Africa

The United Nations has warned that water shortages could affect 5 billion people by 2050. Credit: International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)

By Sareen Malik and Benazir Omotto
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 21 2020 (IPS)

There is an intimate connection between corruption and COVID-19. This pandemic is making everyday life more desperate, especially in poorer communities, and that means more opportunities for those preying on vulnerable people.

Measures to manage the coronavirus has put millions of people out of work and increased the demand for water to maintain good hygiene – and in most low-income settings, fetching water is women’s work.

Where official services are insufficient or non-existent, this means women and girls are chasing a scarce resource and often do not have enough money to pay for it.

The all-too-common result is ‘sex for water’: unscrupulous water suppliers, almost exclusively male, from informal vendors to utility staff, demanding sexual favours as payment for water.

Before the pandemic, getting enough water for basic needs was a daily struggle. Women and girls would spend hours each day collecting water from the nearest source or waiting in long queues at the local tap or pump.

For females living in these circumstances, there has always been the threat of verbal abuse, physical attack or sexual assault while gathering water for their households. Now, with squeezed incomes, weak governance and huge burdens on limited government resources, the danger has got much worse.

Credit: Shutterstock/ Sanitation and Water for All (SWA)

The following three stories from recent interviews with women in Kenya – their names changed for anonymity – are depressingly familiar to activists on the ground.

Goldie

Goldie goes to the water point at 4pm and leaves at around 6 or 7pm. She talks about the lack of courtesy – the men who jump the queue and are served without being rebuked. She does not complain because she fears being beaten up.

The government’s dusk-to-dawn COVID-19 curfew has made queues worse and the situation more tense. She has been sexually assaulted three times during water collection but she says she dare not complain to anyone, fearing that this would leading to “worse consequences” for her. She now fetches water as early as possible to avoid confrontation by these men.

Maureen

Maureen fetches water in the morning with her sisters. When there is a water shortage, she must be out of the door by 4am. She walks for 30 minutes to the water point. She has grown accustomed to harassment, often by people known to her. She feels powerless to do anything about it.

The men, mainly motor bike operators, often block the path and try to ‘woo’ Maureen and her sisters. If they play along, they are allowed to proceed with their business. She has even given her phone number to one of the men and agreed to his advances, which has guaranteed her protection from other men along the route.

However, at the water point, the vendor flirts with her and touches her without her consent, making her feel violated. When Maureen has stood up for herself, the water vendor behaves harshly, yelling at her for any spillage, hiking the price and often ganging up with vendors from other water points to abuse and body-shame her.

Lucy

Lucy fetches water in the evening after doing household chores and studying. Due to water scarcity in her village, she often queues for an hour at the water point, during which she receives advances from various men, including the water operators. If she is amenable to them, she gets to jump the queue.

However, some men then try to follow her home. Lucy has been cornered four times by different water operators who expected to take their ‘relationship’ a step further. She rejected them and is now denied water access and suffers public humiliation through the obscenities they hurl at her.

She is now forced to walk for 30 minutes to a new water point, accompanied by an older relative, usually her mother. Lucy is not comfortable speaking up, given that perpetrators have been known to bribe their way out of trouble and come back to the village to cause problems for the whistleblowers.

Unfortunately, stories like these are not rare. The numbers are elusive, as victims feel compelled to hide their experiences, but activists and NGO staff regularly receive testimony from girls and women whose lives are being made a misery by men demanding sexual favours for water.

COVID-19 has not created this problem, but it has certainly made it more acute. Its existence is a damning indictment of the failure of effective, accountable governance when it comes to water supply and, for that matter, sanitation and hygiene services.

Governments have the power to act swiftly. Many of the alleged perpetrators work for utilities and other official service providers. Chains of command and mechanisms of accountability must be implemented immediately to restore confidence among the public and donors alike. Unofficial, unsupervised water vendors should be removed from the market by governments to ensure universal service coverage.

That any women or girl is being sexually violated to obtain water for their family is criminal, inhumane and unacceptable. Access to water and sanitation are human rights. During the pandemic, the importance of these rights cannot be overstated.

Sextortion for water is a symptom of multiple problems, which means it will take multiple stakeholders to eradicate it. Representatives for water, sanitation, gender, governance and government must come down hard on this most pernicious of practices and end the nightmare for women and girls being forced to trade their bodies for something as essential and irreplaceable as water.

 

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The post How Women & Girls are Forced to Trade Sex for Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sareen Malik is Coordinator, African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW) and Steering Committee Vice-Chair, Sanitation & Water For All (SWA), and Benazir Omotto is Integrated Urban Environmental Planning Officer, UMANDE TRUST, Kenya

The post How Women & Girls are Forced to Trade Sex for Water appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta has resigned. Paul Morigi/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

By External Source
Aug 21 2020 (IPS)

What appears to have started as a mutiny, and resulted in a coup, came on the heels of renewed civilian protests in Bamako, the Malian capital. Tensions have been high since president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta’s 2018 re-election which was marred by irregularities. All the while, he has continued to face allegations of corruption and fraud.

On Tuesday, August 18, reports of mutinying soldiers firing into the air and taking control of an army base filtered out of Mali. With limited information on the initial motives of the soldiers, fears of a mutiny, or worse, a coup, set in. The situation escalated quickly when senior government officials were arrested and tanks appeared on the streets of the capital Bamako.

By afternoon, soldiers stormed the presidential palace and arrested both president Keïta and prime minister Boubou Cissé. The two were taken to the Kati military base, where the mutiny had begun. Soon after, the president resigned in a national television address stating:

If today, certain elements of our armed forces want this to end through their intervention, do I really have a choice?

Large scale protests calling for Keïta’s resignation began in early June 2020. In July 2020, Keïta dissolved the country’s constitutional court, ostensibly in an effort to ease tensions. In April 2020, this same court overturned parliamentary election results for some 30 seats, a move that advantaged Keïta’s political party. This sparked protests in which at least 11 protesters were killed by security forces, intensifying the calls for Keïta’s resignation.

