Africa

More than 237 million people are suffering from chronic under nutrition in Africa of which 32.6 million are in Sub Saharan Africa. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
ACCRA, Ghana/BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 25 2019 (IPS)

There is evident correlation between countries with high levels of children under five years of age who are stunted or wasted and the existence of political instability and/or frequent exposure to natural calamities, experts say.

But current food systems in Africa are not addressing nutrition because of the combination of poor investment in the agriculture value chain, inadequate policies and lack of accountability in addressing malnutrition.

In fact, many governments still focus on providing calories to their populations, not quality diets, Jan Low, Principal Scientist at the International Potato Center and 2016 World Food Prize Laureate, told IPS, warning that hungry populations, especially in urban areas, can become effective political forces for change.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), a healthy diet meets the nutritional needs of individuals if it provides sufficient, safe, nutritious and diverse foods for an active life and reduced disease risk. Diverse foods should include fruits, vegetables, legumes, seeds, nuts, whole grains and foods low in fats, sugar and salt. However foods that constitute a healthy diet are neither affordable nor available for many people.

• More than 237 million people are suffering from chronic under nutrition in Africa of which 32.6 million are in sub-Saharan Africa, says the FAO. With more people either over eating or not eating food with the necessary nutrients to be healthy and productive.

“Most poor people still get over 60 percent of their calories from staple foods. Two ways in which the quality of the foods can be improved is through fortifying them by breeding in key micronutrients into the crops themselves (biofortification) and adding micronutrients to the staple when it is being transformed industrially (fortification),” said Low.

Accounting for nutrition

According to Low, the Continental Nutrition Accountability Scorecard is an excellent attempt to hold governments in Africa more accountable for progress on nutrition.  

The scorecard is an initiative of the African Union and the African Development Bank and helps governments assess progress towards reaching their nutrition targets and to identify the right partnerships within countries across multiple sectors.

Backstopped by the growing evidence base that investing in good nutrition has positive outcomes on economic development, increasingly governments are developing multi-sectoral nutrition policies. Low told IPS that the scoreboard captures includes indicators concerning access to clean water and good sanitation, for example.  

“Unfortunately, the accountability scorecard only calls for monitoring the adoption of legislation for fortification, not for the investment in development and release of biofortified crops.”

“However, the great challenge is to move from words on paper to action in the ground,” Low said.

Moving commitment from paper to reality would also require governments to make knowledge about nutrition a basic life skill and to embed nutrition education in primary and secondary school education and as part of ante-natal clinic services for pregnant women. 

The international community should also support governments to take an innovative and tough stand in tackling unhealthy processed foods and changing food habits in rapidly urbanising centres through establishing international standards of behaviour in advertising and providing guidance on how to tax and regulate private operators promoting such products. 

Positive public policies on nutrition are key

Sonja Vermeulen, Director of Programmes for the CGIAR System Organisation, told IPS that only four African countries; Benin, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa so far are known to have national dietary guidelines.

“Most governments focus on quantity of food available (national breadbasket, maize, rice), not quality; and there is little pro-active sustained public policy work to raise nutritional standards, outside of aid programmes,” said Vermeulen.

She lamented that despite studies showing that most diets of central African countries are among the healthiest in the world, many people in low-paid urban jobs are consuming poor quality, low diversity foods such fizzy drinks and white sweetened buns for lunch.

Derek Headey, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said poor diets, largely defined in terms of excess consumption of unhealthy foods (like red meat and foods rich in sugar, sodium or fat) as well under-consumption of protective foods (like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts), are now the leading risk factor in the global burden of disease. 

“That’s not yet true in Africa, but it is coming because consumption of unhealthy foods is rising rapidly in the continent, especially in urban areas,” Headey told IPS. “Obesity rates are already high in many West African countries, and are now rising rapidly elsewhere, even in places where incomes are still relatively low, like Tanzania. Part of that is related to reduced energy expenditure, but of course it is also driven by poor diets.”

Heady said the consequences of neglecting nutrition are dangerous because poor diets and obesity impose significant economic costs on healthcare systems and on the productivity of the workforce.

The Global Panel on agriculture and food systems for nutrition says malnutrition is costly to African economies, accounting for between 3 and 16 percent of GDP annually. Globally, the impact of malnutrition on the economy is estimated to be as high as $3, 5 billion a year or $500 per individual as a result of lost economic growth and lost investment in human capital, according to the Global Panel.

Reducing food loss and waste could positively impact on global food security and nutrition, said the U.N., arguing that reducing on farm losses can help farmer improve their diets through increased food availability and gain more income from selling part of their produce.

“Achieving Zero Hunger is not only about addressing hunger, but also nourishing people while nurturing the planet,” the FAO said.

Overhauling the food system

World Food Prize Laureate Lawrence Haddad has said the world has a huge challenge of moving from global calls for a more nutritious and sustainable system to meaningful and measurable action.

“There has to be some kind of desire or motivation to make food systems more nutrition supportive, how do you create that desire, that demand and motivation? The narrative has to change dramatically from ending hunger only to nourishing populations,” said Haddad, noting that five of the top 10 risk factors for the burden of disease relate to diet and what we eat.

Haddad is also the Executive Director of Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), a Swiss-based foundation launched by the U.N. in 2002 to tackle malnutrition. He told a panel discussion at the recent Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa Forum in Ghana that data is also a critical element in making food system nutrition sensitive but data on food preparation, storage distribution, retailing, marketing and processing is not accessible in place.

