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The students from Dalton Tokyo Junior assist with cooking and serving Watashi kitchen at Karuizawa. The students found that in Japan, many children and adults don’t get enough food to eat.

By Momoko Harada, Rei Sato and Shunki Sometaya
TOKYO, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

Picture this: It’s the scorching days of summer, and kids are flocking to the nearby mall, eager to bask in the cool air and hang out with friends. But among the laughter and chatter, one girl stands alone in the food court.

It’s a scene we’ve heard of or, maybe, read about in an article, but it’s not until we meet R, a mother in her 30s from the northern Kanto region, that the stark reality hits. “At home, we don’t have air conditioning,” she explains. “So, when I head to work, my kids head out. They spend their days at the library or the local children’s center, keeping each other company until around 7 p.m. They play games, immerse themselves in comics, and for lunch, they share a 100 yen stick bread I bought from Daiso. Drinks? Well, they help themselves to the facility’s water cooler.”

Did you know that a staggering 20 million people in Japan struggle to put enough rice on their tables? Astonishingly, many are unaware of this stark reality, an issue often shrouded in the term hidden poverty, which has quietly become a significant problem in Japan. Furthermore, a troubling statistic reveals that 1 in 7 children in the country currently can’t enjoy three square meals of rice. When we hear “child poverty,” our minds might drift to images of undernourished youngsters in developing nations facing “absolute poverty” without homes or daily sustenance.

However, the poverty we discuss here is “relative poverty,” affecting children in households with less than half the median income. The implications of this kind of poverty often go unnoticed. While they might not go to bed hungry, these children frequently struggle to enjoy a balanced diet. Meat and vegetables become rare luxuries, and carbohydrate-heavy meals, like cheap instant noodles, become the norm. Some can’t even afford basics like school uniforms, bags, or gym clothes, making their lives considerably tougher.

Eight students from Dalton Tokyo Junior visited Foodbank Karuizawa and interviewed Yoko Komiyama at the Watashi Kitchen.

The students from Dalton Tokyo Junior prepare to assist with cooking and serving in the Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa.

A Dalton Tokyo Junior student assisted with cooking at the Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa.

A student from Dalton Tokyo Junior assists with serving at the Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa.

Dalton Tokyo Junior School students interview Yuki Mitsuhara, the president of the NPO Keep Moms Smiling.

The students organized food bank donations.

Among these children, those from single-mother families face the harshest realities, with a surprising 50 percent of such households struggling in this way. The root cause can be traced to the wage gap between men and women, making it exceedingly difficult for single-mother families to make ends meet. Even when educational backgrounds match, a persistent gender pay gap persists, growing more pronounced with time. Shockingly, the annual income of female university graduates often parallels that of male high school graduates.”

Japan grapples with a substantial gender wage gap compared to other prominent OECD countries.

In 2021, the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare reported that 78.6% of men held regular employment, whereas only 46.8% of women enjoyed the same status. This stark disparity contributes to children in single-mother households often going without enough food. It’s natural to assume that Japan, as a prosperous nation, wouldn’t face such pressing issues with childhood hunger.

Yet, parallel to this, there’s been growing concern over food wastage, encompassing the squandering of edible items and supermarket discards due to approaching expiration dates. Reflecting on these issues, we pondered how to utilize surplus food effectively.

Why toss something when others can eat it? We decided to visit Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa, a facility that uses food from food banks to provide free, delicious meals to children. In an interview with Yoko Komiyama, she shared, “Some Japanese children rely on school lunches, but during extended school holidays, some only eat two meals a day. We’re here to support them.”

Additionally, there’s Kodomo-Shokudo, which backs children’s cafeterias offering free or low-cost meals. These cafeterias are for everyone, not just underprivileged children, ensuring that no one feels embarrassed to use them. Thus, we envisioned a welcoming kitchen where anyone could gather, much like their own home kitchens. It’s become a vital community hub, bringing together low-income families, children, working adults, seniors, and solitary diners to share meals and conversations.

On July 22, 2023, we visited the Watashi Kitchen, which operates on the third Saturday of every month, to assist with cooking and serving. We even brought along a team-supplied collection of sweets for the children. The experience was incredibly rewarding. Witnessing people stand for three hours, cooking for 150 individuals, washing dishes, and relishing meals brought immense joy. With around 30 volunteers, all visibly enjoying their tasks, it dawned on me that lending a hand to others truly warms our hearts.

During the school year, children on welfare receive assistance for school lunches. However, when school’s out for holidays, a significant gap emerges, and it’s heartbreaking to hear stories of children returning to school after a break, visibly underfed and having lost weight. We couldn’t help but empathize with parents in these situations, the anguish they must feel as they struggle to provide nourishment for their children while longing to share in their happiness over a meal we often take for granted.

A survey conducted by the NPO Kidsdoor, focusing on disadvantaged households, reveals alarming findings. A staggering 49% of respondents reported cutting back on their own meals to ensure their children could eat. In fact, 17% of parents admitted to eating only one meal a day, while 47% managed just two. These statistics poignantly illustrate how parents prioritize their children’s well-being.

In light of this disparity, where some have the luxury of discarding food they could eat while others struggle daily to put enough on the table, we initiated a food collection drive. We reached out to schools, community members, and those with food items still within a month of their expiration date but likely to go unused. This food, once collected, is then directed to those who need it most.

As part of the Dalton team, in our quest to find a suitable food bank to contribute to, we encountered a non-profit organization called Keep Moms Smiling, doing exceptional work. Keep Moms Smiling is an organization that focuses on providing meals to parents with sick children who often find it impossible to sleep or eat while caring for their hospitalized little ones. Additionally, they collect surplus items from companies and restaurants, redirecting them to parents who find themselves in dire need.

