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.
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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.
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
The post Field Connections- How technology is supporting Pacific agriculture appeared first on Inter Press Service.
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 25 2020 (IPS)
Katharina Pistor’s recent book, The Code of Capital: How the law creates wealth and inequality shows how law has been crucial to the creation of capital, and how capital continues to survive, evolve and enhance its ability to ‘make money’, or secure wealth legally, i.e., through the law.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Legal coding makes capitalPistor sees ‘legal coding’ — e.g., via collateral, trust, corporate governance, bankruptcy, contracts and other property laws — as means for assets to become capital, creating wealth for their holders. When “coded in law”, even “dirt” can become a valuable asset, capable of enriching its owners.
For her, institutions of private law privilege those with capital by ensuring: priority, against competing claims; durability, enabling capital to grow in value; convertibility, ‘locking in’ earlier gains; and universality, ensuring that such privileges extend transnationally.
With the emergence and growing significance of new financial products and services, intellectual property and data access in the early 21st century, the evolution of capital increasingly involves new, especially intangible assets, including debt.
New combinations and prioritization of property rights and contracts have created complex debt products, including collateralized debt obligations and credit debt swaps, the bases for much contemporary ‘financialization’.
Private interests’ flexible use of such legal institutions has been crucial to capital accumulation, but Pistor notes that the increasing private use of law also undermines its role and legitimacy as a public good, and hence, the very ‘rule of law’ itself.
Legal coding is therefore not only about how assets become capital, but also about how capital creates wealth, and laws enable such transformations involving property, ownership and entitlements.
As “capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys”, codifying capital in law worsens inequality between capital and others, especially labour.
Role of states
State sanctioned judicial processes transform assets into capital. Legal coding thus “owes its power to law…backed and enforced by a state”. The state has thus been crucial to legally coding assets as capital, using existing as well as new laws and judicial precedents so crucial to common law.
States and other relevant legal institutions also redefine the law — e.g., through the legislative process, catering to the evolving nature and needs of capital, especially its most successful lobbyists — by amending existing laws and creating new laws.
The state and other social institutions ensure the legitimacy of the ‘rule of law’ by mitigating and managing its adverse effects, as well as by resolving problematic ambiguities and uncertainties.
The legal profession has been the main agency of legal coding, ‘making’ the law. Lawyers contribute to its evolution — by drafting and thus determining the nature, scope and impact of law — and defend the law by legitimizing it, even when challenging, criticizing and reforming the law.
Despite relying on the authority of law, common or legislated, many lawyers go to great lengths to avoid taking disputes to courts, the traditional guardians of the law, instead preferring or even insisting on private settlements or arbitration.
Crossing borders
The accumulation of capital has long been transnational, closely interlinked with the globalization of recent decades. However, legal coding is primarily national, within the realms of particular states.
Hence, the legal reach of capital does not extend to other jurisdictions except when provided for by imperial or colonial jurisdiction, and by international treaty, convention and coercion, including the use of military force, in the post-colonial era.
With globalization, private interests can increasingly choose legal systems to suit their needs, i.e., engage in jurisdiction or ‘forum shopping’. Limiting the ability to opt in and out of legal systems is hence vital for state legitimacy and societal capacity for collective self-governance.
Inter-state collaboration, among ‘independent’ central banks not beholden to national governments, or through multilateral institutions — such as the World Trade Organization, trade agreements, investment and other treaties — have thus become crucial means for extending legal coding beyond national jurisdictions.
As national judicial decisions are not typically considered extraterritorial in scope, the legal community has extended arbitration transnationally while trying to ensure — through convention as much as legislation — that national laws and courts recognize, uphold and enforce the outcomes of such private arrangements.
With new technology, capital is trying to protect and extend its privileges without conventional legal coding, e.g., new blockchain applications suggest that some digital innovations can provide attributes required by capital.
Pistor observes that ‘digital coders’ — those who develop digital code — have set their own rules, transcending national boundaries, without recourse to the law. Until now, however, digital code is still far from an adequate substitute for legal code, with digital ownership, rights and conflict resolution still based on existing laws.
