Africa

Women in Nigeria collect food vouchers as part of a programme to support families struggling under the COVID-19 lockdown. Credit: WFP/Damilola Onafuwa

By Ben Phillips
ROME, Aug 26 2020 (IPS)

Any of the first names that the media reported as having Covid were those of the rich and powerful, from movie stars to political leaders. Be ye ever so high, the virus is above thee – or so it seemed.

Now we understand that this perception, that came in part because at first only the wealthy and well-connected were getting tested, was misleading. The data is now crystal clear: Covid risk maps on to inequality, and Covid is a great unequaliser – in health, and in wealth.

But just as the initial “optimistic” take about Covid – that it would equalize us – got it wrong, so too the now pervasive “pessimistic” take – that the huge costs of the crisis leave us simply unable to act boldly – also gets it wrong.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, when we look at when it was that countries have embarked on the boldest steps to tackle inequality, it has not been when their coffers were most full, but when they were in the midst of, or emerging from, crises. As Covid has worsened inequality, it has also helped to expose it and to demonstrate its harm.

We have witnessed, in ever starker view, the inverse relationship between the concentration of wealth and social contribution. We have watched key workers without proper protections hold our society together, while elites looked after themselves, increasing their wealth by hundreds of billions. We have seen the immorality and unsustainability of systems in which our right to life is shaped by our bank balance.

The acute crisis of the present moment has revealed the deeper crisis of our age. Public opinion surveys, and media coverage have shown that many inequality-reducing policies previously deemed “radical” are now garnering widespread support. The opportunity to properly address inequality is now.

The point is not that the crisis “will” lead to action to tackle inequality, only that it helps generate a “could”. If social structures are like hard metal, crises are like heat that makes them molten: longstanding rules and norms can be reshaped, but in which ways they are reshaped depends on how hard they refashioned and from what direction.

If you’re stirred by the idea of emerging from this crisis into a more equal world, and you’re wondering who it is who can ensure that we do, history provides a very clear answer: you.

For my forthcoming book, How to Fight Inequality, I reviewed when progress had been made in tackling inequality. What I found was that if there is one generalizable lesson of social change it seems to be this: no one saves others, people standing together is how they liberate themselves.

It can be slow and it’s always complicated and it sometimes fails – but it’s the only way it works. The structure will not change from the top. As young activists expressed it to me: ‘There is no justice, just us.’ That can sound quite down, but it turns out that ‘just us’ – organized – is powerful.

Looking at history can help guide us. Crises are important, but what matters most is how we seize them. Three vital elements for stand out for success in the fight against inequality: we need to overcome deference; build power together, and create a new story.

All successful movements against inequality have faced hostility from the powerful, and therefore have depended on people’s willingness to get into trouble. The landless workers who successfully demanded access to land in Latin America, the Civil Rights movement in the US, and the trade unionists who won the welfare state in Europe, were all treated as threats to be squashed before they were recognized for prompting needed change.

Governments have not acted with the determination needed to tackle inequality without a push from the rest of us, and have consistently resisted that push at first. Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, who worked with movements for women’s rights, civil rights, migrant rights and the environment across the twentieth century, summed up her key lesson as ‘be a nuisance where it counts’.

Today’s heroes are yesterday’s troublemakers, and those who will define tomorrow will not be those whom the establishment embraces today.

Victories against inequality were rooted too in mass organizing – the change in each case was collective, never individual – because winning the battle against inequality has required power, which for ordinary people is only ever collective. The Montgomery bus boycott is sometimes told as if it was only a story of Rosa Parks sitting down and Martin Luther King speaking. But it was planned, and trained for. Rosa Parks wasn’t just tired!

And as Dr King himself pointed out, ‘I neither started the protest nor suggested it.’ Two years before Rosa Parks was arrested, the Women’s Political Leadership Council, a group of African-American activists, had been preparing for a bus boycott. The Montgomery Improvement Association, set up after the arrest, had to maintain the boycott for 381 days. And they had to resource it from the community.

Activists printed thousands of flyers to get the message out and got hundreds of volunteers to help organize. Black churches across the city served as centres of organizing. People who didn’t even use the bus helped by providing people lifts in their cars. Postal service workers helped work out the routes that the carpools should take. Taxi operators agreed to reduce rates.

The organizers of the boycott had to hold huge numbers of meetings. They had to fend off legal challenges – and violent attacks. But, because of the joined-up organization uniting faith groups, women’s groups, labour unions and others, holding together even under strain, they won. As civil rights leader Diane Nash noted, ‘It took many thousands of people to make the changes that we made, people whose names we’ll never know.’

Victories against inequality have also depended on the stories that people have developed, the pictures they painted of a more equal world. In Britain in the early twentieth century, suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst’s water colours of women cotton mill and pottery workers highlighted their struggle for dignified working conditions.

In the 1940s, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, coined the phrase ‘welfare state’. Progress in tackling inequality in African and Asian countries after independence was also rooted in a narrative of the meaning of independence and of national destiny. Political independence was not seen as the end but as the first stage: achieving greater equality was core to honouring those who had made a sacrifice for freedom, and core to fulfilling the national destiny.

Citizens in newly independent countries were clear that the role of the new governments was to reshape society by tackling inequality. When later the era of adjustment came, tackling inequality was excised from many countries’ mainstream narratives of nationhood, where once it had been inseparable. Activist musicians and writers are organising now to ensure that the story is retold.

Looking back, we can observe how victories against inequality did not just ‘happen’, and were not just ‘given’, but were won, by ordinary people who were challenging, organized, and painted a picture of the world that could be. We have won before, we can win again.

Covid has exacerbated that feeling that we are not in control of events, that things are all just going on around us, that we are always and only objects, never subjects. But the Covid crisis has also meant that changes that had once seemed impossible have now been shown to be plausible.

