Africa

Regional efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 have so far proven successful. Image Credit: Pacific Community

By William W. Ellis
TORONTO, May 29 2020 (IPS)

By now, the impact of COVID19 on our daily lives has been well documented, especially in advanced economies. Anxiety about the future continues to grow everywhere. Much of the corporate news coverage we consume has focused on the toll this pandemic will take on mainland countries. Often neglected, however, is the unique position Pacific Island States find themselves in.

Globally, there are close to 6 million confirmed cases of COVID19. According to the Pacific Community (SPC), there are 292 cases of the virus across its membership – a truly small number, considering Papua New Guinea’s population of 8.6 million people. Indeed, many of the SPC’s members are seemingly untouched by the global pandemic – as of May 6th, for example, American Samoa had no cases of the virus at all.

Despite the current picture, the Pacific Islands share unique challenges. Small in size, geographically remote, vulnerable to extreme environmental shock, and limited in economies of scale, these islands could be devastated by COVID19.

Over 80% of Papua New Guinea’s population, for example, reside in rural regions where health care infrastructure is limited. Clinics frequently run out of supplies and 4,000 nurses recently went on strike due to a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). In the outer islands and in rural villages across the Pacific, basic services and access to intensive care or fully equipped hospitals is impossible. As reported in The Guardian, Vanuatu only has two ventilators for a population of 300,000 people. Only a few Pacific nations can test effectively for COVID19 and processing samples through Australia, New Zealand or the United States may delay results.

Infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases are also a worrisome factor – the Pacific has the world’s highest levels of Type 2 diabetes and suffer from exceptionally high levels of obesity. These chronic conditions tend to place people in death’s path when exposed to the virus.

Samoan nurses on duty during national measles outbreak. Credit: Pacific Community

Furthermore, Pacific Island culture revolves around large extended families, exacerbating the risk of community transmission. Social isolation may have worked in large, industrial nations, but is exceedingly difficult to implement in the Pacific diaspora. And the U.N. recently warned that misinformation about the virus could be another deadly risk for these people. A high-profile malpractice scandal in 2018 destroyed public trust in the Samoan health care system, contributing to low vaccination rates during a 2019 measles outbreak. The mistrust was also stoked by anti-vaccination misinformation campaigners overseas.

The economic impact of this global crisis is already being felt in the Pacific as well. Reliant on the export of commodities to shuttered buyers overseas, some countries face massive challenges as demand crashes. Travel and tourism – a principal economic driver – have come to a screeching halt, and countries like Fiji and Vanuatu could see their GDP fall by almost 50%. Unemployment figures are likely to be staggering as well, as close to 40% of the latter’s workforce is dependent on tourism.

Dr. Stuart Minchin, Director-General SPC. Credit: Pacific Community

There is a silver lining to all these issues. According to Dr. Stuart Minchin, Director General of the Pacific Community (SPC), the region is no stranger to disasters and challenges, having endured cyclones and the recent measles epidemic. In a recent interview he suggested that the community has “very good regional mechanisms in place to help countries deal with these issues, and more importantly to recover from these issues when they occur.”

The SPC is the principal scientific and technical organization in the Pacific region. An international development organization, owned and governed by its 26 country and territory members, the SPC’s mission is to work for the well-being of Pacific people through effective and innovative application of science and knowledge, guided by a deep understanding of Pacific Island contexts and cultures.

Working closely with the World Health Organization (WHO) in the region, the SPC has been supporting countries through this global crisis. In Dr. Minchin’s words, “with this invisible enemy we’re facing, we’re only as strong as our weakest link, so we have to work together as a region to make sure we can tackle this crisis together.”

“It is important to recognize that this crisis is not going to be over quickly. The health emergency may pass, but there will likely be an economic impact on local economies in the region over quite an extensive period of time. It is therefore really important that we help the countries and territories plan for that.

It is not going to reduce the importance of anything SPC does. In fact, the importance of the work that we do is going to be heightened because the countries will have to deal with challenges in terms of food security, access to water and sanitation, education, livelihoods and the continuing impacts of climate change. There are going to be risks around social and human rights issues as well, so we really need to be focused on how we help countries face these potential crises.”

The approach taken by the SPC reflects the Pacific region’s familial culture and fortitude. So far, the region has warded off the virus by imposing strict quarantines and taking advantage of their isolation from the rest of the world. For example, the Marshall Islands was one of the first countries in the world to impose a travel ban in January. And whilst Samoa’s health system is still strained in the aftermath of the measles outbreak, it has been a clear influence on the region, prompting swift reaction to the threat of COVID19.

As Dr. Minchin has said, “Pacific Countries have done a wonderful job in acting quickly and decisively to protect us but making a difference on how we act and interact every day is in our hands.”

 

 

 

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The post COVID19 and Its Impact on Pacific Island States appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Athletics superstars Eliud Kipchoge, Kenenisa Bekele, Joshua Cheptegei and Geoffrey Kamworor will take part in a worldwide virtual team relay marathon next month.

Protest against anti-abortion law in Opole, Poland. Credit: Iga Lubczańska.

By External Source
BEIRUT / GENEVA, May 28 2020 (IPS)

Health systems around the world are prioritising health care services and equipment to treat people diagnosed with Covid-19, which means that many procedures deemed to be elective and non-essential are being suspended or simply not provided. Abortion, for instance, has been categorised as a non-essential health service by some States, while others have removed certain restrictions to accessing abortion.

To find out more about the current state of women and girls’ reproductive rights, and how activists are responding, CRIN spoke with Paola Salwan Daher, the Senior Global Advocacy Advisor at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Some countries are trying to impose restrictions on access to abortion, including the US and Poland. Can you tell us more about these measures, and how is the Center for Reproductive Rights and its partners responding?

The Covid-19 response has created a lot of violations of sexual and reproductive health rights, including in the US where we are seeing a lot of bills being pushed to try to restrict abortions. States like Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Idaho and others have decided that abortion is a non-essential health service. That is something that we are challenging in court.

In the majority of cases courts have sided with us, but it has happened that courts haven’t. We continue pushing against these restrictions because we are talking about States that already have very shaky access to abortion with very limited options for women and very few clinics that have remained open.

In Europe, Poland is using the pandemic to further a very conservative agenda and is instrumentalising the crisis to cut down on women’s rights. Our partners there have raised the alarm because the parliament was set to discuss two harmful bills: one of them was looking at removing a ground to access abortion, another is looking at criminalising providers of sexual reproductive rights services.