Law as history
Pistor’s own academic background in comparative law appears crucial to her appreciation of how various societies have coped with different challenges, including the normative or ethical choices involved.
Her legal history of capital considers different perspectives and influences. While legal coding has been mis-used by asset owners, lawyers and states, it can also help address such abuses.
The future of capital rests on evolving complex relations and interlinkages among laws, the stakeholders involved as well as related ideologies and perspectives.
Professor Pistor has greatly advanced our shared dialectical understanding of how legal codes — essentially ideological constructs — consolidate, define and transform social relations in order to advance, extend and accelerate capital accumulation, in other words, make history.
The post The Best Law Capital Can Buy appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Poor families can seldom afford the cost of private pre-schooling. They rely on free education provided by NGOs like BRAC to give their children a leg-up in life. Credit: Mahmuddun Rashed Manik / IPS
By Asif Saleh
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jun 25 2020 (IPS)
Nazia has a herd of 5 cows. She has two daughters in secondary education, a seat on the Village Council, a savings account and a permanent home. Nazia has dignity, security and prospects beyond poverty. This is Nazia’s story because alongside her commitment and conviction to create a better life, she benefited directly from the UK government, and its global leadership in the drive to end extreme poverty.
Nazia is no longer Left Behind. And neither are millions of fellow Bangladeshis, previously struggling to survive, far below the international poverty line. Over the last two decades, the UK government, in partnership with BRAC, one of the world’s foremost NGOs, has directly enabled over 2 million of the very poorest families on the planet to graduate from poverty. And for the long-term; 97% of households continue to show dramatically improved lives and livelihoods 5-7 years after they leave poverty. We are immensely proud of this innovative, impactful Partnership – which delivers equally for the UK taxpayer and the poorest families across Bangladesh.
In fact, this ‘Ultra Poor Graduation’ approach is, this week, receiving the Audacious Award, and over 60 million USD, in recognition of its truly transformative potential. Without support from the UK government, with their laser-like focus on impact, appetite for innovation and determination to Leave No one Behind, there would be no Audacious Award for this Initiative. In fact, without support from the UK government, BRAC wouldn’t have the audacious ambition of reaching out beyond Bangladesh, to millions more of the world’s poorest people.
Much has been written in recent days on the merger of the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign Office. Undoubtedly, an independent DFID has delivered. Generation-changing impact on the global issues that matter most. But the new Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) can too. It must. The progress on ending extreme poverty, preventable child deaths, gender equality and climate change, as well as DFID’s world-class reputation on these issues, was too hard won to be side-lined. As an organisation born in the Global South and one of the UK government’s largest development partners, BRAC has seen first-hand the ability of UK Aid to make transformative change.
We choose to believe that the UK government takes incredibly seriously, and won’t consider reneging on, its commitment to Agenda 2030. We choose to believe that this merger could result in greater impact on poverty, combining the best of DFID and FCO expertise, ideals and standards to reaffirm, rather than reduce, the UK government’s contribution to the international community.
In announcing the creation of the new FCDO, the Prime Minister has continued to commit to 0.7% of GNI being used to drive development. The need to invest this budget – which, as a result of global recession, will be significantly less than in recent years – with a focus on impact, value for money and the most vulnerable, is more important than ever before. DFID has rigorous analysis of the ‘best buys’ for development. The new FCDO should trust the evidence, embrace the expertise and lean into the legacy of the UK government as a world-leader in saving, and changing, the lives of the world’s poorest people. Supporting the governments and communities of the Global South to enable families to survive, and thrive, should always be a central, and celebrated, component of the UK’s international leadership.
The COVID-19 crisis represents a moment of reckoning for our shared global commitment to ‘Leave No one Behind’. It also represents the perfect opportunity – and responsibility – for the new FCDO to prove its intent and impact in ‘Building Back Better’ with a priority on the poorest. The international community – both government and civil society – will expect, and require, no less, in line with DFID’s track record, and the true ideals of ‘Global Britain’.