He said documenting where government and businesses made commitments and kept them is important for accountability in the promoting nutrition.

“We really need to be able to adjust to new opportunities and existing and new shocks which could be conflict, climate, could be changing political regimes and could be a while range of things and the key to the ability to adapt in a dynamic way is resources and capacity,” said Haddad.

Though the future for new food systems in Africa can become a reality with commitment. “Unlike many places, Africa can build new food systems, you do not have to try to reform entrenched food systems that are very difficult to change and have vested interests and that have been vesting for hundreds of years. It is not easy but there is a chance to build new food systems.”

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The post Nutrition – the Best Investment for a Developing Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A Pakistani child receives a dose of the oral polio vaccine (OPV). Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 25 2019 (IPS)

In a “historic achievement for humanity”, two of three wild poliovirus strains have been eliminated worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday, following the conclusion by a group of experts that WPV3, type three of the disease, has been eradicated completely.

The deadly viral disease is “very close” to disappearing altogether, with the number of affected children having dropped by 99 per cent since 1988, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced on World Polio Day, marked each 24 October, positioning the world closer than ever to its total eradication.

 Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two remaining countries with reported cases, with Nigeria, a third polio-endemic country, having gone three years without a reported infection, placing it on track to be certified polio-free by 2020

The number of recorded cases has fallen from 350,000 in 1988, to less than 40 today, and from a presence in 125 countries, to just two.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two remaining countries with reported cases, with Nigeria, a third polio-endemic country, having gone three years without a reported infection, placing it on track to be certified polio-free by 2020.

“Following the eradication of smallpox and wild poliovirus type two, this news represents a historic achievement for humanity”, WHO said, with only type one of the virus remaining.

 

18 million would have been paralyzed

All three strains are symptomatically identical, WHO explains, causing irreversible paralysis, and in cases when muscles become immobilized, the disease leads to death. Early on, other signs may include fever, fatigue, and stiffness in the neck and limbs, though most infected people (90 per cent) have very mild, or no symptoms at all.

Thanks to disease control efforts, including the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), comprised of WHO, UNICEF and other health partners, 18 million people are currently walking, who otherwise would have been paralyzed by the virus.

In addition, milestone polio eradication work has saved the world more than $27 billion in health costs in the last 30 years, with potential to generate $14 billion in cumulative cost savings by 2050, when compared to costs incurred in controlling the virus indefinitely.

Beyond Thursday’s milestone, eradication “will send a strong message” regarding the power of vaccines at a time when public trust has been undermined, WHO has said.

As the world faces a spread of misinformation over vaccine safety, eliminating polio will provide “irrefutable evidence” that they work.

UNICEF has stressed that seeing polio disappear means every child, in every household must continue to be vaccinated. The agency has managed to distribute over one billion doses annually, but thousands of children are still missing out.

Vulnerable children live in remote areas or in conflict-affected communities, making access a challenge. Marginalized and underserved communities, already lacking basic resources like water and health care, sometimes only received care through targeted polio vaccination campaigns.

UNICEF continues to lead efforts to increase acceptance and demand for the vaccine through community dialogue, trust-building and evidence-based communication on the effectiveness of the immunization.

 

This story was originally published by UN News

The post World Closer Than Ever to Seeing Polio Disappear for Good appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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In the past, prolonged droughts meant no vegetation and an acute water shortage for both humans and livestock in Kachho, but the situation has changed with the large-scale use of solar-powered tubewells. Courtesy: The Third Pole/Ihsan Birahmani

By Zulfiqar Kunbhar
KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct 25 2019 (IPS)

At the southern end of Pakistan’s Sindh-Balochistan border near the Kirthar mountain range, Sindh’s Kachho desert has witnessed an unprecedented surge in the use of solar-powered tubewells for groundwater extraction in agriculture.

The rise in the number of tubewells powered by solar energy as compared to grid-provided electricity or diesel is linked with the acute power shortage in the country as well as high costs of fuel. While there is no doubt that these solar tubewells have improved agriculture in this drought-hit desert, their mass installation has caused serious environmental hazards. But despite these challenges, the absence of legislation for groundwater control and the lack of a mechanism to store rainwater means that these tubewells continue to be installed at a rapid pace – and the environmental threat worsens.

Rainwater slips away

One major factor behind the excessive groundwater extraction in Kachho is the incomplete construction of the Nai Gaj Dam, which has been designed to provide rainwater storage to Kachho and surrounding areas.

Despite the short-term relief brought on by heavy rains in the 2019 monsoon, farmers in Kachho are likely to continue extracting groundwater in the next farming season starting December, as the rainwater of the Kirthar mountains catchment areas cannot be stored in the incomplete Nai Gaj Dam.

This year, Pakistan received higher rainfall than average. “From January 1 to October 14, Pakistan saw 377 millimetres rains, which means that so far we have got more than 23% higher than normal rain,” said Muhammad Riaz, Director General of the Pakistan Meteorological Department.

Following the rains, farmers in Johi – the largest agricultural village of the Kachho Desert – enjoyed a fulfilling cultivation period. Rains in the catchment areas of the Kirthar mountain range caused the flowing of streams in full swing to the Kachho. The rain provided water for drinking, agriculture and also to recharge aquifers.

“The rains have allowed an additional 150,000 acres of cultivation. But we are well aware that this jubilation is short-lived. For the next crop which is three months later, we will have no water as the streams will stop flowing by then,” Mashooque Birhamani, the Chief Executive Officer of the Sujag Sansar Organisation, told thethirdpole.net.

