Africa

An animal market in Indonesia. Credit: TRAFFIC

By Steven Broad
CAMBRIDGE, UK, May 7 2020 (IPS)

At the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic is raging worldwide, causing human mortality and socio-economic disruption on a massive scale and it appears highly likely that profound impacts will continue for many years to come.

Although the precise origins of the disease remain unproven, there are strong indications of a wild animal source and a direct link to wildlife trade in China.

Even if evidence points elsewhere in future, the magnitude of the current outbreak places under an intense spotlight concerns raised by zoonotic disease experts over many decades about human health risks linked to wild animal trade in the increasingly inter-connected global economy.

As calls for new health-focused restrictions on wildlife trade have increased in volume in response to the current pandemic, some countries have taken immediate action. Building on immediate emergency restrictions placed on wildlife markets in January 2020, China is implementing a long-term prohibition on trade and consumption of wild animals for food as a public health protection measure.

Viet Nam is also considering new health-focused market restrictions and Gabon has introduced new species-specific trade restrictions. Looking ahead, there is a critical need to improve understanding of what sort of interventions might make the biggest difference in reducing risks of zoonotic disease emergence.

However, it is also important to work out how such actions might best complement, rather than conflict with, the range of existing conservation-focused wildlife trade regulation and management measures that are already struggling to contain over-exploitation of nature by people.

Zoonotic disease risks have not been wholly ignored before now. Many countries have live animal quarantine requirements and other rules governing the cross-border movement of meat, fish and other animal products.

Similarly, production, trade and use of live animals and products are subject to animal and human health regulations within domestic markets of most countries. However, such measures are typically designed primarily to address trade and consumption of domesticated species, the volume and value of which vastly exceed wild animal business.

As a result, the provisions of such regulations are seldom tailored to the specific dynamics and risks of the trade in wild animals.

Design of new interventions should be based on evidence-based assessment of disease-related vulnerabilities in current wild animal trade chains. Based on study of past cases, experts point to heightened risks of zoonotic disease spillover in places where large numbers of stressed live animals of different species (wild or domesticated) and people are in close proximity, such as transport hubs, holding facilities and markets.

However, there remains considerable uncertainty about differentiation of risk levels between different wild animal species (or species groups) and about the likelihood of transmission from different wild animal parts and products.

Credit: TRAFFIC

There is a wide range of options for future intervention based on assessment of such risks. Prohibitions on trade and consumption of certain species or products could be warranted. This would likely require new or modified national legislation in many countries, as most current restrictions are explicitly justified by conservation threat levels and jurisdiction is often limited to import/export controls only.

Such measures would of course face the same challenges that undermine existing wildlife trade laws: enforcement is inconsistent, often under-resourced, undermined by criminality and corruption, and given insufficient priority by governments. Risky trade may simply continue through illicit markets.

It is possible that the greatest benefit might come from changes in management practices for holding, trade and processing wild animals in trade. These might include regulatory or voluntary private sector measures aimed to improve animal husbandry, increase separation between species in trade, enhance sanitation at holding facilities and improve personal protection for workers.

These measures may again require modification of existing animal and human health legislation, but there is considerable practical experience from the domesticated animal sector that could be applied to this challenge.

Despite the clear imperative for action provided by the tragic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be critical to ensure that remedial restrictions on wildlife commerce are tailored to achieve specific risk reduction goals and designed to take into account potential negative impacts on social equity, livelihoods, and indirect conservation impacts.

Such measures also need to be set in the context of other zoonotic disease pathways and risk factors that need careful attention, such as land-use change, domestic livestock management practices and other human/wildlife interactions.

It is also vital that amidst the urgent need to reduce zoonotic disease threats from wildlife trade, the ongoing drive to address over-exploitation threats to wildlife does not lose momentum. It is of course possible that new health-focused restrictions on wild animal trade and increased scrutiny of wildlife commerce more generally owing to its likely connection with the pandemic may reinforce conservation-focused action.

However, trade in what may be identified as higher risk sectors, such as that of live wild mammals and birds, makes up a small proportion of the global wildlife trade. The greatest over-exploitation threats are faced by marine species and the biggest wildlife trade flows are of timber and other wild plant products.

There is additional cause for concern that socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic may be driving new trends in wildlife trade patterns that need careful attention. Past disease outbreaks linked to wild meat trade have led to increased demands for marine fish and there is already evidence of greater attention to wild plant-based medicinal treatments and tonics.

Although some illegal wildlife trade flows may now be suppressed by transport interruptions and retail market closures, there is every likelihood that criminal syndicates will move fast to rebuild illicit businesses and exploit diversion of government enforcement resources to other priorities.

A new focus on human health risks linked to wildlife trade practices is certainly warranted as a component of wider thought and action on the relationship between people and nature as the COVID-19 epidemic persists.

The response should be targeted, appropriate to the task and its design grounded in experience gained from past wildlife trade interventions. In the same way that human and environmental health are intimately connected, it is essential that new health-focused wildlife trade interventions are considered in concert with those already focused on conservation gain.

The “super-year for biodiversity” may have been delayed, but the imperative for conservation action remains.

An abridged version of the article appeared in the April issue of the TRAFFIC Bulletin, available for download at: https://www.traffic.org/site/assets/files/12779/bulletin-32_1-final-web.pdf

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Excerpt:

Steven Broad is Executive Director, TRAFFIC, the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network

The post COVID-19 & Human Health Risks Linked to Wildlife Trade Practices appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Franciscka Lucien is Executive Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. Joel Curtain is the Director of Advocacy at Partners in Health.

By Franciscka Lucien and Joel Curtain
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti and BOSTON, May 7 2020 (IPS)

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have a historic opportunity to help stabilize a world reeling from COVID-19. Doing so will require the institutions to change course and aggressively support poor countries’ ability to invest broadly in the government services their populations need.

The pandemic is exposing the consequences of four decades of reduced public spending in the Global South, much of it mandated by the World Bank and the IMF (often called “International Financial Institutions” or “IFIs”). Those consequences were already painfully apparent to people in Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere, who were massively protesting the loss of public services until the pandemic kept them home.

Starting in the 1970s, the IFIs imposed loan conditions via “structural adjustment programs” that forced sharp cuts in government spending in developing countries and constrained their ability to tax, to regulate business and to protect workers. These programs forced significant reductions in public health, education, agricultural support and other important social and economic programs.