This story was originally published by Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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Excerpt:
Asif Saleh is Executive Director of BRAC Bangladesh
The progress on ending extreme poverty, preventable child deaths, gender equality and climate change was too hard won to be side-lined
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By Sabina Devkota
DOLAKHA, Nepal, Jun 25 2020 (IPS)
While growing up in Lele village in southern Lalitpur, Pratap Thapa watched his parents plant maize on their terrace farm and wait for the rains. He often wondered how much of their drudgery could be reduced if water could be brought up from a nearby river.
Thapa went on to study engineering at Delft University in The Netherlands, where he obsessed about how to solve the problem of irrigation for his family in the mountains of Nepal in a cheap and sustainable way.
With his Dutch classmate, he invented a unique pump that derived its energy from the kinetic energy of the flow of water, and used it to pump water up. Like all breakthroughs, it was the sheer simplicity of the technology that made it so applicable.
Called Barsha Pump (after the Nepali word for ‘rain’) Thapa’s invention won him several awards, including the Phillips Innovation Award and Bearing Point Award. This was followed by the registration of the company aQysta in the Netherlands in 2013 to promote the pumps.
It quickly caught on in Europe, but despite success there, Thapa had designed it with Nepal in mind. So, six years ago he brought a couple of prototypes and successfully tested them to irrigate nearly 130 hectares of flats above the Indrawati, Trisuli and Tama Kosi rivers.
“It’s ironic that almost two-thirds of Nepal’s farms depend on the rains when we are a country of 6,000 rivers,” says Thapa, who studied industrial engineering in India and did his Masters at the Institute of Engineering in Lalitpur.
Today, 131 Barsha Pumps have been deployed across 30 districts with subsidies to farmers from the government’s Agriculture Engineering Directorate, District Agriculture Development Office, and international agencies. Depending on capacity, the pump costs between Rs160,000 – 280,000.
The beauty of the Barsha Pump is that it uses the natural flow of water and doesn’t need fuel. Therefore it does not emit greenhouse gases, and has zero operating cost.
The pump has a special spiral pipe where the water helps compress the air, which in turn lifts water up to a maximum height of 20m or a distance of 2km.
Yuvaraj Shrestha owns a one-hectare farm on a flat above the Tama Kosi River in Ramechhap, and used to make Rs500,000 a year selling vegetables. His main problem was dependance on the rains, even though a glacier-fed river flowed just below the farm.
But in the year after he installed a subsidised Barsha Pump, he made more than Rs3 million in profit from his farm. The pump brings up 12,000 litres of water a day from the Tama Kosi. The flats along the Tama Kosi that used to be fallow in the dry season are now lush green all year round.
“It all started with this pump, this is the key to my success,” said Shrestha.
In Sindhuli district, Arjun Kumar Khatri from the village of Ratomate was practicing subsistence rain-fed agriculture. Now, he is lifting water from Sun Kosi River, 14m below his farm, with a Barsha Pump. “I didn’t believe a pump could lift water without electricity until I saw one myself, our lives are transformed,” he says.
Barsha Pumps are now bringing this miracle to 12 countries including Indonesia, Spain, Turkey and Zambia. Thapa keeps modifying the design with feedback from farmers.
This story was originally published by The Nepali Times
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the ongoing conflict and continued prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Mali, creates a worrying picture for the West African nation. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS
By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2020 (IPS)
The current coronavirus pandemic is having a profound affect on children in conflict zones — with girls especially being at higher risk of violence and sexual health concerns.
“For adolescent girls specifically, these disruptions can have profound consequences, including increased rates of pregnancy and child, early, and forced marriage,” Shannon Kowalski, director of advocacy and policy at the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), told IPS.
Kowalski shared her concerns this week after an open debate on children and armed conflict at the United Nations, where experts shared the progress made in the efforts to pull children out of conflict-ridden circumstances, as well as how the current pandemic has made the issue more complex.
Virginia Gamba, special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed conflict, said her team had documented 25,000 grave violations against children.
Henrietta Fore, executive director of U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said at the Jun. 23 briefing that although the organisation had rescued almost 37,000 children in the past three years, there remains massive concerns about the number of children still in dire situations.