Online advocacy is an issue in Poland because it was the mass mobilisation of women in the streets that was able to stop the bills previously. There’s a reason why the government is reactivating these bills now, as it’s not possible for women to be present on the streets.

 

Has it been happening elsewhere?

We know that there were instances of hospitals in Sao Paolo, Brazil that are not categorising abortions as an essential medical service. It’s also happening in other countries but it’s been less documented than cases in the US and Poland.

You also have very unhelpful speeches made by people in power like the President of El Salvador who decided to reiterate that he is against abortion while commenting on the crisis. Another example is the Pope coming out and stating that he wants to protect the world from war and abortion. Surely they have other priorities they should be focusing on instead of policing women’s bodies.

There are also good examples where States are saying that abortion is an essential health service. In France, activists have been able to push the goverment to extend the [time] limit to access medical abortion, extending it from seven to nine weeks in response to the delay in accessing services because of how the health system is overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases. In the UK, they are also facilitating access to medical abortion via tele-medicine.

 

In your opinion, why is abortion seen as a non-essential procedure?

Where there have been attempts at taking off abortion from the list of essential services, it has been done mainly in places where abortion access was already restricted and the Covid-19 crisis provided an excellent political opportunity to further restrict access. Drugs used for medical abortion are listed as essential medicines by the World Health Organization (WHO), [which] reiterated the message contained in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), that every woman has the recognised human right to decide freely and responsibly, without coercion and violence, the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. Access to legal and safe abortion is essential for the realisation of these rights. Not recognising the essential character of access to abortion care is to go against international human rights law and WHO guidance.

 

How is the Covid-19 pandemic impacting other areas of your work? And how were you able to respond?

We are also seeing violations of the right to maternal health care. Under the pretext of the Covid-19 response, some hospitals are denying women birth partners despite [the] WHO’s recommendation that there are better maternal health and infant health outcomes when women have the ability to have a partner [present] when they are giving birth. We have successfully pushed the United Nations’ Special Procedures to issue a statement speaking to these issues.

We have also seen instances of scheduling unnecessary c-sections, sometimes going against the wishes of the person, or discharging women earlier than they would normally, saying it’s a measure to avoid contamination. It’s a very fine balance between the excuses given of wanting to protect women and infants and punishing women and curtailing their rights. What we really should be interrogating is the state of health systems and why they are built in a way that countries cannot respond to a pandemic without curtailing women’s rights.

 

Have you seen anything specific to girls?

No, not that I have heard of. The issue with girls is that whenever there’s a restrictive legal framework with respect to abortion, for them it’s even worse. Even when the abortion law for women isn’t very restrictive, for girls there are always additional barriers because of their age, like third party authorisation, which contravenes legal obligations of States under human rights law. One of the recommendations that came out of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment on children’s rights during adolescence is that States should include a presumption of legal capacity of adolescents to access sexual reproductive services.

 

We don’t often hear about reproductive rights explicitly in terms of children’s rights. Why might that be?

Human rights standards are very clear on the right to sexual and reproductive health being applicable to both women and girls (see the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights General Comment 22). Also as per the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment 20, “The risk of death and disease during the adolescent years is real, including from preventable causes such as childbirth, unsafe abortions, road traffic accidents, sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, interpersonal injuries, mental ill health and suicide, all of which are associated with certain behaviours and require cross-sectoral collaboration.”

Girls have sexual and reproductive rights because they are sexual beings that will have sex, might want to get pregnant, but also might be at a higher risk of violence, rape and sexual abuse, that would require access to sexual and reproductive information and services.

The reason why some are reluctant to recognise girls’ reproductive rights is because of pervasive stereotypes that cast girls as non-sexual persons, or who at least shouldn’t be having sex. These stereotypes are deeply harmful and refuse to take into account girls’ agency, right to bodily autonomy, as well as the need for accountability when girls’ sexual and reproductive rights are violated.

 

Even though the answer to this question may be evident, can you explain why governments are trying to restrict women and girl’s access to reproductive rights?

It’s this willingness to control women’s bodies. Reproductive justice and women’s right to bodily autonomy is one of the foundations of women’s equality. When a woman is able to decide for herself how many children she wants to have – if [any] at all – and the spacing of these children and with whom she wants to have them, it puts her at the same level as a man.

She will then want the same rights, which is a problem for the establishment. It’s social control over women to make sure that we are continuing to provide free reproductive labour, we continue to be the primary caregiver of children, thus limiting our ability to take up more of a productive role and more community and political roles. The rise of fundamentalism and of populism and the conservative idea that women and their bodies need to be controlled along with gender stereotypes are the root causes of restrictions to reproductive rights.

 

Do you believe that governments will increase these regressive proposals/measures?

In times of crisis it’s women and marginalised groups that are the worst hit and primary target of restrictive policies. It might very well be that we see an increase of the backlash that we have been witnessing on women’s rights for the past couple of years because of the crisis. It’s also an opportunity for women and marginalised groups because the workers on the frontlines are disproportionately women. Reproductive health work is the kind of work that is holding societies together.

We’re not in need of bankers, we’re not in need of people in advertising right now, we are actually in need of people who provide care work and health work. These people are disproportionately women and I see a window of opportunity for women and marginalised groups to organise and mobilise because they’re the worst hit. I see a window of opportunity to ask for changes.

 

Sabine Saliba is Regional Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa at CRIN – Child Rights International Network and is based in Lebanon.  

The post Reproductive Rights of Women and Girls Under Lockdown appeared first on Inter Press Service.

South Africa's local authorities have been demolishing shacks claiming they were built illegally.

Head of the Department for the Fight Against Smuggling and Human Trafficking, Abdiwakil Abdullahi Mohamud told IPS that pointed out that it was not possible to control all Somalia's borders as they had limited resources available. Credit: Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar/IPS

By Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar
MOGADISHU, May 28 2020 (IPS)

While simultaneously suffering from the coronavirus pandemic, flooding and a locust crisis, Somalia, could well see a rise in the number of people who are susceptible to human trafficking.

According to the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the rainy season in Gu resulted in twice the average rainfall, causing floods across this East African nation, affecting almost a million people and displacing over 400,000 people. 

“As more people find themselves in vulnerable circumstances as a result of displacement from floods, drought and conflict, it is assumed that some of them are likely to seek “greener pastures” it is anticipated that in this state of vulnerability they could become susceptible to human trafficking and exploitation,” Isaac Munyae, Programme Manager for Migrant Protection and Assistance at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Somalia, told IPS over email.