Structural adjustment also transferred power from national governments, which are accountable to their citizens, to corporations and IFIs. These entities were empowered to make decisions affecting people’s lives without those impacted having any say. This transfer of power accelerated when the 1980s credit crisis made countries desperate for loans, especially because the IMF’s seal of approval was a prerequisite to loans by other creditors.

Haiti accepted structural adjustment in return for financial help during its democratic transition in the mid-1990s. The conditions forced the government to eliminate half of its civil servants, privatize public services, and slash tariffs that had protected farmers.

Twenty-five years later, foreign actors have increasing access to Haiti’s economy, but Haitians have limited access to healthcare and other basic services. Spending on public health went from 16.6% of the national budget in 2004 to 4.4% in 2017, and there are currently an estimated 124 ICU beds and 70 ventilators for 11 million people. The shriveled health and sanitation budgets had catastrophic consequences in 2010, when cholera-contaminated sewage leaking from a UN military base spawned the worst cholera epidemic of modern times, with over 800,000 sick and 10,000 killed. After seeing their country ravaged by a disease that can be stopped with clean water and adequate sanitation, Haitians are bracing for the worst from COVID-19.

Although the IFIs have abandoned “structural adjustment” as a term, Global South governments are still recovering from the programs’ effects, and the IFIs continue to impose loan conditions that limit spending for government services. The response to the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to repair this damage with support that enables countries to invest in resilient systems that can respond to a range of crises, and deliver basic government services like healthcare and education.

Seizing this opportunity requires returning power to people, and their governments. The IMF took a small step in the right direction April 13 by deferring debt payments for Haiti and 24 other countries. Debt relief for low- and middle-income countries, coupled with a massive allocation of the IMF’s reserve currency ― Special Drawing Rights ― would provide governments a more appropriate level of financial flexibility. On April 17, the World Bank announced a new Trust Fund to help countries prepare for disease outbreaks.

The IMF’s Managing Director, economists and many governments have backed these common-sense measures. The US government has not, which raises the issue of power within the IFIs. Voting power at both IFIs is skewed profoundly in favor of wealthy countries, with low- and middle- income counties having only 40% of the vote despite representing around 85% of the global population. This power imbalance is both a symptom and a cause of rising global inequality.

The US has one of every six votes in the two IFIs. A bill filed last week would direct those votes to support Global South governments’ investments in the public education, healthcare and other services their citizens need, without imposing inappropriate conditions. The bill, called the Robust International Response to Pandemic Act., was sponsored by Representatives Jesús García (IL-04), Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) and Mark Takano (CA-41). The rest of Congress should rise to the challenge COVID-19 is presenting and pass the bill.

The post Time for the World Bank and IMF to Be the Solution, Not the Problem appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Franciscka Lucien is Executive Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. Joel Curtain is the Director of Advocacy at Partners in Health.

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Credit: UNFPA

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 2020 (IPS)

The world’s poorer nations, reeling under an unrelenting attack on their fragile economies by the COVID-19 pandemic, have suffered an equally deadly body blow: being buried under heavy debt burdens.

Abiy Ahmed, prime minister of Ethiopia who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, said last week that in 2019, 64 countries, nearly half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, spent more on servicing external debt than on health.

Ethiopia alone, he said, spends twice as much on paying off external debt as on health. “We spend 47 percent of our merchandise export revenue on debt servicing”, he wrote in an oped piece in the New York Times.

According to the UK-based Jubilee Debt Campaign, some of the countries battling debt burdens include Lebanon, which spends about 41% of its revenue on debt service; El Salvador, which spends 38% of its revenues on debt service; and South Sudan, which spends 29%.

And these are not necessarily the most highly-indebted poor countries in the world — Sri Lanka pays 48% of its revenue in debt service, and Angola 43%.

On April 15, the Group of 20 countries (G20) offered temporary relief to some of the world’s lowest-income countries by suspending debt repayments until the end of the year.

But, regrettably, their best offer fell far short of expectations.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a “debt standstill” across all developing countries affected by debt vulnerabilities. This includes external public and commercial debt.

“The private sector’s voluntary and well-coordinated engagement in debt relief discussions is crucial”, he adds.

In 2020, “we expect to lose the equivalent of more than 300 million jobs; a decline in global trade between 13 and 32 per cent; remittance flows to low‐ and middle‐income countries to drop by around 20 per cent; and foreign direct investment to decline by 35 per cent,” the United Nations warned last week.

Clemence Landers, a Policy Fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD), told IPS the G20 bilateral debt suspension is a good start, but it’s only a temporary stopgap measure.

In the months ahead, she pointed out, it will be clear that some countries need deeper and more permanent relief.

“The global community should use this time to establish the broad contours of an orderly debt relief process that distributes the burden equitably between all bilateral and commercial creditors”.

In parallel, argued Landers, the international financial institutions should find ways to deploy financing packages above levels that they have already announced to ensure that net flows to countries are robust. But an effective and orderly process is far from a given.

“It will largely hinge on the G20’s ability to provide an ambitious plan and maintain strong political pressure to achieve a coordinated approach,” she declared.

Professor Kunal Sen, Director United Nations University– World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), told IPS the recent announcement by the governments of the G20 countries of a debt moratorium for the poorest countries is a welcome initiative as it allows these countries to allocate the funds that would have gone to service external debt to deal with the immediate needs of the pandemic.

According to Jubilee Debt Campaign, the suspension covers debt payments by 77 countries to G20 and other governments, from 1 May to the end of 2020, estimated to be $12 billion.

The payments will not be cancelled but come due to be paid between 2022 and 2024, along with interest accrued in the meantime. There will be a review by the G20 before the end of 2020 as to whether further action will be taken.

The G20 announcement also calls on private creditors to similarly suspend debt payments, and calls on multilateral creditors to explore options for doing so.

The G20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union (EU).

The Ethiopian Prime Minister said at the very least, the suspension of debt payments should last not just until the end of 2020 but rather until well after the pandemic is truly over.

“It should involve not just debt suspension but debt cancellation. Global creditors need to waive both official bilateral and commercial debt for low-income countries,” he declared.

Richard Ponzio, Senior Fellow and Director of the Stimson Center’s Just Security 2020 Program, told IPS the G20 Finance Ministers wisely agreed on a ‘time-bound suspension of debt service payments’, between now and the end of the year, for 77 of the world’s poorest countries.

“Now it’s time for private creditors, who are owed USD $3 billion (or a quarter of total debt), to step up and participate in this initiative,” he noted.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect countries in different ways, once they begin to transition from the current emergency to a full recovery phase, the G20 should revisit the need to sustain this policy, in 2021 and 2022, on a country-by-country basis, with the goal of helping all countries adversely affected by the pandemic to get back-up on their feet, Ponzio declared.

Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director at the Oakland Institute, a leading US-based policy think tank, told IPS the Covid-19 pandemic has unleashed a crisis of untold proportions – the disastrous impact of which is being felt by the poorest and poor nations.

According to the World Bank itself, COVID has pushed about 40-60 million people into extreme poverty, with best estimate being 49 million.

Bank’s projections suggest that Sub-Saharan Africa will be the region hit hardest in terms of increased extreme poverty, she said.

“At such a time, an inclusive bailout requires that united global response should ensure a just recovery and transition to a better future for those most in need.”

She pointed out that Central African Republic has just three ventilators, Sierra Leone has 13, Liberia has three, South Sudan has four.

Mittal said developing countries should be boosting healthcare systems to defend against the virus and protecting their economies and the poor, instead of using precious resources to pay off external debt, which anyway never benefitted the communities.

“These loans were often generated for so called “development” projects which have failed to bring development to the countries or populations that were intended to benefit”.

At this time, she argued, it is pertinent to cancel bilateral, multilateral and private debt for this year and instead, emergency additional finance should be provided. This time also calls for real negotiations around debt cancellation.

Above all, it is important to ensure removal of loan leverage to open up markets and force reforms such as the opening of land markets in Ukraine. Loan programs intended to control economies and natural resources have to stop, said Mittal.

Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Director of Jubilee Debt Campaign said the G20 offer is a first step in dealing with the magnitude of the coronavirus debt crisis, but much more needs to be done.

The G20 deal keeps vital money in countries for now, but today’s suspension will soon become tomorrow’s debt crisis unless payments are cancelled in full.

“We urgently need a UN-led process to cancel external debt owed to all creditors, for all countries in crisis,” said Clifton.

“The suspension of debt payments to private creditors is only voluntary. The UK and New York can make sure it happens by introducing emergency legislation to prevent any lender suing a country for stopping debt payments during the current crisis”.

Otherwise, she argued, “the real beneficiaries of today’s deal could be rich speculators who keep being paid thanks to debt suspensions by other lenders.”

Meanwhile, several Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines, have taken a severe beating primarily because of a sharp fall in migrant earnings resulting from the closure of industries and construction work in the Middle East and Gulf nations due to COVID-19.

According to the New York Times, millions of Indians who work in the Arab world — particularly in the oil-rich countries of the Gulf — have lost their jobs in recent weeks as Arab economies have contracted under lockdown.

“We have been getting distress calls from the Gulf,” said Mahesh Kumar, a spokesman for India’s foreign ministry.

The Times said Indian media have reported more than 150,000 Indians in the United Arab Emirates requesting to be evacuated — and that several large naval warships have already been dispatched to the UAE and the Maldives.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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Quechua indigenous farmers from the town of Huasao, in the Andes highlands of Peru, cut insect repellent plants in front of Juana Gallegos' house, while others prepare the biol mixture, a liquid organic fertiliser that they use on their vegetable crops. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
HUASAO, Peru, May 6 2020 (IPS)

It’s eight o’clock in the morning and Pascuala Ninantay is carrying two large containers of water in her wheelbarrow to prepare with neighbouring women farmers 200 litres of organic fertiliser, which will then be distributed to fertilise their crops, in this town in the Andes highlands of Peru.

“We grow healthy, nutritious food without chemicals,” she tells IPS, describing the sustainable agriculture she practices in Huasao, a town of about 1,500 people in Quispicanchi province, 3,300 metres above sea level, in the department of Cuzco in south-central Peru.

It will take them four hours to prepare the “biol”, a liquid fertiliser composed of natural inputs contributed by the local farmers as part of a collective work tradition of the Quechua indigenous people, to which most of the inhabitants of Huasao and neighbouring highlands villages in the area belong.

“Between all of us we bring the different ingredients, but we were short on water so I went to the spring to fill my ‘galoneras’ (multi-gallon containers),” explains Ninantay.

The women, gathered at the home of Juana Gallegos, work in community. While some gather insect repellent plants like nettles and muña (Minthostachys mollis, an Andes highlands plant), others prepare the huge plastic drum where they will make the mixture that includes ash and fresh cattle dung.

They keep working until the container is filled with 200 litres of the fertiliser which, after two months of fermentation in the sealed drum, will be distributed among them equally.

Making organic fertiliser is one of the agro-ecological practices that Ninantay and 15 of her neighbours have adopted to produce food that is both beneficial to health and adapted to climate change.

They are just a few of the almost 700,000 women who, according to official figures, are engaged in agricultural activities in Peru, and who play a key role in the food security and sovereignty of their communities, despite the fact that they do so under unequal conditions because they have less access to land, water management and credit than men.

That is the view of Elena Villanueva, a sociologist with the Flora Tristán Centre for Peruvian Women, a non-governmental organisation that for the past two years has been promoting women’s rights and technical training among small-scale women farmers in Huasao and six other areas of the region, with support from two institutions in Spain’s Basque Country: the Basque Development Cooperation agency and the non-governmental Mugen Gainetik.

“During this time we have seen how much power the 80 women we have supported have gained as a result of their awareness of their rights and their use of agro-ecological techniques. In a context of marked machismo (sexism), they are gaining recognition for their work, which was previously invisible,” she told IPS.

A group of women farmers are ready to head out to the plots they farm on the community lands outside of Huasao, a rural town in Peru’s Andes highlands department of Cuzco. They are wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, because they depend on their production for food and income from the sale of the surplus, to cover their household expenses. CREDIT: Nayda Quispe/IPS

This group of women farmers is convinced of the need for nutritious food that does not harm people’s health or nature, and they are happy to do their small part to make that happen.

“We want to have a variety of food constantly available, but taking care of our soil, water, plants, trees and air,” says Ninantay.

“We no longer use chemicals,” says Gallegos. “Thanks to the training we have received, we understood how the soil and our crops had become so dependent on those substances, we thought that only by using them would we have a good yield. But no, with our own fertilisers we grow lettuce, tomatoes, chard, artichokes, radishes and all our big, beautiful, tasty vegetables. Everything is organic.”

Once they were producing their fresh produce using agro-ecological techniques, the women decided to also begin growing their staple crops of potatoes and corn organically. “I see that the plants are happier and the leaves are greener now that I fertilise them naturally,” says Ninantay.