She cited UNICEF’s monitoring and reporting mechanism statistics over the last 15 years that reflect this reality.
UNICEF documented a total of 250,000 cases of grave violations against children in armed conflict, including:
The numbers reflect a grave — and timely – reality. On May 12, terrorists blew up a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing 24 people, including two infants. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has since pulled out from the hospital citing security concerns.
This only deepens the problem for marginalised populations such as women and children. Fore said children in conflict zones who are now further caught in the pandemic are at a “double disadvantage”, given that they’re likely finding themselves at “increased risk of violence, abuse, child marriage and recruitment to armed groups”.
A general increase in conflictExperts say there has been a general increase in organised violence in various parts of the world under the pandemic. Sam Jones, communications manager at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a data collection and crisis mapping project, told IPS that they’ve documented state repression and consequential violence in some places under the pandemic, while in some other cases, “warring parties have used the pandemic as an opportunity to escalate campaigns or push the advantage”.
Jones’ concern was reflected in Fore’s speech on Jun. 23, where she pointed out that when states manipulate this kind of crisis, it’s the children who are hardest hit.
“Far too often, parties in conflict are using the pandemic and the need to reach and support children…for political advantage,” she said. “Children are not pawns or bargaining chips – this must stop.”
Certain areas have seen what Jones said is the largest increase in organised violence since the pandemic broke out around the world: Libya, Yemen, India, Mali and Uganda.
For all the countries, except Uganda, it was a mere intensification of already existing violence; in Uganda, the violence came in the form of government restrictions.
“By mid-April, ACLED had already recorded more than 1,000 total fatalities from conflict in Mali. Over the first three months of the year, we recorded nearly 300 civilian fatalities specifically, a 90 percent increase compared to the previous quarter,” he said.
“At best, violence has continued despite the pandemic, while at worst both armed groups and state forces could be using it as an opportunity to ramp up activity and target civilians,” he added.
How conflict affects children and girlsThe crisis in Mali is especially of importance as human rights advocates released a statement of concern just a day after the briefing, about Mali’s failure to curb female genital mutilation (FGM).
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) raised alarms about the report released by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which stated more than 75 percent of girls under the age of 14 had gone through the practice as of 2015.
Among other findings, the committee found that government has “failed to guarantee victims of female genital mutilation access to adequate and affordable health care, including sexual and reproductive health care”.
Concerns raised by experts such as Fore and Kowalski, when put next to the data about the ongoing conflict and continued prevalence of FGM in Mali, creates a worrying picture for the West African nation.
The committee report found that the women and girls in Mali already had limited access to sexual and reproductive health.
Meanwhile, Fore pointed out that the pandemic has exacerbated the lack of access for women and girls in countries that were already struggled to provide access. This raises the questions about how, on top of being a country in conflict, the pandemic is further exacerbating the health of girls who suffered FGM in Mali.
Fore said the current pandemic further adds layers to the crisis surrounding children in armed conflict.
“As the pandemic spreads, healthcare facilities have been damaged or destroyed by conflict, services have been suspended, children are missing out of basic medical care including vaccination, and water; sanitary systems have been damaged or destroyed altogether making it impossible for children to wash their hands,” she said.
Meanwhile, Kowalski of IWHC raised concerns about U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent decision to pull funding from the World Health Organisation, and what that means for girls caught in conflict.
“In addition, in most countries affected by COVID-19 we are experiencing increases in gender-based violence, reduced access to contraception, abortion, and other reproductive health services, and a decrease in the quality of maternal health care — all which are intensified for women and girls in conflict,” she said.
Gamba, after sharing the statistics of children suffering in conflict, ended her speech on an important note.
“Behind these figures are boys and girls with stolen childhoods and shattered dreams, and there are families and communities torn apart by violence and suffering,” she said. “The only thing children and communities have in common today is their hope for peace, a better life and a better future. We must rise to meet that expectation.”
