.

The successive corrective measures of discrimination and segregation only made the division of society even more evident. Despite the actions of Martin Luther King, who paid for his daring with his life, legal advances supercharged racist resentment from a part of society that resisted reform. “Affirmative Action” and food stamps multiplied the opposition.

Simultaneously, the black community, which had ceased to call itself “colored,” to take a curious journey back to being classified as “African,” watched with amazement as other newcomers from other continents were climbing ranks.

Latin Americans began to outnumber blacks not only in economic resources, but in numbers. As a result of the new census parameters, while whites held 63%, Hispanics (15%) and Asians (10%) cornered blacks (13%).

Internally, the new “African-Americans” decided to opt for a peculiar nationalism: they defended themselves with their signs of “black is beautiful”, they enthroned their peculiar English inherited from their owners, and they monopolized some entertainment professions.

Some were more fortunate and co-opted the rosters of basketball teams. For their part, some managed to settle on the ladders of power as senators and congress people, thanks in part to the restructuring of electoral districts.

Then they even aimed, with the decisive support of white sectors, to opt for the incredible: the presidency of the United States. It was already too much and the opposition to this impudence did not forgive Obama or the rest of the community, and even less the Democrats and liberals.

The mirage of the election of the first black president bypassed the resistance of deep America and the withdrawal of the “silent majority” that Nixon tried to awaken. Now Trump has reinvented it.

It was forgotten that only about a third of the electorate voted for Obama, while another third chose the Republican candidates. Another third stayed home. Among those 60-70% of Americans who abstained from voting on the traditional electoral correction, crouched was the mostly white sector, both high-income and lower-middle-class that followed the sounds of the piper Trump.

Those who rejected the candidate Hillary Clinton believed, and still believe, that their faltering economies have been pierced by the rise of the historically vanquished. They now believe that their pristine suburbs, real or imagined, are threatened by the “socialist” hordes of predominantly Latino origin, and the “terrorists” who insist on protesting against what they consider dangerous interference by the security forces in daily life.

The only thing missing is that the statistical evidence of the black overpopulation of the prisons and the number of crime victims of the same origin is “enriched” with sad deaths of blacks at the hands of white policemen.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

 

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There is currently a grave pattern of detention or unsubstantiated allegations against journalists in Mozambique. Last month unknown attackers set on fire the office of a weekly newspaper Canal de Moçambique that had recently published investigations exposing corruption in the government. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/The Commonwealth

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

While Mozambique was recently rattled by an arson attack on a local media organisation, experts say that it’s only a part of a worrying pattern of continuous attacks on the media in the country.

• On Aug. 23, unknown attackers set on fire the office of a weekly newspaper Canal de Moçambique that had recently published investigations exposing corruption in the government. 
• The attack not only destroyed equipment and furniture, but also the files at the office.

Angela Quintal, the Africa programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS that while they had never before witnessed an attack of this magnitude or nature, there is currently a grave pattern of detention or unsubstantiated allegations against journalists in the country. CPJ, a non-profit focused on press freedom, also monitors such attacks on the media around the world.

Quintal pointed some of the recent cases: arbitrary arrest and detention of radio journalist Amade Abubacar; the arrest of investigative journalist Estacio Valoi; the detention of Amnesty International researcher David Matsinhe, and driver, Girafe Saide Tufane, who were held for two days before being released without charge; and the repeated harassment of Canal’s executive editor Matias Guente.

Then there are the other cases, such as the enforced disappearance of Ibraimo Mbaruco, a community radio journalist and newscaster in Palma district in Cabo Delgado province.

On the same day as the arson attack, journalist Armando Nenane was arrested for not fully complying with regulations surrounding COVID-19, according to Quintal. Nenane published a story about how he managed to deposit funds in a former Defence Minister’s bank account in order to verify an exposé that Canal had published.

These arbitrary arrests are part of a pattern, says Matsinhe, the Mozambique researcher for Amnesty International. He told IPS that under the pandemic, there’s been an increase in harassment, intimidation, arbitrary arrests and detentions of journalists often under the guise of allegations that they were “violating COVID-19 regulations”.

“The police have used COVID-19 state of emergency to practice extortion on people,” he told IPS. “Some journalists have been exposing this practice and the police have taken a retaliatory approach against the journalists.”

The country’s increasingly deteriorating press freedom is also an attack on human rights, he said.  

“People’s right to information depends on the journalists’ ability to do their work, which in turn depends on respect, protection, promotion and fulfilment of press freedom by the government,” Matsinhe said. But in taking that away, the government of Mozambique “relies on people’s ignorance, lack of information, to exercise its power and practice corruption unchecked.”

“Under the current economic, social and political conditions in Mozambique, access to information – which is only possible where press freedom is guaranteed – enables Mozambicans to participate in their country’s political life, to hold their government accountable, to exercise their civil and political rights,” he added.

While the lack of this right is worrisome, Quintal said the reaction by Canal’s staff members – by continuing to work and publish – shows they’re not bowing to this pressure. Staff had set up a makeshift office and published a front-page editorial vowing not to back down from their investigative journalism. “Obviously such an attack might have a chilling effect on the media and could well result in some self-censorship by journalists. However, it has been heartening to see how Canal de Moçambique and its online daily publication continued to publish,” she said.

“In terms of solidarity, the fact that a rival media group and its journalists rallied to assist and even offered their premises so that Canal journalists could produce that week’s edition of the newspaper, was also great to see,” Quintal added.

Still, a lot of work remains to be done. 

“In my opinion [the government] has simply ignored the attempts to reach out and to engage,” Quintal said.

Matsinhe said the government can take some “concrete steps” to improve and ensure freedom of press in the country.

“The government must refrain from seeing the press as the state enemy and investigate the cases of injustices committed against various journalists and bring those found responsible to justice.”

Echoing similar demands, Quintal acknowledged the positive efforts by the Media Institute of South Africa-Mozambique, “to form a reference group with the government to review and consolidate the legal framework for cybersecurity and digital rights, and to ensure that it does not undermine access to information”.

The government must also conduct a review of legislation that is hostile towards press freedom, such as “overly broad” sections of the Penal Code that are often used to crack down on journalists.

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The Laureates and Leaders for Children, founded in 2016 by Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, state that if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative. According to the international Labour Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, one in five children in Africa are involved in child labour. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Regina Njagi’s four children, aged between 11 and 17, have not benefitted from online learning since the COVID-19 led to the closure of all schools in Kenya, earlier in March. With the closure, Njagi lost her job as a teacher at a local private school.