Villanueva says these decisions on what to plant and how to do it contribute to new forms of agricultural production that meet the food needs of the women and their families while also contributing to the sustainable development of their communities.

“With agro-ecology they enrich their knowledge about the resistance of crops to climate change, they carry out integrated management of pests and diseases, and they have tools to improve their production planning,” she explains.

And even more important, “this process raises their self-esteem and strengthens their sense of being productive citizens because they are aware that they are taking care of biodiversity, diversifying their crops and increasing their yields,” she adds.

Thanks to this, these peasant women are obtaining surpluses that they now market.

Three times a week, Ninantay and the other women set up their stall in Huasao’s main square where they sell their products to the local population and to tourists who come in search of local healers, famous for their fortune telling and cures, which draw on traditional rituals and ceremonies.

The agro-ecological women farmers set up their stall three times a week in the main square of the rural municipality of Huasao to sell lettuce, tomatoes, Chinese onions, radish and other fresh produce. They are now marketing their wares in compliance with the health regulations put in place in response to the coronavirus pandemic, for which they have received training from the municipal authorities. CREDIT: Nayda Quispe/IPS

Coronavirus alters local dynamics

However, the measures implemented by the central government on Mar. 15 to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have reduced trade, by not allowing outsiders to visit Huasao, known locally as “the village of the witchdoctors” because of its healers.

But the work in the fields has not stopped; on the contrary, the women are working harder than ever.

“We used to have the income of my husband who worked in the city, but because of the state of emergency he can no longer leave,” says Ninantay. “My fellow women farmers are in the same boat, so we continue to harvest and sell in the square and what we earn goes to buying medicines, masks, bleach and other things for the home.”

Initially, she says, the husbands didn’t want their wives to participate in the project and stay overnight away from home to attend the training workshops. But after they saw the money they were saving on food and the income the women were earning, “they now recognise that our work is important.”

Their husbands, like most Huasao men, do not work in the fields. They work in construction or services in the city of Cuzco, about 20 km away, or migrate seasonally to mining regions in search of a better income.

So the community lands, where each family has usufruct rights on three-hectare plots, were left in the hands of women, even though the title is usually held by the men. With the opportunity offered by the Flora Tristán project, they have increased their harvests and are no longer merely subsistence farmers but earn an income as well.

Despite the pandemic, the women obtained permission from the authorities and received training on the care and prevention measures to be followed in order to market their products under conditions that are safe for them and their customers.

Their stall at the open-air market in the town’s main square is already known for offering healthy food, and on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays they run out of vegetables and other products they offer. They also sell their wares in other fairs and markets.

Their stall in the municipal market is also seen as an alternative to return to more natural foods in the face of the increasing change in eating patterns in rural areas.

“Many people don’t want to eat quinoa or ‘oca’ (Oxalis tuberosa, an Andean tuber), they prefer noodles or rice,” says Ninantay. “Children fill up on sweets and junk food and they are not getting good nutrition, and that’s not right. We have to educate people about healthy eating if we want strong new generations.”

She stresses the importance of people understanding that nature, “Mother Earth”, must be respected.

“We have to recover the wisdom of our ancestors, of our grandmothers, to take care of everything that we need to live,” she warns. “If we do not do this, our grandchildren and their children will not have water to drink, seeds to plant, or food to eat.”

Flora Tristán’s Villanueva announced that the 80 women farmers in the programme would participate in initiatives for the recovery of agricultural and water harvesting practices based on forestation and infiltration ditches, using native trees known as chachacomas (Escallonia resinosa) and queñuas (Polylepis).

The women hope that their experience and knowledge will be extended on a large scale, because although they share with their families, neighbours and relatives what they are learning, they believe that the authorities should help expand these practices.

“We would like not only Huasao, but all of Cuzco to be an agro-ecological region, so that we can help nature and guarantee healthy food for the families of the countryside and the city,” says Gallegos, convinced that if they could do it, everyone can.

• Women Farmers in Peru Bring Healthy Meals to Local Schools

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By External Source
May 6 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Denmark is Education Cannot Wait’s (ECW) third largest donor, with US$79.1 million in contributions to date. In this insightful interview with Denmark’s Minister for Development Cooperation, Rasmus Prehn, we explore the importance of girls’ education and gender equality, the humanitarian-development nexus, expanded engagement with the private sector, education in emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic and more. A former high school teacher, with a master’s degree in social science, Minister Prehn has been a member of Danish Parliament since 2005, and was named Minister for Development Cooperation on June 27, 2019. Minister Prehn is the former chairman of the Danish Research, Education and Further Education Committee, a tireless advocate for education in emergencies, and a true champion for achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG4: inclusive and equitable, quality education for all.

Denmark is a strong political advocate of education and girls’ education in emergencies and crisis countries. How do you see investments in education in crisis countries bringing transformative change for the overall development agenda?

RP: Education holds a huge potential for transformation. Both in respect to giving children the tools they need for a sustainable future and in respect to transforming society as we know it into a place where girls and boys, women and men, have equal rights and opportunities. An educated girl can significantly increase her income as compared to girls with no education. Her future children will have a much higher chance of surviving the first five years of their lives.

Girls living in emergency contexts are of particular risk of being out of school. They are also at higher risk of sexual- and gender-based violence, including teenage pregnancies and child marriage. Their sexual and reproductive health and rights are often under pressure during times of crisis. Supporting education is also a way to address these risks, as education provides a foundation for increased gender equality and for the protection of the rights of women and girls.

Denmark’s investments in education in crises have a two-fold aim: 1) to ensure continuity of learning for children so that they have the tools for a better future 2) to re-define gender and social norms and raise girls and boys to be equal citizens with equal rights and opportunities.

Since Education Cannot Wait became operational in 2017, Denmark has also become one of Education Cannot Wait’s biggest strategic donor partners and has made major investments in Education Cannot Wait over the past years. What are the key incentives for investing in this relatively new global fund?

RP: Denmark is very committed to work more effectively across the humanitarian-development nexus to ensure more sustainable education outcomes in areas affected by conflict and protracted crisis. This was a key incentive for Danish support to ECW right from the start and for the large contributions that have placed Denmark among the largest donors to ECW.

For the same reason, a key priority for Denmark is that ECW focuses on its mandate to bridge the humanitarian-development nexus to secure long-term education impact. This is only more relevant in light of COVID-19, which has led to the close down of schools in more than 190 countries worldwide. When responding to the COVID-19 crisis, there was a need for immediate action to enable continued learning and address protection risks linked to children being out of school, while also supporting resilient education systems.

