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The Sudan Partnership Conference, which took place via teleconference, pledged $1.8 billion to support the transitional government as well as facilitating access to loans and partial or total debt relief by some countries. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/Nina R

By Reem Abbas
KHARTOUM, Jun 26 2020 (IPS)

This week, when Sudan’s Minister of Energy and Mining Adil Ibrahim addressed the country, stating that households will face power-cuts for up to seven hours a day, people had already been sitting on plastic chairs outside their homes, scouring the internet to purchase battery-operated fans. This Northeast African nation has seen temperature highs of up to 41 degrees Celsius recently.

Ibrahim attributed the power cuts to foreign engineers who had been working to build the country’s energy industry but left because of the COVID-19 crisis. However, the situation is more complicated.

“The government does not have money to buy the gasoline needed for the energy sector, the country does not have foreign currency and the reserve at the central bank of Sudan is very minimal,” an anonymous source at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning told IPS.

Sudan has barely emerged from the 30-year long dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, who was overthrown by a revolution in April 2019. Currently, the transitional government — a civilian and military government — is too broke to finance Sudan’s transition.

The military has controlled Sudan for almost 50 years through dictatorships and it continues to have a tight grip on power.

But yesterday, Jun. 25, the Sudan Partnership Conference, which took place via teleconference, pledged $1.8 billion to support the transitional government as well as facilitating access to loans and partial or total debt relief by some countries.

The conference, hosted by Germany and supported by the Friends of Sudan, brings together the European Union (EU), the United States, the United Kingdom and several Gulf and African countries. Senior figures in the EU, the Sudanese government as well as the Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres addressed the conference.

In total, 40 countries and institutions took part in the pledge that Sudan’s Prime Minister Dr. Abdallah Hamdok called “unprecedented”. 

But Shawqi Abdelazim, a veteran journalist in Khartoum, says that the conference was not only about meeting financial targets.

“The conference had political targets and it has put Sudan back on the map and signalled its return to the international community. Many countries asked for Sudan to be removed from the state sponsors of terrorism list which is very important for economic recovery,” Shawqi Abdelazim, who works for Sudanese and German publications, told IPS.

• Sudan remains on the United States’ State Sponsor of Terrorism list.
• As a result, the country cannot access to funding from international financial institutions.

Shawqi Abdelazim added that by working with Sudan, the international community made a decision, “it is either they work with us to save the transitional period or they leave us to face our own fate; to fight off the military leaders or self-isolate in an attempt to re-build our economy with humble means”.

A recent report by the European Council on Foreign Relations states that the military generals “control a sprawling network of companies and keep the central bank and the Ministry of Finance on life support to gain political power”.

The civilian wing of the government led by Hamdok needs reassurance as it continues to solidify civilian rule to make way for democratic elections in three years as well as fight the deep state control of the former ruling party, the National Congress Party (NCP).

“The conference gave legitimacy to the civilian government, they made it clear that they are supportive,” Mayada Hassanein, an economist in Khartoum, told IPS.

But this does not mean that the financial pledges would keep the civilian government afloat for a long time.

“The amount pledged, $1.8bn is less than what is needed for cash transfers for the ministry of finance program to support families,” said Hassanien.

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning had been keen to secure at least $1.9 billion to support its family assistance programme, which aims to allocate $5 per family to support them with the ever-increasing living costs.

The programme was inspired by similar successful programmes in Brazil, but in the Sudanese context, it could have its flaws.

“It is fair to support vulnerable families, but this money is better spent on public services that can protect families from the volatility of the market. There is no point in having money in my pocket if I can’t find medicine or take my children to school,” Mayada Abdelazim, an economist in Khartoum, told IPS.

Sudan has serious medicine shortages and the crisis was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis.

Previously there were only ‘partners’ not donors

On the ground, the reality is dire. The transitional government, with all the external and internal support it garnered, was unable to fund the ambitious democratic transition the Sudanese people fought for.

• The country’s foreign debt stands at $62 billion.
• And even though the U.S. ended a 20-year trade embargo against Sudan in 2017, sanctions have not been fully removed.