The hardened structures are molten again. We can shape what happens – not alone, but with each other. Now, too, we must make our own history.

 

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The post Covid is a Great Unequaliser, But the Crisis Could Enable us to Build a More Equal Future appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ben Phillips is the author of ‘How to Fight Inequality’, due to be released in September. He is also an advisor to the United Nations, governments and civil society organisations, and was Campaigns Director for Oxfam and for ActionAid, and co-founded the Fight Inequality Alliance.

The post Covid is a Great Unequaliser, But the Crisis Could Enable us to Build a More Equal Future appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A farming community in South Africa is reeling after the bodies of five women were recently discovered.

Credit: Pattabi Raman.

By Upasana Khadka
KATHMANDU, Aug 25 2020 (IPS)

Despite dire predictions about a drastic drop in remittances that Nepal gets from its workers abroad due to the Covid-19 induced economic downturn, money transfers have hit Rs875 billion which is only 0.5% less than the preceding year.

This is in stark contrast to the World Bank’s prediction of a 14% decline, a worst-case scenario of a 28.7% drop by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the forecast of an 18% reduction by Nepal’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

During the initial months of the crisis in March/April remittances did take a sharp dip, declining from Rs79.2 billion the preceding month to Rs34.5 billion. But it has since picked up, rising steadily to Rs94 billion in May/June and Rs101 billion in June/July. Far from declining, the figures for the past two months are record high monthly inflows to date. (See graphs)

The annual growth rate of remittances till this year, which declined by only 0.5%, had been on a positive trajectory, with year-on-year increase of 7.9% in 2017/18 and 14.1% in 2018/19.

 

Source: Nepal Rastra Bank

 

Source: Nepal Rastra Bank

 

“In many essential sectors including manufacturing, Nepali migrant workers overseas have continued to work throughout the pandemic,” explains Gunakar Bhatta, spokesperson at Nepal Rastra Bank. With news of the virus spreading in Nepal and complications with repatriation, many workers may now be weighing their options and deciding to stay back abroad.

Ramesh, a Nepali worker at WRP Asia, a company making latex gloves in Malaysia, says that after the initial slump at the factory, there is now lots of work because of the heightened global demand for gloves.

“We are now all working overtime. I just finished an 11 hour shift, 8 hours of my regular hours with 3 hours overtime,” he told us over the phone from Kuala Lumpur. Other Nepalis employed overseas in storekeeping, domestic work, cleaning and security, considered essential services, have continued to work right through the pandemic.

Also, the volume of workers who have registered to return home pales in comparison those who have decided to stay back, either because they are continuing to work or they are in a wait-and-watch mode as their decision depends on the situation of their employers. Many are also waiting for normal flights to resume on 1 September.

Ram, a Nepali worker in Qatar, says he holds his transfers when the banks are closed back home, but the pandemic has not stopped the monthly remittances to family in Nepal. “I send money home very month, just like I did before Covid-19, things have not changed much for me or my family. I use my bank phone app to transfer the money,” he says.

At the central bank, Gunakar Bhatta notes that contrary to initial fears, China’s demand for oil has recovered to over 90% of pre-pandemic levels, which bodes well for Gulf economies and subsequent demand for migrant workers.

This trend is mixed in other labour-sending countries in the region. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh have seen a surge in remittances, whereas the Phillipines has seen a decline. Some experts say the increase in the past two months in Nepal may be due to workers sending more money home to their families because their incomes have been affected by the lockdowns. The higher June-July figures could also be because of the backlog from earlier months of the lockdown.

“Migrants may have sent what is remaining of their savings from their bank accounts and their gratuity if any. It is uncertain what the numbers will look like next fiscal year, remittance data for August will be a helpful indication,” says Suman Pokharel, CEO of International Money Express (IME).

He adds that the decrease in economic activity and the disruptions in travel have led to a drop in informal hundi transfers, and an increase in transactions through banks and registered money transfer agencies.

The Nepali rupee-US dollar exchange rate is at an all-time low of about Rs120, and in dollar terms total remittances this year have decreased by 3.3%, and in 2018/19 it had actually increased by 7.8%.

The outflow of overseas migrant workers decreased in 2019/20 compared to the previous year after the government stopped issuing labour approvals from the third week of March. In 2018/19, 236,208 new workers had left for foreign employment, and 272,616 migrants renewed their permits. This year, that number has decreased to 190,453 and 177,980 respectively (See graph).

 

Source: MINISTRY OF LABOUR

 

Remittances in 2019/20 could therefore take a hit due to the reduction in both the flow and stock of workers due to shrinking demand and job displacements, or contract completion.

While the remittances this year have defied predictions, it masks individual stories of many migrant workers who have not only been unable to send remittances home, but are living in charity and desperate to return. Many are stranded due to uncertain and inadequate repatriation flights, the government’s constant flip-flopping in decisions, and lack of communication.

The Rs875 billion that was remitted this year will cushion to Nepal’s economy, and also includes contributions from undocumented workers who send home money regularly.

However, these workers are not eligible for the government’s repatriation support scheme for  tickets and quarantine back home which is funded by the Foreign Employment Welfare Fund (FEWF). Nor has an alternate mechanism mobilising the government’s Covid-19 fund been set up to support them.

 

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

The post Defying Predictions, Nepal’s Remittances Still High appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.

By External Source
Aug 25 2020 (IPS)

The race for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is well underway. It’s tempting to assume that once the first vaccine is approved for human use, all the problems of this pandemic will be immediately solved. Unfortunately, that is not exactly the case.

Developing a new vaccine is only the first part of the complex journey that’s supposed to end with a return to some sort of normal life. Producing hundreds of millions of vaccines for the U.S. – and billions for the world as a whole – will be no small feat. There are many technical and economic challenges that will need to be overcome somehow to produce millions of vaccines as fast as possible.