In response to COVID-19, and as the LEGO Foundation – the philanthropic arm of a Danish world class private sector company – increased its support to Education Cannot Wait – you also decided to frontload financing for Education Cannot Wait. This is a wonderful way for governments and private sector to provide matching support. How would you describe this model example of engaging private sector?

RP: Denmark firmly believes in partnerships and collaboration to solve the challenges faced in the world today. We need to work together at all levels to make sure we leave no one behind. Collaboration across the public and private sector is one important way of ensuring progress towards common goals. We recognize and much appreciate the role and support of the LEGO Foundation towards education in emergencies. The Danish Government and the LEGO Foundation are currently strengthening collaboration in the area of education. Through close strategic dialogue and coordinated actions such as the matching support, the aim of the collaboration is to ensure synergies towards common goals and the realization of SDG4. We hope that this can set an example for enhanced private and public sector collaboration also in other sectors.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a global impact upon all areas of virtually everyone’s life. What does Denmark see as the top three priorities moving forward to achieve SDG4 (quality, inclusive education), particularly for crisis-affected children and youth already impacted by armed conflicts, forced displacement and natural disasters – and now doubly hit by COVID-19?

RP: For Denmark, quality and inclusive education is key for learning outcomes. At the same time, both quality and inclusiveness in education are impacted by the context in which children are learning. When the surrounding world is unsafe and uncertain, a pre-condition for children to learn is to ensure a protective environment. Therefore one key priority is a holistic cross-sectoral response that includes access to health care, psychosocial support and protection measures as part of education efforts.

COVID-19 has indeed added a double concern to education in emergencies. A concern that only further stresses the need to develop resilient education systems that are able to deliver quality education in crisis contexts. Be it pandemics, natural disasters or wars. A significant element is to ensure that we reach those furthest behind by using innovative and context-specific methods for distance learning. It is also important that we consider that education quality is not only about the number of children accessing education or learning outcomes, but also about teaching methods, curriculum and the social environment in schools between students and teachers, and students and their peers.

A particular concern for Denmark are the consequences that the school closures caused by COVID-19 have for both girls’ and women’s rights. We know that education is one key element to prevent social and gender norms that drive harmful practices. Where pre-COVID-19 projections showed that a decline in harmful practices could be reached, post-COVID-19 projections show that more girls will be exposed to female genital mutilation and child marriage. Therefore, quality education and establishing inclusive conditions for girls in schools through addressing harmful social and gender norms is a key priority for Denmark and also is the reason why we are part of the ECW gender reference group. The classroom reflects the surrounding society and the reverse is also true. We must work at all levels to create inclusive conditions for girls’ access to school.

As a Member of Parliament, you have been the Chairman of the Committee on Research, Education and Further Education. What does education represent for you on a more personal level? How does this influence you in your work as a policymaker?

RP: I could not be a bigger champion of education and skills development: this is the key to create the hope for a better future. I have immense respect for the potential offered by education at all levels to change norms in a positive way. This is why I have been preoccupied with education since my early youth. I have myself worked as a high school teacher for 8 years. I have also been a teacher in the Danish folk high schools (“højskoler”), which is an education institution invented in the 1830s with the aim to help people qualify as active members of society with the means to change the political situation and meet across social borders.

###

About Education Cannot Wait: ECW is the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies. It was launched by international humanitarian and development aid actors, along with public and private donors, to address the urgent education needs of 75 million children and youth in conflict and crisis settings. ECW’s investment modalities are designed to usher in a more collaborative approach among actors on the ground, ensuring relief and development organizations join forces to achieve education outcomes. Education Cannot Wait is hosted by UNICEF. The Fund is administered under UNICEF’s financial, human resources and administrative rules and regulations, while operations are run by the Fund’s own independent governance structure.

Please follow on Twitter: @EduCannotWait @YasmineSherif1 @KentPage
Additional information at: www.educationcannotwait.org

For press inquiries: Kent Page, kpage@unicef.org, +1-917-302-1735
For press inquiries: Anouk Desgroseilliers, adesgroseilliers@un-ecw.org, +1-917-640-6820
For any other inquiries: info@un-ecw.org

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Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), briefs Security Council members during the open video conference in connection with the International Criminal Court and the situation in Libya. Courtesy: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 6 2020 (IPS)

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday highlighted crimes against humanity and grave mismanagement of the law in Libya during a release of their latest report on the North African nation. 

Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, said enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, hate speech, and severe maltreatment of detainees remains a massive concern in the country that’s been caught in a civil war since 2014 with administrations in its capital Tripoli pitted against Benghazi. 

Bensouda warned of serious violence due to armed conflict in the region, resulting in a large volume of civilian casualties from air-strikes and shelling operations. She also called on “serious and urgent reforms” regarding the prison situation across the country.

“Arbitrary detention and serious mistreatment of detainees affects not only migrants and refugees but also thousands of other people detained in prisons and detention centres across Libya,” she said during the May 5 virtual briefing.

“Many people are detained without lawful basis or denied their fundamental procedural rights,” she said. 

Furthermore, those detained – many of whom are women and children – are put at risk for abuse such as murder, torture rape and other forms of sexual violence, she said. 

This is further strengthened by testimony from formal detainees who have claimed they were subject to “brutal methods of torture”.  

Many have died after being subject to torture and not being given access to timely medical care. 

She also noted that, “derogatory and dehumanising language” have permeated both traditional and social media. 

“This is cause for concern,” she said. “This type of language generates both hatred and fear in the community and deepens divisions within society. It sows the seeds of crimes against targeted groups of individuals and foments conditions in which mass atrocity crime can occur.”

“Leaders and prominent members of the community have a special responsibility to lead by example to refrain from hate speech,” she added. “Anyone who incites fear, hatred and division in the community causes harm not only to those targeted but also to society as a whole.”

Shortly following the ICC’s briefing on Tuesday, Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said the U.N. Support Mission for Libya (UNSMIL) “remains concerned at the continued fighting in the country and reiterates its call for a cessation of hostilities during the holy month of Ramadan”. 

Dujarric added that the UNSMIL’s acting special representative Stephanie Williams remains engaged in outreach efforts with mediators as well as other international partners, including those involved with the Berlin Conference, in order to ensure that Libya can return to proper political process. The main objectives of the Berlin Conference, held in January, was to find consensus among concerned member states on the Libyan crisis.  