This Horn of Africa nation is considered a source, transit and destination country for trafficking in the region and each year a unknown number of migrants pass through the country’s borders. According to Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) officials, trafficking has been rampant in the country for decades.

“Many Somalis are trafficked across the borders and are often moving along the southern and northern routes through Sudan, South Sudan and Kenya. On the other hand there are some Somalis  and a lot of Ethiopians travelling to Yemen along the eastern route that pass through Somalia and also fall prey to exploitation,” Munyae said.

The IOM added that the COVID-19 outbreak — Somalia has some 1,711 confirmed cases as of May 27 — “poses an additional challenge in an already fragile context where it may further hinder access to basic services, leaving the population highly vulnerable”. 

• According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, the country has some 2.6 million displaced people. 

• Since the start of this year, more than 220,000 Somalis were internally displaced because of drought and climate-related disasters, including 137,000 due to conflict.

• And in March and April, more than 50,000 people were forced to flee their homes as operations against the Islamic insurgent group, Al Shabab, resumed in Lower Shabelle.

With continued political and food insecurity, and the second-longest coastline in Africa after Madagascar (3,333 kilometres) which is difficult to patrol, the U.N.-backed FGS said it is doing its utmost to end human trafficking. 

“Somalia has a very long coastline and as I am speaking to you, we don’t have the capacity to control all of it, but our police maritime unit who have close cooperation with other forces in the country are always engaged in routine operations using speed boats, but to fully control such a long coastline needs much capacity than we currently have,” the head of the Department for the Fight Against Smuggling and Human Trafficking, Abdiwakil Abdullahi Mohamud, told IPS.

Mohamud and Somali parliament member Mohamed Ibrahim Abdi both lamented the lack of an existing human trafficking law.

“Human trafficking is a big problem which must be tackled, but I can confirm that Somali parliament hasn’t yet a human trafficking law. We recognise the importance of a law, but right now there is nothing on the table, I hope we will get the law in place in the future, I cannot say when,” Abdi, told IPS.

However, the federal state of Puntland has a human trafficking act in place, which requires enforcement. While in the breakaway region of Somaliland, “a referral mechanisms for supporting victims of human trafficking was developed and adopted this year,” said Munyae. 

In December, the FGS and IOM signed a cooperation agreement where “IOM proposes to work with the government in establishment of appropriate legal frameworks and referral mechanisms in collaboration with other UN and I/NGO partners,” Munyae told IPS.

There are no official figures of trafficking in Somalia.

• According to Mixed Migration Centre, in May 2019 there was an increase of 41 percent of the number of people migrating from Somalia to Yemen.
• Those migrants were from Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya. The center said that in April 2019 alone some 18,904 Somali and Ethiopian migrants were recorded to have arrived in Yemen.

Mohamud said his department developed a close cooperation with the Department of Immigration and has so far been able to end the trafficking of people through airports and sea ports.

However, he pointed out that it was not possible to control all land borders as they had limited resources available.

According to Mohamud, his department prevented thousands of young Somali men and women from being trafficked out of the country since it was established three years ago. But he is mindful that people previously saved from trafficking could once again become susceptible.

“We do not have the financial capacity to create jobs for them, but we teach them some skills and we then hand them over to their families. That is what we are able to do for them at the moment,” he said, adding that high unemployment meant young Somalis were vulnerable to human traffickers.

• According to a figure released by the International Labour Organisation in 2019, the youth unemployment rate in Somalia was 24.89 percent.

Munyae added that additional factors that resulted in susceptibility to human trafficking included, “poverty as a result of loss in livelihoods caused by displacements for whatever reason, family pressures, social factors such as child marriages and forced labour and customary practices and lack of appropriate legal frameworks for protecting the rights of mobile population”.

However, Muna Hassan Mohamed, the chairlady of Somali Youth Cluster, believes that many youth are risking their lives in the hands of human traffickers as they are promised dual nationality.

“Of course, the unemployment and insecurity are very big problems that we can’t deny, but the main factor that drives young Somalis to be exploited by human traffickers is what I can call [the passports].

“When I say passports, I mean European, American, Canadian or Australian passports, because if you are a citizen of any of these countries, then it is easier for you to be an MP, a minister or get a well-paid job in Somalia,” she told IPS, adding that most Somali parliament members, government ministers, general directors and other key staffers are all dual citizens.

“Almost every well-paid job in Somali government’s institutions has been taken by Somalis with foreign passports, while international NGO’s in the country do not have an equal opportunity policy when employing Somali nationals,” she said explaining that those Somalis with dual citizenship were paid more than locals. 

Meanwhile, Omar Ahmed Tahriib-diid, who irregularly migrated to Europe in 2014, wants to spare others the hardships he faced.

Tahriib-diid, who now lives in the relatively peaceful Puntland State northeast of Somalia, said he decided to return to his native region.

“Every day I witnessed people dying of hunger or being tortured to death by the cruel human traffickers. We always hear in the news that migrants drowned at sea, but the underreported thing is that many more die even before reaching the sea,” Tahriib-diid told IPS of what he experienced when he left the country, travelling through Sudan and Libya.

“In Sudan they dealt with us well, but I can say that there was a widespread brutality in Libya which I can describe as a hell on earth,” he said.

Eventually, he made his way to Germany where he tried for an entire year and had been unable to get a job. Upon his return to Somalia, he landed a job as the regional coordinator for Sanaag region at the Ministry of Justice in Puntland State.

Now he remains engaged in awareness programmes and “succeeded to prevent many young people from risking their lives. Some of them are now running their own business or secured jobs through my awareness campaigns with the help from the government”.

** Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Bonn.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

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The post Triple Emergencies of COVID-19, Flooding & Locusts Makes Somalia Susceptible to Human Trafficking appeared first on Inter Press Service.

George Mahuku, IITA plant pathologist and lead author of the paper.

By External Source
May 28 2020 (IPS-Partners)

A paper published by a team led by scientists from IITA was among the top 10% most downloaded of all papers published between January 2018 and December 2019 in Wiley’s Plant Pathology journal.

The research team received the news in a congratulatory message and an online certificate from the Journal. Part of the message stated: “We are excited to share that your research, published in Plant Pathology, is among the top 10% most downloaded papers! What it means: Among work published between January 2018 and December 2019, yours received some of the most downloads in the 12 months following online publication. Your research generated immediate impact and helped to raise the visibility of Plant Pathology.”