I am a professor of health policy and management at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health and have been working in and studying the worlds of vaccine development, production and distribution for over two decades. The issues the world is facing today regarding the coronavirus vaccine are not new, but the stakes are perhaps higher than ever before.

There are four main challenges that must be addressed as soon as possible if a vaccine is to be produced quickly and at a large scale.

 

Existing manufacturing capacity is limited

The shrinking and outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing capacity has reached into all sectors. Vaccines are no exception.

The number of U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical companies involved in vaccines development and production has fallen from 26 in 1967 to just five in 2004. There are many causes – relatively low profit margins, smaller markets compared to those of other medications, corporate mergers, liability risks and the anti-vaccination movement – but the result is that in some years, companies have struggled to meet need even for existing vaccines. Just take a look at the flu vaccine shortages of 2003-2005 and the childhood vaccine shortages of the early 2000s.

When a coronavirus vaccine is approved, production of other vaccines will need to continue as well. With the flu season each year and children being born every day, you can’t simply reallocate all existing vaccine manufacturing capacity to COVID-19 vaccine production. New additional capacity will be needed.

 

The type of vaccine is still unknown

While there are a few frontrunners at the moment, it is still unknown which of the more than 160 vaccines in development will get approval first, and therefore, what kind of manufacturing needs to be put in place. Producing a COVID-19 vaccine will not be the same as adding a new strain to an existing flu vaccines or simply tweaking how other existing vaccine are made.

Most existing vaccines, like those for flu and measles, use either inactivated or weakened forms of those specific viruses to generate immunity, but researchers can’t simply swap the flu virus for SARS-CoV-2. Additionally, a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine may not even use inactivated or weakened virus, but instead could incorporate a protein or genetic material from the coronavirus. Manufacturing such pieces of the virus in large amounts may require new processes that have never been tried before, since the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t ever approved any DNA vaccines for human use.

Some companies are developing mRNA or DNA vaccines. Others are working with inactivated SARS-CoV-2 or even other types of viruses like the chimp adenovirus. Then there are those targeting different protein subunits of the virus. Each vaccine may have very different manufacturing requirements and it is impossible to know which of these candidates will reach the market and when.

Governments and other funders face a difficult choice. If they gamble and provide funding to scale up manufacturing for a particular vaccine now, they could save time and thus lives. Picking wrong, though, could end up costing much more in money, suffering and lives. Ultimately, manufacturers will seek financial assurances – like upfront payments or commitments to buy the vaccine when it is available – from governments and funders to make sure that the time, effort and resources dedicated to vaccine development and manufacturing will not be wasted. For example, the U.S. government’s $2.1 billion deal with Sanofi and GSK will include scaling up of manufacturing capacity and the purchase of 100 million doses of the vaccine.

 

The size of the problem is unprecedented

As the saying goes, knowing is not the same as doing. Producing a completely new vaccine at such a large scale so quickly is unprecedented.

Numerous delays occurred in the production of the H1N1 flu vaccine in 2009. Consider what may happen with a novel vaccine that could require new reagents, production processes, equipment and containers, among other things. Rollouts of the smallpox and polio vaccines occurred decades ago with less urgency and when populations were significantly smaller. Today, assuming that the herd immunity threshold is at least 70%, manufacturers would need to produce at least 230 million doses to cover the U.S. population and over 5.25 billion doses to cover world’s population. And that’s if only one dose is required. Requiring two doses per person would double the doses needed.

Never before has humanity tried to produce something for every person on Earth as quickly as possible. There are going to be problems.

 

Economic poker game

Ultimately, most potential vaccine manufacturers are businesses, seeking to minimize costs and maximize revenue where possible. They will want incentives to forego other more lucrative opportunities, such as continuing to develop or produce medications that have higher profit margins.

For example, companies may not readily reveal current and potential manufacturing capacity. After all, these can be major bargaining chips in negotiating contracts with governments and other possible funders. Revealing that you have too little capacity right now may jeopardize confidence in your ability to make the vaccine. Revealing that you already have enough capacity can hinder your bargaining for more funding and resources.

During the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic while I was working within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, we had to continuously deal with changing vaccine production schedules as manufacturers continued to renegotiate the terms with the government.

Moreover, the extent of the pandemic brings this poker game to the world stage. Different countries may be negotiating with or even against each other and manufacturers. For example, high-income countries may be angling to get ahead of other countries seeking to receive vaccines.

 

A plan and a systems approach

Ultimately, vaccine production is only one part of a complex, interconnected system whose ultimate goal is to prevent people from getting a disease.

The type of vaccine developed, size and location of the initial target populations, the way the vaccine is administered, the number of doses and the storage requirements for the vaccine are all interconnected and just some of the factors that affect the production requirements. For example, work done by my team at the City University of New York has shown that that the number of vaccine doses that you put in a single vial can have a variety of cascading effects on vaccination and disease control programs.

People’s lives, and life as we know it, are on the line. All of the complexities of producing a vaccine need to be addressed through open worldwide discussions and extensive mapping and modeling of these scenarios. Without proper planning and preparation, society may be left in a situation where production cannot meet demand or vaccines are shoddily produced.

And even when enough vaccines are manufactured, there’s still the challenge of actually getting them into hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. and billions around the world. There are worries that there won’t be enough glass vials to store the vaccines or syringes to administer them, as well as concerns about the temperature controlled supply chain.

These challenges of production and distribution, though large, are not insurmountable. The more planning governments and businesses do now, the better they will be able to deliver the vaccines the world so desperately needs.