Promoting inclusiveness among the country’s various interests can help 2020 look more like Mali’s 1991 coup, that led to multiparty elections, rather than its 2012 experience

On top of potential election fraud and crackdowns by security forces, Keïta’s government has bungled its response to ethnic-religious violence. The Tuareg rebels, a group that has historically had separatist aspirations, have loosely aligned with jihadist groups, posing a steep challenge to the state.

The group Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) conflates the material grievances of the Tuareg with the ideological concerns of various prior Salafi-Jihadi groups, posing another ongoing threat to the state and its military.

Mali’s recent political turmoil has only been exacerbated by its economic struggles. Reliant on gold mining and agriculture, the country has been especially vulnerable to volatile commodity prices that have suffered further declines in the midst of the global pandemic. In addition, nearly half of the country’s population lives in extreme poverty.

 

Mali’s history of military unrest

Mali is no stranger to political unrest. In 2012, a small, localised mutiny at the Kati barracks escalated to the overthrow of then president Amadou Toumane Touré. The fallout was dramatic, prompting a failed countercoup and political and civil disorder.

Worse still was the loss of half the country’s territory to insurgents. As a result, the international community intervened in an effort to mediate the crisis.

Yet, it is important to consider the parallels. The 2012 coup occurred when disgruntled soldiers rioted to demand better weapons, ammunition, and equipment to battle against Tuareg insurgents in the north. When the defence minister’s attempts to negotiate with the mutineers failed, the crisis quickly escalated.

Though the original intent was not to overthrow president Touré, inaction led to a putsch. Mutinies are public events that occur within a state’s active armed forces, benefit from their collective nature, and have political aims short of the seizure of executive power. Coups, on the other hand, are rebellions led by the military and sometimes political elites, seeking to oust the executive.

While scholars have studied coups extensively, research on mutinies is still in its infancy. Mutinies are important to investigate as they can often have dire consequences for civilians and occur more frequently than coups in the post-Cold War era. Further, they can escalate to other, more severe forms of political violence.

Mutinies are also likely a proximate indicator for coup activity. For example, in 2011 Burkina Faso experienced four mutinies, shortly followed by a successful coup in 2014 and another coup attempt in 2015. Guinea Bissau saw three mutinies between 1998 and 1999 and experienced three coups, one of which was successful, between 1998 and 2000.

An interesting empirical question is raised here: why do some mutinies escalate to coups while others do not? While this is an emerging line of research and important question for policymakers, there is an initial consideration to be made in the case of Mali: mass political protests matter.

We know that protests spur both mutinies and coups. Further, protests in the capital city are most likely to spur coup activity, like those protests that have troubled Bamako this summer.

Protests can signal to mutineers and military leaders that there is widespread, civilian support for a putsch. This may shift mutineers’ or military leadership’s objectives from demonstrating grievances to upending the status quo and ousting the executive.

 

International reaction

The apparent coup drew sharp criticism from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The influential grouping of 15 countries proceeded to close all borders with Mali and ordered sanctions against the conspirators. The African Union, European Union, and United Nations each also issued statements condemning the coup.

ECOWAS recently demonstrated its willingness to help oust illegitimate leaders, the most recent case being The Gambia. More broadly, the African Union has adopted a strong anti-coup norm, and the creation of the organisation’s anti-coup framework has seen an accompanying decline of coup attempts in the region.

Given the swift and wide-ranging international condemnation from regional organisations and world powers alike, Mali’s putschists would seem to be especially vulnerable to international responses. This is particularly the case given the substantial presence of foreign troops. These include over 11,000 soldiers deployed to Mali as part of the UN stabilisation mission and an additional 5,000 French soldiers.

Aid dependence here could also play an important role. The World Bank estimates that overseas development assistance amounts to around 70% of Mali’s central government expenditure.

International interventions can be important, but they will ultimately be informed, and either strengthened or weakened, by the role of Mali’s internal dynamics. While Burkina Faso saw Gilbert Diendéré’s 2015 coup unravel within a week, this was primarily due to internal resistance. In sharp contrast, there has so far been no public support for Keïta and his government.

Public opposition to Keïta makes his return unlikely, but external pressure can help right the ship. It remains to be seen what promises of elections will ultimately lead to.

Elections have increasingly become the norm following coups, and given swift international pressure a poll can be seen as a forgone conclusion. However, the holding of elections–even if “free and fair”–says little about the quality and durability of the future government.

Promoting inclusiveness among the country’s various interests can help 2020 look more like Mali’s 1991 coup, that led to multiparty elections, rather than its 2012 experience.

 

Christopher Michael Faulkner, Visiting Assistant Professor in International Studies; 2018-2019 Minerva-USIP Peace and Security Scholar, Centre College; Jaclyn Johnson, Director of Analytics (StableDuel), University of Kentucky; Jonathan Powell, Associate professor, University of Central Florida, and Rebecca Schiel, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Central Florida

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

The post Another Mutiny Turned Coup: Mali Is No Stranger to Military Unrest appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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

Five factors that made the coup against former Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta more likely.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta was forced to resign on Tuesday after being detained by soldiers.

Ploy Phutpheng. Credit: UN Women.

By Valeria Esquivel
GENEVA, Aug 20 2020 (IPS)

The pandemic is disproportionately affecting women workers. Governments should prioritize policies that offset the effects the COVID-19 crisis is having on their jobs.

I am a feminist economist. My job is to examine how the inequalities between women and men are part and parcel of the functioning of labour markets, and to assist our constituents in implementing what we call “gender-responsive” employment policies – i.e., macroeconomic, sectoral and labour market policies that explicitly contribute to gender equality.

Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 crisis large numbers of women were excluded from the labour market. The pandemic has made things much worse.