Incomplete dam

In 2012, the government started the construction of the Nai Gaj Dam, an earth core rockfill embankment dam located on the edge of the Kirthar range near Dadu’s Kachho desert. The plan was to store 0.3 million acre feet (MAF) of rainwater from the Kirthar catchment area and also irrigate 28,000 acres, thus reducing water shortage.

So far, 51 percent of the project has been completed. In August this year, a committee of Pakistan’s upper legislative house Senate revealed that due to differences on payment between the provincial Sindh government and the federal government, the estimated construction cost of the Nai Gaj Dam is now three times higher than the original projection of PKR 16.9 billion (USD 108 million). The committee also told the House that the matter is now subjudice and that the Supreme Court’s decision is awaited.

“Completion of the Nai Gaj Dam can reduce pressure on groundwater extraction,” said Muhammad Munir Babar, a professor at the US-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water (USPCAS-W) at the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET).

Babar, who hails from the Kachho area, added, “Overall, due to climate change, the rain has become scarce in Kachho. No steps have been taken to recharge the aquifer whenever the rains do come. So Kachho is left vulnerable.”

Surge in tubewells

Prior to the introduction of low cost solar powered tubewells in Kachho two years earlier, traditional tubewells operating on electricity and diesel were used in the area – albeit in a smaller quantity.

With reliable solar technology available at a lower cost, the region has witnessed a sharp increase in tubewells. The latest estimates by the Sujag Sansar Organisation, a local non-governmental organisation working in Kachho on water, says the number of tubewells has surged from less than 1,000 to over 5,000 in just two years.

“On an average, everyday there are three new tubewells are being installed in the area – all solar. Even the existing tubewells are being converted to solar technology,” Birhamani added.

Kachho stands well above the national average of tubewell installations, taking its area and population into account. The national average stands at one tubewell for 217 people for every 79 hectares. In Kachho, there is one tubewell for every 50 persons for 48 hectares.

Environmental impact

In the past, prolonged droughts meant no vegetation and an acute water shortage for both humans and livestock in Kachho. Joblessness in the area resulted in a high level of poverty and destitution.

The mass installation of tubewells here has breathed new life into Kachho when it comes to economic prosperity. The expanded agriculture in the area has brought radical changes in inhabitants’ lifestyles. There is a sharp decline in migration and an increase in livelihood options.

“Increased availability of groundwater means that migration has almost been suspended. Now, the only people who migrate are those who cannot afford tubewells,” said Birhamani.

But while the economic and agricultural activities in Kachho have resumed with a new zeal, the large scale groundwater extraction has brought serious environmental hazards.

According to Babar, the groundwater table has fallen drastically.

“The gravity of the situation can be gauged by the fact that the aquifer level has gone down drastically within the passage of two years – after the installation of solar powered tubewells. In western Kachho, which is nearer to the hill torrents, water is shallow. However, the water level in eastern Kachho is 450 feet. Two years back, it was somewhere between 60 to 70 feet,” he added.

In just the second year of the mass tubewell installation, the groundwater has become saline.

Since there is no regulation of the extraction of  groundwater and locals are largely unaware of the limits of aquifers, pumping continues unabated and can lead to the elimination of groundwater altogether, Birhamani warned.

Babar added that no Kachho-specific environmental study has been conducted to calculate the effects of excessive groundwater usage.

He referred to Pakistan’s National Water Policy (NWP), which says that groundwater was depleting and its quality was deteriorating in the country.

“In general, the document refers to the overmining and pollution of aquifers that results in salinisation and the presence of fluorides and arsenic in water, which in turn degrade the quality of agricultural lands. Due to excessive extraction, Kachho is prone to depleting the aquifers. The area is already under-reported. If the government wants to improve the water situation and the level of poverty, a study is vital,” Babar said.

A bleak future

Kachho’s increasing dependence on groundwater depicts the country’s overall situation, as aquifer extraction is the only reliable resource that provides resilience against droughts and climate change impacts.

Pakistan, which is currently at the ‘water stressed’ level, is likely to touch ‘water scarcity’ levels by 2025. The agriculture sector is Pakistan’s backbone, and to fulfill its 60% irrigation needs from groundwater, the country has become the fourth largest groundwater extractor in the world.

According to the NWP, Pakistan is extracting more than 50 MAF from the aquifers and has already crossed the sustainable limit of safe yield.

According to a document compiled by the Pakistan Academy of Sciences (PAS), the introduction of solar technology in groundwater extraction has boosted the number of tubewells in the country so much that the number has gone from 0.2 million to 1.2 million in two-and-half decades.

The NWP, which is Pakistan’s first ever consensus document signed by all administrative units, provides guidelines on water scarcity related issues and has stressed upon legislation for uncontrolled groundwater extraction.

In its guidelines, the NWP has asked provinces to establish groundwater authorities to ensure sustainability, transparency, efficiency, safety and affordability.

However, so far, Sindh has not been able to act upon the NWP’s recommendations.

Rasheed Channa, spokesperson of the Chief Minister of Sindh, acknowledged the delay and said that the formation of the province’s groundwater authority is “in process”.

“I cannot announce any date. However, I can tell you that the relevant departments – including law, public health engineering and others – are working on it,” he said, adding that the government is aware of the importance of such a body.

The writer is a Karachi-based environmental journalist. He can be reached @ZulfiqarKunbhar

This story was originally published by The Third Pole and can be found here.