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By External Source
Jun 25 2020 (IPS-Partners)
UNESCO launches a global campaign challenging our perception of normality. The 2’20” film relies on facts to prove its point – facts about the world before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Put together, these facts make us question our ideas about what is “normal”, suggesting that we have accepted the unacceptable for far too long. Our previous reality cannot be considered normal any longer, now is the time to make a change. It all starts with Education, Science, Culture and Information.
The post UNESCO Campaign – The next normal appeared first on Inter Press Service.
”As a New Yorker and first-generation American, I have the pleasure and great honor to serve as the Commissioner for International Affairs for the most global city in the world. New York City is home to the largest diplomatic community in the world – 193 Permanent Missions, 116 Consulates and the headquarters of the United Nations”-- Penny Abeywardena, Commissioner.
By Dr. Palitha Kohona
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jun 25 2020 (IPS)
The recent approach of the US to the UN and its agencies has left many shaking their heads. The US, under President Roosevelt, played a seminal role in creating the UN and its key agencies after World War II and subsequently nurturing them.
But the Organization that Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold once said was created not with the intention of taking mankind to heaven but to prevent it from going to hell, is today itself mired in hellish doubts about its future, particularly with the US, its physical host.
The biggest funder and the one remaining global super power, the US has been in a foul mood, pulling out of the Human Rights Council (HRC), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and ceasing cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO) while threatening funding cuts.
Despite the many criticisms leveled against it, the UN has chalked up many global successes. To begin with, despite being unable to eliminate regional conflagrations, it has, inter alia, succeeded in avoiding a global war, contributed to improving living standards and advanced the rule of law and respect for human rights.
The US for its part, a key architect of the UN, has successfully maneuvered the Organization on countless occasions to achieve its global agenda and policy goals, while maintaining a mantle of legal legitimacy and moral justification.
Following the decolonization process and the emergence of other economic and military power centres, especially China, the Organization has not always been at the beck and call of the Western alliance that has irked the West, in particular the US.
While using the UN and its agencies to castigate others, e.g., Sri Lanka, North Korea, Iran, etc over human rights issues, the US has had no qualms about using its muscle to block a recent resolution tabled by the 54 member African Group at the Human Rights Council on black deaths at the hands of the police in the US. Some of its allies, including Australia and the Netherlands supported the US, as it sought to suppress the international criticism.
This precedent set at the HRC may be difficult to manage in the future even when trying to raise genuine human rights issues. In addition, the US has studiously used its long arm to block any action by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on violations of humanitarian standards by US or Israeli military personnel while readily supporting such action in the case of African leaders.
The UN Impact Report 2016 is a cost-benefit analysis of hosting the UN in New York City. Credit: Office of the Commissioner for International Affairs, New York City
The Security Council, with US support, has referred the leaders of Libya and Sudan to the International Criminal Court. The targeting of African leaders caused some African countries to threaten to leave the ICC.
We are reminded that the US insisted on Article 98 of the Rome Statute which prohibits the ICC from requesting assistance or the surrender of a person to the ICC, if to do so would require the state to “act inconsistently” with its obligations under international law or international agreements unless the state or the third-party state waives the immunity or grants cooperation.
The U.S., having concluded over 120 bilateral immunity agreements (BIA) prohibiting such a transfer, even if the state is a member of the Rome Statute, has interpreted this article to mean that its citizens cannot be transferred to the ICC even if the state is a member of the Rome Statute.
The Bush Administration claimed that the BIAs were drafted out of concern that existing agreements—particularly the status of forces agreements or status of mission agreements (SOFAs or SOMAs)—did not sufficiently protect Americans from the jurisdiction of the ICC.
The United States, along with Israel and Sudan, having previously signed the Rome Statute has formally has given notice of its intention not to ratify the Rome Statute while United States policy concerning the ICC has varied widely.
The Clinton Administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit it for Senate ratification. The George W. Bush Administration, the U.S. administration at the time of the ICC’s founding, stated that it would not join the ICC.
President Trump has said, “As far as America is concerned, the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority. The ICC claims near-universal jurisdiction over the citizens of every country, violating all principles of justice, fairness, and due process. We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.”