It is disproportionately affecting women workers who are losing their jobs at a greater speed than men. More women than men work in sectors that have been hard hit by the economic fallout from the pandemic, such as tourism, hospitality and the garment sector. Large numbers of domestic workers, most of whom are women, are also at risk of losing their jobs.  The vast majority of health workers are women, which raises the risk of them catching the virus.

School closures and caring for those who become sick, has forced women lucky enough to remain in employment to cut down on paid working hours or to extend total working hours (paid and unpaid) to unsustainable levels

Moreover, the fragility of their employment situation, coupled with reduced access to labour and social protection have meant that women have found they are particularly vulnerable to the pandemic, even in sectors which, until now, have experienced less disruption.

One of the ideas at the core of feminist economics is that the unpaid care work that takes place in households and families to support everyday life is a vital part of the economic system. This type of work is primarily carried out by women and most of the time is not recognized as such. School closures and caring for those who become sick, has forced women lucky enough to remain in employment to cut down on paid working hours or to extend total working hours (paid and unpaid) to unsustainable levels.

Here are five ways to ensure that women’s job prospects are not damaged long-term by the COVID-19 crisis:

•  Prevent women from losing their jobs by implementing policies that keep them in work, as women have a harder time than men in getting back to paid work once crises have past. By compensating for wage losses caused by the temporary reduction in working hours or the suspension of work, these policies can help maintain women workers in their jobs, and safeguard their skills.
• Help women find new jobs if they’ve lost them:  Public Employment Services (PES), that connect jobseekers with employers, can help women find jobs in essential production and services. At the local level, they can speed up job placement in sectors that are recruiting amidst the pandemic
• Avoid cutting subsidies: Expenditure cuts in public services have a disproportionate effect on women and children. That’s why it’s so important to avoid cuts in health and education budgets, wages and pensions. Past crises have shown that when support for employment and social protection are at the core of stimulus packages, they help stabilize household incomes and lead to a speedier recovery.
• Invest in care: Care services have the potential to generate decent jobs, particularly for women. This crisis has highlighted the often difficult and undervalued work of care workers, whose contribution has been, and remains, essential to overcoming the pandemic. Improving their working conditions will have a significant impact on many women workers, given the large numbers who work in the care sector.
• Promote employment policies that focus on women: Governments need to pro-actively counterbalance the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on women. From a broader perspective, macroeconomic stimulus packages must continue to support and create jobs for women. Policies should focus on hard-hit sectors that employ large numbers of women, along with measures that help close women’s skill gaps and contribute to removing practical barriers to entry.

 

This article was originally published by Work in Progress

The post Put Gender Equality at the Heart of the Post-COVID-19 Economic Recovery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Valeria Esquivel is Senior Employment Policies and Gender Officer, Employment, Labour Markets and Youth Branch, International Labour Organization (ILO)

The post Put Gender Equality at the Heart of the Post-COVID-19 Economic Recovery appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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By External Source
Aug 20 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Small island nations face an existential and developmental threat from ship-source pollution endangering their vulnerable marine ecosystems and ocean economies. An effective international legal regime can help.

Often close to world shipping lanes, small island and coastal nations are at particular risk from oil spills.

MV Wakashio oil spill. Credit: IMO

Reliant on the marine environment and its biodiversity for tourism, fishing and aquaculture, islanders face an existential threat when oil spills happen in their waters.

This is why the environmental crisis unfolding in Mauritius is of grave concern.

It also brings into focus the international legal framework in place to provide support when ship-source environmental disasters strike, a new UNCTAD article says.

The seas and their use are governed by several international conventions. But some are not ratified by all countries that might benefit, and others are yet to enter into force.

This creates murky waters when oil spills happen, as not all parties have the same liability and compensation recourse, depending on which kinds of ships are responsible for the pollution and whether they have signed up to existing conventions.

“There’s a need for universal participation in the existing international legal framework, where all nations are party to agreements, so when incidents like this occur, vulnerable countries are protected,” said Shamika N. Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s technology and logistics director.

She said such oil spills herald negative environmental and socio-economic consequences for developing countries, especially small island developing states (SIDS).

Ms. Sirimanne added: “Sustainable Development Goal 14 calls on us to protect life below water and this means minimizing pollution at every possible turn, including putting all necessary precautions in place to manage environmental disasters like oil spills when they do happen.”

Using legal mechanisms to protect nations, blue economy

Different kinds of ships are subject to different international legal conventions.

The UNCTAD article maps out all the recent and applicable legislation which would apply to Mauritius based on the fact that liability and compensation will be critical in the aftermath of the spill on two fronts: economic and environmental.

The challenge in the Mauritius case is that the legislation that would provide higher compensation to the island nation does not apply, because the ship which ran aground is from a bulk-carrier, not an oil tanker.

Oil tanker pollution is governed by a different convention to that of bulk carriers, which is covered by the International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage (Bunkers Convention).

It provides for a lower financial cap on liability, dependent on ship size or gross tonnage.

In the case of the MV Wakashio (101.932GT), the maximum compensation for economic losses and costs of reinstatement of the environment would be about $65.17 million.

If it were an oil tanker, the applicable International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds regime could have provided compensation of up to $286 million.

This is more than four times the Bunkers Convention provision and for Mauritius, could mean less financial aid to restore the environment and economic activity in the wake of the oil spill.

The UNCTAD article’s authors, Regina Asariotis and Anila Premti, emphasize the need for all countries to adopt the latest international legal instruments, given the potentially high costs and wide-ranging environmental and economic implications of ship-source pollution incidents.

What happened to the bulk carrier MV Wakashio?

The MV Wakashio, a Japanese-owned and Panamanian-flagged bulk-carrier, was sailing without cargo when it grounded on a coral reef on 25 July in an environmentally sensitive and biodiverse area off the east coast of Mauritius. The cause of the grounding is still unknown.

At the time of the grounding, the ship reportedly contained approximately 3,894 tons of fuel oil, 207 tons of diesel and 90 tons of lubricant oil on board.