The post Solar Tubewells Suck Water out of Sindh Desert appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Cheap and reliable solar technology has bolstered the use of tubewells in Sindh; but as groundwater is sucked out rapidly, life is under a grave threat

The post Solar Tubewells Suck Water out of Sindh Desert appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Yasmine Sherif, Director Education Cannot Wait, UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. Credit: ECW/Kent Page

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 24 2019 (IPS)

As massive protests escalated worldwide last month, millions of children walked out of schools to demonstrate against the lackadaisical response – primarily from world leaders –to the ongoing climate emergency resulting in floods, droughts, typhoons, heat waves and wildfires devastating human lives.

Gordon Brown, a former British Prime Minister and UN Special Envoy for Global Education, rightly pointed out a harsh reality: there are also millions of children who, ironically, have no schools to walk out from.

The figures are staggering: there are 260 million who don’t go to schools, mostly because there are none, while the education of an estimated 75 million children and youth have been disrupted by humanitarian crises.

One of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG4) is aimed at ensuring that everyone—”no matter who they are, or where they live” – can access quality education by the targeted date of 2030.

But achieving that formidable goal has been undertaken by Education Cannot Wait (ECW) described as the first global, multi-lateral fund dedicated to education in emergencies.

Launched in 2016, and hosted by the UN children’s agency UNICEF, ECW has provided educational opportunities, in its first two years of operation, to over1.5 million children and youth caught up in the widespread humanitarian crises.

And ECW has invested in 32 countries, including Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lebanon, Nigeria, State of Palestine, Somalia, Syria, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe, providing schools and quality education in crisis settings.

But still, it has a long way to go because, at the current rate of progress, about 225 million young people will not be in school by 2030.

At a high-level UN summit meeting in September, ECW got a big boost, when world leaders pledged a record $216 million for children’s education.

Asked how confident she was that the ECW can help meet SDG4 – particularly when the UN remains skeptical of eradicating poverty and hunger by 2030, ECW Director Yasmine Sherif said: ‘I have hope that we can narrow the gap for the SDG4 target and at Education Cannot Wait, we are all highly motivated to contribute’.

However, she said, this will require increased, bold financial investments and funding in SDG4, especially for the 75 million children and youth left furthest behind in countries of conflicts, disasters and displacement.

ECW has put in place a business model that in a short period of time has proven to work and accelerate SDG4, said Sherif, a human rights lawyer with 30 years of experience in international affairs, including 20 years in management & leadership, and graduated with an LLM from Stockholm University in 1987 and joined the United Nations in 1988.

It is a model that translates the UN reform agenda and the New Way of Working into joint programming with governments, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), enjoys strong strategic buy-in from donor partners who are increasingly investing in ECW as a catalytic and speedy funding mechanism, while also rolling out the Grand Bargain commitments, including the localization agenda, cash-assistance and significantly contributes to strengthened humanitarian-development coherence, she declared.

“In other words, the political will is there, organizational partners are committed to working together, and ECW’s investments are crisis-sensitive and rapid, while also focused on quality. Together with our partners, we move with humanitarian speed to achieve development depth. The determining factor will thus be financing.”

She pointed out that quality, inclusive education costs money and those costs are significantly higher in situations of armed conflicts, forced displacement and natural disasters, where the education sector is often partially or wholly destroyed, where access is a major challenge and where insecurity, the constant threat of violence and an ever-changing environment requires extraordinary precautions and measures.

“That is why these children and youth are left furthest behind in the first place, and we intend to reach them. But it largely depends on increased, urgent financing. ECW is calling on world leaders, private sector and philanthropic organizations to mobilize $1.8 billion by 2021 to reach children and youth caught in emergencies and protracted crises with education”.

Over the longer term, research from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in 2016 estimated that up to 2030, US$8.5 billion will be needed annually from the international aid community to provide a basic education package for the estimated 75 million children affected by crises, that is, US$113 per child, said Sherif who has served in New York, Geneva and in crisis-affected countries in Africa, Asia, Balkans and the Middle East.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: In terms of access to children in conflict situations, what crisis has been the most difficult? Yemen? Afghanistan? Syria? How do you monitor these situations? Or are most children in these war-ravaged countries left out of your mandate — perhaps due to security and/or lack of access reasons?

SHERIF: Education Cannot Wait was established at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 with a mandate to reach 75 million children and youth left behind due to emergencies and protracted crises. Our mandate is precisely that: to reach them.

The more exposed they are, the more insecurity that envelopes them, the more deprivation and injustice they suffer, the stronger is our incentive and responsibility to ensure they can claim their right to quality education. Yes, access is very difficult during an active armed conflict. Yet, we must together with partners find solutions to overcome the challenges and obstacles. The ultimate solution is of course a political one: peace.

So far, Education Cannot Wait and our in-country partners – including host-governments, UN agencies, civil society, private sector – and importantly, local organizations, communities, teachers and parents – have reached over 1.5 million girls and boys in the past 24 months and the numbers keep rising.

For a variety of reasons, not least insecurity and access, Yemen is a herculean challenge for delivering on a development sector like education. Still, we have been able to deliver partial education support to an additional 1.3 million children and youth who were consequently able to take end-of-cycle exams and receive food rations. As this type of assistance is different from the assistance provided in other countries, ECW beneficiaries in Yemen are featured separately.