“As a widow, these are desperate times for me. I exhausted my savings by paying school fees for my two children in high school, just three weeks before the closure. How many times can I borrow food from relatives and neighbours? Everyone I know is struggling so the children must work. Otherwise, they will starve,” Njagi tells IPS.

Nobel laureates galvanise action for world’s vulnerable children

Njagi is not alone in having to send her children to work for the families’ survival. The impact of the pandemic on children will be a focus of Nobel Peace Laureates and Leaders for Children at a Fair Share for Children Summit on Sept. 9 and 10. Several Nobel laureates and heads states and directors of United Nations agencies are listed as speakers, including Nobel laureates the Dalai Lama, Professor Muhammad Yunus, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, among others.

To globalise compassion and galvanise action for the world’s most vulnerable children, the Laureates and Leaders for Children founded in 2016 by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, state that if the world gave the most marginalised children and their families their fair share, which translates to 20 percent of the COVID-19 response for the poorest 20 percent of humanity, the results would be transformative.

The Nobel laureates fear that despite pledges of unprecedented sums of money to support world economies, this may not reach children.

“As a result, COVID-19 could turn the clock back a decade or more on progress made on child labour, education, and health for hundreds of millions of children,” the Laureates say in a joint statement.

Satyarthi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has personally rescued tens of thousands of children from slavery and will be one of the speakers at the Fair Share for Children Summit.  

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and concerns escalate that even more children have been placed in harm’s way, the Laureates and Leaders for Children is calling upon the world’s heads of government to demonstrate wise leadership and urgently care for the impoverished and the marginalised with a special focus on children.

“One trillion dollars would fund all outstanding United Nations and charity COVID-19 appeals, cancel two years of all debt repayments from low-income countries, and fund two years of  the global gap to meet the SDGs on health, water and sanitation, and education,” Laureates and Leaders for Children says.

Education is a particularly vital step as quality education is the most powerful way to “end exclusion and change the future for marginalised children. There would still be enough left to fund social protection safety nets which are crucial in the fight against child labour. More than 10 million lives would be saved, a positive response by humanity to the tragedy of COVID-19,” Laureates and Leaders for Children says.

No school but work during the pandemic

But from May to July this year, all four of Njagi’s children were unable to attend school as they were employed on a daily wage to pick coffee at plantations in the Mbo-i-Kamiti area, Kiambu County, Central Kenya.

The children are currently engaged in this year’s second coffee picking season which has just begun and will last through October. Njagi says her children will then participate in the final and major coffee picking season from October through December.

Picking coffee is a difficult job, and her children must leave for the plantation, some two kilometres away from their home in Kagongo village, by six o’clock in the morning.

After harvesting the coffee, each worker, child or adult, is expected to load their harvest onto waiting trucks which transport the day’s pickings to the local coffee factory.

All workers must do everything possible to get onto the truck with their coffee or else they will walk to the factory, at least a kilometre away. 

“At the factory, each person places their coffee on a weighing scale, and each worker is paid their daily wage based on the weight. I advised my children to combine their harvest because if the weight is too low, they might not get paid,” she adds.

Children across the world at risk

The World Bank estimates that globally the pandemic will push 40 to 60 million people into extreme poverty in 2020.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), together with UNICEF, warns that a one percentage point rise in poverty leads to at least a 0.7 percent increase in child labour in certain countries. 

Child rights experts, such as Nairobi-based Juliah Omondi, are increasingly concerned that Njagi’s household is far from the exception. For millions of households across Africa, child labour is now a lifeline, and vulnerable children must adapt or starve.

Omondi is a member of the G10 (groups of 10 civil society organisations) local movement that agitates for the rights of women and children. She tells IPS that in “many African countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Eritrea and Nigeria, international labour standards on the minimum age protection are ignored in the informal sector”.

In Nigeria, for instance, the National Bureau of Statistics show that as of 2019, 50.8 percent of Nigeria’s children were working full time. Omondi adds that the situation is dire in Africa’s poorest countries, including Mali, Niger, Somalia and South Sudan.

COVID-19 likely to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children

Danson Mwangangi, a regional socio-economic expert and independent consultant based in Kigali, Rwanda, says that the pandemic has provoked economic severe and labour market shocks and that children are bearing the brunt.

While the number of working children has fallen by 94 million since the 2000s, the plight of Njagi’s children confirms fears by the ILO that the pandemic is likely to exacerbate the abuse and exploitation of children and roll back progress towards the eradication of child labour.  

“Ongoing crisis will make it exceptionally difficult for the United Nations to realise its commitment to end child labour in the next five years. For the first time in 20 years, we are going to see a spike in the number of child labourers,” Mwangangi warns.

The impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable children clearly visible

ILO pre-pandemic statistics indicate that approximately 152 million children between the ages of five and 17, or one in 10 children, worldwide work. Of these, 73 million are in hazardous work. Nearly half of all children in labour are from the African continent and are aged between five and 11 years. 

According to ILO, 85 percent of child labourers in Africa are in the agriculture sector; another 11 percent are in the services sector, with the remaining four percent in industry.

“We are beginning to see the fallout. More child marriages, more girls being employed as domestic workers and, unfortunately, domestic work for children in Africa has been normalised,” Omondi says.

Mwangangi agrees. He says that while statistics by child agencies, like the U.N. Children’s Fund, show that one in five children in Africa is in child labour, there is a general understanding that this does not include underage domestic workers such as house girls and farm boys.

Unfortunately, child labour is not the only problem facing marginalised and vulnerable children in Africa.  When Save the Children released a report in July entitled “Little Invisible Slaves”, it became apparent that COVID-19 has created more children vulnerable to trafficking and revealed that the world lacks much-needed child protection infrastructure.  

The report says that COVID-19 “changed the pattern of sexual exploitation, which is now operating less on the streets and more indoors or online”.

Omondi speaks of fears that millions of children are trapped in houses with their abusers and that it has becoming that much more difficult to reach them.

Save the Children estimates that of the 108,000 cases of human trafficking reported in 164 countries in 2019, at least 23 percent involved children.

Worse still, one in 20 child victims of sexual exploitation worldwide is under eight years old. Overall, Africa accounts for eight percent of child sex trafficking in the world.

According to the United States Department of State, 19 percent of world’s enslaved population is trafficked in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the same breath, nearly half of all countries in Africa including Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Lesotho, Tunisia, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Botswana have been flagged as notable sources, transit points and destination for people subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour. 

In Kenya, for instance, one of six such victims are children, this is according to the Trafficking Data Collaborative, a data hub on human trafficking. 

Meanwhile, Laureates and Leaders for Children caution that the inequalities the world’s children face, combined with the “impact of COVID-19 will reverberate for years to come”. But, they say,  “none will feel it as painfully as the world’s most marginalised children”.