The open-source paper, “Sources of resistance in Musa to Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum, the causal agent of banana xanthomonas wilt” published on 17 September 2018, announced a breakthrough in the search for banana varieties that are resistant to the lethal bacterial banana wilt disease. It proved wrong the belief that all banana varieties in the Great Lakes region are susceptible to the condition and provided hope in the banana breeding efforts for varieties resistant to the disease—one of the most effective ways to control the disease.

Victor Manyong, the IITA hub director, congratulated the team, noting that this was an indication of the quality of science generated by the team and the potential impact of the work to address the challenges facing agriculture productivity for smallholder banana farmers in the region.

The findings of the paper are significant for smallholder farmers in the Great Lakes region of Africa where banana is an important food and staple crop as its production has been greatly affected by the bacterial banana wilt disease.

The bacterial banana wilt disease, which is regarded as the most devastating disease of banana in the region, is transmitted by insect vectors, contaminated garden tools, and infected planting material. The disease, which causes premature ripening and rotting of the fruits, wilting, and eventually death of the plant, has drastically affected the production of highland cooking banana in the region and the food and income of millions of farmers.

“This is exciting news for the team. We are extremely pleased with the recognition”, says George Mahuku, the IITA plant pathologist based at IITA Tanzania and lead scientist for the work.

“As a follow-up to this work, we are now screening a population made from one of the resistant varieties ‘Monyet’ and a susceptible variety ‘Kokopo’ to identify biological markers (quantitative trait loci – QTL) of genes associated with resistance. This information will be used to develop protocols for the rapid transfer of resistance genes to susceptible but farmer-preferred cultivars. We are also continuing with screening other banana types to identify more sources of resistance,” Mahuku said.

Other researchers in the team are drawn from the Centre of the Region Haná for Biotechnological and Agricultural Research, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic, the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa as well as IITA banana researchers based in Uganda and Arusha.

The research was funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB).

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Health workers applause back to the public applauding them. Madrid, Spain, 22 March 2020. Credit: Burak Akbulut

By Djaffar Shalchi
COPENHAGEN, May 28 2020 (IPS)

For the past few decades, many big corporations and very wealthy individuals have operated according to the myth that they are “self-made”, that their success owed nothing to anyone else.

From that narrative has come the notion that they are entitled and able to cut themselves off from others, contributing as little as possible in taxes and workers’ wages.

But now that the myth has run into the fact of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s clear that none of us are independent; that we are, in fact, interdependent.

I am a one of those who gets highlighted as a self-made man. I am told that I fit the storyline: I am an immigrant son of a single mother from Iran; while my mum cleaned in hotels, I studied hard, worked hard, and went on to be a successful entrepreneur. I rose to be a multimillionaire – the American Dream, except in Denmark!

It has always been obvious to me, however, that I have not risen all by my own efforts: that I am not a self-made man, that the welfare state made me. Without the creche care and schooling and health care I received, I could not have flourished; and without Denmark’s strong public services, neither could my business.

That’s why, in real life, contrary to the Hollywood tale, kids are more likely to achieve the American dream in Denmark than in America. That’s why I recognise that it is my responsibility to help others rise, by giving back – not only as a philanthropist, but also, and preferably, as a taxpayer.

That’s why I am helping to lead an international campaign – Move Humanity – that is demanding that governments increase taxes on people like me.

A number of governments have shared that pressure from the richest individuals is a major obstacle in the way of key inequality-reducing reforms. Studies show that the super-rich have been avoiding as much as 30% of their tax liability. Poor countries have been losing $170 billion of tax revenues every year as a result of tax dodging.

Djaffar Shalchi. Credit: Move Humanity

Many corporations and wealthy individuals have lobbied against higher taxes, arguing that they would be anti-business. But, as we have seen, the fact is that tax is not anti-business, pandemics are anti-business.

A small number of plutocrats are profiteering in this crisis in obscene ways and appear to be planning for dystopia. But most businesses are ultimately threatened by the combination of health collapse, economic collapse, systems collapse and trust collapse that Covid-19 has wrought.

Progressive taxation – from corporate profits, and from personal income and wealth – is the only sustainable way to fund the public services and infrastructure on which restoration depends.

Public health, stability and trust are the platforms on which business viability stands. To do what is right is also to do what is practical.

It is time for millionaires to back redistribution. Over 175 millionaires signed the open letter launched at Davos in January 2020, “Millionaires against Pitchforks”, that called for higher taxes on people like themselves.

But these 175 were seen as outliers. Now, after the Covid-19 crisis, that could change, and must change.

The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted just how much society depends on frontline workers, these no longer hidden heroes. It has also highlighted, in the Financial Times’s words, that “radical reforms — reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades — will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. Redistribution will again be on the agenda.”

It is no surprise that countries which value public goods and the active role of the state like Denmark, Germany and South Korea, are holding up more strongly to the Covid-19 crisis than the more laissez-faire US and UK, or that, in India, Kerala is holding up more strongly than the states in the north of the country.

Across the world now, politicians of many stripes, economists of almost all stripes, and ordinary people of every stripe increasingly recognise the essential role of government action, funded by progressive taxation.

Experts say a 1% wealth tax on the world’s top 1% could bring in over $1.6 trillion.

Tackling inequality is central to restore consumer demand, strengthen human capital, ensure collective health security and prevent societal breakdown. If we allow inequality to rise any higher, we will all be in danger – of an even more intensified economic crisis and of violent instability.

For the rich to hide in bunkers, offends others’ dignity and their own, and is no way to truly thrive. Even before Covid-19, a multimillionaire whom I visited in Brazil could, when he looked out of his window, see only metal bars, as if he was caged in.

From my window in Denmark, the view is of flowers. As is noted in The Spirit Level, and in the yearly World Happiness Report, more equal societies are safer, healthier, happier, and more stable. They have longer-running growth, and higher social mobility. And they are much better able to cope with crises.

The Covid-19 pandemic is revealing not only how unjust the world’s inequalities are, but also how these inequalities have been rooted in a fallacy that denied the reality of our interdependence.

The difference between clinging to individualized and inward-looking approaches, and unleashing the power of collective action from the local to global, will be millions of lives saved and billions of lives improved.

Higher taxes on very wealthy few, and on the biggest corporations, are crucial to restoring trust and to funding the common services we all need to thrive. Through this we can put the world back in business, and reconnect business with the world. It’s worth every penny. Even millionaires should back it.

*This piece was co-authored with Ben Phillips, an advisor to governments and international institutions on how to tackle inequality.

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Excerpt:

Djaffar Shalchi is an entrepreneur and business owner and founder of the Move Humanity campaign

The post Memo from a Multi-Millionaire: Covid-19 Proves Business Case for Taxing the Rich appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Concern mounts about Guinea-Bissau commitment to curb drug trafficking, writes Ricci Shyrock.