Things looked promising in the first months after Hamdok was sworn in. In October, the European Union (EU) pledged €466 million in development assistance and various EU countries pledged funds for development and technical support. But this was not enough to help the government stand on its feet.

A report by the European Council on Foreign Relations explained that “international donors blame their reluctance to assist the Sudanese government on its inaction regarding subsidy reform”.

The International Crisis Group says that fuel subsides have damaged Sudan’s economy. They currently take up 40 percent of the country’s annual budget. “As part of the subsidies policy, fuel importers can buy dollars at a price far below market price, leaving room for corruption”.

Local economists paint a similar picture, but the government is cozying up to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“One reason Sudan is unable to get loans is its significant debt, however, the IMF and the World Bank are clear gateway to accessing international funds. The IMF is now in agreement with the government to send technical experts to support with the reforms, but this was not a clear promise to give Sudan money,” Mayada Abdelazim said.

The IMF’s structural adjustment programmes mandate lessening or lifting subsidies all together and in recent months, a familiar process is underway in the country.

“The government has already lifted fuel subsidies by offering commercial fuel (which is another word for unsubsidised) in addition to subsidised fuel. But currently, you can only find fuel at the gas stations that offer unsubsidised fuel, they basically lifted subsidies without entering into a direct confrontation with the public,” said Mayada Abdelazim.

Rising inflation impacts the population

During Al-Bashir’s tenure, Sudanese people endured numerous wars (some of which are only in the process of being resolved), severe economic impoverishment, and the oppression of all dissent and a total deterioration of all aspects of their welfare.

For years, 70 percent of Sudan’s budget was invested in the security and military sector leaving very little for healthcare and education, which were further destroyed through privatisation policies and incessant corruption by the ruling party.

A few weeks ago, the government increased the minimum wage by up to 700 percent to match raising inflation. However, inflation increased from 98.81 to 114.33 percent between April and May.

The new salaries have now become redundant as the prices of basic food items increased from 200 to 300 percent and the Sudanese pound (SDG) continued to plummet, reaching 145 SDG to the U.S. dollar in the black market versus 55 SDG to the dollar.

“Any money you give people will get eaten up as prices increase due to volatility. Business owners do not know how much they would have to pay for rent or stock next month, they have to push up their prices based on expectations,” said Mayada Abdelazim, who has been working on a paper on the partnership conference.

Outside Khartoum, the situation is even worse for ordinary citizens.

Hanan Hassan, a civil servant who lives in Damazin in Blue Nile state, over 500 kms from the capital, Khartoum, told IPS that businesses have taken advantage of the salary raises to increase their prices.

“Transportation costs inside the city went up by 300 percent, food items are increasing on a daily basis which makes it impossible to come up with a monthly budget. Traders are taking advantage of people because there is no monitoring by the authorities and others are arguing that they have to purchase fuel at commercial rates,” said Hassan.

In the meantime, the government has a dilemma, currently it has no money to pay salaries or to import basic food items.

“The Minister is opposed to financing from the Central Bank, but the bank has to print money to finance the remainder of the 2020 government budget,” said the source at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.

Reclaiming what can be reclaimed

In November 2019, the transitional government passed a law establishing the Empowerment Elimination, Anti-Corruption, and Funds Recovery Committee, which is tasked with ridding the country of the legacy of the former regime and reclaiming Sudan’s embezzled resources.

The committee has held numerous press conferences to announce the confiscation of land, companies and financial resources from old regime. All the resources will revert to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, which is supposed to integrate them into the annual budget.

“The government expects that the confiscated land and property would bring in 77 billion SDG in profit,” said the source at the Ministry of Finance.

In May, the committee announced that it now controls $3.5 to $4 billion worth of assets from the former president. This is not yet cash. Observers believe that the government will have a hard time liquidating the assets as the cronies of the former regime are the only ones with the money to buy them back.

In the meantime, there is optimism that the international community will use this conference to make up for the lost opportunities that were pointed out in recent reports indicating that the international community have wasted time and delayed much-needed support to Sudan.

“Sudan’s revolution gave people around the world hope that change can happen, it is our responsibility to support this transitional process,” German Ambassador Ulrich Klöckner told IPS.