By 11 August, some estimates indicated that between 1,000 and 2,000 tons of fuel oil had reportedly leaked from a breached tank and drifted into the surrounding lagoon, including areas of mangrove.

On 15 August, the ship split in two, at which point most of the fuel on-board had been recovered, according to the Japanese firm that owns the wrecked vessel.

The spill is considered as the worst in the history of Mauritius. It has endangered coral, fish and other marine life, imperiling the economy, food security, health and the $1.6 billion tourism industry in the country, already suffering from the negative effects of COVID-19.

Source: UNCTAD

The post Mauritius Oil Spill Puts Spotlight on Ship Pollution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Deforestation due to the expansion of livestock farming dominates the landscape near Alta Floresta, a southeastern gateway to the Brazilian Amazon. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Sue Branford
Aug 20 2020 (IPS)

“The xapiri [shamanic spirits] have defended the forest since it first came into being. Our ancestors have never devastated it because they kept the spirits by their side,” declares Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, who belongs to the 27,000-strong Yanomami people living in the very north of Brazil.

He is expressing a commonly held Indigenous belief that they — the original peoples on the land, unlike the “white” Amazon invaders — are the ones most profoundly committed to forest protection. The Yanomami shaman reveals the reason: “We know well that without trees nothing will grow on the hardened and blazing ground.”

Now Brazil’s Indigenous people have gained scientific backing for their strongly held belief from two American academics.

In a study published this month in the PNAS journal, entitled Collective property rights reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, two political scientists, Kathryn Baragwanath, from the University of California San Diego, and Ella Bayi, at the Department of Political Science, Columbia University, provide statistical proof of the Indigenous claim that they are the more effective forest guardians.

In their study, the researchers use comprehensive statistical data to show that Indigenous populations can effectively curb deforestation — but only if and when their full property rights over their territories are recognized by civil authorities in a process called homologação in Portuguese, or homologation in English.

 

Full property rights key to curbing deforestation

The scientists reached their conclusions by examining data on 245 Indigenous reserves homologated between 1982 and 2016. By examining the step-by-step legal establishment of Indigenous reserves, they were able to precisely date the moment of homologation for each territory, and to assess the effectiveness of Indigenous action against deforestation before and after full property rights were recognized.

In their study, the researchers use comprehensive statistical data to show that Indigenous populations can effectively curb deforestation — but only if and when their full property rights over their territories are recognized by civil authorities

Brazilian law requires the completion of a complex four-stage process before full recognition. After examining the data, Baragwanath and Bayi concluded that Indigenous people were only able to curb deforestation within their ancestral territories effectively after the last phase ­— homologation — had been completed.

Most deforestation of Indigenous territories occurs at the borders, as land-grabbers, loggers and farmers invade. But the new study shows that, once full property rights are recognized, Indigenous people were historically able to reduce deforestation at those borders from around 3% to 1% — a reduction of 66% which the authors find to be “a very strong finding.”

However, they emphasize that this plunge in deforestation rate only comes after homologation is complete. Baragwanath told Mongabay: The positive “effect on deforestation is very small before homologation and zero for non-homologated territories.” The authors concluded: “We believe the final stage [is] the one that makes the difference, since it is when actual property rights are granted, no more contestation can happen, and enforcement is undertaken by the government agencies.”

Homologation is crucially important, say the researchers, because with it the Indigenous group gains the backing of law and of the Brazilian state. They note: “Without homologation, Indigenous territories do not have the legal rights needed to protect their territories, their territorial resources are not considered their own, and the government is not constitutionally responsible for protecting them from encroachment, invasion, and external use of their resources.”

They continue: “Once homologated, a territory becomes the permanent possession of its Indigenous peoples, no third party can contest its existence, and extractive activities carried out by external actors can only occur after consulting the [Indigenous] communities and the National Congress.”

The scientists offer proof of effective state action and protections after homologation: “For example, FUNAI partnered with IBAMA and the military police of Mato Grosso in May 2019 to combat illegal deforestation on the homologated territory of Urubu Branco. In this operation, 12 people were charged with federal theft of wood and fined R $90,000 [US $23,000], and multiple trucks and tractors were seized; the wood seized was then donated to the municipality.”

 

Temer and Bolsonaro tip the tables

However, under the Jair Bolsonaro government, which came to power in Brazil after the authors collected their data, the situation is changing.

Before Bolsonaro, the number of homologations varied greatly from year to year, apparently in random fashion. A highpoint was reached in 1991, when over 70 territories were homologated, well over twice the number in any other year. This may have been because Brazil was about to host the 1992 Earth Summit and the Collor de Mello government was keen to boost Brazil’s environmental credentials. The surge may have also occurred as a result of momentum gained from Brazil’s adoption of its progressive 1988 constitution, with its enshrined Indigenous rights.

Despite wild oscillations in the annual number of homologations, until recently progress happened under each administration. “Every President signed over [Indigenous] property rights during their tenure, regardless of party or ideology,” the study states.

But since Michel Temer became president at the end of August 2016, the process has come to a standstill, with no new homologations. Baragwanath and Bayi suggest that, by refusing to recognize the full property rights of more Indigenous peoples, the Temer and Bolsonaro administrations “could be responsible for an extra 1.5 million hectares [5,790 square miles] of deforestation per year.” That would help explain soaring deforestation rates detected by INPE, Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research in recent years.

Clearly, for homologation to be effective, the state must assume its legal responsibilities, says Survival International’s Fiona Watson, who notes that this is certainly not happening under Bolsonaro: “Recognizing Indigenous peoples’ collective landownership rights is a fundamental legal requirement and ethical imperative, but it is not enough on its own. Land rights need to be vigorously enforced, which requires political will and action, proper funding, and stamping out corruption. Far from applying the law, President Bolsonaro and his government have taken a sledgehammer to Indigenous peoples’ hard-won constitutional rights, watered down environmental safeguards, and are brutally dismantling the agencies charged with protecting tribal peoples and the environment.”