IPS: Besides conflicts, forced displacement and natural disasters hindering SDG4, isn’t the lack of education also remotely linked to widespread poverty in developing nations? Is there a co-relation between the two?

SHERIF: Absolutely. In fact, it is not question of a lack of education being remotely linked to poverty, there is in fact a direct correlation. It is all interrelated: education and poverty; education of girls and gender-inequalities; education and the rule by force as opposed to the rule of law.

Indeed, quality and inclusive education – SDG4 – is the very foundation of all the other SDGs. How is it possible to build a socio-economically viable society if the citizens and refugees in that society cannot read or write, cannot think critically, have no teachers, no lawyers, no doctors.

Education is a sound economic investment: for each dollar invested in education, more that $5 is returned in additional gross earnings in low-income countries. Education empowers the most marginalized: a child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live past the age of five.

Education is key to promoting peace, tolerance and mutual respect: it reduces the likelihood of violence and conflict by 37% when girls and boys have equal access to education.

IPS: Are Western nations the only major donors for ECW? Are there any political and economic heavy weights such as China, Saudi Arabia and India who are donors or potential donors?

SHERIF: There are currently 18 strategic financial donor partners to Education Cannot Wait and each year new partners join up with our movement. These include governments, private sector and philanthropic organizations from various regions including North America, Europe, Oceania and the Middle East.

As a vote of confidence in the progress we are achieving, several early partners have already recommitted new funding. As the global, multilateral fund for education in emergencies and protected crisis hosted by the United Nations with its 193 UN Member States, we believe that increasing investments in Education Cannot Wait will continue to encourage more strategic donor partners in the larger UN family – whether they are from the north or the south, east or west.

We are all one humanity, and we have a collective responsibility to ensure that all children and youth in conflicts, natural disasters and displacement can exercise their human right of a quality education.

IPS: On fundraising and educational goals, is there any coordination between ECW and the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFED)? if not, how different are they?

SHERIF: We have a shared understanding of the colossal needs to address the challenges of education worldwide and ECW and IFFED are very complementary. So, coordination and cooperation come very easily.

The most optimal coordination always occurs where there is a shared vision and a clear division of labor. ECW and IFFED have two different business models and each targets different sides of the same coin, which allows us to maximize collective impact in each context. The same complementarity pertains to GPE, which also has a different business model and focus.

All approaches are needed and by complementing each other’s efforts, we can achieve real results for children. No one can do it alone. In the field of service, it is all about working together, complementarity and collaboration.

IPS: Can the funds you raise be described as un-earmarked core resources, or are some of them earmarked by donors as to where you should spend them– and on which humanitarian crisis? In short, do you have a free hand or are they funds with strings attached?

SHERIF: More than half of the funding ECW has is unearmarked, though we do also have some earmarked funds. We have a shared understanding among our strategic donor partners based on a comprehensive financial analysis, humanitarian and development needs assessments.

There are no political strings that hamper the operations and we work on the basis of combined humanitarian principles (humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence) and development principles (national ownership, capacity development and sustainability).

ECW adheres to organizational standards of accountability, transparency and risk-mitigation, and our donors are proactive and strategic partners in all of this. So, from these important principles and perspectives, while we do not have a free hand to do whatever we want, thankfully, we are free to effectively and speedily serve those left furthest behind. And, that is the greatest freedom of all.

If you want to learn more about Education Cannot Wait and its efforts to get children and youth caught in armed conflicts, forced displacement, natural disasters and protracted crises, please follow ECW on Twitter at: @EduCannotWait and visit their website here: https://www.educationcannotwait.org/”

The post World’s Spreading Humanitarian Crises Leave Millions of Children Without Schools or Education appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Oct 24 2019 (IPS)

On October 11, the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee announced that this year´s Peace Prize is awarded to Ethiopia´s prime minister Abiy Ahmed: “For his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.”1 Let us hope that Abiy remains a worthy Peace Prize winner and that warfare and human suffering on the Horn of Africa will finally come to an end.

The decision surprised those who speculated that the Prize would be awarded to the environmental activist Greta Thunberg. However, people close to the Nobel Committee declared that the decision was unaffected by public opinion. The Committee had made an effort to follow the statutes of Alfred Nobel´s testament – that the Prize has to be awarded to “the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” –2

Irrespective of sixteen years old Greta Thunberg not been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize her huge following casts doubts about the trustworthiness of world leaders. In her opening address to leaders attending this year´s UN Climate Change Summit Greta declared that

You are failing us! This is all wrong! I shouldn’t be up here; I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope, how dare you! We will be watching you. You have stolen my dreams, my childhood with your empty words …3

It has been claimed that Greta Thunberg is being used to convey messages of her parents and various pressure groups. That such a young girl cannot make any difference on her own. Many of her detractors have rather been men than women. It has been pointed out that the “ infantilization” of Greta seems to coincide with stereotypical labels powerful men have used to silence women´s public speech – that they are over-emotional, hysterical, unable to think for themselves, or even mentally disturbed. Why do some men feel threatened by a sixteen years old girl? Can her attacks on unbound industrial capitalism be interpreted as doubts about certain men´s belief in their masculine self-worth?