“It’s important that all the parties involved, whether Libyan or those who have influence over those parties, move in the same direction, and that is towards political talks,” Dujarric told the Associated Press at the briefing. 

The report came a little after the first anniversary since the Libyan National Army (LNA), a rebel group led by defected general Khalifa Haftar, orchestrated an attack to seize the Libyan capital Tripoli from the U.N.-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).  

Since the coronavirus pandemic has become a priority for governments around the world, experts fear this may be putting the crisis in Libya on the backseat of international diplomacy and in turn giving way for the crisis to continue, according to recent analysis by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). 

“As European officials shy away from the Libyan dossier to tackle the pandemic at home, there are concerns that efforts to secure a political solution to the conflict will be severely weakened,” ACLED said in an analysis shared in April.  

At the end of March, the Secretary-General had appealed for a global ceasefire in all conflict areas as communities — especially those who are in transit or in conflict — are at graver, more complicated risks of the coronavirus. 

Over a month later, Haftar announced a “truce” as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began. However, GNA forces reportedly said they would not adhere to this temporary ceasefire as they did not trust him to keep his word.

On Tuesday, as the report was being released, Al Jazeera reported an attack by the GNA on an airbase under the control of Haftar’s leadership, ensuing in heavy fire exchange between forces on both sides. The airbase was reportedly a key facility that was used to attack GNA forces, according to the report.

• One Month Since Libya’s Migrant Tragedy, Detentions Continue
• Libya Tragedy: Why Lock up Migrants in the First Place?

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A young boy in Pakistan receives an oral polio vaccine (OPV). Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Laura Mackenzie
May 6 2020 (IPS)

Interruptions to vaccination programmes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could result in new waves of measles or polio outbreaks, health experts warn.

A growing number of one-off immunisation campaigns and national routine vaccine introductions are being delayed amid social distancing and other measures to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2, leaving millions unprotected.

With both preventive campaigns and routine immunisations impacted, “we’ll have an increasing number of children who will become susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases and that will definitely lead to outbreaks”,

Richard Mihigo
World Health Organization’s Africa office
Uptake of routine immunisations has dropped in many vulnerable countries, with people unable or unwilling to travel to sessions — something that was also observed during the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

With both preventive campaigns and routine immunisations impacted, “we’ll have an increasing number of children who will become susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases and that will definitely lead to outbreaks”, says Richard Mihigo, programme manager for immunisation and vaccines development at the World Health Organization’s Africa office.

Coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, “such outbreaks will not receive the same attention as in normal times”, he adds.

“We saw this during the [2013-2016] Ebola outbreak in West Africa, where we had an outbreak of measles at the same time. And recently we’ve seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo that an ongoing outbreak of measles has killed more people than the ongoing outbreak of Ebola. But all attention was on Ebola.”

Following the WHO’s recommendation last month that all mass vaccination campaigns should be suspended in response to COVID-19, Mihigo says mass preventive campaigns — which help to fill in the gaps in places with weak routine immunisation — had been put on hold in almost all African countries, while campaigns to target existing outbreaks are being considered on a case-by-case basis.

Those halted include preventive measles campaigns in Chad, Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Sudan, as well as in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than 6000 people have died since last year in the DRC in what is currently the world’s largest measles outbreak. These campaigns alone had aimed to reach 21.2 million children under the age of five, Mihigo says.

Meanwhile Gavi, the global Vaccine Alliance, which vaccinates almost half of the world’s children, announced earlier this month that 14 major immunisation campaigns supported by the alliance had been postponed, along with four national routine vaccine introductions.

These delays, which impact campaigns against polio, measles, cholera, human papillomavirus (HPV), yellow fever and meningitis, have affected at least 13.5 million people in 13 of the world’s least-developed countries, the alliance says, cautioning that many more delays are expected. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which partners with Gavi and the WHO, has also recommended that all polio vaccination campaigns be paused worldwide.

Countries with fragile health systems and ongoing conflicts — many of which are yet to feel the full impact of the novel coronavirus — are most at risk, says Charlie Weller, head of vaccines programme at the Wellcome Trust.

She too highlights the DRC, where Ebola has struck in areas of active conflict, as a country particularly at risk: “The impact to their health system and how they will be able to manage through and beyond COVID-19 is a very big concern.”

Gavi chief executive, Seth Berkley, warns that the international community needs to act to prevent potentially devastating outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.

“The legacy of COVID-19 must not include the global resurgence of other killers like measles and polio,” he says.

However, some experts believe that a rise in cases of vaccine-preventable diseases are inevitable.

When vaccination coverage goes down, inevitably more outbreaks will occur, including of life-threatening diseases like measles and polio, WHO deputy director-general Zsuzsanna Jakab says.

WHO spokesperson for polio eradication Oliver Rosenbauer says that although temporarily halting polio vaccination campaigns was the “only recommendation to make under this new reality”, the organisation was anticipating an increase in polio cases as a result — including a possible spread of the virus to new areas.

Echoing Mihigo’s warning about COVID-19 distracting from other disease outbreaks, Rosenbauer stresses the need for continued polio surveillance and a return to vaccination campaigns “as rapidly as is safely feasible”.

“We must not forget that as long as children in Pakistan are at risk of polio paralysis … then all children in the world, wherever they live, could one day be affected by polio,” Rosenbauer adds. Pakistan and Afghanistan are currently the only countries in the world still affected by the wild poliovirus, WPV1.

Once the immediate COVID-19 crisis is over, experts agree that the speedy and effective implementation of catch-up vaccination campaigns will be vital — a matter that could be complicated by US President Donald Trump’s recent threats to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to the WHO.

But Weller stresses that although investment in catch-up campaigns is vital, there will be no quick fixes.

“It’s not just about putting a band-aid or plaster over a dip in vaccine coverage,” she says. “It’s about helping those countries to strengthen their health systems for the long term.”

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

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By Richard Cupitt
WASHINGTON DC, May 6 2020 (IPS)

Even during this pandemic, perhaps especially during this pandemic, the global institutions to help prevent the spread of biological and chemical weapons to proliferators or terrorists must continue their work.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted in a recent address to the UN Security Council, the focus on the pandemic has created new opportunities for terrorists to exploit.

In the realm of biological and chemical weapons proliferation, three important instruments and their related institutions must meet the challenge of doing their important work under widespread travel bans, social distancing and misinformation campaigns: the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW); the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) and the BWC Implementation Support Unit (BWC-ISU); and United Nations Security Council resolution 1540 (2004) and the 1540 Committee.