Watson continues: “Brazil’s tribes — some only numbering a few hundred living in remote areas — are pitted against armed criminal gangs, whipped up by Bolsonaro’s hate speech. As if this wasn’t enough, COVID-19 is killing the best guardians of the forest, especially the older generations with expertise in forest management. Lethal diseases like malaria are on the rise in Indigenous communities and Amazon fires are spreading.”

In fact, Bolsonaro uses the low number of Indigenous people inhabiting reserves today — low populations often the outcome of past horrific violence and even genocide — as an excuse for depriving them of their lands. In 2015 he declared: “The Indians do not speak our language, they do not have money, they do not have culture. They are native peoples. How did they manage to get 13% of the national territory?” And in 2017 he said: “Not a centimeter will be demarcated… as an Indigenous reserve.”

The Indigenous territory of Urubu Branco, cited by Baragwanath and Bayi as a stellar example of effective state action, is a case in point. Under the Bolsonaro government it has been invaded time and again. Although the authorities have belatedly taken action, the Apyãwa (Tapirapé) Indigenous group living there says that invaders are now using the chaos caused by the pandemic to carry out more incursions.

 

A little girl in Sawré Muybu, an indigenous village on the Tapajós River between the municipalities of Itaituba and Trairao in the northern Brazilian state of Pará. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

 

Land rights: a path to conserving Amazonia

Even so, say the experts, it still seems likely that, if homologation was implemented properly now or in the future, with effective state support, it would lead to reduced deforestation. Indeed, Baragwanath and Bayi suggest that this may be one of the few ways of saving the Amazon forest.

“Providing full property rights and the institutional environment for enforcing these rights is an important and cost-effective way for countries to protect their forests and attain their climate goals,” says the study. “Public policy, international mobilization, and nongovernmental organizations should now focus their efforts on pressuring the Brazilian government to register Indigenous territories still awaiting their full property rights.”

But, in the current state of accelerating deforestation, unhampered by state regulation or enforcement, other approaches may be required. One way forward is suggested in a document optimistically entitled: “Reframing the Wilderness Concept can Bolster Collaborative Conservation.”

In the paper, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares from the Helsinki Institute of Sustainable Science, and others suggest that it is time for a new concept of “wilderness.”

For decades, many conservationists argued that the Amazon’s wealth of biodiversity stems from it being a “pristine” biome, “devoid of the destructive impacts of human activity.” But increasingly studies have shown that Indigenous people greatly contributed to the exuberance of the forest by domesticating plants as much as 10,000 years ago. Thus, the forest and humanity likely evolved together.

In keeping with this productive partnership, conservationists and Indigenous peoples need to work in harmony with forest ecology, say the authors. This organic partnership is more urgently needed than ever, they say, because the entire Amazon basin is facing an onslaught, “a new wave of frontier expansion” by logging, industrial mining, and agribusiness.

Fernández-Llamazares told Mongabay: “Extractivist interests and infrastructure development across much of the Amazon are not only driving substantial degradation of wilderness areas and their unique biodiversity, but also forcing the region’s Indigenous peoples on the frontlines of ever more pervasive social-ecological conflict.…  From 2014 to 2019, at least 475 environmental and land defenders have been killed in Amazonian countries, including numerous members of Indigenous communities.”

Fernández-Llamazares believes that new patterns of collaboration are emerging.

“A good example of the alliance between Indigenous Peoples and wilderness defenders can be found in the Isiboro-Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS, being its Spanish acronym), in the Bolivian Amazon,” he says. “TIPNIS is the ancestral homeland of four lowland Indigenous groups and one of Bolivia’s most iconic protected areas, largely considered as one of the last wildlands in the country. In 2011, conservationists and Indigenous communities joined forces to oppose the construction of a road that would cut across the heart of the area.” A victory they won at the time, though TIPNIS today remains under contention today.

Eduardo S. Brondizio, another study contributor, points out alternatives to the industrial agribusiness and mining model: numerous management systems established by small-scale farmers, for example, that are helping conserve entire ecosystems.

“The açaí fruit economy, for instance, is arguably the region’s largest [Amazon] economy today, even compared to soy and cattle, and yet it occupies a fraction of the [land] area occupied by soy and cattle, with far higher economic return and employment than deforestation-based crops, while maintaining forest cover and multiple ecological benefits.” he said.

And, he adds, it is a completely self-driven initiative. “The entire açaí fruit economy emerged from the hands and knowledge of local riverine producers who [have] responded to market demand since the 1980s by intensifying their production using local agroforestry knowledge.” It is important, he stresses, that conservationists recognize the value of these sustainable economic activities in protecting the forest.

The new alliance taking shape between conservationists and Indigenous peoples is comparable with the new forms of collaboration that have arisen among traditional people in the Brazilian Amazon. Although Indigenous populations and riverine communities of subsistence farmers and Brazil nut collectors have long regarded each other as enemies — fighting to control the same territory — they are increasingly working together to confront land-grabbers, loggers and agribusiness.

Still, there is no doubt time is running out. Brazil’s huge swaths of agricultural land are already contributing to, and suffering from, deepening drought, because the “flying rivers” that bring down rainfall from the Amazon are beginning to collapse. Scientists are warning that the forest is moving toward a precipitation tipping point, when drought, deforestation and fire will change large areas of rainforest into arid degraded savanna.

This may already be happening. The Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), a non-profit, research organisation, warned recently that the burning season, now just beginning in the Amazon, could devastate an even larger area than last year, when video footage of uncontrolled fires ablaze in the Amazon was viewed around the world. IPAM estimates that a huge area, covering 4,509 square kilometers (1,741 square miles), has been felled and is waiting to go up in flames this year — data some experts dispute. But as of last week, more than 260 major fires were already alight in the Amazon.