It is not the first time a sixteen years old girl has provoked powerful men and triggered great changes. Most famous is probably Joan of Arc, who born in a peasant family claimed that she since she was thirteen years old had visions of saints instructing her to recover France from English domination. At the age of sixteen the charismatic, and hitherto entirely unknown girl was against all odds presented to Prince Charles of France, who decided to send her to Orleáns in an effort to end an English siege on that town. Soldiers, as well as their commanders, were enthused by Joan´s forceful personality and under her command they succeeded in crushing the English siege. Joan of Arc´s ardor and sense of righteousness turned the longstanding Anglo-French conflict into a religious war. She succeeded to lead French troops to swift victories, resulting in Charles´s consecration as French ruler. After years of humiliating defeats, which had demoralized and discredited military and civil leadership, the actions and message of an illiterate girl succeeded in boosting French morale and paved the way for a decisive French victory in the Hundred Years´s War. However, before that, Joan had in 1430 been captured by her enemies, put on trial by a pro-English bishop, declared guilty of heresy and burned at the stake, dying at nineteen years of age.4 I do not know if Joan of Arc´s far from peaceful efforts were recommendable, but she made old men listen to her and her achievements changed world history.

More unknown than Joan of Arc´s endevours is the bravery of another sixteen years old girl. In 1951, Barbara Johns convinced her schoolmates and teachers to organize a strike to protest the substandard facilities at her segregated school in Farmville, Virginia. While the school principal was away, Barbara Johns forged a memo ordering teachers to bring their classes to a special assembly. She then delivered a speech revealing her plans for a strike in protest of the unequal conditions of black and white schools. The same day, 450 students and teachers staged a protest in front of Farmville´s courthouse. Barbara´s actions attracted the attention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which took her case to court, using it as evidence that segregated schools are unconstitutional. Because she was a teenager at the time, Barbara Johns’s contribution to civil rights has generally been overlooked.

Had the student strike begun ten or fifteen years later, Barbara Johns would have become something of a phenomenon in the public media. In that era, however, the case remained muffled in the white consciousness, and the schoolchild origins of the lawsuit were lost on nearly all Negroes outside Prince Edward County. This was 1951 […] television was an infant, and the very word “teenager” had only recently entered common use. The idea that non-adults of any race might play a leading role in political events had simply failed to register on anyone.5

Barbara Johns´s struggle was far from being safe and harmless. She was harassed daily and the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in her parents´ yard, fearing for her safety they sent her to Montgomery Alabama to live with her uncle.

The force and dedication of young women, particularly those suffering from a vulnerable position, are often ignored, even mocked and in the worse cases met with violence. The fate of two young Nobel Peace Prize winners bear testimony of this. The 2014 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the then seventeen years old Malala Yousafzai for her “struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”6 Malala was born to a Pashtun family in Pakistan, where her family ran a chain of schools in the Swat region. In early 2009, when she was eleven years old, Malala wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu telling about her life during the Taliban occupation of Swat. Malala´s commentaries became known nationally, and she soon appeared on national TV. In October 2012, Malala was shot by a Taliban gunman, the bullet entered the side of her left eye, went through her neck and into her shoulder. She survived due to expert treatment at the military hospital in Pashawar.7

Nadia Murad is an Iraqi Yazidi woman who founded an organization to help “women and children victimized by genocide, mass atrocities, and human trafficking to heal and rebuild their lives and communities.”8 In 2018, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with the motivation “for efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.”9 Nadia´s activism is a result of ISIS killing members of her family in 2014, twenty years old Nadia was after that held captive as a sex slave for three months, before she managed to escape.

On July 19 this year, Nadia met with Donald Trump. The video from that encounter can be seen as an illustration of a world leader´s disinterest in the disturbing message of a young woman.10 Behind Trump, sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, stand 27 survivors of religious persecution. Someone indicates the presence of Nadia, informing the President she is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Trump turns to her, but appear to be uncomprehending and uninterested. Most of the time he avoids looking directly at Nadia, who tells him about the killing of her mother and six of her brothers. ”They say that ISIS is defeated, but where are the 3,000 Yazidis they abducted?” Nadia states that 95,000 Yazidis now are refugees and asks the U.S. Government for support. A distracted Trump asks where Nadia´s mother and brothers are, even if she just told him they had been killed. Trump declares: ”I know the area very well. We’ll look into it. And you had the Nobel Prize? That´s incredible. They gave it to you for what reason? Can you explain?” Nadia explains that she made it clear to everyone that ISIS raped thousands of Yazidi women and that she was the first woman who bore witness about this crime. Trump mumbles: ”Oh, really? Is that right? So you escaped?” Nadia repeats that she and many others do not know where their loved ones are, if they are dead or alive. Trump shakes her hand: ”I’ll look. We’ll look. OK, thank you very much.”

Watching the creepy spectacle of a powerful narcissist frozen in boundless self-absorption, makes you despair about today´s world leadership. It is not surprising that young and fearless women are becoming symbols of the spark of hope that in spite of everything continues to flicker in most of us. A hope that young people will be capable of following the advice of Langston Hughes:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.11

1 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2019/press-release/
2 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYqtXR8iPlE
4 Warner, Marina (1981) Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism. New York: Vintage Books.
5 Branch, Taylor (1988) Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. p. 21
6 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2014/press-release/
7 Yousafzai, Malala and Christina Lamb (2013) I am Malala: The Story of a Girl who Stod Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
8 https://nadiasinitiative.org/
9 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2018/press-release/
10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYUW-1Wg2xs
11 Dreams in Bontemps, Arna, ed. (1941) Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers. New York: Harper Collins.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

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Hamza Idris (left), an editor with the Daily Trust newspaper, sits with colleague Hussaini Garba Mohammed in their office in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, in February 2019. The office was raided in January by the military, who seized 24 computers. Credit: CPJ / Jonathan Rozen

By Jonathan Rozen
ABUJA / NEW YORK, Oct 24 2019 (IPS)

Hamza Idris, an editor with the Nigerian Daily Trust, was at the newspaper’s central office on January 6 when the military arrived looking for him.