Bruce Y. Lee, Professor of Health Policy and Management, City University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Approval of a Coronavirus Vaccine Would Be Just the Beginning – Huge Production Challenges Could Cause Long Delays appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Aug 25 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Over 200,000 migrant laborers, mostly from Africa, work in Italy’s fields. After being exploited for years, the coronavirus global pandemic made these workers “essential” overnight — but without labor rights or even access to basic sanitation, these farmworkers are living and working in conditions that have been described as modern slavery. Union leader Aboubakar Soumahoro has been documenting these inhumane conditions and is now helping the workers organize to demand real and lasting change.

Source: Doha Debates

 

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The post The Invisibles: Inhumane Conditions of Italy’s Migrant Farmworkers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Aug 25 2020 (IPS-Partners)

According to a 2016 Guttmacher Institute study, 60% of girls ages 15-19 in developing countries who want to avoid pregnancy do not have access to modern contraceptive methods. Women Deliver Young Leaders Kizanne James and Khadija Sinanan dive deeper into stigma around contraceptive use in their home country of Trinidad and Tobago as part of their projects as World Contraception Day Ambassadors.

Not your typical MD

Kizanne James is not your typical medical doctor. Based in Trinidad and Tobago, she has over 15 years of experience in youth leadership and works daily to educate her young patients on family planning. Through her World Contraception Day Ambassador project, she created a mobile app and website that helps people access contraception. The website and app provide accurate and timely information about types of contraceptives available, as well as where to access them, including the exact location of 16 health centers that provide them for free.

“Contraception is free in Trinidad at most health centers so you just have to go and tell them you want this and they’ll book you an appointment. So you don’t need to go to a gynecologist, you can just go to a health center.”
— Kizanne James

As part of her project, Kizanne also set out to collect information about young people’s understanding of contraceptives. She interviewed, photographed, and filmed 73 young people from different areas of the country about their attitudes, perceptions, and experiences with contraception.

“That experience was so eye-opening for us because we had so many misconceptions out there and people were uncomfortable to discuss something that is just part of us. Sexual health is part of us.”
— Kizanne James

Elevating underrepresented voices

Trained as an attorney, Khadija Sinanan is dedicated to working with young people in Trinidad and Tobago. She is the Co-Director of WOMANTRA, a youth-led organization dedicated to feminist activism and scholarship to improve the lives of women and girls in the Caribbean.

Her project as a World Contraception Day Ambassador focused on highlighting the intersectionality of race, gender, and social inequalities affecting young people. Through in-depth interviews and storytelling, Khadija sought to amplify the voices of young people in rural communities as well as LGBTQIA communities, both of which have historically been underrepresented in Trinidad and Tobago.

“I wanted to see what have been the lived experiences of young people. Sometimes there’s a lot of pushback in communities so some people aren’t comfortable coming out or speaking openly about their experiences.”
— Kizanne James

Source: Women Deliver

 

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The post How Two Young Women Are Working to Improve Access to Contraception in Trinidad and Tobago appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The malicious code could sign owners up to subscription services without permission.

The death of a woman whose one-year-old child was reportedly found malnourished beside her body is being investigated.

Sudan is on the US' list of state sponsors of terror as al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden lived there.

Nigerian women's footballer Chinenye Okafor quit playing to become a hairdresser after going unpaid for 13 months.

A factory in Uganda is providing accommodation for workers so that they could keep working during lockdown.

The killing of Hachalu Hundessa laid bare the deep-seated ethnic animosity in Ethiopia.

Nigeria is now rid of wild polio having had more than half of global cases less than 10 years ago.

Credit: Sarawak Biodiversity Centre

By Angel Mendoza
PARIS, Aug 25 2020 (IPS)

The voices of indigenous people worldwide are being silenced and their lives made invisible. Stewards of the earth, they are left at the fringes of public discourse in countries around the globe. Indigenous people are not “extinct”, they exist, and they are building innovative networks and solutions, that could be the key to many of our world’s problems.

From the Chepang indigenous peoples in Nepal being evicted from their ancestral lands, to the killing of indigenous leaders in Colombia, native communities continue to be victims of attacks, yet they are also building powerful movements, fighting for access to land, education and autonomy.

“There’s no democracy in the world without the respect and defence of indigenous people. The diversity of human beings and nature is our wealth,” says Iara Pietricovsky, Chair of Forus International, a global network of civil society organisations.

According to the World Bank, there are approximately 476 million Indigenous Peoples worldwide, in over 90 countries. They represent over 6% of the global population, yet their voices in state’s decision making and the media remain silenced. The Covid-19 pandemic has become a further threat that indigenous communities are facing as it spreads in their vulnerable regions, infecting thousands.

New challenges in times of pandemic

British writer Damian Barr explained it clearly: “We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm. Some are on super-yachts. Some have just the one oar.”

The death on August 5 from Covid-19 of the Brazilian Chief Aritana Yawalapiti, confirms the vulnerability of the indigenous peoples in the face of the pandemic. He was one of the most influential leaders who helped create the Xingu indigenous park, located in the southern Amazon. Nearly 6,000 indigenous people from 16 different ethnic groups live in this protected area in the state of Mato Grosso.

“In Brazil, right now, there is a deliberated policy of destruction of the lives and culture of indigenous communities, using the old genocidal strategy: invading their lands and providing no support in terms of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Pietricovsky explained.

According to the Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB) there are now 23,000 indigenous people infected with Covid-19 and 639 have already died across the country. In particular, the indigenous communities of the Amazon have already seen their homelands devastated by illegal deforestation, industrial farming, mining and oil exploration.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic has magnified their struggle, just as the forest fires are rampant once more, affecting the livelihood of around three million indigenous people – members of 400 tribes.

Indigenous communities: valuing their diverse identities

We must make sure indigenous peoples are visible, by valuing their identities, knowledge and community-building approach – ending centuries of exploitation and oppression.