 

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Small-scale slash-and-burn agriculture is one of the deforestation problems in Brazil’s Amazon jungle. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By External Source
Jun 26 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus pandemic, suspected of originating in bats and pangolins, has brought the risk of viruses that jump from wildlife to humans into stark focus.

These leaps often happen at the edges of the world’s tropical forests, where deforestation is increasingly bringing people into contact with animals’ natural habitats. Yellow fever, malaria, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Ebola – all of these pathogens have spilled over from one species to another at the margins of forests.

As doctors and biologists specializing in infectious diseases, we have studied these and other zoonoses as they spread in Africa, Asia and the Americas. We found that deforestation has been a common theme.

More than half of the world’s tropical deforestation is driven by four commodities: beef, soy, palm oil and wood products. They replace mature, biodiverse tropical forests with monocrop fields and pastures

More than half of the world’s tropical deforestation is driven by four commodities: beef, soy, palm oil and wood products. They replace mature, biodiverse tropical forests with monocrop fields and pastures. As the forest is degraded piecemeal, animals still living in isolated fragments of natural vegetation struggle to exist. When human settlements encroach on these forests, human-wildlife contact can increase, and new opportunistic animals may also migrate in.

The resulting disease spread shows the interconnectedness of natural habitats, the animals that dwell within it, and humans.

 

Yellow fever: Monkeys, humans and hungry mosquitoes

Yellow fever, a viral infection transmitted by mosquitoes, famously halted progress on the Panama Canal in the 1900s and shaped the history of Atlantic coast cities from Philadelphia to Rio de Janeiro. Although a yellow fever vaccine has been available since the 1930s, the disease continues to afflict 200,000 people a year, a third of whom die, mostly in West Africa.

The virus that causes it lives in primates and is spread by mosquitoes that tend to dwell high in the canopy where these primates live.

In the early 1990s, a yellow fever outbreak was reported for the first time in the Kerio Valley in Kenya, where deforestation had fragmented the forest. Between 2016 and 2018, South America saw its largest number of yellow fever cases in decades, resulting in around 2,000 cases, and hundreds of deaths. The impact was severe in the extremely vulnerable Atlantic forest of Brazil – a biodiversity hotspot that has shrunk to 7% of its original forest cover.
Shrinking habitat has been shown to concentrate howler monkeys – one of the main South American yellow fever hosts. A study on primate density in Kenya further demonstrated that forest fragmentation led a greater density of primates, which in turn led to pathogens becoming more prevalent.

Deforestation resulted in patches of forest that both concentrated the primate hosts and favored the mosquitoes that could transmit the virus to humans.

 

Malaria: Humans can also infect wildlife

Just as wildlife pathogens can jump to humans, humans can cross-infect wildlife.

Falciparum malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people yearly, especially in Africa. But in the Atlantic tropical forest of Brazil, we have also found a surprisingly high rate of Plasmodium falciparum (the malaria parasite responsible for severe malaria) circulating in the absence of humans. That raises the possibility that this parasite may be infecting new world monkeys. Elsewhere in the Amazon, monkey species have become naturally infected. In both cases, deforestation could have facilitated cross-infection.

We and other scientists have extensively documented the associations between deforestation and malaria in the Amazon, showing how the malaria-carrying mosquitoes and human malaria cases are strongly linked to deforested habitat.

 

Another type of malaria, Plasmodium knowlesi, known to circulate among monkeys, became a concern to human health over a decade ago in Southeast Asia. Several studies have shown that areas sustaining higher rates of forest loss also had higher rates of human infections, and that the mosquito vectors and monkey hosts spanned a wide range of habitats including disturbed forest.

 

Venezuelan equine encephalitis: Rodents move in

Venezuelan equine encephalitis is another mosquito-borne virus that is estimated to cause tens to hundreds of thousands of humans to develop febrile illnesses every year. Severe infections can lead to encephalitis and even death.

In the Darien province of Panama, we found that two rodent species had particularly high rates of infection with Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, leading us to suspect that these species may be the wildlife hosts.