In April 2019, the United States revoked the visa of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, in anticipation of a later investigation into possible war crimes committed by U.S. forces during the War in Afghanistan. The investigation was authorized in March 2020. In June 2020, Donald Trump authorized sanctions against ICC in retaliation.
In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act (ASPA), which contained a number of provisions, including authorization for the President to “use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court”, and also prohibitions on the United States providing military aid to countries which had ratified the treaty establishing the court.
The US has also denied entry visas to certain individuals to attend meetings of the world body, including senior officials from Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Venezuela, North Korea, Russia and Cuba, among others.
The US will be severely challenged if it seeks to justify its actions as being consistent with its obligations under the Head Quarters Agreement with the UN. (HQ Agreement, 11 UNTS 1).
With the US in the present confrontational mood, and the real risk of an intractable conflict between the UN and the US, Covid19 provides a convenient way out with which the UN will be comfortable.
The members of the world body can now opt to address the organization through video link. An entry visa will no longer be sine qua non for the purpose of entering the US and addressing the UN.
This mechanism, of course, will not sit comfortably with the New York hotels and restaurants, not to mention the hire car companies.
The post The US & the UN — A Looming Confrontation appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Excerpt:
Dr Palitha Kohona is a former Chief of the Treaty Section in the UN Office of Legal Affairs; a one-time chairman of the General’s Assembly’s Legal Committee; and former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations
The post The US & the UN — A Looming Confrontation appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Gita Gopinath is Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
By Gita Gopinath
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 24 2020 (IPS)
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed economies into a Great Lockdown, which helped contain the virus and save lives, but also triggered the worst recession since the Great Depression. Over 75 percent of countries are now reopening at the same time as the pandemic is intensifying in many emerging market and developing economies. Several countries have started to recover. However, in the absence of a medical solution, the strength of the recovery is highly uncertain and the impact on sectors and countries uneven.
Compared to our April World Economic Outlook forecast, we are now projecting a deeper recession in 2020 and a slower recovery in 2021. Global output is projected to decline by -4.9 percent in 2020, 1.9 percentage points below our April forecast, followed by a partial recovery, with growth at 5.4 percent in 2021.
These projections imply a cumulative loss to the global economy over two years (2020–21) of over $12 trillion from this crisis.
The downgrade from April reflects worse than anticipated outcomes in the first half of this year, an expectation of more persistent social distancing into the second half of this year, and damage to supply potential.
High uncertainty
A high degree of uncertainty surrounds this forecast, with both upside and downside risks to the outlook. On the upside, better news on vaccines and treatments, and additional policy support can lead to a quicker resumption of economic activity. On the downside, further waves of infections can reverse increased mobility and spending, and rapidly tighten financial conditions, triggering debt distress. Geopolitical and trade tensions could damage fragile global relationships at a time when trade is projected to collapse by around 12 percent.
A recovery like no other
This crisis like no other will have a recovery like no other.
First, the unprecedented global sweep of this crisis hampers recovery prospects for export-dependent economies and jeopardizes the prospects for income convergence between developing and advanced economies. We are projecting a synchronized deep downturn in 2020 for both advanced economies (-8 percent) and emerging market and developing economies (-3 percent; -5 percent if excluding China), and over 95 percent of countries are projected to have negative per capita income growth in 2020. The cumulative hit to GDP growth over 2020–21 for emerging market and developing economies, excluding China, is expected to exceed that in advanced economies.
Second, as countries reopen, the pick-up in activity is uneven. On the one hand, pent-up demand is leading to a surge in spending in some sectors like retail, while, on the other hand, contact-intensive services sectors like hospitality, travel, and tourism remain depressed. Countries heavily reliant on such sectors will likely be deeply impacted for a prolonged period.
Third, the labor market has been severely hit and at record speed, and particularly so for lower-income and semi-skilled workers who do not have the option of teleworking. With activity in labor-intensive sectors like tourism and hospitality expected to remain subdued, a full recovery in the labor market may take a while, worsening income inequality and increasing poverty.