Soldiers with AK47s walked between the newsroom desks repeating his name, he told CPJ. It was the second raid on the paper that day; the first hit the bureau based in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, where Idris had worked for years.

The soldiers did not know what Idris looked like and his colleagues did not point him out, he said. Unable to find their target, they ordered everyone to evacuate and seized 24 of the paper’s computers. Idris simply filed out with everyone else.

In Maiduguri, however, the military arrested Uthman Abubakar, the Daily Trust northeastern regional editor, with his two phones and computer, CPJ reported at the time. He was held for two days, interrogated about his sources for a report written with Idris about a military operation in the region, and then released without charge.

“They took the devices to their computer forensics room,” Abubakar told CPJ. “They conducted some forensic search.”

The Daily Trust raids are emblematic of a global trend of law enforcement seizing journalists’ mobile phones and computers—some of their most important tools. CPJ has documented device seizures around the world, from the United States to Slovakia to Iraq.

In Benin, police copied data from the seized computer of Casimir Kpedjo, the editor of Nouvelle Economie newspaper, CPJ reported in April. And in Tanzania, during the detention of two CPJ staff in November 2018, intelligence officers took their devices and boasted about Israeli technology that could extract their information.

Forensics technology designed to extract information from phones and computers is marketed and sold to law enforcement agencies around the world. CPJ has found at least two companies that produce digital forensics tools—Israel-based Cellebrite and U.S.-based AccessData—operating in Nigeria, where CPJ research shows that security forces regularly arrest and interrogate journalists.

Recent Nigerian national budgets feature significant financial allocations to bolster surveillance and digital forensics capacities. From 2014 to 2017, the Nigerian government spent at least 127 billion naira (over US$350 million) on “surveillance/security equipment,” according to a 2018 calculation reported by Paradigm Initiative, a Nigeria-based digital rights group.

“Evidence showed that these purchases were made for political reasons, especially by the then authorities in power to monitor their adversaries and political opponents,” that report said.

One of Nigeria’s major security concerns is the years-long conflict in the northeast against Boko Haram and splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP). Hours before the raids on Daily Trust’s offices, the paper had published a report about a Nigerian military effort to retake six towns from Boko Haram.

In a statement published on Facebook the next day, a Nigerian army spokesperson said the report had divulged classified information, “undermining national security” and contravening Nigeria’s Official Secrets Act.

Privacy is enshrined in Nigeria’s constitution, and law enforcement agents must obtain a judicial warrant to search computer systems under Nigeria’s 2015 cybercrime law.

However, the 1962 Official Secrets Act gives sweeping powers for security forces to grant themselves warrants to search and seize all materials considered evidence, as well as arrest those suspected of committing offenses under the act.

On January 10, four days after the raids, Nigerian military investigators summoned Idris and Nurudeen Abdallah, the Daily Trust investigations editor, to question them about their sources for the report, which they refused to reveal, they told CPJ. Then the officers demanded their phones. “They said they want to scan it,” Idris told CPJ.

“They said [they] just want to see the contents and then maybe the numbers of the people I talk to—I said no.” The officers told them a server for scanning technology was housed at the Office of the National Security Adviser, the president’s top security aide, Abdallah told CPJ. The journalists said they had not brought their phones, and refused several follow-up requests to return with them.

CPJ reached Sagir Musa, a Nigerian military spokesperson, by phone on October 9 and asked about the Daily Trust raids. Musa said he could not hear and asked to be sent a message before the line went silent; subsequent calls and messages went unanswered. Calls to Onyema Nwachukwu, director of defense information for the Nigerian military, also went unanswered.

An individual within Nigerian law enforcement told CPJ that security forces use Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) and Forensic Toolkit (FTK) to retrieve information from devices. UFED is sold by the Israel-based company Cellebrite, which is owned by the Japan-based SUNCORPORATION, while FTK is sold by the U.S.-based AccessData Group.

The individual agreed to speak to CPJ due to concerns about the technology’s possible misuse, but asked that their name be withheld for fear of reprisal.

Cellebrite’s website says their UFED product can “[e]xtract and decode every ounce of data within digital devices” and that their equipment is deployed “in 150 countries.” Company records stolen by hackers and reported by VICE News in 2017 suggest client relationships with Russia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. U.S. federal law enforcement has also invested in the Cellebrite technology, according to government procurement information listed online and media reports.

In Nigeria, “authorities seized [a drug lord’s] Samsung phone” during his arrest “and extracted and analyzed data from it using UFED,” according to a case study publicized on Cellebrite’s website.

Separately, Cellebrite’s UFED was used in Myanmar to “pull documents” from the phones of then jailed Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, The Washington Post reported in May 2019.

Cellebrite said it required clients to “uphold the standards of international human rights law” or it may terminate their agreements, according to the Post’s report. Cellebrite’s terms and conditions state that products, software, and services are to be used “in a manner that does not violate the rights of any third party.”

CPJ reached Christopher Bacey, Cellebrite’s director of public relations, by telephone in mid-September to request clarification about the company’s sales in Nigeria, and if the company reviews countries’ human rights records or considers the rights of journalists to protect their sources.