One of the species, Tome’s spiny rat, has also been implicated in other studies. The other, the short-tailed cane mouse, is also involved in the transmission of zoonotic diseases such as hantavirus and possibly Madariaga virus, an emergent encephalitis virus.

While Tome’s spiny rat is widely found in tropical forests in the Americas, it readily occupies regrowth and forest fragments. The short-tailed cane mouse prefers habitat on the edge of forests and abutting cattle pastures.

As deforestation in this region progresses, these two rodents can occupy forest fragments, cattle pastures and the regrowth that arises when fields lie fallow. Mosquitoes also occupy these areas and can bring the virus to humans and livestock.

 

Ebola: Disease at the forest’s edge

Vector-borne diseases are not the only zoonoses sensitive to deforestation. Ebola was first described in 1976, but outbreaks have become more common. The 2014-2016 outbreak killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa and drew attention to diseases that can spread from wildlife to humans.

The natural transmission cycle of the Ebola virus remains elusive. Bats have been implicated, with possible additional ground-dwelling animals maintaining “silent” transmission between human outbreaks.

While the exact nature of transmission is not yet known, several studies have shown that deforestation and forest fragmentation were associated with outbreaks between 2004 and 2014. In addition to possibly concentrating Ebola wildlife hosts, fragmentation may serve as a corridor for pathogen-carrying animals to spread the virus over large areas, and it may increase human contact with these animals along the forest edge.

 

What about the coronavirus?

While the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak hasn’t been proved, a genetically similar virus has been detected in intermediate horseshoe bats and Sunda pangolins.

The range of the Sunda pangolin – which is critically endangered – overlaps with the intermediate horseshoe bat in the forests of Southeast Asia, where it lives in mature tree hollows. As forest habitat shrinks, could pangolins also experience increased density and susceptibility to pathogens?

In fact, in small urban forest fragments in Malaysia, the Sunda pangolin was detected even though overall mammal diversity was much lower than a comparison tract of contiguous forest. This shows that this animal is able to persist in fragmented forests where it could increase contact with humans or other animals that can harbor potentially zoonotic viruses, such as bats. The Sunda pangolin is poached for its meat, skin and scales and imported illegally from Malaysia and Vietnam into China. A wet market in Wuhan that sells such animals has been suspected as a source of the current pandemic.

 

Preventing zoonotic spillover

There is still a lot that we don’t know about how viruses jump from wildlife to humans and what might drive that contact.

Forest fragments and their associated landscapes encompassing forest edge, agricultural fields and pastures have been a repeated theme in tropical zoonoses. While many species disappear as forests are cleared, others have been able to adapt. Those that adapt may become more concentrated, increasing the rate of infections.

Given the evidence, it is clear humans need to balance the production of food, forest commodities and other goods with the protection of tropical forests. Conservation of wildlife may keep their pathogens in check, preventing zoonotic spillover, and ultimately benefiting humans, too.

Amy Y. Vittor, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Florida; Gabriel Zorello Laporta, Professor of biology and infectious diseases, Faculdade de Medicina do ABC, and Maria Anice Mureb Sallum, Professor of Epidemiology, Universidade de São Paulo

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

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Coast guards keep watch in the Thengar Char island in the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, on February 2, 2017. Reuters File Photo

By Earl R Miller and John Cotton Richmond
Jun 26 2020 (IPS-Partners)

In late 2019, we learned of the harrowing plight of Suma Akter, a Bangladeshi woman in Saudi Arabia who secretly recorded and shared on social media her story of abuse and exploitation abroad. In Saudi Arabia, Akter said, her employer beat her and at one point poured hot oil on her hand. Later on, when she fell ill, Akter said her employer sold her to another person for 22,000 riyals (almost Tk 5 lakh).

This is just one form of human trafficking. Human trafficking is a crime; it involves exploiting someone—using them, capitalising on their vulnerabilities—for the purposes of compelled labour or commercial sex by using force, fraud or coercion. It is an appalling crime that takes advantage of often desperate people, hijacking their dreams, and robbing them of their freedom, for profit.