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• A Pandemic Cannot Justify Child Labour
• Covid is a Great Unequaliser, But the Crisis Could Enable us to Build a More Equal Future

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Experts say that the not guilty verdict in the trial of the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak sends a chilling message to Slovak journalists that they cannot be protected or work in safety. In this dated photo, a protester in the Slovak capital, Bratislava holds up a picture of murdered journalist Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

A Slovak businessman with alleged links to organised crime has been found not guilty of ordering the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak in a ruling that has left press freedom campaigners and politicians shocked.

Marian Kocner had been accused of ordering the killing of Kuciak, an investigative reporter with the Slovak news website Aktuality.sk.

Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova, both 27, were shot dead at Kuciak’s home in Velka Maca, 40 miles east of the capital Bratislava in February 2018. Self-confessed hired killer Miroslav Marcek, 37, had earlier this year pleaded guilty to murdering the couple and was sentenced to 23 years in jail.

But a court in Pezinok, north of the capital, ruled yesterday, Sept. 3, that there was not enough evidence to prove Kocner had ordered the murder. A woman also on trial for helping Kocner facilitate the murder, Alena Zsuszova, was acquitted, but a third person, Tomas Szabo, was found guilty of taking part in the killings.

“We are surprised and disappointed that after a long investigation and legal process that it has ended in this verdict. This is a sad day for press freedom in Slovakia and internationally,” Tom Gibson, EU Representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.

“This has sent out a potentially very chilling signal to other journalists that they cannot be protected and cannot do their work safely,” he told IPS.

The murders of Kuciak and Kusnirova shocked Slovakia and led to the largest mass protests in the country since the fall of communism.

Prime Minister Robert Fico and Interior Minister Robert Kalinak were forced to resign, and the head of the police service later stepped down.

Police said that the murders were related to Kuciak’s work as an investigative journalist – Kuciak’s last story had exposed alleged links between Italian mafia and Fico’s Smer party – and the subsequent investigation uncovered alleged links between politicians, prosecutors, judges, and police officers and the people allegedly involved in the killings.

At the heart of these was Kocner, a controversial figure frequently linked to alleged serious criminals and who in a separate case was earlier this year sentenced to 19 years in jail for forging promissory notes.

Prosecutors argued in court that Kocner had ordered the killing in revenge for articles he had written about the multimillionaire’s business dealings.

Although not accused of pulling the trigger himself, for many Kocner was the central figure in the trial and a symbol of deep-rooted corruption at the highest levels of state.

And ahead of the verdict, journalists had said the outcome of the trial would be a watershed in Slovak history, in terms of both restoring public trust in a judiciary which the Kuciak murder investigation has shown to apparently be riddled with corruption, and in showing that same judiciary can clearly punish crimes designed to silence journalists.

But soon after the ruling, many local journalists said they had been left shocked and disappointed, while others said they were angry and could not understand how the court had reached its verdict.

But many said they simply felt the justice system had failed the victims and their families, as the people who ordered the murder had still not been brought to justice.

Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), describe the acquittals as “a huge failure of the investigation bodies and the judiciary”.

“We expected Slovakia to set a positive example regarding the prosecution and condemnation of crimes against journalists. Instead, we remain in a situation of impunity. Who ordered the killing of Jan Kuciak? Why was he killed? We should have a clear answer,” he said.

Regardless of what judicial failures may or may not have led to the decision, it is expected to have serious repercussions in Slovakia and other countries with some arguing it is a serious setback in battling impunity and ensuring justice.

Pavol Szalai, Head of European Union and Balkans Desk at Reporters Without Borders, told IPS: “This [verdict] is the biggest setback for freedom of the press in Europe since the murder itself. During this investigation and the court process Slovakia had been seen as an island of hope in Europe and today a strong signal of hope could have been sent out to other countries.

“But now, with the Slovak justice system unable to identify and bring to justice the person, or persons who ordered these murders despite massive public and political pressure to do so, how can other countries, like Serbia for example, be expected to do so?”

CPJ’s Gibson added: “This case was closely followed internationally and for European institutions especially this was an important case in terms of strengthening press freedom in Europe.

“One of the important things about Jan Kuciak’s murder was that he was a journalist working on investigative stories involving sensitive information and there are journalists in lots of other countries doing similar kind of work. This case was kind of symbol in terms of [highlighting] the need to protect journalists in other countries doing similar work.”

Prosecutors have appealed the court’s verdict and it will now go to the Supreme Court, which will either confirm the verdict or could send the case back to court to be heard again.

However, it is expected it will be months before the Supreme Court delivers any ruling and if the case is sent back to court, it could be years before another verdict is reached, which could again be appealed.

Some observers fear this could lead to a complete erosion of trust in the Slovak judiciary which has already been severely weakened by the court’s ruling.

Zuzana Petkova, a former journalist who worked on stories with Kuciak, told IPS: “This is not the end of the case, but if the people who ordered the murders are not put behind bars, Slovakia will drag this case around like a trauma, and there will be no trust left in the Slovak justice system. Already after today’s verdict there is far less trust in the system.”

Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International Slovakia, wrote in a Facebook post: “It must be a top priority for the Supreme Court and law enforcement bodies to prevent this case becoming the last nail in the coffin of the trust of the public in the judiciary and justice in Slovakia.”

Slovak politicians, many of whom openly admitted they had been shocked by the court’s ruling, urged people to believe that those behind the killings would eventually be brought to justice.

But some who have followed the trial are taking a more pessimistic view.

Drew Sullivan, Editor at the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, told IPS he had little hope that the people who ordered the killings would ever be convicted.

He told IPS: “The ruling was a huge disappointment although not completely unexpected. Experienced crime figures know how to isolate themselves from their crimes and there was no direct forensic evidence of [Kocner’s] involvement.

“However, there was testimony and clear circumstantial evidence of his involvement. If he had been a regular person, he’d have been found guilty based on witness testimony, but courts don’t accept the testimony of commoners against the ruling class. He is rich, powerful and murderous, and will cause problems for some time now in Slovakia.”

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• Never Been a Worse Time to be a Journalist

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Tijjani Muhammad-Bande. Adhering to physical-distancing guidelines, the General Assembly met fully in-person on 3 September, for the first time in nearly six months, with its president urging all Members to “galvanize multilateral action…to deliver for all”, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Credit: United Nations

By Tijjani Muhammad-Bande
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 4 2020 (IPS)

Although we have not convened in this Hall since March, New York-based delegations have worked tirelessly to uphold the values and principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations, whilst contending with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The UN’s chief deliberative body continued the Organization’s work, all the while forging and deepening partnerships to build back better.