By External Source
May 27 2020 (IPS)

Between 2002 and 2004, the World Health Organization (WHO) faced the first pandemic of the globalized 21st century, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). Under the leadership of Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland and through epidemiological, clinical, and logistical coordination, the WHO facilitated a strong and ultimately successful response to the outbreak. Today, the WHO is facing the coronavirus pandemic in an even more globalized and urbanized world, further complicating response and coordination efforts. What similarities do these two pandemics share, and what lessons in leadership might we be able to learn from the past?

The post LIVE STREAM: Former Norwegian Prime Minister Brundtland on Pandemic Leadership appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Chicago Council on Global Affairs

 

Gro Brundtland, Former Prime Minister of Norway; Former Director-General, World Health Organization. Moderated by Catherine Bertini.

The post LIVE STREAM: Former Norwegian Prime Minister Brundtland on Pandemic Leadership appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Businessman Félicien Kabuga, who evaded capture for 26 years, says he was trying to help victims.

Djibouti Port. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By External Source
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, May 27 2020 (IPS)

The African Continental Free Trade Area was launched two years ago at an African Union (AU) summit in Kigali. It was scheduled to be implemented from 1 July 2020. But this has been pushed out until 2021 because of the impact of COVID-19 and the need for leaders to focus on saving lives.

Studies by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and others state that the free trade area has the potential to increase growth, raise welfare and stimulate industrial development on the continent. But there are concerns. Some countries, particularly smaller and more vulnerable states, could be hurt. For example, they could suffer revenue losses and other negative effects from premature liberalisation.

African countries are increasingly connected to the global economy, but tend to operate at the lowest rung of the ladder. They are mainly supplying raw materials and other low-value manufactured outputs. Cooperation is needed between Africa’s emerging entrepreneurs and industries to improve their competitiveness in global markets

The impact of COVID-19 will only worsen these structural weaknesses. The Economic Commission for Africa has reported that between 300,000 and 3.3 million people could lose their lives if appropriate measures are not taken. There are several reasons for this level of high risk. These include the fact that 56% of urban dwellings are in overcrowded slums, 71% of Africa’s workforce is informally employed and cannot work from home and 40% of children on the continent are undernourished.

Africa is also more vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19 because it is highly dependent on imports for its medicinal and pharmaceutical products and on commodity exports. The latter include oil, which has suffered a severe collapse in price.

Other contributing factors are high public debt due to higher interest rate payments than Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, a weak fiscal tax base, and the negative impact on Africa’s currencies due to huge stimulus measures taken by OECD countries.

The COVID-19 crisis has brought these weaknesses into sharp relief. But it also provides an opportunity for African countries to address them. For example, they could accelerate intra-regional trade by focusing on the products of greatest need during the health crisis. Countries could also start building regional value chains to advance industrialisation, improve infrastructure and strengthen good governance and ethical leadership.

These are all vital to guiding African countries through the current crisis.

These goals can be achieved if African states adopt a “developmental regionalism” approach to trade integration. This would include fair trade, building regional value chains, cross-border investment in infrastructure and strengthening democratic governance.

 

Fair trade

A number of conditions need to be met for a free trade area to succeed.

Firstly, African states vary widely in size and economic development. As a result some may warrant special attention and specific treatment. In particular, among Africa’s 55 states 34 are classified by the United Nations as least developed countries. These are low income countries that have severe structural problems impeding their development.

Building trade agreements in favour of small and less developed economies will contribute to fairer outcomes of the free trade deal.

Secondly, African governments should include their stakeholders – businesses (both big and small), trade unions and civil society organisations – in the national consultation process. This will require effective institutions that enable the fullest participation.

Additional steps countries should take to cope with the fallout from COVID-19:

• Reduce tariffs on vital pharmaceutical products (such as ventilators), personal protective equipment and food products;
• Stimulate intra-regional trade by prioritising these products for an immediate or early phase down in the free trade area.

 

Building regional value chains

African countries are increasingly connected to the global economy, but tend to operate at the lowest rung of the ladder. They are mainly supplying raw materials and other low-value manufactured outputs.

Cooperation is needed between Africa’s emerging entrepreneurs and industries to improve their competitiveness in global markets. This would have a number of positive outcomes including:

• triggering industrialisation, which will transform economies
• helping African countries obtain a fairer share of the value derived from African commodities and labour, and
• improving the lives of people on the continent.

The current crisis creates an opportunity for African countries to build value chains on medical equipment, pharmaceuticals and personal protective equipment.

The clothing and textile sector could also be restructured to meet the needs of the health sector while taking advantage of the breakdown in supply chains from China and Europe.

As more countries lock down their economies and apply movement controls, agricultural and processed food supply chains are disrupted. This creates opportunities to build regional supply chains and partner with retailers.

There are also opportunities to build infrastructure to support the health response: hospitals, water and sanitation, schools, low-cost housing and alternative energy.

African countries can also benefit from the growing interest in environmental tourism.

 

Cross-border infrastructure investment

Since most African countries are less developed, and many are small, intra-regional trade will require them to cooperate to improve their infrastructure. This includes physical ports, roads and railways as well as customs procedures, port efficiency and reduction of roadblocks.

Progress is already being made. Examples include the Mombasa-Nairobi Corridor; the Addis to Djibouti road, rail and port connection; and the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor, which handles more than two-thirds of West African trade.

Increased investment in these types of cross-border infrastructure projects will benefit regional integration.

 

Democracy and governance

Most African states have started accepting multi-party systems of governance. Many have also embraced a culture of constitutionalism, rule of law and human rights.

Democratic governance supported by active citizenship will create an environment of transparency and predictability that encourages domestic and foreign investment. Both are vital for growth and industrialisation. The process is also essential for the sustainability of regional economic integration and democracy in Africa.

Countries are becoming better at fulfilling their democratic obligations. For example, 40 African countries, including the Seychelles and Zimbabwe, voluntarily joined the African Peer Review Mechanism. The mechanism is a remarkable achievement that the free trade area agreement must build on.

 

The way forward

The free trade area could become a landmark in Africa’s journey towards peace, prosperity and integration. The COVID-19 pandemic, notwithstanding its devastating impact on the health and economies of Africa, could be an opportunity to advance the free trade area in a more developmental, inclusive and mutually beneficial way for African countries.