On June 25, the United States Secretary of State released the 2020 global Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, upgrading Bangladesh’s ranking from Tier 2 Watch List to Tier 2. This significant step reflects Bangladesh’s progress in combating human trafficking over the past year, including standing up seven anti-trafficking tribunals and taking action against recruiting agencies exploiting Bangladeshis seeking to work abroad.

We congratulate the government and committed civil society actors who fought tirelessly to pursue accountability for traffickers and freedom for victims. They are Bangladesh’s heroes in the fight against global human trafficking. The Tier 2 ranking means the Bangladesh government is making significant and increasing efforts to meet the minimum standards towards the elimination of trafficking. But there is more work to be done to fully meet these standards, and put an end to this despicable practice.

The United States is proud to work with Bangladesh in its efforts to combat human trafficking. We echo the UN Network on Migration’s June 11 op-ed in encouraging further actions to address TIP, and have four recommendations for Bangladesh to take further action in its fight to secure freedom for victims of human trafficking:

First, employ the seven anti-trafficking tribunals to manage the 5,000+ cases filed under the 2012 anti-trafficking law, and swiftly bring traffickers to justice as detailed in the 2000 UN TIP Protocol. Until the legal stakes for criminals are visibly raised, trafficking remains a low-risk, high-profit endeavour. This must change.

Second, make the Bangladesh response to human trafficking victim-centred by prioritising care for all victims, male and female, young and old. This means Bangladesh will need to allocate more government resources to enhance care for survivors—in conjunction with the robust efforts of the NGO and donor community—and to ensure all victims receive adequate protections and care plans tailored to the medical, psychological, social, legal, and rehabilitation needs necessary to begin the healing process.

Third, strengthen measures to protect individuals seeking safe channels to work abroad. This includes continuing to enforce applicable laws for recruitment agencies, cracking down on businesses that inflate official recruitment fees set in place by government-to-government negotiations, and working to end the payment of these fees by workers and placing the burden on employers to pay these costs. When individuals take out a loan to pay recruitment fees, they become acutely vulnerable to exploitation. This calculus, one that disadvantages employees from the start, needs to change entirely. Employers must do more to build accessible paths for safe migration. We were encouraged by the government’s quick actions to investigate and arrest suspected traffickers following the horrendous killing of 26 Bangladeshis in Libya, and we hope these actions lead to institutional safeguards to ensure tragedies like these never happen again.

Fourth, investigate and prosecute traffickers who are compelling thousands of people to engage in commercial sex acts, including because they were born in a brothel. We call on the government to take immediate measures to carefully investigate reports of sex trafficking in licensed brothels, identify and protect the victims.

All of this is genuinely hard work, and in the midst of the global Covid-19 crisis, the fight has only become more urgent. Traffickers are capitalising on the chaos of the pandemic and we must hold them to account for their crimes. It is time for us all to prioritise the actions necessary to protect freedom. We are committed to our partnership with Bangladesh in the critically important task to abolish human trafficking.

Earl R. Miller is the United States Ambassador to Bangladesh. He is perhaps the only US ambassador in history to have investigated and arrested human traffickers as a former sworn law enforcement officer.

John Cotton Richmond is the United States Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. He has led anti-trafficking NGOs and served as a specialised human trafficking prosecutor before coming to the highest position in the United States federal government dedicated to the fight against trafficking.

The post What still needs to happen to win the fight against human trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A mother and daughter in Kenya. The daughter was a victim of sexual violence. Credit: Tara Carey, Equality Now

By Tsitsi Matekaire
LONDON, Jun 26 2020 (IPS)

In Malawi, Mary* was only 14 years old when she was recruited and trafficked to the city of Blantyre and sold for sex in a bar. A man had arrived in her village looking for girls to work as domestic helpers for families.

He appeared genuine and for Mary – and many girls who are out of school and living in poverty – this seemed a way out and a chance to earn money to support her family. She was living with her grandmother, who had hardly enough to buy food.

When Mary arrived in Blantyre, the promised work never materialized. Instead, the man sold her to a bar owner who in turn sold her for sex to his customers. Isolated and traumatized, Mary was trapped for over three months, and only escaped when the bar owner went away one night.