I commend the body for its foresight in adopting and extending Decision 74/544, which has allowed the Membership to adopt more than 70 decisions and resolutions and elect Main Committees chairs for the upcoming milestone 75th Assembly session.

This has ensured business continuity on issues of critical importance.

We employed virtual methods to gather stakeholders from around the world on Charter Day, and once again at the multi-stakeholder hearing on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women.

I thank the Secretariat for its continued commitment.

I applaud the work of the intergovernmental negotiations on the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations.

The Member States demonstrated leadership in responding to the global pandemic by adopting two resolutions with wide co-sponsorship calling for solidarity and global access to medicines and medical equipment.

The first in-person meeting since March is held in the General Assembly following the outbreak of the coronavirus. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

I congratulate the Fifth Committee Chair – responsible for administrative and budgetary matters – for adopting creative methods that allowed the resumed session to conclude with 21 draft recommendations, and a peacekeeping budget of $6.5 billion for the 2020-2021 fiscal year.

Your work has ensured that the United Nations can continue to operate on the ground and meet the needs of the people we serve.

I also applaud the World Health Organization (WHO) for leading the COVID-19 response from the outset.

The entire UN system has rallied to address the needs of the people we serve, and particularly our humanitarian workers in the field and our Peacekeepers, who continue to protect communities in the most complex environments globally.

We maintain the importance of these efforts as we begin the Decade of Action and Delivery to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or as it is likely to become, the decade of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

I urge you to galvanize multilateral action now to fulfill our financing for development commitments. We remain in this together, as nations, united. Let us continue striving together to deliver for all.

 

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Excerpt:

Tijjani Muhammad-Bande is President of the outgoing 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly

The post The First “Virtual” Post-Pandemic UN General Assembly Meeting appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The offer to pay those whose land was seized 20 years ago is intended to mend relations with the West.

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

South Sudanese refugees practice social distancing as they wait to access a food distribution at Kakuma camp. © UNHCR/Samuel Odhiambo

By Daniel Gurara, Stefania Fabrizio, Daniel Gurara, and Johannes Wiegand
WASHINGTON, Sep 3 2020 (IPS)

While the COVID-19 crisis is sending shockwaves around the globe, low-income developing countries (LIDCs) are in a particularly difficult position to respond. LIDCs have both been hit hard by external shocks and are suffering severe domestic contractions from the spread of the virus and the lockdown measures to contain it. At the same time, limited resources and weak institutions constrain the capacity of many LIDC governments to support their economies.

Growth in LIDCs is likely to come to a standstill this year, compared to growth of 5 percent in 2019. Further, absent a sustained international effort to support them, permanent scars are likely to harm development prospects, exacerbate inequality, and threaten to wipe out a decade of progress reducing poverty.

 

Multiple shocks take a heavy toll

LIDCs entered the COVID-19 crisis in an already vulnerable position—for example, half of them suffered high public debt levels. Since March, LIDCs have been hit by an exceptional confluence of external shocks: a sharp contraction in real exports, lower export prices, especially for oil, less capital and remittances inflows, and reduced tourism receipts.

Take remittances, for example, that exceeded 5 percent of GDP in 30 (out of 59) LIDCs in 2019. Between April and May, they fell by 18 percent in Bangladesh, and by 39 percent in the Kyrgyz Republic, compared to the previous year. The repercussions are likely to be felt widely where remittances are the main source of income for many poor families.

As for the domestic impact, while the pandemic has evolved more slowly in LIDCs than in other parts of the world, it is now inflicting a sizeable toll on economic activity. Many LIDCs acted swiftly to contain the spread. From mid-March, when reported infections were still low, they put in place containment measures including international travel controls, school closures, the cancelation of public events and gathering restrictions.

Mobility—a proxy for domestic economic activity—also declined sharply, and continued to retreat as measures were broadened to include workplace closures, stay-at-home orders, and internal movement restrictions. From late April/early May, containment measures have gradually loosened and mobility has recovered, but has yet to return to pre-crisis levels.

 

 

Managing difficult trade-offs with scarce resources

Most LIDCs cannot sustain strict containment measures for long as large segments of the population live at near subsistence levels. Large informal sectors, weak institutional capacity, and incomplete registries of the poor make it difficult to reach the needy. Further, governments have only limited fiscal resources to support them.

Recent surveys conducted across 20 African countries reveal that more than 70 percent of respondents risk running out of food during a lockdown that lasts more than two weeks.

Faced with such constraints, the short but sharp front-loading of containment fulfilled a critical purpose: it flattened the infection curve, while granting time to build up capacity in the health sector.

Many LIDCs have followed this path: while they expended less fiscal support to their economies than advanced or emerging market economies, the share of additional spending dedicated to health has been higher.

 

 

As broad-based containment becomes difficult to sustain, LIDCs should transition to more targeted measures, including social distancing and contact tracing—Vietnam and Cambodia are good examples. Policy support should focus on supporting the most vulnerable, including the elderly, and on limiting the health crisis’s long-term fallout.

For example, protecting education is critical to ensure that the pandemic does not—as highlighted in a recent Letter to the International Community by a group of eminent persons—“create a COVID generation who loses out on schooling and whose opportunities are permanently damaged.”

Where the necessary infrastructure exists, technology can sometimes be leveraged in innovative ways. For example, to limit the spread of the virus, Rwanda is leveraging its digital finance infrastructure to discourage the use of cash. Togo employs the voter registration database to channel assistance to vulnerable groups.

 

A decade of progress under threat

Despite the best efforts of LIDC governments, lasting damage seems unavoidable in the absence of more international support. Long-term “scarring”—the permanent loss of productive capacity—is a particularly worrisome prospect.

Scarring has been the legacy of past pandemics: mortality; worse health and education outcomes that depress future earnings; the depletion of savings and assets that force firm closures—especially of small enterprises that lack access to credit—and cause irrecoverable production disruptions; and debt overhangs that depress lending to the private sector. For example, in the aftermath of the 2013 Ebola pandemic, Sierra Leone’s economy never recovered to its pre-crisis growth path.

Scarring would trigger severe setbacks to LIDCs’ development efforts, including undoing the gains in reducing poverty over the last 7 to 10 years, and exacerbating inequality, including gender inequality. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will thus be even more difficult to achieve.