Faizel Ismail, Director of the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town

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

The post How a Post-COVID-19 Revival Could Kickstart Africa’s Free Trade Area appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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A communal farmer harvesting her maize crop in Seke communal lands, Zimbabwe. In recent years, Zimbabwe has witnessed a rapid growth in digital agriculture. Credit: Tonderayi Mukeredzi/IPS

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
HARARE, May 27 2020 (IPS)

Shurugwi communal farmer, Elizabeth Siyapi (57) can no longer be scammed by unscrupulous middlemen to sell her crops cheaply. Nowadays, before she takes her produce to market she scours her mobile phone, which has become an essential digital agriculture data bank, for the best prices on the market.

“When my livestock are sick, instead of waiting for an extension officer to physically visit me for help, which may take days, I just consult my phone to look for information on what to do,” she told IPS.

Siyaphi is one of approximately 34,000 small holder farmers across the country collectively using two smart phone-based solutions, Kurima Mari and Agrishare, promoted by German development agency, Welthungerhilfe Zimbabwe, to find markets, extension services, weather information and hire agriculture equipment.

Tawanda Mthintwa Hove, the head of digital agriculture at Welthungerhilfe Zimbabwe, said farmers have been using Kurima Mari to learn good agricultural practices and link with markets since 2016.

“Kurima Mari is available offline which eliminates the need for buying data. An extension officer updates the application on a regular basis and the updates are shared using bluetooth making it costless to the farmer,” he told IPS. “Whilst Agrishare is an online-based solution, it enables farmers to secure the best equipment in their homes, which reduces mobility costs.”

Over the last three years Siyaphi has utilised digital agriculture to find good agricultural practices. And her maize yield has multiplied from two 50-kilogram bags of maize to over three and a half tonnes.

• Though during the current COVID-19 lockdown in this southern African nation, her yields have reduced because of water restrictions.
• She told IPS that while markets remain available through the app, mostly via farmer to farmer contacts, transporting her produce to market has become the biggest problem because of lockdown restrictions. The current lockdown is in place indefinitely, though reviewed every two weeks by government. 

Hove said that mobile digital technologies improve the quantity and quality of farmer’s harvests by giving them current information on production practices. They also facilitate linkages, weather advisory services, add efficiency to commodity systems, which in the long run help increase farmer’s yields and make them more profitable.

In recent years, Zimbabwe has witnessed a rapid growth in the use of digital agriculture.

• Other digital agriculture innovations include the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) and Econet Wireless championed, Ecofarmer Combo programme, which delivers weather-based insurance, real time location-based weather information and farming tips to over 80,000 communal farmers.
• Started by the churches in 2019, Turning Matabeleland Green, is another digital agriculture programme that uses satellite technology to send weather information and farming advice to over 2,000 farmers via the short message service.

Paul Zakariya, ZFU executive director, told IPS that mobile technology has enabled farmers to get farming advice in real-time, make online payments for inputs and services and access extension services from the tap of a phone, services that were previously available only through pamphlets and meetings.

According to the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN)  and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), “Precision farming and new digital tools can help, enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of farming, while improving yields”.

But Charles Dhewa, the chief executive officer of Knowledge Transfer Africa, an indigenous systems company that operates eMkambo, another digital agriculture solution, said mobile applications were not yet directly benefitting smallholder farmers here.

“A few elite farmers with appropriate android phones could be benefitting here and there. That is why we have not positioned eMkambo Nest as a lead solution in our eMkambo platform,” he told IPS. 

Dhewa stated that although content was important, many farmers and traders don’t have time and bandwidth to toy with many of the available mobile and digital farming applications. The channels have reached their limits and are disintegrated, in addition to causing information asymmetry amongst farmers.

Digital literacy and the high cost of mobile communication is also reversing gains that could have been made by digital technology.

“The high cost of mobile money is worsening the situation, rendering mobile technology more of a luxury than a necessity,” he said. “Paying for agricultural commodities through mobile money is now more expensive.” 

Zakariya said despite an increased deployment of digital technologies in agriculture, farmers were using ICTs much less to improve agri-business. Beyond mobile applications, the country has been slow in adopting other appropriate technologies and innovations crucial in commercialising the country’s agriculture, which remains mostly subsistence. 

There is little use of high-end technologies with potential to enhance production and value chain competitiveness such as crop protection technology, soil and moisture sensors, drones, precision farming, molecular technology, use of global positioning systems and geographic information systems (GIS).

Zakariya said the uptake of modern, sophisticated technologies was capital intensive for most farmers while many more farmers lacked knowledge on the use and efficacy of the newer technologies.

Dhewa said that GIS has a better future in agriculture than mobile applications sharing information.

• The Digitalisation of the African Agriculture Report 2018-19 said there has been a significant growth in digitalisation for agriculture across the continent during the past 10 years.
• The report, authored by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, said by 2019, there were about 390 distinct, active digitalisation for agriculture solutions, where 33 million small holder farmers were registered.
• But despite the impressive growth figures, only 42 percent of the registered farmers and pastoralists are using the solutions with any frequency.

According to Hove, it is rural farmers that have been hit hard by COVID-19 lockdown restrictions and prohibitive data costs, as such many can’t move their produce easily and have been deprived of income. This has forced some farmers to resort to middlemen.

Still, Hove said, some rural farmers have been able to find markets through the contact list (farmer to farmer) on the app as opposed to using the real-time markets list.

Meanwhile Siyapi said that she and other farmers struggle to buy data. As a lead and successful farmer, she requires about $16 a month in data but says other farmers can make do with $2.20 to download updates and peruse the marketplace.

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The post Digital Agriculture Benefits Zimbabwe’s Farmers but Mobile Money is Costly appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

In recent years, Zimbabwe has witnessed a rapid growth in the use of digital agriculture but uptake of modern technology is capital intensive for farmers.

The post Digital Agriculture Benefits Zimbabwe’s Farmers but Mobile Money is Costly appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Dr Julia Stamm
BERLIN, May 27 2020 (IPS)

Crises make us think smaller. When everything is uncertain, we turn inward: to our families, our communities, the immediate needs around us. We focus on the essential and the immediate; we survive.

On an individual level, this instinct can be clarifying, as it may bring into focus the realm of the Truly Important: our closest human relationships, our health, our community, our freedom.

Looking past this circle of immediacy, however, it’s clear to see that the current global pandemic will demand much more of us. Beyond the here and now, it is becoming increasingly clear that he Covid-19 crisis is creating enormous need and essential work for the future.

Preparing for and addressing these future challenges is also a matter of great urgency. Responding to the urgent needs of the moment while keeping the futures we want in our field of vision requires us to be intentional and thoughtful about the choices we make now.