Although it has now been over two years since his arrest, the case is still pending in court. With no fixed time limit, the legal process has dragged on, leaving Mary waiting indefinitely and stuck in limbo. Meanwhile, the man who recruited her from the village has never been arrested.

Mary would have abandoned her fight for justice long ago had it not been for the support of Equality Now and our partner People Serving Girls at Risk, who have been providing psycho-social assistance to help Mary rebuild her life and navigate the difficult legal process.

This includes covering her transport costs and accompanying her to numerous court hearings that to date have resulted in only postponements, disappointment, and upset.

Worryingly, the many legal obstacles faced by Mary are neither uncommon in sex trafficking cases, nor are they unique to Malawi. Across Africa, traffickers who recruit, abuse, and sexually exploit vulnerable and impoverished women and children are going unpunished because governments and criminal justice systems are failing in their duty to hold perpetrators to account.

Take for instance, the horrific case of German national Bernhard Glaser, who was arrested in Ugandan in February 2019 and charged with multiple counts of sex trafficking and abusing girls aged 10 to 16 who were living at an unlicensed shelter Glaser had established ostensibly to “help” vulnerable children.

The story made international headlines and caused huge public uproar amongst Ugandans who were appalled at how this predator had betrayed the community’s trust and abused his position of power to sexually exploit many girls over a long period of time.

Despite widespread public outrage, more than a year after Glaser’s arrest, the case was still pending, delayed by multiple adjournments, with Glaser yet to even enter his plea. He died from cancer in April 2020, a day after being granted bail.

The girls never got their day in court. Nor has the Ugandan state addressed the issues making them vulnerable to exploitation or provided assistance to help them overcome their ordeal, instead leaving them at risk of further abuse.

Meanwhile, 61-year-old American Christian missionary Gregory Dow has pleaded guilty in a US court to sexually abusing girls in Kenya. Back in 1996, he was convicted in America for assault with intent to commit sexual abuse against a teenager and was sentenced to two years’ probation and ordered to register as a sex offender.

He later travelled to Kenya and in 2008 established a home for orphaned children where he violated girls in his care.

In 2017, Dow fled back to the United States after Kenyan authorities attempted to arrest him. He was eventually taken into custody after being located by FBI agents and US police.

A statement by the US Department of Justice said: “The defendant purported to be a Christian missionary who cared for these children and asked them to call him “Dad.” But instead of being a father figure, he preyed on their youth and vulnerability.”

Sexual exploitation is both a cause and a consequence of discrimination and the unequal status of women and girls. Adolescent girls are in an especially disadvantaged position, which is underpinned by multiple layers of discrimination directed at them for being young, female, and sexualized by society.

These structural inequalities exist across Africa, as they do in all the regions of the world. High levels of poverty alongside harmful cultural practices make girls particularly susceptible to sexual predators and traffickers, who take advantage of shortcomings in social safety nets, local child protection systems, law enforcement, and judicial processes.

The current pandemic exposes and exacerbates deep-rooted structural inequalities that run along the cultural fault lines of gender, sexuality, race, disability, and class. In the wake of COVID-19, an economic crisis is placing further burdens on underprivileged communities, with many suffering severe financial hardship.

The United Nations has warned human traffickers are becoming increasingly active, targeting impoverished women and children who have lost their income as a consequence of lockdown and social distancing measures introduced to limit the spread of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, school closures have interrupted the education of over 1.5 billion students worldwide, and protection systems have been severely disrupted. Predators are seeking to take advantage of youngsters spending more time unsupervised on the internet.

Across Africa, the expansion of inexpensive, high-speed internet and the growth in smartphone, tablet, and laptop ownership is swelling the number of children who can be targeted in the digital realm. Girls are particularly vulnerable to online grooming, sexual coercion, and sextortion, accounting for 90% of those featured in online child abuse materials.

Coupled with this is a disturbing global surge in demand for child abuse content. The worldwide impact of COVID-19 means people have been spending more time online, fuelling what was already a vast and rapidly expanding form of cybercrime intersecting national boundaries.