 

 

LIDCs cannot make it alone

The support of the international community is key to enable LIDCs to tackle the pandemic and recover strongly. Priorities include: (1) guaranteeing essential health supplies, including cures and vaccines when they are discovered; (2) protecting critical supply chains, especially for food and medicines; (3) avoiding protectionist measures; (4) ensuring that developing economies can finance critical spending through grants and concessional financing; (5) ensuring that LIDCs’ international liquidity needs are met, which requires International Financial Institutions to be resourced adequately; (6) reprofiling and restructuring debt to restore sustainability where needed, which, in many cases, may require relief beyond the G20/Debt Service Suspension Initiative; and (7) keeping sight of the United Nations’ SDGs, including by reassessing needs when the crisis subsides.

The COVID-19 pandemic will be defeated only when it and its socioeconomic consequences are overcome everywhere. Urgent action by the international community can save lives and livelihoods in LIDCs. The International Monetary Fund is doing its share: among other things, the IMF has provided emergency financing to 42 LIDCs since April. It stands ready to provide more support and help design longer-term economic programs for a sustainable recovery.

Daniel Gurara is an Economist at the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department of the IMF.

Stefania Fabrizio is Deputy Unit Chief in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy, and Review Department.

Johannes Wiegand is Chief of the Development Issues Unit in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department.

This story was originally posted on IMFBlog – Read the original here

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Qatar filed a case with the International Court of Justice under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination against the United Arab Emirates. The hearings were held by video link. Courtesy: International Court of Justice

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 3 2020 (IPS)

Qatar officials reiterated their claim on Wednesday that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) be held responsible for their “discrimination” against Qatari citizens, as the third day of public hearings proceeded at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nation’s highest court. But foreign policy experts caution that the case is not good for stability in the Persian Gulf region.

The case, filed under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), deals with, among other things, the expulsion of Qatari citizens from the UAE because of their nationality.

“In 2017, the UAE began ‘unprecedented discriminatory measures’ that target Qatar based on their national origin,” Mohammed Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, legal advisor to Qatar’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Dean of the College of Law at Qatar University, said at the hearing.

Qatar claims the discrimination began following a 2017 boycott by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt. The countries had reportedly cut diplomatic ties with Qatar  because of its alleged support of terrorist groups.

“The UAE has engaged in the violations of the human rights of Qatari people,” Al-Khulaifi added later.

Michael Stephens, a scholar with the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), told IPS: “Whilst it was understandable Qatar and the UAE had some very big differences over regional politics, the way in which this has been handled has been highly damaging and has really not produced any of the sort of results that the UAE initially hoped for.”

He said that the dispute might be posing a challenge in the Persian Gulf region overall.

“It’s not good because they’re playing out their rivalries in weaker countries, like Libya and Somalia, and polarising politics in those areas,” he said. “I don’t think this is good for the stability of the Gulf.”

He added that this might further undermine the negotiations over the nuclear deal, and “has emboldened actors to play the Gulf states against one another, who are smart and “can take money from both sides”.

• In 2015, Iran signed a nuclear deal with world powers to limit operations on its nuclear industry, among other things. It was reported that since January Iran has begun reducing its commitments to the deal.

“In general, it has made the Gulf look divided and weak,” Stephens said.

Lubna Qassim Mohammed Yousuf Bastaki, one of the speakers for the UAE, said Qatar’s case, “masquerading” as  discrimination, “concerns UAE measures that were addressed to Qatari nationals on the sole basis of their nationality, as nationality was both the focus and the effect of the UAE measures”.

At the start of proceedings this week the UAE argued that the ICJ had no jurisdiction in the matter as the dispute was based on nationality and not race and thereby did not relate to the CERD.

Bastaki argued that Qatar was invited “based on our commonalities as one people” to join the new union of the Arab emirates. “The fact that we have a  common origin which traversed the new national boundaries was understood,” she said.

She also said under the UAE law, Qataris are among the few who have the ability to become UAE nationals easily.

“This well illustrates the artificiality of the supposed racial distinctions which Qatar is now seeking to conjure up,” she said. 

Bastaki is not the only person to express her concern about the specific allegations of discrimination based on nationality.

“The Qataris have a much stronger argument, I think in that they sense that their nationals have been mistreated, but they’ve also made this slightly odd claim that this is about racism, when they are basically from the same background,” Stephens of FPRI told IPS. “Certainly the ruling families come from the same background.”

“So, claiming ‘racism’ is a difficult one that would only be possible if you had a Qatari from an Iranian origin, or a different background,” he added.

Stephens said that the UAE has certainly at times acted discriminatingly towards those who showed support for Qatar, citing the arrest of a British fan who was supporting Qatar during a football match. Last January, Ali Issa Ahmad was held by UAE police for two weeks after he supported Qatar in a football tournament held in the UAE.

“But the Qatari football team was allowed to play in the tournament and actually won,” Stephens said. “So it’s not a complete shutdown.”

Stephens said he can’t gauge the outcome of the rulings; he said Qatar’s position appears to be “strengthening” with more international arbitrators getting involved.

Stephens said the UAE’s claims that they were acting against people who supported terrorism, is a “very, very difficult claim to make: how would they prove that? How would they show just a normal Qatari walking around in Dubai or Abu Dhabi was supporting terrorism, by virtue of the fact that they’re Qatari?”

The hearings will continue till Friday.

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SOFI launch event. Credit: FAO

By Zoltán Kálmán
ROME, Sep 3 2020 (IPS)

Five years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda we are far from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to the recently launched SOFI Report (The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020), we are not on track to eradicate poverty, hunger and malnutrition. On the contrary, with the current trends, the global number of undernourished people in 2030 would exceed 840 million. Moreover, WHO has reported alarming rates of overweight and obesity, globally affecting 39% and 13% of the adult population, respectively.

What are the reasons?

The SOFI Report identifies conflicts and climate-related shocks as main causes, adding that even in peaceful settings, food security has worsened, due to increased inequalities and economic slowdowns affecting access to food for the poor. Unhealthy diets contribute to increasing rates of overweight and obesity, creating serious social, health problems, triggering heavy burden on public health expenditures. Our broken food systems have negative impacts on the environment as well, leading to biodiversity loss, soil degradation, increased GHG emissions, etc. Food losses and waste, as preventable consequences of unsustainable food systems, are also contributing to food insecurity. This year’s SOFI Report makes a clear reference to some of the externalities, the so-called “hidden” costs of our food systems. It quantifies the increased medical costs: Diet-related “health costs are projected to reach an average of USD 1.3 trillion in 2030” and the costs of climate damage: “The diet-related social cost of GHG emissions related to current food consumption patterns are estimated to be around USD 1.7 trillion for 2030 for an emissions-stabilization scenario”. In addition, the costs of inaction on biodiversity loss, described by a recent OECD report, should also be taken into consideration: “The world lost an estimated USD 4-20 trillion per year in ecosystem services from 1997 to 2011, owing to land-cover change and an estimated USD 6-11 trillion per year from land degradation.”