Years ago Davi Kopenawa Yanomami warned: “They [the white people] continue to maltreat the earth everywhere they go.… It never occurs to them that if they mistreat it too much it will finally turn to chaos.… The xapiri [the shamanic spirits] try hard to defend the white people the same way as they defend us.… But if Omoari, the dry season being, settles on their land for good, they will only have trickles of dirty water to drink and they will die of thirst. This could truly happen to them.”

 

Citations:

Kathryn Baragwanath and Ella Bayi, (10 August 2020), Collective property rights reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Julien Terraube, Michael C. Gavin, Aili Pyhälä, Sacha M.O. Siani, Mar Cabeza, and Eduardo S. Brondizio, (29 July 2020) Reframing the Wilderness Concept can Bolster Collaborative Conservation, Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

 

This story was originally published by Mongabay

The post Indigenous Best Amazon Stewards, but Only When Property Rights Assured: Study appeared first on Inter Press Service.

President Keïta was forced to resign after being detained by soldiers.

Credit: 2020 John Holmes for Human Rights Watch

By A Kenyan Migrant Worker
DOHA, Aug 19 2020 (IPS)

Like thousands of migrant workers from Africa and Asia, I am finally in the land of my dreams, Qatar. I knew working here would be tough, but I thought I would be able to regularly send money home to my family and live decently.

I had imagined that once here, I could sneak a peek at gli Azzuri, the Italian national team and my favorite, but seeing the way Qatar treats workers like me preparing for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, my excitement dwindled. 

In the land of my dreams, every day feels like a nightmare. 

The soaring unemployment rate in Kenya, my home country, pushes thousands of young people to look for jobs overseas. A family friend had moved here recently to work in the hospitality industry. He appeared to have a decent life. That, plus the lack of income tax and the promise of medical coverage helped lure me here. 

My friend did say that working in the Gulf is not for the faint of heart, but I asked myself if things could be worse than they are in Kenya. I have a bachelor’s degree with honors and still found no stable job opportunities in my hometown. I knew I needed something to supplement the freelance writing I was doing.

Overworked, underpaid, and left on my own without any security net, I have a false choice: stick it out, or return to Kenya, defeated and drowning in debt

I found a local recruiting agent who agreed to facilitate my visa and job application process for a security guard job. He demanded $1,500 in recruitment fees. This is a huge amount, but I asked around and I found that all Kenyan migrant workers pay recruitment fees for a job in Qatar. My parents offered to cover me. They said it would leave them in a financial crunch, but it would be worth it to see my life take off. After working hard their whole lives, both of them will be forced to retire this year, so it is up to me to fend for myself and shoulder my family’s responsibilities. 

The recruiting agent turned out to be both disorganized and surreptitious. The flight he arranged for me was an eight-hour journey from my hometown. I had paid him to secure me a job as a security guard, but after the non-refundable payments were made, when he handed me my paperwork hours before my departure, I discovered my visa and employment contract were for a cleaning position. Not to worry, he said, when I get to Qatar I can change jobs.  

My Qatar dream was finally in motion as the plane powered into the gloomy night sky. I was greeted by the architectural masterpiece that is Hamad International Airport. Things were bound to pick up now, I thought. But my employer, who was supposed to meet me, was nowhere to be found. After numerous frantic phone calls, he told me to get a taxi and go to my accommodations.

Inside my room, at the shoebox accommodations I found four other workers who seemed miserable. We didn’t talk much. The place was rundown, with no beds, only used mattresses and soiled duvets which harbored an insect colony. I willed myself to be optimistic and decided to talk to my employer in the morning about changing jobs. 

My employer heard my concerns and took me for an interview at a local security services company. I was offered an employment contract that seemed fair. For eight hours of work a day, my monthly salary would be 1,500 Qatari riyals ($412), I would be paid at a higher rate for any overtime work, and the employer would cover my health care and housing.  

In Qatar, a migrant worker needs to get their previous employer’s written permission to change jobs while on contract. While for me, it was a smooth process, other workers have told me how difficult it was for them, and how employers often use the power they have over workers to further exploit them. My new company made it a point to inform me that they themselves never give workers the permission to change jobs. I didn’t think too much about this, I was just happy to leave my infested room and start earning money. In retrospect, I wish I had.  

The legal transfer of my immigration documents took a month, without pay, and when I finally was ushered into the security company’s housing, I was ready for better days. 

The new housing was better than where I had been living, but still not up to bare minimum standards. Ten of us were stacked in a stuffy room. About 15 people shared a toilet, and about 60 shared the communal kitchen, which was built for a handful of people.

Since then, with different assignments, I have lived in various places. At one point I was sleeping in the educational facility I was guarding. For the last month I have been sharing my room with five other men from my company, and for a while, water from the air conditioner was leaking onto our beds. 

As for my working conditions, the four hours of overtime I put in daily are ignored in my pay slips, I work seven days a week without a day off, wages are delayed for up to three months, and during this time they don’t even provide us with a food allowance. 

My March salary arrived in June, April’s salary came in July.  I have not been paid for May, June, and July. For every day that my wages are delayed, I go deeper into debt, because I send 1,000 Qatari Riyals ($275) a month home and have no choice but to borrow money for food. 

I have been here for more than six months, but I have not been issued a Qatar Identity Card, which is mandatory for migrant workers. Other employees tell me it takes eight to ten months for our company to issue Identity Cards. Without the card, I can’t take a complaint to the Labor Department; I can’t even step out of my housing without risking arrest.  

I have not had a single off day since I started working six months ago – a single day off will cost me 50 Qatari Riyals ($14). I desperately need a few days off to fight the fatigue that is dragging me down. However, I also desperately need a complete salary to break even and start moving toward a decent life. 

My assignments vary. I have worked at hotels, offices, and schools. Currently I stand for 12 hours a day, outside a hotel in one of Qatar’s upscale neighborhoods. I am tasked with directing and controlling traffic, conducting regular foot patrols, and assisting and escorting guests who enquire about whether rooms are available. My duty is made harder by the unwavering and relentless Middle East sun.  