Peruvian sociologist, Anibal Quijano, explains how the ideas of “race” and “naturalization” are linked to colonial relations of domination that are still affecting indigenous communities today. The conquered and dominated, were placed in a natural position of inferiority.

This social structure located indigenous communities at the bottom of the social ladder. The colonial era might seem over, but indigenous communities continue to seek recognition in a “horizontal society”, in which one can form relationships on a plane of equality.

In the Covid-19 context, indigenous communities find themselves with little access to health care and prevention. José Luis Caal, project coordinator of CONGCOOP, a platform of civil society organisations in Guatemala, explains how the Covid-19 pandemic has generated a health, economic and cultural crisis, where indigenous peoples are one of the most affected groups, due to the historical structural inequalities in which they live.

“The crisis has only highlighted the violation of rights they suffer, especially women, who have had to face an enormous workload as they are the main caregivers in the family and community,” Caal says.

The absence of adequate health services, economic subsidies and food support, as well as the continuation of extractive activities and the expansion of the agricultural frontier in many places, have had a great impact on indigenous people. They are vulnerable to the risk of contagion, Caal says, without their demands and complaints being heard.

In response to the health crisis in Guatemala and worldwide, a series of policies, projects, and subsidies are being implemented to alleviate the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. Government support, however, has not reached rural and indigenous communities. As a result, several communities have taken this issue and many more, in their own hands.

Indigenous Communities and Innovation – the Way Forward

In Peru, a complex country with different social realities, local non-government organizations such as ANC, a national platform of civil society organisations, are listening and understanding the innovative knowledge inherent in indigenous communities.

They constantly organise on-site studies and use an inclusive, ethnological and participatory approach. They don’t teach or import an idea of development; they exchange and learn from indigenous communities. In this way, for over 50 years, civil society organisations in Peru have contributed to the development of social sciences and influenced government policies, by bring indigenous voices forward.

“The first thing that must be understood and valued are indigenous communities’ concepts around nature and their environment. This is essential in order to respect their rights and above all, to ensure that policies do not disrupt their livelihoods. We sometimes think that the western vision is “natural”, and therefore their ideas of family, property, land, and their relationship with nature is trivialised,” says Pina Huamán of the Peruvian platform ANC.

Education, the type of knowledge one absorbs, is a priority for indigenous communities across Latin America. Guatemala for instance, has 22 Mayan languages, yet indigenous young people cannot find educational resources in their native language.

The Guatemalan platform, CONGCOOP, with support from Forus International, has launched a Virtual Training Centre this year, to offer its members, notably young indigenous people, “localised” expertise that will support new leadership in the country.

For indigenous people around the globe, the way forward is to guarantee that their existence, language and culture is respected. We must ensure a meaningful exchange and build bridges of solidarity instead of walls of ignorance.

 

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The post Covid-19 Pandemic Another Threat to Indigenous Communities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Angel Mendoza is a Communication Assistant at FORUS, a global network of civil society organisations, previously known as the International Forum of National NGO Platforms (IFP/FIP).

The post Covid-19 Pandemic Another Threat to Indigenous Communities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 25 2020 (IPS)

The World Bank leadership must urgently abandon its ‘Maximizing Finance for Development’ (MFD) hoax. Instead, it should resume its traditional multilateral development bank role of mobilizing funds at minimal cost to finance developing countries.

Funding is urgently needed for Covid-19 containment, relief and recovery efforts, to prevent recessions becoming protracted depressions and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Anis Chowdhury

Mobilizing funds, maximizing finance
The World Bank’s MFD – a reheated version of its 2015 Billions to Trillions: Transforming Development Finance (B2T) campaign – promised to leverage billions of ODA into trillions of development finance. However, MFD has failed to achieve its purported objective to fill the estimated US$4~5 trillion annual SDGs funding gap.

Blended finance and public private partnerships (PPPs) are its two main instruments for such leveraging without offering evidence that either can and will deliver development projects much better than traditional public procurement.

Both benefit private finance at the expense of the public interest, particularly by increasing the risks of government contingent liabilities. Increasing such exposure is presented as an unavoidable cost of raising additional finance.

The Bank has long claimed that private finance offers the best solution to pressing development and welfare concerns. Its MFD strategy urges using public money to leverage private finance, and capital markets to transform bankable projects into liquid securities.

It presumes that most developing countries cannot achieve the SDGs’ Agenda 2030 with their own limited fiscal resources, especially as overseas development assistance (ODA) becomes increasingly scarce.

The strategy envisages multilateral development banks (MDBs) and development finance institutions increasing financial leverage through securitization to attract private investment, particularly by institutions.

It would deploy scarce public resources to ‘de-risk’ such financing arrangements by transforming ‘bankable’ development projects into tradable assets. Thus, governments bear more of the risks and costs of greater financial fragility.

The MFD approach had mobilized only US$0.37 of additional private capital for every US$1 of public money invested in low-income countries (LICs), according to an April 2019 study. Leverage ratios were generally low across sectors, and lowest for LIC and middle-income country (MIC) infrastructure.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Blended finance no magic bullet
The study also revealed that blended finance has effectively transferred risk from the private to the public sector. The public sector had borne 57% of the cost of blended finance investments on average, but 73% in LICs. Despite ever more public subsidies to incentivize private investment in LICs, leverage ratios may have declined.

Thus, “the big push for blended finance risks skewing ODA away from its core agenda of helping eradicate poverty in the poorest countries”. Others fear that blended finance “will crowd out ODA rather than crowd in private finance”.

Blended finance – “a heady cocktail of public, private and charitable money”, according to The Economist – came into vogue following the 2015 UN Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa.

The Economist called it a “honey trap”, noting that blended finance was “floated at all manner of gatherings, from the recent meetings of the IMF and the World Bank to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos”. The WEF claimed that every dollar of public money invested typically attracted US$1~20 in private investment.