The shocking figures confirm the urgent need for an overall assessment of all positive and negative externalities of our food systems. Results of this assessment, based on neutral science, could be a solid foundation for policy decisions to elaborate and apply appropriate policy incentives aiming at more sustainable food systems. Scientists agree that transforming our food systems is among the most powerful ways to change course and realize the vision of the 2030 Agenda. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that in 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the SDGs by 2030. As UNSG said: “Transforming food systems is crucial for delivering all the Sustainable Development Goals.”

According to the concept of the Summit “we are all part of the food systems, so we need to come together to bring about the transformation that the world needs”. Transformation of our food systems should be a bottom-up, inclusive process, where all stakeholder groups are involved: FAO and other UN organizations, governments, local communities, private sector, civil society, academia, famers’ associations. In this regard, the unique, inclusive and multistakeholder model of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) could apply. The reports of the High Level Panel of Experts are valuable, relevant instruments and the CFS policy recommendations and other CFS “products” (adopted by consensus) can also provide proper guidance for governments and all other stakeholders in their policy decisions.

To enhance the role of private sector in the process of transforming our food systems, it is much appreciated that the new management of FAO decided to prepare a revised strategy for the private sector engagement, following the recommendations of FAO governing bodies.

From FAO Members’ perspective, the basic values such as transparency, accountability, inclusivity, neutrality and independence and regular impact assessments could be guiding principles of the new FAO private sector engagement strategy. For the sake of transparency and accountability, it would be desirable to make available some basic information on existing private sector partnerships (main objectives, the financial and non-financial contributions, etc.). Naturally, it requires the (hopefully granted) consent of the private sector partners. What does it mean if they do not agree? It might mean there is something to hide and this lack of transparency would be a matter of serious concern.

FAO has an important role and responsibility to ensure, as honest broker, that private sector partnerships follow the principle of inclusivity, address the real needs of people and contribute to eliminating poverty and hunger. FAO should guarantee the participatory and needs-based approach and make sure that all private sector investment projects and initiatives are developed in consultation and close collaboration with national governments, local communities, civil society organisations and farmers’ associations. This would increase ownership of the rural communities. In addition, FAO could help countries with policy advice to create the enabling economic policy environment where private sector finds its profit interests while the investments are serving the needs of the local communities, contributing to their development.

Neutrality and independence of FAO has been a great value and it should be preserved, in particular when private sector engagement is extended to fields like policy dialogue, norms and standard setting. In this regard, appropriate process for selecting partners should be in place to reduce and manage any potential risks (conflicts of interests, reputational risks, interference in standard setting, etc.).

In addition, compliance with CFS policy recommendations and other CFS “products”, such as the RAI principles and the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure (VGGT), could be a prerequisite for private sector partners wishing to engage in partnership with FAO. Why? Because CFS “products” are relevant instruments, they can guide governments and all other stakeholders in their policy decisions. CFS “products” are adopted by consensus, after inclusive, multistakeholder discussions, including by the Private Sector Mechanism at CFS. Compliance with the CFS VGGT is a rather serious issue, statistical figures clearly show that in many parts of the world land grabbing situation has been worsening also in the past decade.

In order to improve efficiency and effectiveness of private sector partnerships, it is essential to regularly assess their impacts, possibly involving external, independent experts. Appropriate benchmarks should be in place to understand the extent to which the private sector partnerships contribute to the achievement of SDGs, in particular SDG 1 and 2, eliminating poverty and achieve zero hunger. Based on these assessments, private sector partnerships performing well should be scaled up, and those with poor results should be improved or terminated.

All in all, private sector has an essential role to play (engaged with due respect to the above principles) to achieve the common goals. As Agnes Kalibata, UN Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit has put it: “We believe in a world where healthy, sustainable and inclusive food systems allow people and planet to thrive. It is a world without poverty or hunger, a world of inclusive growth, environmental sustainability, and social justice. It is a resilient world where no one is left behind.”

 

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Excerpt:

Zoltán Kálmán, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Hungary to the UN Food and Agriculture Agencies in Rome, Member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Food Systems Summit

The post “Hidden” Costs of Our Food Systems appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Experts are reaching towards a startling hypothesis about the continent's low infection and death rates.

Ethiopia has begun filling the mega dam before reaching an agreement with Sudan and Egypt.

The members of Megative, with Gus van Go (far left). Credit: Daviston Jeffers

By SWAN
PARIS, Sep 2 2020 (IPS)

Even as their income dries up and their touring opportunities disappear because of the Covid-19 pandemic, some artists are using their work to call out injustice, criticize inept leaders and spark social change.

The members of Megative – a Brooklyn-based, reggae-dub-punk collective – are among those aiming to fight negative global currents, and they’re doing so through edgy, scorching music.

“I think activism is the most important thing we have right now in 2020. It’s do or die right now for humanity. The injustice absolutely must end, and it will not end with silence,” says music producer Gus van Go, leader and co-founder of the group.

In a year of uncertainty and division, Megative stands out for its multicultural composition as well as its fusion of styles and thought-provoking lyrics. This past July, watching the incompetence of certain heads of state in the face of the pandemic, the group released the song The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum, a cover of the Fun Boy Three hit from the early Eighties, combining dub and punk music.

 

 

The original was a critique of the Ronald Reagan-Margaret Thatcher era, and Megative thinks the track is just as pertinent in 2020, with the current presence of problematic leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.

“We still believe the message is important, and it’s almost more relevant now,” van Go told SWAN in a telephone interview from Montréal, Canada, where he grew up, and where he has a studio along with one in Brooklyn.

The group was due to take their songs on the road – scheduled to perform at “five or six festivals” in France, for instance – but the pandemic has caused all these events to be cancelled. The musicians now find themselves, like so many other artists, struggling to maintain an income and to keep their overall work going.

“I think Covid-19 is exposing something that I’ve always thought about in the music industry,” said van Go. “So much inequality. We’ve always had this one percent of artists who have been insanely rich … and the rest of us are working our asses off, in order to eke out a living.”

“The universe took away the one single piece of the pie that the artist still had. All of a sudden, nearly every single musician cannot make a cent. One day, the universe just said ‘no you cant have that’. There is no income for all these artists. You see how dangerous it is to have just one source of income? Do we not need music in this world?

He explained that with the massive decline in album sales over the past decade, musicians had turned to touring in order to “just barely make a living – travelling together in a shitty old van”. But now even that has dried up with the global health crisis.