The Futures Project exists precisely at this juncture where present and future come into conversation, and from this vantage point, it is clear that we cannot talk about problem-solving in the present without making sure we know where we want to go.

One need not look far to see the roadmap of future needs that is emerging in light of the Covid-19 crisis. If you follow the cracks, long-existent but willfully ignored, that have come starkly into view in the past few months, you can trace your way to some of the challenges that will shape our future.

With the closure of schools, we see not only the fact of disparate access to internet networks, but also the direct translation of this disparity into outcomes: some students will return to school having kept up with their learning, and others will fall further behind.

We see that for those without stable housing and access to food and water, social distancing, handwashing, and safe shelter at home are simply not possible. We see that our essential workers have long been the least celebrated, their livelihoods among the least protected. These are only a few examples.

Julia Stamm

We see also that solutions are possible—that, especially if we are willing to acknowledge the inequalities that we’ve grown comfortable with, in the parts of the world that benefit from them, we can fix our problems. This will take a massive reimagining of what’s possible, and a massive recalibrating of what is acceptable to us.

The UN75 global conversation initiative, launched to celebrate the 75th birthday of the United Nations in October 2020, has opened an international dialogue on precisely these topics.

The initiative asks people to talk about the future, asking three “big questions”: what kind of future do we want to create? Are we on track? What do we need to bridge the gap?

Of course, when these questions were written and the initiative launched, no one foresaw the upheaval that was to come. Given the massive disruption that Covid-19 has caused, these questions may, at first glance, feel out of place. In a crisis, everything feels immediate. And to some extent, it is true: we have to adapt, respond, pull together, and make it through.

Our view, though, is that crisis response and thinking about the future go hand-in-hand. In this uncertain moment, asking ourselves and each other about the futures we want to inhabit provides light for our path.

Given the sometimes-overwhelming scope of the crisis, using the future as our guide will help us find our next small step. 2020 was to be the beginning of a crucial decade for the UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and even though most did not factor a global pandemic into their response plans, the SDGs also provide a blueprint for the future that can serve to guide our crisis response.

If we have any hope of repairing the cracks, of finding solutions to urgent problems that not only carry us through the moment but also pave the way to a more resilient future, we must bring people together across borders, sectors, and boundaries to create a vision for the future and make plans to act.

This is exactly the task that the UN75 questions facilitate, and the backdrop against which The Futures Project builds its work.

Our commitment during this time is to serve as a steward of thinking and doing that helps us all keep the futures we want to inhabit, and the futures we hope future generations can inhabit, in our field of vision.

Our current initiative, Innovators for the Future, bridges reflection and action, thinking and doing, by building off of the UN75 questions. By identifying projects that are having positive impacts on their communities now, while also keeping an eye on the future they want to see, we are looking at what the UN75 questions look like in action.

Innovators for the Future extends the UN75 dialogue by asking not only what kind of future we want to create, but also, what are we doing to get there? And for our part at the Futures Project, we’re asking: how can we help build the bridge between thinking and doing; between present and future?

Through our Social Impact Accelerator, we’re also lending a hand, supporting the do-ers of the world and the future visions for their communities towards which they are building.

Above all, The Futures Project and the Call for Innovators are about commitment to the idea that we can—and will—build better futures. We do not know exactly what this looks like.

Creating these future visions are part of the work. We do, however, believe wholeheartedly that our imagined world of tomorrow can teach us about how to do better today. We are committed to doing the work it takes to build the world that we see outlined in the UN Vision, and we remain hopeful.

The post UN@75 & the Future We Want appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr Julia Stamm is Founder & CEO, The Futures Project, described as a “nonprofit initiative to transform the way we think about and shape the future, re-envisioning the role that technology and innovation can play in helping us realise the futures we want to create.”

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By Gareth Willmer and Fiona Broom
May 26 2020 (IPS)

Crucial global goals to reduce hunger and poverty and curb climate change have gone backwards or stalled, the United Nations Secretary-General warns in a new report, as the COVID-19 outbreak moves from being a health crisis to becoming the “worst human and economic crisis of our lifetimes”.

The number of people suffering hunger has increased, climate change is occurring faster than predicted, and inequality is increasing within and among countries, António Guterres says in his ‘Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals’ 2020 report.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were launched four years ago to address the most pressing global needs for a sustainable future, including education and health improvements and reductions in social and economic inequalities.

“The effects of the pandemic and the measures taken to mitigate its impact have overwhelmed the health systems globally, caused businesses and factories to shut down and severely impacted the livelihoods of half of the global workforce,” he says in the report.

It comes on top of an existing slowing in progress towards many of the SDGs, and Guterres had launched a Decade of Action in September to turn things around.

The latest report, published last week (14 May), illustrates “the continued unevenness of progress and the many areas where significant improvement is required”.

The report has been released ahead of UN Economic and Social Council high-level meetings scheduled for July to provide a global, data-driven overview of the SDGs.

 

Women and girls

Last year’s report had already warned that there was “simply no way that we can achieve the 17 SDGs without achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls”.

In the 2020 review, Guterres says “the promise of a world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal, social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed, remains unfulfilled”.

Only half of the world’s women who are married or ‘in-union’ make their own decisions regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights, based on 2007-2018 data from 57 countries, the report says.

“People are talking about a global response in terms of a vaccine, I think we should pay attention to those who are talking about a global response to the coming food crisis.”

Social and economic development has been shown to accelerate when women have access to mobile phones, the report says, but phone ownership remains higher for men than for women.

More than 260 million children were out of school in 2017 and 773 million adults — two-thirds of whom are women — remained illiterate in 2018.

As of 2019, less than half of primary and lower secondary schools in Sub-Saharan Africa had access to electricity, computers, the internet and basic handwashing facilities, the report states.

Billions of people worldwide still lack access to safely managed water and sanitation services, including 2.2 billion people without safe drinking water.

And, the world is projected to miss the target to end poverty in all its forms as hunger increased for the fourth consecutive year and about 50 million children experienced acute undernutrition. Globally, 144 million children under five were still affected by stunting in 2019, with three quarters of these children in Central and Southern Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa.

Claire Heffernan, director of the London International Development Centre, a membership organisation, says the SDGs are incompatible with the COVID-19 pandemic on a political level.

“The SDGs reflected the political will of the time,” she says. “Today, in the midst of this pandemic, I think it’s safe to say global political will is in short supply.”