I finally got a health card after five months. Imagine being in a foreign country during a global pandemic and not having health care. To make matters worse, it seems that my company doesn’t care much about personal protective equipment. They bring gloves and masks just once in a while.  The hotel staff often lends us masks. Luckily, the only person I know of who has had Covid-19 was a supervisor at the hotel before I was assigned here. 

My workmates encourage me when I am at my lowest points. We understand the systematic challenges workers experience daily. The government talks about reforming labor laws but most of it feels like it is only on paper. People on the ground are really suffering and rogue employers are getting away with gross injustices. The class division is stark in Qatar. The country is one of the richest in the world, but it was built and continues to run on the fuel of its migrants. The exploitation and oppression have taken a mental and physical toll on us, but the resolve to improve our lives keeps us going. 

The 2022 World Cup is another thorny matter. Even the biggest and glitziest stadiums can’t justify maltreatment of workers.  

Overworked, underpaid, and left on my own without any security net, I have a false choice: stick it out, or return to Kenya, defeated and drowning in debt.  

 

The author asked not to use his name for his protection.        

The post I Came to Work in Qatar to Pursue My Dreams, But My Life is a Nightmare appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The author is one of the 93 migrant workers Human Rights Watch interviewed for a recent report on salary abuses ahead of Qatar’s 2022 FIFA World Cup, he has requested anonymity for his safety; work visas and residence permits for migrant workers in Qatar are directly tied to employers, hence workers are often afraid to speak publicly against salary abuses

The post I Came to Work in Qatar to Pursue My Dreams, But My Life is a Nightmare appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Women in Minsk, Belarus. Unsplash/Jana Shnipelson

By External Source
Aug 19 2020 (IPS)

President Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s government is teetering after he declared victory in a rigged 9 August vote. Protests have exploded. Moscow, Brussels and other stakeholders should avoid transforming the Belarus crisis into a European one, cooperate to warn against repression and insist on new, fair elections.

As protests and strikes in Belarus enter their second week, Moscow, Brussels and many other European capitals have struggled to respond. The politics that brought Belarusians to the streets of their villages, towns and cities are local: they are angry that their president of 26 years has tried to steal yet another election.

But if the crisis in Belarus is at its core anything but an East-West standoff, it is happening at a time when hasty responses by either Russia or Western states could turn it into just that. Because such a showdown would serve no one’s interests, all stakeholders should take care to consult with each other and coordinate their policies, even as they do what they can to help Belarus and Belarusians.

Aliaksandr Lukashenka has been president of Belarus since 1994, and both citizens and outside observers have roundly questioned the legitimacy of every vote in the country since the one that brought him to power. This one, held on 9 August, was even less transparent than its predecessors.

Instead of competing, Russia and other European states would be better advised to work together to help Belarusians chart their own path forward, including through mediation involving Tsikhanouskaya (now in Lithuania for her safety) and her team

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) complained that it was invited too late to send observers, while staff from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) stayed away due to COVID-19. Lukashenka’s primary opponent on the ballot, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, registered to run only a few weeks ago, when her husband, along with other prospective candidates, was prevented from doing so and arrested instead.

Tsikhanouskaya’s central campaign promise was a new, free, fair and transparent election within six months of taking office. Her campaign drew tens of thousands of citizens to its rallies in the lead-up to the vote, the first sign that this time might be different.

And, indeed, when Lukashenka claimed to have garnered an improbable 80 per cent of the vote, a lot of Belarusian citizens simply did not believe him. Solid evidence that they are right lies in their own numbers, which grow each day, even as both demonstrators and passersby are arrested en masse; the use of rubber bullets and, reportedly, live ammunition; and the clear signs of torture on the bodies of those released from Lukashenka’s jails, which are rapidly running short of space.

As even state-run factory workers call on Lukashenka to leave, television presenters refuse to work, and some police appear to join the protesters, the president has asked Moscow for help. This is a change – albeit not the first one – for Lukashenka, who one week ago claimed that Russian (as well as Polish) “puppet masters” were behind the opposition and, prior to the 9 August vote, announced the arrest of 33 alleged members of a Russian private militia, whom he accused of planning to destabilise the country. (Thirty-two were sent back to Russia on 14 August. The one with Belarusian citizenship stayed.)

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Lukashenka on his victory, relations between the two countries had been cooling for a while, as the Belarusian president periodically courted Western support to limit Moscow’s leverage.

Putin may see advantages in supporting a weakened Lukashenka – particularly if European states deem him illegitimate. Lukashenka may be counting on this eventuality. His most recent comments have clearly been aimed at Moscow, alleging that NATO troops are massing near the country’s borders, something the alliance has denied (and of which there is no evidence).

Some in the Kremlin may see this crisis as an opportunity for Russia to bring Belarus back more squarely into its corner. Nor would Moscow relish the precedent of an ally and neighbour losing power in the face of popular protests. That said, the Belarus opposition so far has not been particularly hostile to Moscow, and Russia risks alienating them if it throws its weight behind the discredited president. Lukashenka’s demise is far from guaranteed, but it seems increasingly plausible. Russia has reasons to keep its options open.

Up to now, Western countries have largely limited themselves to expressions of concern, although a few, including Lithuania, Estonia, the UK, Ireland and Canada, have declared the election illegitimate. But growing Russian/European divergence on Belarus could have more serious geostrategic implications. 

Just as NATO strategists often postulate that war with Russia would begin as a result of a Russian attack on a Baltic country, Russian scenarios for that same war often start with a Western-backed revolution in Belarus. What is happening today reflects neither scenario: as noted above, it is Lukashenka, not the opposition, who reached out to Western leaders in the past.

But Russian fears of Western influence in Belarus coupled with Western concerns over Russia’s hold on Minsk could undermine efforts from both to respond to the unfolding crisis and make it worse.