Exceptional policy support has helped
On the positive side, the recovery is benefitting from exceptional policy support, particularly in advanced economies, and to a lesser extent in emerging market and developing economies that are more constrained by fiscal space. Global fiscal support now stands at over $10 trillion and monetary policy has eased dramatically through interest rate cuts, liquidity injections, and asset purchases. In many countries, these measures have succeeded in supporting livelihoods and prevented large-scale bankruptcies, thus helping to reduce lasting scars and aiding a recovery.
This exceptional support, particularly by major central banks, has also driven a strong recovery in financial conditions despite grim real outcomes. Equity prices have rebounded, credit spreads have narrowed, portfolio flows to emerging market and developing economies have stabilized, and currencies that sharply depreciated have strengthened. By preventing a financial crisis, policy support has helped avert worse real outcomes. At the same time, the disconnect between real and financial markets raises concerns of excessive risk taking and is a significant vulnerability.
We are not out of the woods
Given the tremendous uncertainty, policymakers should remain vigilant and policies will need to adapt as the situation evolves. Substantial joint support from fiscal and monetary policy must continue for now, especially in countries where inflation is projected to remain subdued. At the same time, countries should ensure proper fiscal accounting and transparency, and that monetary policy independence is not compromised.
A priority is to manage health risks even as countries reopen. This requires continuing to build health capacity, widespread testing, tracing, isolation, and practicing safe distancing (and wearing masks). These measures help contain the spread of the virus, reassure the public that new outbreaks can be dealt with in an orderly fashion, and minimize economic disruptions. The international community must further expand financial assistance and expertise to countries with limited health care capacity. More needs to be done to ensure adequate and affordable production and distribution of vaccines and treatments when they become available.
In countries where activities are being severely constrained by the health crisis, people directly impacted should receive income support through unemployment insurance, wage subsidies, and cash transfers, and impacted firms should be supported via tax deferrals, loans, credit guarantees, and grants. To more effectively reach the unemployed in countries with large informal sectors, digital payments will need to be scaled up and complemented with in-kind support for food, medicine, and other household staples channeled through local governments and community organizations.
In countries that have begun reopening and the recovery is underway, policy support will need to gradually shift toward encouraging people to return to work, and to facilitating a reallocation of workers to sectors with growing demand and away from shrinking sectors. This could take the form of spending on worker training and hiring subsidies targeted at workers that face greater risk of long-term unemployment. Supporting a recovery will also involve actions to repair balance sheets and address debt overhangs. This will require strong insolvency frameworks and mechanisms for restructuring and disposing of distressed debt.
Policy support should also gradually shift from being targeted to being more broad-based. Where fiscal space permits, countries should undertake green public investment to accelerate the recovery and support longer-term climate goals. To protect the most vulnerable, expanded social safety net spending will be needed for some time.
The international community must ensure that developing economies can finance critical spending through provision of concessional financing, debt relief and grants; and that emerging market and developing economies have access to international liquidity, via ensuring financial market stability, central bank swap lines, and deployment of a global financial safety net.
This crisis will also generate medium-term challenges. Public debt is projected to reach this year the highest level in recorded history in relation to GDP, in both advanced and emerging market and developing economies. Countries will need sound fiscal frameworks for medium-term consolidation, through cutting back on wasteful spending, widening the tax base, minimizing tax avoidance, and greater progressivity in taxation in some countries.
At the same time, this crisis also presents an opportunity to accelerate the shift to a more productive, sustainable, and equitable growth through investment in new green and digital technologies and wider social safety nets.
Global cooperation is ever so important to deal with a truly global crisis. All efforts should be made to resolve trade and technology tensions, while improving the multilateral rules-based trading system. The IMF will continue to do all it can to ensure adequate international liquidity, provide emergency financing, support the G20 debt service suspension initiative, and provide advice and support to countries during this unprecedented crisis.
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The post Reopening from the Great Lockdown: Uneven and Uncertain Recovery appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Excerpt:
Gita Gopinath is Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
The post Reopening from the Great Lockdown: Uneven and Uncertain Recovery appeared first on Inter Press Service.