COVID-19, the CWC and the OPCW

Although much smaller than the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in staff and budget, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) must facilitate the implementation of arguably a more extensive verification regime under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), with tens of thousands of potentially inspectable facilities located in almost every country in the world, a challenge that a pandemic only magnifies.

The OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias set up an internal task force to monitor COVID-19 and its potential impact on the organization in late January and then responded swiftly to March guidance issued by the Netherlands (which hosts the headquarters of the OPCW) and by the World Health Organization (WHO) to have approximately 90% of the OPCW’s 500 plus staff work remotely, while cancelling all non-essential travel, including for training, through May 1.

More importantly, the OPCW postponed for rescheduling as circumstances warrant, capacity building events, inspections of facilities with scheduled chemicals and former chemical weapons facilities, inspections related to abandoned or old chemical weapons, and deployments and missions to Syria.

Director-General Arias pointedly noted that this meant that the OPCW would be unlikely to meet its schedule of 241 inspections for facilities with scheduled chemicals this year. On April 17, the Director-General extended the ban until June 1.

Credit: United Nations / Giovanni Diffidenti

As the OPCW adjusts to working remotely, other work of the OPCW has continued, from enhancing its online presence, to working on its new ChemTech Centre, to releasing a new report on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

The OPCW has also welcomed the annual national declarations required under the CWC. However, national authorities in many countries are also coping with the impact of COVID-19, with differing degrees of success.

Moreover, the OPCW will likely face increased strain on its budget and contributions. This is likely to have already emerged as the OPCW has moved more toward seeking to prevent the re-emergence of chemical weapons with a new focus on attribution of chemical weapons use and chemical security.

A deep economic recession will likely mean cuts in the national budgets for implementing the CWC obligations of States parties – already a concern – and financial support for and attention to the OPCW. Even worse, the illness or even death of at least a few key national officials seems likely.

Only recently, moreover, have States Parties decided to take on several important new tasks, such as adding chemicals to its Schedules for the first time, expanding its efforts on chemical security, and creating new mechanisms for attribution, in no small part because of a resurgence in use of chemical weapons for warfare, terrorism and assassination.

Without significant financial and material support for their efforts, States Parties and the OPCW seem ill placed to implement these new tasks in the coming year.

COVID-19, the BWC and the BWC-ISU

For the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the pandemic has made the possible consequences of a malicious release of a biological agent – mountains of death and debt – clearer than ever.

At the same time, State Parties have long recognized that efforts to implement biosecurity measures usually complemented and enhanced biosafety and public health, such as improving disease surveillance, improving secure diagnostic laboratory capacity, or building general capacity to respond to disease outbreaks.

Not surprisingly, many national governments have entertained the need to adopt and implement the BWC and contribute to its strengthening. And the requests for assistance have increased enormously according to several sources (although which requests, if any, that have gone to the BWC is confidential).

Although the BWC has no verification regime, its members do report on confidence building measures, assistance activities and advances in science among other implementation efforts.

BWC activities usually revolve around two short sessions, the Meeting of Experts (MXP) and the Meeting of States Parties (MSP), but States Parties must also prepare for a Review Conference in 2021.

Unfortunately, all of this work, including efforts to address assistance requests through an on-line database, must be serviced by a talented but pathetically small support staff, i.e., the BWC – Implementation Support Unit (BWC-ISU), which consists of three full-time staff members located at the United Nations offices in Geneva.

Moreover, even before the pandemic shortfalls in the budget for the BWC and the BWC-ISU have been significant enough to raise questions about even having a meaningful MSP.

While COVID-19 has surely emphasized the need for improving implementation of the BWC and of the roles of the BWC and the BWC-ISU, the pandemic seems likely to reduce government capacity and income, while paradoxically creating excessive expectations for what the BWC and the BWC-ISU can do in response to such global turmoil.

COVID-19, UNSCR 150, and the 1540 Committee

United Nations Security Council resolution 1540 (2004) is the international legal instrument that creates the binding obligations on all States to prohibit a range of illicit activities while controlling legitimate ones related to items, including dangerous pathogens like COVID-19.

As with the BWC-ISU, the UN Security Council subsidiary body that monitors and facilitates implementation of the resolution, informally known as the 1540 Committee, will also hear new calls to improve the low levels of implementation of the resolution’s biosecurity elements, which typically complement and support public health efforts to prevent and respond to pandemics.

Located in New York City, the 1540 Committee and its Group of Experts, continue some of their work remotely, such as reviewing reports and other materials on national implementation and receiving assistance requests, while facing limits on other aspects of its work, such as training and outreach efforts.

Most important, in early 2020 the 1540 Committee and some of its key supporters had launched a series of activities for the 3rd Comprehensive Review of the resolution, which it needs to complete before the mandate of the Committee expires in April 2021.

Most of these events now have been suspended and some will likely be abandoned. In most cases, these activities were meant to give voice to those not on the Committee, i.e., the other 178 UN Member States not on the 15-member Council, civil society organizations, and industry, all of whom have key roles in furthering implementation efforts.

Under a shortened schedule to hold these events, these voices will struggle to be heard. Although not working under quite as severe financial constraints as the BWC-ISU, the pandemic and its associated recession will likely reduce important extra-budgetary support for the work of the 1540 Committee and, more importantly, turn national attention away from closing other gaps in implementation.

Particularly in regions where States already struggle to meet their obligations, e.g., Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia, already scarce government resources will have to go towards fighting the pandemic.

The pandemic also will, moreover, put added pressure on some commercial enterprises to engage proliferators, terrorists, and other criminals to avoid financial ruin. To expand on the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the COVID-19 pandemic has made an already vulnerable world even more vulnerable to exploitation by proliferators, terrorists, and criminals.

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Excerpt:

Richard Cupitt is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Partnerships in Proliferation Prevention program at Stimson. His areas of expertise include WMD nonproliferation, export controls, and foreign policy.

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By Lars Hein and Daud Khan
WAGENINGEN, Netherlands / ROME, May 5 2020 (IPS)

Globalization has been a driver for increased prosperity world-wide, but it has been in reverse in the last years due to the growth of populism in the USA and Europe. The COVID-19 pandemic may well provide further momentum to increasingly national-interest oriented policies in the west.

Nevertheless, a common response to COVID-19 is needed, where rich countries support developing countries in alleviating the impacts on the poor. COVID-19 offers an opportunity to revive collaboration world-wide, but the public and political leaders in North America and Europe need to broaden their perspective on mitigating the pandemic’s impacts.