At his request, CPJ sent questions by email, but received no response before publication. Msao Koda, who works in Cellebrite sales for SUNCORPORATION, similarly requested questions by email in September and did not respond before publication.

Like Cellebrite, AccessData advertises FTK as a tool to identify information on “any digital device or system producing, transmitting or storing data,” including from web history, emails, instant messages, and social media. It also boasts capacity to “[d]ecrypt files, crack passwords, and build a report all with a single solution.”

In 2011, System Trust, a Nigeria-based digital security company, established a sales partnership through DRS, a South Africa-based cybersecurity company, to distribute AccessData technology, the Nigerian Vanguard newspaper reported at the time. System Trust CEO Philip Nwachukwu told CPJ by phone that the Nigerian security forces were not among his clients for their technology, but that he was not sure if AccessData had other business relationships in the country.

He also emphasized that digital forensics equipment should be deployed ethically. “I can’t be a state actor and feel like I have the power, then go and invade the privacy of an individual,” he said.

Several CPJ calls to AccessData’s corporate headquarters in the U.S. were forwarded by an operator, then rang unanswered. Interview requests sent to two email addresses provided over the phone by people at their London and Frankfurt offices also went unanswered.

CPJ’s repeated calls to DRS in early October were forwarded to cybersecurity specialist Zach Venter. On one occasion, Venter asked that CPJ call back after 30 minutes. Subsequent attempts to reach him via phone and messages were unsuccessful.

Uthman Abubakar’s devices were returned shortly after his release from detention in Maiduguri, but it was nearly seven weeks before the 24 computers confiscated during the second raid were returned, Mannir Dan-Ali, Daily Trust’s editor-in-chief told CPJ. The paper would not be using them again, he said.

For information on digital safety, consult CPJ’s Digital Safety Kit.

*Jonathan Rozen has previously worked in South Africa, Mozambique, and Canada with the Institute for Security Studies, assessing Mozambican peace-building processes. Rozen was a U.N. correspondent for IPS News and has written for Al-Jazeera English and the International Peace Institute. He speaks English and French.

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Excerpt:

Jonathan Rozen* is Senior Africa Researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

The post Nigerian Military Targeted Journalists’ Phones, Computers with “forensic search” for Sources appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 24 2019 (IPS)

A partnership between United Nations and African Union (AU) agencies will help African economies insure themselves against the droughts and other extreme weather events that plague the continent, organisers say.

The AU’s African Risk Capacity (ARC) and the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) stuck a deal in Bonn, Germany, this week to raise money for the safeguard scheme and advance policies that help countries adapt to weather threats.

Organisers say that 45 million people across Africa cannot put enough food on their tables, especially in the south and east of the continent, where punishing dry spells have cut harvest yields and pushed up prices of staples.

“Reducing the impacts of drought and other natural disasters by helping member states improve climate resilience through innovative mitigation and risk financing instruments are key to our mandate,” Mohamed Beavogui, ARC’s director general, said in a statement on Wednesday. 

“The agreement signed today with UNCCD will create a functional synergy in our efforts to help countries better understand their risk profiles, improve knowledge and strengthen capacities for climate adaptation and food security.” 

Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UNCCD, described a new financial vehicle called the eXtreme Climate Facility (XCF) that would raise money for AU members to access to alleviate their parched agricultural sectors.

The XCF will be “an important tool to help African countries to cope effectively with the impacts of drought”, said Thiaw, formerly a Mauritanian official and deputy chief of the U.N. Environment Programme.

Drought-ravaged countries can apply to the fund for help adapting to drought and other weather calamities, organisers said. Payouts will be corruption-proof and provided as “climate change catastrophe bonds”.

“The message is clear. We will see an increasing number of droughts with unprecedented severity, which are exacerbated by climate change. No country or region, rich or poor, is immune to the vagaries of drought,” said Thiaw.

“The UNCCD is helping 35 of Africa’s 57 countries to create the mechanisms they need to take early action to avert drought disasters. Today, Africa is ramping up pre-emptive actions as a unified front against future drought and climate-induced disasters in the region.”

The inking of an agreement between the two agencies came amid a week of growing concerns over harsh dry spells across Africa that are reducing harvests, killing wildlife and worsening security for millions of people.

On Wednesday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a study group, released a report saying that three decades of conflict in Somalia — together with crippling droughts and flooding — were strengthening the hands of militants and weakening the government’s power. 

In the Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe, at least 55 elephants have died from starvation since September, officials said on Monday. The locations of their carcasses — near water holes — suggested they had traveled long distances to drink.

On October 15, aid agency Concern Worldwide, which co-compiles the Global Hunger Index, said hunger levels in the turbulent Central African Republic were “extremely alarming”, while levels in Chad, Madagascar, and Zambia were “alarming”.

“Today marks the beginning of a unified front against drought and climate-induced disasters in the African region,” Thiaw said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Our key aims are to support the establishment and implementation of national drought plans and mobilise innovative financial instruments to better mitigate the risks of extreme climate situations.”

According to the UNCCD, droughts already bad and they are getting worse. By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will experience serious water shortages, and two-thirds of the world will be “water-stressed”, the UNCCD says. 

Though droughts are complex and develop slowly, they cause more deaths than other types of disasters, the UNCCD warns. By 2045, droughts will have forced as many as 135 million people from their homes.

But there is hope. By managing water sources, forests, livestock and farming, soil erosion can be reduced and degraded land can be revived, a process that can also help tackle climate change. 

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