However, as The Economist recently found, “blended finance has struggled to grow. Since 2014 the flow of public and private capital into blended projects and funds has stayed flat at about US$20bn a year…far off the goal of US$100bn set by the UN in 2015” for climate investments by 2020. On average, MDBs mobilize less than US$1 of private capital for every public dollar.

The Economist concluded, “merging public and private money will always be hard, and early hopes may simply have been too starry-eyed. A trillion-dollar market seems well out of reach. Even making it to the hundreds of billions a year
may be a stretch”.

Public finance, private profits
An early 2018 World Bank review of regulatory frameworks for procuring PPP infrastructure projects came up with a long list of shortcomings in both developed and developing countries.

It found poor “government capabilities to prepare, procure, and manage such projects constitutes an important barrier to attracting private sector investments”. Thus, authorities often failed to consider PPPs’ fiscal implications, risks of opportunistic renegotiations and lack of transparency.

A 2018 European Court of Auditors report recommended that the EU and member states “should not promote a more intensive and widespread use of PPPs until the issues identified in this report are addressed”.

It had found “widespread shortcomings and limited benefits, resulting in €1.5 billion of inefficient and ineffective spending. In addition, value for money and transparency were widely undermined, particularly by unclear policy and strategy, inadequate analysis, off-balance-sheet recording of PPPs and unbalanced risk-sharing arrangements.”

Likewise, a 2018 UK National Audit Office report noted that it has “been unable to identify a robust evaluation of the actual performance of private finance at a project or programme level.” It also found the costs of one group of PPP projects in education around 40% higher than for a project financed by government borrowing.

Similarly, the Australian Auditor-General’s report on private health sector involvements concluded, “It appears governments have embarked on the path of increased privatisation without the benefit of rigorous analysis of the benefits and costs. Individual examples of privatisation have highlighted many problems which have resulted in costs rather than savings to the public purse”.

A more recent study concluded, “The mixed public-private funding and provision has had a deleterious effect on the Australian hospital system”. Clearly, PPPs have been much abused, even in developed countries with presumably better regulatory, governance and oversight capacities and capabilities than in most developing countries.

Mobilizing finance for private partners
In October 2017, ahead of the World Bank Group annual meeting, 152 organizations from 45 countries issued a manifesto opposing “the dangerous rush to promote expensive and high-risk public-private partnerships (PPPs)”. It pointed out that the “experience of PPPs has been overwhelmingly negative and very few PPPs have delivered results in the public interest”.

The World Bank’s Public Private Partnership in Infrastructure Resource Center (PPPIRC) has identified ten important risks of PPPs, such as “development, bidding and ongoing costs in PPP projects are likely to be greater than for traditional government procurement processes”.

The PPPIRC warned that “the cost has to be borne either by the customers or the government through subsidies”, and that the “private sector will do what it is paid to do and no more than that”.

Thus, there are serious doubts about the extent to which governments can count on the private sector to support sustainable development. Yet, the Bank claims unambiguously, “PPPs are increasingly recognized as a valuable development tool by governments, firms, donors, civil society, and the public”.

With the current World Bank leadership trying to reduce developing countries’ debt, it may well abandon the former Obama-appointed World Bank President’s MFD. But it also seems to be eschewing banks’ financial intermediation role of raising and lending funds at low cost to developing countries.

 

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The Mayan Train, the flagship megaproject of leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, seeks to promote the socioeconomic development of the south and southeast of the country, with an emphasis on tourism and with the goal of transporting 50,000 passengers per day by 2023. The fear is that the mass influx of tourists will damage preserved coastal areas, such as Tulum beach in the state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy

By Emilio Godoy
Mexico City, Aug 25 2020 (IPS)

Mayan anthropologist Ezer May fears that the tourism development and real estate construction boom that will be unleashed by the Mayan Train, the main infrastructure project of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will disrupt his community.

“What we think is that the east of the town could be affected,” May told IPS by phone from his hometown of Kimbilá.

“The most negative impact will come when they start building the development hub around the train station,” he said. “We know that the tourism industry and other businesses will receive a boost. There is uncertainty about what is to come; many ejidatarios [members of an ejido, public land held in common by the inhabitants of a village and farmed cooperatively or individually] don’t know what’s happening.”

This town of 4,000 people, whose name means “water by the tree”, is in the municipality of Izamal in the northern part of the state of Yucatan, about 1,350 km southeast of Mexico City. The district will have a Mayan Train station, although its size is not yet known, and the prospect awakens fears as well as hope among the communities involved.

In Kimbilá, 10 km from the city of Izamal, there are 560 ejidatarios who own some 5,000 hectares of land where they grow corn and vegetables, raise small livestock and produce honey.

“These ejido lands are going to be in the sights of tourism and real estate companies, real estate speculation and everything else that urban development implies. We will see the same old dispossession and asymmetrical agreements and contracts for buying up land at extremely low prices; we’ll see unequal treatment,” said May.

The government’s National Tourism Fund (Fonatur) is promoting the project, which is to cost between 6.2 and 7.8 billion dollars. Construction began in May.

The plan is for the Mayan Train to begin operating in 2022, with 19 stations and 12 other stops along some 1,400 km of track, which will be added to the nearly 27,000 km of railways in Mexico, Latin America’s second largest economy, population 129 million.

It will run through 78 municipalities in the southern and southeastern states of the country: Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Chiapas and Tabasco, the first three of which are in the Yucatan Peninsula, which has one of the most important and fragile ecosystems in Mexico and is home to 11.1 million people.

Its locomotives will run on diesel and the trains are projected to carry about 50,000 passengers daily by 2023, reaching 221,000 by 2053, in addition to cargo such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, which are major agricultural products in the region.