Either direct Russian military intervention or heavy-handed Western efforts to foster a transition would risk transforming this crisis into the NATO-Russia standoff it is not and turn the people of Belarus into pawns. Because this struggle has not been about East-West competition, Lukashenka’s fall, if it comes, need not be a geostrategic loss for Moscow any more than his survival would be a victory over Brussels or Washington.

Instead of competing, Russia and other European states would be better advised to work together to help Belarusians chart their own path forward, including through mediation involving Tsikhanouskaya (now in Lithuania for her safety) and her team. As of 17 August, Lukashenka has called for a constitutional referendum followed by new elections, an apparent effort to buy time. But with or without him, the next step ought to be the more transparent, fair race that Tsikhanouskaya promised.

In the longer term, Belarus will need support from all of its neighbours in order to rebuild, particularly given the public health crisis caused by poor management of the pandemic by Lukashenka’s team (which dismissed the coronavirus’ risks) – a crisis that could worsen as a result of mass detentions.

In the meantime, as long as the threat of further violence and repression remains, more states should follow Lithuania’s lead and ease entry requirements – paired with appropriate quarantine – for Belarusians, whether temporarily or, if needed, for the still uncertain long term.

 

This statement was originally published by the Crisis Group

The post How to Help Belarus appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The UN reports the deaths of at least 45 people in the largest shipwreck off Libya's coast this year.

Leo Messi. Credit: FCB.

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Aug 19 2020 (IPS)

The Barcelona Football Club disaster in the quarterfinals of the Champions League, which was once more appropriately called the European Cup, is indeed a cataclysmic event, unprecedented, with predicted drastic and hurtful consequences.

Future Barça fans, when faced with the hardships of life, will argue that “more was lost in … not in Cuba … but in Lisbon.”

The end of Barcelona in the maximum European competition has all the characteristics to be not only the closing of a chapter of its sporting journey, but the end of an entire era of a team led by Messi.

The Barça of two long decades, trained by technicians who tried to follow the anthological schemes of Johan Cruiff and Pep Guardiola, transferred their style to the Spanish team that won two European Cups and a world trophy.

That strategy was embodied in the Cruiff doctrine composed of the three Ps: position, possession and pressure. Now the new European style is predicted to be based on physical power and speed, embraced by Bayern Munich, who have destroyed Barça.

What can also be blurred in the future Barça is a set of identity signs that had made it emblematic. Barça has been the refuge of foreigners who chose to nest in Catalonia at different times.

It was founded in the late 19th century by a handful of Germans and English, led by the Swiss Hans Gamper. It was presented with a name that did not fit with the academic rules: Football Club Barcelona, ​​which only the Franco regime managed to hispanicize by force into Club de Fútbol Barcelona.

This external insert in the Barcelona of that time, which had already exceeded its medieval limits with the Cerdá Plan grid, sent a global message that received the “national” response from a sector that called itself the Club Deportivo Español, later spiced up as Real. Thus a rivalry generally resolved in favor of Barça would be born, which would not hide its foreign inclinations.

Joaquín Roy

As an example, its “culers”, in a friendly match in 1925 booed the Spanish Royal March, the national anthem, and applauded the God Save the King performed by an English Navy band that had landed in the port of Barcelona.

That whim would cost Barcelona five years of closure decreed by General Primo de Rivera, a strong man of Alfonso XIII. Dazed by financial debts, Gamper was forced into exile and upon his return his health deteriorated to the point that he committed suicide.

Politics continued intertwined with the life of the club, and at the beginning of the Civil War, with Catalonia allied on the Republican side, one of its presidents, Josep Sunyol, of the pro-independence party Esquerra Republicana, was shot by Franco’s troops.

At the end of the conflict, a group of its players, who had moved to Latin America in search of income that had evaporated during the war, opted for self-imposed exile and their return was prohibited by Franco.

Despite the fact that Barça managed to recover and win several national competitions, thanks in part to the leadership of the Hungarian Kubala, only under the direction of Cruiff’s “Dream Team” it did manage to capture the longed-for first European Cup until 1992 at Wembley with the goal by Koeman.

In line with the rebirth of democracy, Barça built a nationalist image, although not pro-independence, since the majority of its mass was socially conservative in its upper sectors, and moderately leftist in its bases.

Some presidents contributed to claim that Barça exceeded sporting limits. Narcís de Carreras forged an emblematic slogan: “Barça is more than a club.” The shirt incorporated the Catalan flag on its neck and back. The captain, a position to which Messi was elevated, wore, in addition to the regulation armband, another with the “senyera”.

The slow transformation of Catalan nationalism into independence-seeking, which increased the percentages of radical votes to almost half the electorate, coincided with the rise of Barça to the heights of European football, without dangerously contaminating the collective image of the club.

The international style was reinforced by the incorporation of young products from La Masía, the players’ school. Spanish-speaking immigrants used the support for Barça as a remedy for the always difficult integration. Even outside the Spanish borders, Barça was recognized as one more product of globalization.

But after Guardiola’s departure, various presidents, poorly advised by the stars, inserted a long dozen players with a difficult fit (such as Neymar, Coutinho and Giezmann) and others with financially unjustifiable contracts.

Simultaneously, the offspring of La Masía were unable to join the team. Only Sergi Roberto had reached the Spanish team, in contrast to the seven Barcelona starters who won the World Cup in South Africa.

The few national titles and the unaffordable Champions League did nothing more than make up the triumphant emptiness of yesteryear. The musketeers who had once forged Messi’s supremacy had grown old. You could smell the decline. Future failures will be relativized with a comforting sigh of “more was lost in Lisbon.”

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

The post More Was Lost in Lisbon appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Brazil-born Jose Clayton is 'in love with Tunisia' and still lives there more than 25 years after moving to North Africa to play football.

The 16-year-old from Sudan, whose body was found at Sangatte, Calais, reportedly went missing at sea.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta announced his resignation on Tuesday after being detained by soldiers.

Satellite images capture tug boats trying to remove the broken vessel, which spilled tonnes of oil.