Exponential growth in the volume of digital content is making the cybersphere harder to police, and emboldened distributors of child sexual exploitation material are targeting mainstream platforms to reach wider audiences.

It is commendable that numerous African governments, including those in Kenya, Malawi, and Uganda, have enacted anti-trafficking and child protection laws that can be used to safeguard children and punish offenders. It is an important step. However, implementation is often very weak. Sex trafficking and sexual exploitation cases are not prioritized.

In many African countries, courts have closed, reduced, or adjusted their operations, making the situation even worse for girls seeking justice. Mounting backlogs of legal cases will further prolong judicial and administrative proceedings.

Without functioning judicial oversight, girls’ access to justice and protection from sexual exploitation will be undermined to an even greater extent.

It is more urgent than ever that the justice system responds to the realities of children whose rights have been violated. States must put in place measures to ensure that girls have access to protection and justice in meaningful ways during and after the pandemic.

Governments need to do more to ensure survivors of sexual exploitation are protected and supported in their recovery. When victims and their families cannot trust the courts to deliver justice, it undermines the power of the law and emboldens offenders to continue exploiting and abusing with impunity.

 

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Excerpt:

Tsitsi Matekaire is a London-based human rights lawyer and Global Lead for Equality Now’s End Sex Trafficking program

The post African Governments Failing Survivors of Child Sexual Exploitation appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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

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By External Source
Fiji, Jun 25 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Standing in the middle of a field around a withered plant, the Pacific Community’s Plant Health Doctors conducted their first virtual meeting as they continue their work on the frontline by providing vital support for farmers in Fiji and the region.

Plant Health Doctor Mr Mani Mua conducted the virtual meeting from a farm located in Baulevu, in the Province of Naitasiri in Fiji accompanied by the Fiji Ministry of Agriculture Extension Officers and farmers from the area, linking up with the regional plant health doctor network and plant health experts from Australia and New Zealand.

SPC, through its Land Resource Division (LRD) has been training plant health doctors and conducting plant health clinics since launching the pilot program in the Solomon Islands in March 2012 as Agriculture Extension officers continue to face challenges in delivering effective services to large volumes of farmers in rural and remote communities.

To overcome these challenges, a new, free phone application, the Pacific Pest and Pathogens app was developed for use by agriculture extension officers and farmers which enables them to quickly diagnose and get treatment advice for pest and disease threats to horticulture in Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs). Adding to the app’s capacity to provide instant assistance to farmers is the addition of a new “WhatsApp” social media group in late 2017. Using WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, an extension officer – or farmer – can instantly send a text message or photo seeking assistance from the group’s growing number of experts.

“Agriculture extension officers are helping farmers to identify diseases and fight pests with the help of the handy mobile phone app which contains 350 factsheets and is particularly helpful in providing information to people in remote locations. In other words, using the app and WhatsApp, we as extension and research officers can be in many places at one time and more useful to farmers than ever before,” explained Mr Mua.

With exchange of real time information and visual inspection of diseased plants from the farm, plant health doctors and extension officers are able to provide remedies to the farmers and collect samples for testing and analysis. During the plant health clinics, farmers from the local area bring samples of plants from their farm which are infected by disease or infested with pests, for diagnosis and ideas for management.

“At the same time, we are also building our data base on local farmers and their needs. During the clinics, farmer information is collected and pests and pathogens within the locality can be identified, isolated and treated before it spreads or ruins entire seasonal crops. This is a life line for farmers,” added Mr Mua.

For a farmer like Mr Saqa Dewan whose livelihood is dependent on his seasonal crops, having plant health doctors at his door steps and providing their service has been a game changer.

“We often continue to experiment with various remedies when our crops are infested and diseased, but it is expensive and doesn’t work. Now, for the first time, we are able to learn from the extension officers, be involved in diagnosis and lean the use of proper pesticides and other remedies we can use so that our hard work does not go to waste,”Mr Dewan.

Implemented by the Pacific Community, the project focuses on integrated crop management (ICM) and identifying plant health management strategies, which has been funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) with support from the University of Queensland.

Source: South Pacific Community SPC

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