A map of the Mayan Train’s route through the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Construction began in May and it is expected to begin operating in 2023. CREDIT: Fonatur

Pros and cons

The Mexican government is promoting the megaproject as an engine for social development that will create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional attractions and energise the regional economy.

But it has unleashed controversy between those who back the administration’s propaganda and those who question the railway because of its potential environmental, social and cultural impacts, as well as the risk of fuelling illegal activities, such as human trafficking and drug smuggling.

The megaproject involves the construction of development hubs in the stations, which include businesses, drinking water, drainage, electricity and urban infrastructure, and which, according to the ministry of the environment itself, represent the greatest environmental threat posed by the railway.

U.N. Habitat, which offers technical advice on the project’s land-use planning aspects, estimates that the Mayan Train will create one million jobs by 2030 and lift 1.1 million people out of poverty, in an area that includes 42 municipalities with high poverty rates.

The region has become the country’s new energy frontier, with the construction of wind and solar parks, and agribusiness production such as transgenic soy and large pig farms. At the same time, it suffers from high levels of deforestation, fuelled by lumber extraction and agro-industry.

The environmental impact assessment itself and several independent scientific studies warn of the ecological damage that would be caused by the railway, which experts say the Mexican government does not seem willing to address.

The crux: the development model

Violeta Núñez, an academic at the public Autonomous Metropolitan University, told IPS that there is an internal contradiction within the government between those seeking a change in the socioeconomic conditions in the region and supporters of the real estate business.

“You have to ask yourself what kind of development you are pursuing and whether it is the best option,” she said. “The Mayan Train is aimed at profits and these stakeholders are not interested in people’s well-being, but in making money. What some indigenous organisations have said is that they never asked for a railway, and they feel that the project has been imposed on them.”

The railroad will cross ejido lands in five states where there are 5,386 ejidos totalling 12.5 million hectares. The ejidos would contribute the land and would be the main investors. To finance the stations, Fonatur has proposed three types of trusts that can be quoted on the Mexican stock market and that entail financial risks, such as the loss of the investment.

The undertaking was not suspended by the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico, as the government classified its construction as an “essential activity”.

In Calakmul, in the southeastern state of Campeche, the Mayan Train will make use of the right-of-way that the Federal Electricity Commission has for its power lines. But on other stretches construction of the new 1,400-km railway will lead to the eviction of families. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

To legitimise its construction, the leftwing López Obrador administration organised a consultation with indigenous communities through 30 regional assemblies, 15 informative and 15 consultative, held Nov. 29-30 and Dec. 14-15, 2019, respectively.

These assemblies were attended by 10,305 people from 1,078 indigenous communities in the five states, out of a potentially affected population of 1.5 million people, 150,000 of whom are indigenous.

But the consultation was carried out before the environmental impact assessment of the megaproject was even completed.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico questioned whether this process met international standards, such as the provisions of International Labour Organisation Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, to which the country is a party.

The railway will also displace an undetermined number of people, to make room for the tracks and stations, although U.N. Habitat insists that this will be “consensual”.

Fears of a new Cancún

The government argues that the project will not repeat the mistakes of mass tourism destinations, symbolised by Cancún, which wrought environmental havoc in that former Caribbean paradise in Quintana Roo. But its critics argue that the major beneficiaries appear to be the same big tourism, real estate and hotel chains, and that it will cause the same problems as a result of the heavy influx of visitors.

In Kimbilá, the local population already has firsthand experience of confrontations over megaprojects, such as a Spanish company’s attempt to build a wind farm, cancelled in 2016. But the difference is that now the opponent is much more powerful.

May said the railway “is an attempt to transform indigenous peoples and integrate them into the tourism-based economic model. They want us to imagine development from a global perspective, because it is a sign of socioeconomic progress. They believe that tourism is the source of progress, that cities bring development and that this is the best way to go.”

In Izamal, home to more than 26,800 people, construction of the development hub would require 853 hectares, 376 of which belong to ejidos.

Núñez warned of the disappearance of the campesino (peasant farmer) and indigenous way of life. “People have survived because of their relationship with the land and now this survival is being thrown into question and they are to become workers in the development hubs. This is not an option, if we are to defend the rural indigenous way of life,” she said.

The researcher suggested that an alternative would be the appropriation of the megaproject by the communities, in which “the ejidatarios themselves, in a joint association, present an alternative proposal other than the trusts on the stock market.”

The Mayan Train is a link in a plan that seeks to integrate the south and southeast of Mexico with Central America, starting with the government’s “Project for the territorial reordering of the south-southeast” and linked to the “Project for the integration and development of Mesoamerica”, which has been modified in appearance but not in substance since the beginning of the 21st century.

Its aim is to link that region to global markets and curb internal and external migration through the construction of megaprojects, the promotion of tourism and the services entailed.

In the 2000s, the government of the southern state of Chiapas fomented “Sustainable Rural Cities”, with aims similar to those of the Mayan Train, and experts argue that the failure of that project should be remembered.

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The post Mayan Train Threatens to Alter the Environment and Communities in Mexico appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Some Kenyan private schools have found new sources of income after they were forced to close.

A regional delegation failed to convince the military leaders to reinstate the deposed president.

Aerial view of Georgetown, Guyana. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Jeremy M. Martin and Kathryn Hillis
LA JOLLA, California, Aug 24 2020 (IPS)

Just over five years ago, a major oil discovery occurred on the northeastern coast of South America. There have been a series of additional discoveries ever since. But this time it was not Venezuela. It was Guyana.

Fast forward to August 6 when Irfaan Ali assumed the presidency. The country had been plunged into a political crisis since its March election and allegations of fraud.

The situation had become dire and sanctions were levied against the former government of David Granger. As the new government reviews its policy and regulatory frameworks, there is, in our estimation, what could be called a not-to-do list when it comes to oil governance.