“Covid has shone this giant light on it,” he added. “The universe took away the one single piece of the pie that the artist still had. All of a sudden, nearly every single musician cannot make a cent. One day, the universe just said ‘no you cant have that’. There is no income for all these artists. You see how dangerous it is to have just one source of income? Do we not need music in this world? What if Covid continues for two or three years, what if this goes on for multiple years?”

He said it’s time for artists to band together and demand change – in their industries, communities and countries. “Megative supports activism,” he declared.

Discussing the origins of the group, van Go said the idea for the collective grew out of an overnight drive from New Mexico to California that he took with fellow musician Tim Fletcher 10 years ago. There were only two CDS available in the car – Combat Rock by The Clash, and More Specials by the 2 Tone and ska revival band The Specials, both English. The sounds got van Go thinking about the “conscious lyrics” and the history of the musical styles and their influences.

“We have a love for Jamaican reggae and dub culture of the early Eighties with bands like Steel Pulse and The Clash. But reggae in North America, where we are from, is associated with vacation spots, coconut trees and irie vibes. We were lamenting the darker reggae of the early Eighties. Our Clash discussion morphed into how a reggae band would look in 2018,” he said.

Back in New York, they invited a producing-engineering duo called Likeminds and Jamaican MC Screechy Dan to join the conversation. The enthusiasm for the project was so strong that they recorded three songs which almost immediately led to a signing with Last Gang Records and the subsequent release of their debut album in summer 2018.

The collective now brings together disparate artists including the Grammy-nominated Likeminds (Chris Soper and Jesse Singer); Jamaican-born singer, MC and dancehall veteran Screechy Dan; singer-guitarist and punk rocker Alex Crow; percussionist-DJ-singer JonnyGo Figure; and the rising Brooklyn drummer Demetrius “Mech” Pass.

All the members have their own individual projects but contribute their respective skills to create the Megative sound – a fusion of UK-style punk, Jamaican dub and reggae, and American hip-hop. The music is a response to today’s world, to everything that’s happening including the “hyper-noise of incessant information”, according to the collective.

The overarching theme is existentialist angst amidst precarious conditions. Tracks such as Have Mercy, Bad Advice and More Time call upon listeners to take control and rely on their own sense of what’s right, with lyrics set against dub beats and a punk vibe, and skilful singing mixed with mindful rapping.

For van Go, born Gustavo Coriandoli in Argentina and raised in Canada, the historical alliance between punk and reggae was central to Megative’s formation. He recalls growing up in Montréal in the late 1980s and early 90s, when the “punk rock movement was taking hold” among the youth.

“The shows had trouble finding venues, so they always tried to rent space … and sometimes that would be at Jamaican community centres. All these punks would be at these shows, but also the Rastafarian community. So, dub music was playing. I was 16, had never heard dub, had never been been to a punk show, so it fused in my brain,” he told SWAN.

Similar congregations or collaborations in the UK had led singer Bob Marley to release Punky Reggae Party in 1977, a reflection of the bridging of cultural divides; and punk-dub pioneer Don Letts wrote about the movement in his 2006 autobiography Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers.

“It’s all about social message – in punk and reggae, so they’re natural allies or they should be,” said van Go. “There’s a positivity but also a dark side. I love the energy that this creates, in punk and reggae and in early hiphop.”

When asked about Megative’s views on the current discussion around cultural appropriation in the arts, van Go answered: “This is an ongoing discussion with us, and we really encourage dialogue on the subject.” He added that the group takes a multicultural approach to creating music, as can be seen from their output so far.

Regarding the future of the collective, van Go said Megative planned to continue producing music with a cause, and to get back to touring when possible. They are currently “writing new material” but aren’t certain in which format(s) it will be released.

“Like nothing else can, I think music can definitely help heal,” van Go told SWAN. “We have to topple these terrible people who are in power right now. We have to find concrete ways to end systemic racism. Music has to play a part as it did in the Sixties. It needs to.”

The post Music Collective ‘Megative’ Dubs Out the Negative appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Former Nigeria Under-20 goalkeeper John Felagha has been confirmed to have collapsed and died in his room at the camp of Aspire Football Dreams in Senegal.

The chief prosecutor at the Hague-based ICC, Fatou Bensouda, is among those sanctioned.

South African authorities paid five times the recommended price for PPE, the auditor general finds.

By Stephen Leahy
Sep 2 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Having reported on SARS, Ebola, Bird Flu (H5N1) outbreaks, as well as writing about efforts to combat HIV, I was horrified by what was going on in Wuhan, China last Jan mainly because of how fast this new SARS-CoV-2 virus spread. By early Feb it seemed likely there’d be a global pandemic and by the end of Feb I started to freak out as the pandemic took hold. I’ve never been to Wuhan or China nor seen anyone who had; and I hadn’t travelled any where recently. It was nearly impossible for me to have encountered the virus but that didn’t keep me from getting sick with fear and dread knowing that a goddamn microscopic parasite was going to turn our lives upside down when we already had multiple crisis of on our plate. (You know, climate, ecological collapse, rise of populism and authoritarianism.) I refused to write about the virus or the disease it causes — COVID-19 — until I had to face the little bastard personally.

Hockey arena as COVID-19 testing centre

“Moved up two places!!” I texted my partner one glorious summer morning while standing in a long line outside a COVID Assessment Centre. A few days before I’d been to a couple of outdoor patios with friends and woke up that morning with a sore throat and feeling very fatigued, two potential COVID-19 symptoms. I live part of the time with health-compromised relatives over 80 and a pregnant daughter.

So, as you do in a time of pandemic, I went to get a free COVID-19 test.

It didn’t occur to me that spending a couple of hours inside a converted but still chilly ice-hockey arena with 200 odd people who maybe infected might be a lot riskier than having a beer with a friend on outdoor patio. I wasn’t the only one thinking this given the way our bodies were repelling each other like the equal poles of magnets. It was nerve-wracking, while being super boring. Three hours after lining up outside the arena, I reached the once-feared-but-now-welcome climax: a small screened off area where a no-nonsense nurse jammed a cotton-ball lollypop up my left nostril to tickle my brain.