The last decades have seen the emergence of a highly interlinked world. There has been a massive increase in global trade, travel and tourism and this has brought major benefits to most of the world’s population with incomes rising and poverty dropping.

However, as with all such major trends there have also been losers in the rapid process of globalization. In developed countries, income inequality which had been falling since the Second World War, started rising again. Combined with this was a growing resentment from workers who were unable to shift out of dying industries, such as steel and textiles, where imports from developing countries were better and cheaper.

The COVID-19 pandemic may well be the last nail in the coffin of globalization. Firms in USA and Europe will step away from the long supply chains and just-in-time deliveries that helped drive down costs. All countries will attempt to build up production of “essential goods” including medical supplies and possibly even food items

The globalized system has been increasingly under threat for the past several years, particularly from populist parties working on fears and resentment of those who feel left behind by globalization.

The COVID-19 pandemic may well be the last nail in the coffin of globalization. Firms in USA and Europe will step away from the long supply chains and just-in-time deliveries that helped drive down costs. All countries will attempt to build up production of “essential goods” including medical supplies and possibly even food items.

All this will impact trade, especially from developing countries. At the same time credit and investment flows will be largely focused to helping domestic enterprises in developed countries with little left for flows to developing countries.

This reversal of globalized production chains is bad news for developing countries, coming at a time when the medical emergency responses to COVID-19 are drawing heavily on public and private resources, and lockdowns are hitting output and employment, both in the formal and informal sectors.

While globalization has many faults, it is useful to understand it did allow both developed and developing countries to substantially raise living standards. But much was built on the backs on workers in developing countries.

Many workers, often women, worked for long hours in unhygienic and unsafe factories producing clothing and manufactured components; in Africa, thousands toiled in mines to extract minerals needed for production of laptops and smartphones.

These workers were the silent victims of globalization who only came to the news when there was a fire in a garments factory or the collapse of a mine shaft. They are better off – many above the poverty line – but it remains a grim existence with the risk that even a small shock will send them spiraling back into poverty and destitution.

With the pandemic likely to lead to severe recession in the USA and Europe, much Government attention will turn to supporting those affected in their own countries and within the EU. This will certainly be the case in the USA where the coming presidential election will find the Republicans beating the drum of America First.

But there is likely to be similar rhetoric across Europe. Many have learned from their handling of the refugee/immigration issue that solidarity does not win votes. The economic impacts of COVID-19 are particularly high in Southern European countries.

In the coming year, a lot of the political energy in the EU will be wasted on a debate on how to balance support for dealing with the impacts of COVID-19 and pointless transnational funding of outdated institutional and economic models. Despite this political turbulence, efforts to alleviate the economic impact of crisis in OECD countries will take off. These will include increasing credit to businesses and the self-employed, delaying tax collection and ensuring basic income support.

However, in the emergency, there is hardly any mention in the policy and public debate of the impacts of COVID-19 in developing countries, let alone the economic impacts on the poor in these countries. But turning the backs on developing countries will be an epochal mistake for the USA and Europe for moral, economic and political reasons.

It is quickly becoming clear that the economic and social impacts of COVID-19 in developing countries will stretch far beyond the immediate medical and social costs. Currently, the WHO is reporting some 255,000 deaths from COVID-19 globally, and more than 3.6 million confirmed cases.

These numbers are very likely to underreport cases and fatalities in developing countries, where COVID-19 is rapidly spreading, but medical and testing equipment are in short supply. However, the secondary impacts may well go far beyond these primary effects. Hundreds of millions of people, many of who work in the small scale services sector will suddenly find themselves without jobs.

Traditionally, many of these people relied on informal networks in time of stress and hardship. However, safety nets that work through family and friends are unlikely to be sufficient: many relatives that could otherwise provide support will also have lost their job.

Family relations may be under strain from the lock-down: a doubling of domestic violence has been reported as a consequence of people’s confinement to their houses and neighborhoods in combination with job losses – putting further strain on social networks. Many of the poor will lose an important part of their savings to cope with the current crisis, affecting all phases of life including schooling, marriage and pensions.

Throughout developing countries, government, NGOs and private charities are rapidly gearing up to meet the immediate food and medical needs of the poorest and vulnerable sections of the population. But what is needed goes beyond the life-saving relief and survival support that is currently being offered.

Governments in developing countries will soon need to start to think about what are the key next steps to minimize damage to their economies and societies. In spite of the current crisis, it is crucial that OECD countries reach out to these governments and offer their support: the challenges to rebuild institutions and economies will exceed the capacities of many developing countries.

The support needed is diverse. Clearly, in the short term there is a need for medical assistance and, in the poorest countries, food support. This is immediately to be followed by debt relief – government and companies need to be able to survive the crisis so that economies can be built up quickly when COVID-19 has started receding.

A main priority for the poor in developing countries relates to reentering the labor market. In the short term, increased competition for jobs can be expected, potentially affecting pay levels. In addition, there is a need to rebuild financial buffers for events such as funerals, weddings and sickness, and for old age; ensure the continuation of education opportunities; address domestic violence, and sustain the psychological health of those affected by COVID-19 or its indirect impacts.

These responses would need to involve a broad range of national and multinational bodies including the IMF and UN agencies, NGOs and development aid agencies. Given the complexity and scope of the task, substantial funding and careful planning and coordination would be required. Also the private sector should take its responsibility. Potentially debt relief for companies could be made conditional on assisting employees coping with COVID-19 impacts.

Unfortunately, there is as yet very little attention in the West for mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 in developing countries. There is very little if any debate on how developing countries can be assisted in dealing with the various impacts of COVID-19.

Nevertheless, a slow response will only exacerbate the economic and social aftermath of the crisis in these countries. We are at a turning point: poverty reduction, pandemics, climate change and other global challenges require immediate and coordinated responses.

The COVID-19 crisis offers a choice: rebuilding global collaboration based on shared interests, education, respect and support for those in need, or an increasing focus on own short-term interests that will only lead to building up the next crisis and reduce capacities to cope.

Hence, we call for an urgent start of the debate, in particular in the West, on the various efforts needed to deal with COVID-19 focusing on those that need this support the most, i.e. the poor in developing countries.

Lars Hein is professor in environmental systems analysis at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He worked in over 30 developing countries as UN staff and while employed in the private sector.

Daud Khan is a former senior United Nations official who now lives between Italy and Pakistan. He read Economics at the London School of Economics and Oxford University where he was a Rhodes scholar. Khan holds a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

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