 

Food crisis

Subir Sinha, senior lecturer in institutions and development at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), says he is sceptical of suggestions in the report that progress has been made on poverty, because the quality of data from national governments has become worse.

He says that wage protections and labour rights need to be made into political issues to ensure they stay on governments’ radars.

“COVID-19 is going to make questions of hunger much worse,” Sinha says. “People are talking about a global response in terms of a vaccine, I think we should pay attention to those who are talking about a global response to the coming food crisis.”

The SDG progress report comes after the United Nations predicted last week that the COVID-19 crisis could push 130 million more people into poverty in the next 10 years.

About 35 million people are expected to fall below the extreme poverty line this year as a result of the pandemic, with 56 per cent of them in Africa, the UN’s World Economic Situation and Prospects as of mid-2020 report predicted.

The global economy is forecast to lose a staggering US$8.5 trillion in production over the next two years due to the pandemic, the UN report says.

This is a “tremendous setback” for sustainable development, Elliott Harris, UN chief economist and assistant secretary-general for economic development, told SciDev.Net.

“[The pandemic] is particularly affecting the more vulnerable groups … because these are the ones whose activities generally require some form of physical proximity to others.”

 

Remittances

Remittances from migrant workers in the global North could face a hit – in countries such as Haiti, South Sudan and Tonga, remittances constitute more than a third of gross domestic product.

“You have an abrupt cut of people’s livelihoods and incomes, and then you’ve got different kinds of cascading effects through the bigger food system,” says Sophia Murphy, senior specialist in agriculture, trade and investment at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

There are also fears about what the pandemic could mean for long-term food security, with the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) estimating that 130 million more people in low- and middle-income countries may be pushed into acute food insecurity this year.

Bumper crops in some regions are at risk of being wasted. India has been hit by COVID-19 at harvest time, with crops left unpicked and difficulties getting grain to market for sale before it spoils.

This comes after rising hunger in the three years to 2018 pushed undernourishment back to levels seen around 2010.

Evidence of price rises has already emerged. In Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo, the WFP notes a 10 per cent surge in the price of a typical local basket of food – comprising fish, pulses, peanut paste, cassava flour, oil and condiments – in the space of two weeks.

The organisation expects food price rises to occur more widely, as this is happening in countries such as Syria, where prices have more than doubled in the past year.

“I think it’s probably much more widespread than we realise because we’ve never encountered an emergency on this sort of scale before,” says Jane Howard, head of communications, marketing and advocacy at the WFP’s London office.

“It’s like having an emergency in every single country that you’re working in.”

Some countries are already reeling from other problems, such as the locust swarms in East Africa, leading to potentially “devastating” impacts, she adds.

 

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

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By Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, May 26 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Despite all the preoccupation with the current raging pandemic, it sadly appears that there has been no let-up in the global arms race among the major powers. In mid-May, the United States President Donald Trump, at an event for his new Space Force at the White House made a significant announcement, It was that the US was building right now an “incredible” new missile which would travel faster than any other in the world “by a factor of almost three”. This was obviously a response to the latest Russian ‘Avangard’ missile, which Russian President Vladimir Putin claims in invincible, with a speed of twenty times that of sound. The Chinese, reportedly are also feverishly working on their own hypersonic counterparts. All these would be strategic tools to significantly alter the war-fighting capabilities of humanity in the future.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

Up until recently, around the times of the First Great War (1914-1918) war fighting was based on come rather simple techniques Battlefield outcomes could be based on certain straight forward equations. One was a mathematical model, named after its proponent, called ‘Lanchester’s Law’. According to it, between two confronting sides, the higher number or greater firepower had better chances of winning. More complex formulae were derived therefrom. But it had too many limitations for use in contemporary conflict.

So, ideas evolved further. A system called ‘network’ enabled smaller numbers with lesser firepower to be more effective in an ‘asymmetric conflict’ which is also now called ‘sub-conventional’ war Non-state actors like the ‘Hizbulllah’ in Lebanon used these principles involving a hierarchical mode of communications effectively against an ostensibly more powerful Israeli army.

In 1996 two researchers of the US Rand Corporation, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt gloated a more refined concept in a document entitled ‘The Advert of Network’. The US has since pioneered an even more sophisticated version, which only modern well-equipped armies were capable of implementing. This was called ‘Network-centric operations’. Simply put, it involved four loops of sensors: First, identification of enemy assets, second, command and control of decision-making; third, target elimination, and fourth, logistics. Most modern armies now have ‘net-work command’, with latest communications and computers, with the Signals Branch at its care.

Now there are those who hold that even this ‘network-centrism’ is vulnerable. This is particularly go with the advent of ‘Artificial intelligence (AI) in warfare. The ‘Networks’ could be susceptible to disabling by such weapons. Today, as the new US space Force makes evident, battlefield domains are no longer confined to land, air, and sea. It now also includes space, deep-sea, cyber-space, and the solar electro-magnetic spectrum. Cyber-attacks can knock-out high value assets, including not only military command and control, but also critical civilian functions like banking, travel and telephony which would paralyze life-style, without a single shot being fired!

Today there is a race to build ever more ‘autonomous weapons’ such as smarter drones. Contemporary ‘intelligent machines’ can react at superhuman speeds, that are hard presses to match. There are those who argue future ‘Artificially intelligent’ weapons may be able to think ahead of the human brain, which could cause unique issues.

Actually, this is not much different from some 2500 years ago, the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote : “speed is the essence of war”. Military analysts are already speaking of a coming “battlefield singularity” in which the pace of combat will eclipse the pace of human decision-making. Fastest reaction in the shortest possible time will be the key to overwhelming the adversary. It would be akin to what is known as “OODA’ in aerial dogfighting. The ‘Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act’. So, will machines in battlefield take over from the human protagonists? The answers, at least for now, is happily, no. Even if fully autonomous weapons could possible led humans to code battlefield control, the ultimate critical decisions about how this technology is used, will still rest in human hands.

The principal security threat that the world confronts now is not military, it is an unconventional one, a malady, COVID-19 like the ‘Smart Weapon’, it is a ‘smart virus’, It is unseen, moves swiftly, adapts fast and mutates easily. Any battle-strategy, classical of modern, would advocates to those equally susceptible, the need to combine budget and brains to combat this unforeseen and deadly foe. True, it is easier said than done. But the clear absence of any-logical alternative would be a powerful factor in achieving this end. Uniting against this common, enemy COVID-19, is our Hobson’s Choice, one that has no option.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is Principal Research Fellow at ISAS, National University of Singapore, former Foreign Advisor and President of Cosmos Foundation Bangladesh.

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier

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