Three observations:

• Observation #1 Health care workers
No one wants to be in a COVID-19 testing center, especially the health care workers. It’s noisy, busy, and stressful. The unvarying work of registering people, interviewing and testing them is monotonous as hell. Spending all day with hundreds of people near catatonic with fear and/or pissed off that their family/boss made them come probably isn’t much fun either. And some of these folks are infectious. Health care workers are indeed our true heroes.
• Observation #2 Little kids
There were a lot of little kids, some only a few months old in that tense, noisy arena. What was that doing to their mental well-being? And what about the pandemic itself? Everything in their nascent grasp of the world has been shattered. Maybe it’s similar to the experience of British kids at the outbreak of World War II. One day everything changed with a few innocent words declaring Britain was now at war.
• Observation #3 On being a pariah
I did not like being a pariah. While awaiting the results of the test I had to self-isolate in case I was infected. Suddenly I was a potentially mortal threat to the people I love. My presence in the same house made everyone nervous. Everything I’d touched — and, really who can remember? — was now a hazard. I wanted to shout: “I’m fine! It’s just a plain old sore throat!” But of course it might not have been. The consequences of not taking precautions could be calamitous.

Luckily it only took 27 hours to get the negative result and my sore throat had cleared up by then. My 27 hours as a pariah are nothing compared to those hundreds of thousands (millions now?) who have done the 14-day quarantine. Although my experience was relatively trivial, I’m pretty sure not many would say that their 14 days of self-isolation was the best vacation ever or great opportunity to get work done.

And for many the disease itself, COVID-19, is no picnic.

I’m now pretty motivated to find how to avoid having to go to a testing centre again while living some kind of life. I’m not a virus expert, or expert in anything really, except maybe explaining stuff. So this is my take on how to minimize the risks of catching the virus.

The chart below from the Texas Medical Association shows how doctors there ranked the relative risk of various activities. Relative is the key word here. Few things are risk-free and we largely ignore or unaware of the risks we take in our daily lives. Driving a car is probably the most dangerous thing we do on a regular basis. But since it’s familiar, and believe we’re in control of the risk we tend to discount or ignore the danger. However the odds of being in a fatal car accident are 1 in 106 in your lifetime. And the odds of that happening this year are 1 in 8,300. I’d be a lot happier if it was one in a million.

How to eliminate risk of COVID infection besides moving to New Zealand?

It’s simple enough to eliminate the risk of a fatal car accident: don’t ever get in a car. But what can we do to virtually eliminate/dramatically reduce our risk of contracting COVID-19? A move to New Zealand would do it since there’d been no community transmission for more than 100 days until recently. At end of August there were just over 100 active cases in a country of nearly 5 million people. Meanwhile the US reported between 50,000 to 60,000 new cases every day in July and August according to The COVID Tracking Project. New Zealand’s borders are effectively closed to non-residents so that’s probably not a viable COVID-risk reduction strategy for the rest of us.

The plain truth is that living in a place where a lot of people are already infected with this highly transmissible virus increases your risk of infection. Just as someone who drives 10 hours a day faces a higher risk of a traffic accident than a person driving five hours a week. And so the current number of active cases in your area is a major indicator of the level of risk.

In Ontario, Canada where I live, there were just over 1000 active infections at the end of August. These are people who have tested positive and able to infect others. However there are also untested, infected people with no symptoms or very minor symptoms who are also able to infect others. But how many?

Biostatistician Ryan Imgrund, who does the COVID-19 tracking for Ontario, has a sophisticated way to estimate how many people may be capable of passing on the infection currently in addition to the known active cases. It roughly works out to between 4 and 5 times the active case load in Ontario, so around 5,000 people with transmissible infections. Given population of Ontario, this works out to one transmissible infection floating around for every 2963 people at the end of August.

Given that the odds of a fatal car accident is 1 in 106 in your lifetime, one potentially infectious person in 2963 looks almost as good as New Zealand. But to be a 1 in 2963 chance, everyone would need to stay at home until a vaccine is delivered to their door.

What’s your dinner party risk?

Since that’s not going to happen Imgrund used this data to calculate the chances of encountering an infected person in various social situations. As the chart below shows if you attend a diner party in Ontario with ten people the chances of one person at the party with a transmissible COVID-19 infection is just 0.3 percent.

At a wedding with 250 in attendance the chances shoot up to 8.1 percent. That’s almost a one in ten chance someone there could transmit the virus. Attending a concert or sporting event with thousands of people and you’re pretty well guaranteed at least one person could transmit the virus.

Now even if there is an infected person at a party, or a couple of them in a busy bar, that doesn’t mean you’ll get infected. There’s a number of factors that can increase or decrease your risk — air circulation, humidity levels, distance, the viral load of the infected person and more.

Unfortunately Imgrund’s Risk Assessment Chart and method of estimating total transmissible infections only applies in Ontario. States count active cases differently than Ontario does. And these can be different from state to state. This summer Centre for Disease Control (CDC) Director Robert Redfield estimated the actual number of U.S. residents who have been infected with the coronavirus is likely to be 10 times as high as the number of confirmed cases.

Navigating safely through the pandemic

Despite the risks, we’re generally very comfortable behind the wheel of a vehicle. After all driving is much safer after 100 years of mass automobile use. A wide range of efforts have gone into making driving less risky: seatbelts, air bags, well-designed roads, signage, signal lights. There are dozens of laws and rules we have to follow. And we’ve invested a lot of time learning the rules in the Driver’s Manual, developing the skills needed to safely navigate a vehicle and passing drivers’ tests.

All of this — knowing and following the rules, developing the skills, having years of driving experience — greatly lowers our risk. Insurance companies have the data to prove this which is why the insurance cost for new drivers is so high.

By contrast we’re just six months into the pandemic. There are now some rules in some places, like wearing masks inside public spaces. Unfortunately it’s far too soon to have anything like a Safe Pandemic Manual to study or a set of safety rules to follow. We’re all trying to figure out the best ways to stay safe. One thing we need to know is that like driving, pandemic risk is situational. In other words the risk of catching the disease, as well as the consequences, depends on the circumstances you happen to be in.

A COVID-19 mantra: Time and Place, People and Space

Ryan Imgrund has an easy to remember catch phrase or “need-to-know mantra” that can help us evaluate the risks of various situations to help reduce the risk of catching the virus: Time And Place, People And Space.

Let me break it down:

• Time:
The longer you’re in a place with other people the higher the risk. A 10-minute conversation on a sidewalk is low risk, a two-hour chat on the porch is higher.
• Place:
Indoors is risker than outdoors. A stuffy, crowded bar is way risker than a group picnic in a park.
• People:
The more people in a place the bigger the risk which Imgrund’s chart clearly shows. Being with a few COVID-savvy people is lower risk. These are folks with a tight social bubble of 10 people or fewer; who avoid all high risk activities, and regularly wear masks and their wash hands.
• Space:
Keep your distance: two meters or one caribou.

Website: https://leahy.substack.com

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Excerpt:

My personal pandemic panic

The post Navigating Safely Through The Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.