The well-known and hugely studied resource curse has confronted countries such as Venezuela for decades. In many cases, significant natural resources correlated with depressed development as other sectors are neglected and currency appreciates causing uncompetitive exports

Given the major oil discoveries, political instability was problematic for the economic outlook and development of the nation. It was particularly acute for managing the oil resource and income on the horizon.

Earlier this year, oil was commercialized from the Liza field. With that milestone, solving the political crisis was essential in order to allow the new administration to grapple with the key oil governance challenge and the what, where and how they should focus when it comes to the emerging oil sector.

Guyana need only look to its neighbor Venezuela to see the perils of abundant oil resources. The well-known and hugely studied resource curse has confronted countries such as Venezuela for decades. In many cases, significant natural resources correlated with depressed development as other sectors are neglected and currency appreciates causing uncompetitive exports.

It bears noting that even before the political crisis, Guyana received a host of international experts, institutions and donors eager to dispense advice as to how to avoid the grim fate of the resource curse. But as much of the literature illuminates, many of the recommendations are easier said than done.

For example, economic diversification and rooting out corruption are excellent and obvious ideas that many larger and more prosperous countries have failed to achieve.

So, back to our not-to-do list that we feel contains five feasible, actionable ideas for the Ali administration.

 

First, avoid overinvestment in the oil and gas industry. While there should be adequate infrastructure for drilling and shipping the oil, the country should resist the urge to move downstream of the wellhead. Any refineries built would likely be deeply unprofitable.

For context, the last new refinery in the United States was built in 1977, as refining is a high cost venture that can take many years to turn a profit. Additionally, most energy economists point to an oversaturation of global refining capacity, especially as many people are looking to decrease their use of fossil fuels. This truism has been deepened by the impact of COVID-19 on the global fuels market.

The previous administration in Guyana hired a consultant who determined building a refinery would cost around $5 billion and not generate significant revenue to outweigh expenses. In addition to the cost issue, a refinery built before the state has enacted proper oversight and regulatory agencies could become a vehicle for corruption and crony capitalism. Look no farther than another neighbor, Brazil, as to the pratfalls of this issue.

Second, do not subsidize gasoline. In Latin America, an abundance of oil has led to a sense of resource nationalism, causing citizens to view gasoline as a public good rendered nearly free by government subsidies.

There are many cautionary tales that demonstrate the folly of this logic, with the most drastic in Venezuela, but also the recent example of Ecuador. These extreme subsidies are not sustainable and are nearly politically impossible to remove once they become expected by the people. Moreover, as economists around the world intone: they can be quite regressive.

While a gasoline subsidy can, in the short term, provide a quick jolt of economic growth to a developing country, it is not worth the long-term debt. To avoid the future need for the IMF and possible citizen uprisings, Guyana should keep gasoline at market value.

Thirdly, and perhaps not a typical theme to consider: Do not turn away dual citizens. Transitioning a largely agricultural country into the world’s newest oil nation requires significant technical expertise and talent.

Given Guyana’s small population, this can be hard to find. Fortunately, Guyana has a large diaspora across the globe comprised of individuals with experience and ability.

The government should appeal to its far-flung citizens to return home and share in the newfound opportunities. While this seems obvious, there is a pervasive nationalistic pride that makes accepting dual citizenship difficult.

For instance, it is illegal to be a member of the Guyanese parliament while holding dual citizenship. Several Guyanese politicians recently had to make the choice to either step down or renounce their foreign citizenship after the High Court of Guyana reaffirmed the restrictive law.

This type of nationalism cultivates the exact nature of policy that could hinder the success of Guyana. In order to benefit from its rich oil resources, the country needs individuals with the best education and diverse experiences working not just as engineers in oil companies, but also serving in the government.

Insulating industry and governance from foreign influence is a path to incompetent organizations and increased risk of corruption.

Fourth, do not disregard the potential to monetize associated natural gas resources. The noted offshore oil discoveries have also proven a considerable amount of what is referred to as associated natural gas, that is a byproduct of the oil being extracted.

Historically, the associated gas in offshore oil projects was not necessarily a valued commodity and other than some uses for reinjection was more often than not flared, or burned off, given that the real value was in the oil being produced.

Major developments around the use of natural gas as a cleaner burning power generation source, as well as the importance of avoiding flaring for emission and environmental reasons point to an obvious win-win for Guyana to monetize the associated natural gas primarily for use in power generation.

Moreover, the newfound power generation source would greatly complement a largely hydroelectric power system and one that is currently expensive and in need of enhanced reliability.

Lastly, do not encourage delusions of grandeur. After ExxonMobil discovered the first massive oil field, an expectation developed of great, and fairly immediate, wealth derived from the offshore discoveries.

While there will be significant economic development and by extension the opportunity to attain greater wealth derived from the oil resource, the average citizen will most likely not see an immediate large-scale change in their circumstances. The government needs to convey this reality to the people in order to keep expectations accurate and of a realistic timeline.

When the population is anticipating wealth that may not occur on the level or timetable perceived, the simmering displeasure with government could lead to unrest and destabilizing protests.

The reality check and need to manage expectations, while politically unpopular, will also help to ensure for the population that governance of the oil wealth is wise, long-term and not one of associated with the expectation of a rapid, endless financial windfall and deluge of funds.

Hopefully, Guyana will be able to use the bevy of outside advice it is receiving to turn its resource curse into a resource blessing. At least with these ideas there are a few items to cross off its to-do list.

 

Jeremy M. Martin is Vice President, Energy and Sustainability at the Institute of the Americas at the University of California San Diego.

Kathryn Hillis is a second year graduate student at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego and an intern at the Institute of the Americas.

The post A Not-To-Do List for Guyana’s New Administration When It Comes to Oil appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The 2,000-year-old Jabal Maragha site was thought to have been a small settlement or a checkpoint.