According to Yuki Mitsuhara, the president of Keep Moms Smiling, “Parents don’t need to be at the hospital with their sick children, but due to the shortage of nursing staff, they often have to take on caregiving roles. While hospitals provide meals for patients, they don’t offer such provisions to caregivers, including beds or showers. Consequently, many parents fall ill themselves due to lack of rest and often lose their jobs as they stay long-term at the hospital.” Mitsuhara, drawing from personal experience, added, “I vividly recall the warmth of having a hot meal while my child was hospitalized for an extended period. I want to offer these parents a moment of joy through a good meal, one that renews their strength to continue caring for their children. With this mission, our restaurant chefs join hands to prepare and provide these much-needed, delicious meals to parents of sick children.”

In today’s world, it’s clear that the divide between abundance and scarcity is stark. We, as youth, aspire to be that bridge, connecting those who wish to prevent waste, extend a hand of hope, and share joy with organizations like ‘Keep Moms Smiling.’

We yearn for you to understand the potential that resides in each one of us. Together, we can spark a chain reaction of goodwill and empathy, proving that the youth can be formidable allies in tackling global issues. So, here’s our question: What will you do today to make tomorrow brighter for someone else?

Note: Shunki Sometaya was the team leader

Edited by Hanna Yoon

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

Did you know that a staggering 20 million people in Japan struggle to put enough rice on their tables? Hidden poverty is a growing issue in Japan. In this latest article from IPS' Youth Thought Leaders they call on people to spark a chain reaction of goodwill and empathy and help them prove that youth are formidable allies in tackling global issues.

This 14-year-old Ugandan girl was forced into marriage by her parents at 8 years old. Credit: UNICEF/Stuart Tibaweswa
 
According to the United Nations, at least 12 million girls are married before they reach the age of 18 every year, and more than 650 million women alive today were married as children. Around 257 million women globally face unintended pregnancies due to lack of access to contraception, abortion care, and counseling.

By Nandita Bajaj
ST PAUL, Minnesota, USA, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

There’s an insidious new tactic emerging for selling right-wing ideology to wider audiences, evident in last month’s Budapest Demographic Summit for “family-friendly thinkers and decision-makers,” the upcoming pro-birth Natal conference in Austin, Texas, and the recent film “Birthgap.”

They all peddle pronatalism, a set of norms and policies that exhorts and often coerces women to have more children to raise fertility rates, often coupled with alarmism over alleged “population collapse.”

Pronatalism is on the rise to counter the growing push for gender equality, contraceptive access, and women’s educational and economic empowerment. It is connected to totalitarian policies dictating reproductive choices, the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory, the religious anti-abortion movement, tech elite futurism.

Elon Musk, for example, is an avowed pronatalist who donated $10 million to population collapse “research” and liked the idea of denying voting rights to childless people. He wanted to attend the Budapest summit, but couldn’t make it so he met last week in Texas with Hungary’s President Novák instead to draw attention to the “demographic crisis.”

Lately, pronatalists are trying to pull a more appealing game face. The Budapest Summit says it wants to support the “psychological health and security of families,” so they can “plan for a secure future.” The Natal conference claims it “has no political or ideological goal other than a world in which our children can have grandchildren.”

The “Birthgap” film purports to help cure an epidemic of “unplanned childlessness” and proposes “re-engineer[ing] our societies to reduce [it so] many more people would go on to have…children just like parents naturally do.” It conducts tearful interviews with regretful women who lament that their natural drive to have children was thwarted by society, and now it’s too late.

Who could object to standing up for families’ health and security, and for the right of people who want children to have them? Yet behind this innocuous-seeming family-friendly rhetoric lurk unsavory connections to right-wing propaganda, manipulation, and straight-up lies.

The Budapest summit touts Hungary’s achievement of the “highest rates of marriage and childbearing in Europe, while divorce and abortion rates are falling,” a nice way of saying that its right-wing populist leader Viktor Orbán adopted and implemented the Great Replacement ideology, which motivated mass-shooters in the U.S., as state policy. “We do not need numbers, but Hungarian children,” he said. “In our minds, immigration means surrender.”

The Natal conference has demonstrable links to far-right eugenicists and racists. “Birthgap” filmmaker Stephen Shaw is feted by right-wing talk show hosts like Jordan Peterson, Neil Oliver, and Chris Williamson, and presented as a “renowned demographer” despite having no credentials in demography. Shaw and Peterson both gave keynotes at the Budapest summit.

But ad hominem objections to the people behind the conferences and the film aside, the assertions they make are discreditable and counterfactual. Decrying imminent “population collapse” while the global population grows by 80 million each year and is projected to hit 10.4 billion in the 2080s is absurd.

To make depopulation seem like a threat, “Birthgap” resorts to lying about data on the reasons for declining birth rates. It cites a 2010 study (which it calls a “meta-analysis”) by Prof. Renska Keizer which the film says indicates that just 10% of women chose not to have children and 10% can’t have them for medical reasons, which “leaves a whopping 80% of women without children childless by circumstance” as opposed to by choice.

But that’s not at all what Keizer’s research says. The 2010 study Birthgap cites is not a meta-analysis, not quantitative, and does not indicate 80% of childless women didn’t choose to be so. In fact a 2011 study by Keizer et al. analyzed a 2006 dataset surveying women in the Netherlands who were childless at age 45, and found that 55% of them were childless voluntarily, while 45% were childless due to medical or other reasons.

Other studies found similar results: 56% of those without children were voluntarily childless according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 72% according to the CDC National Survey of Family Growth, and 74% according to a 2022 Michigan State University study. Researchers working on my organization’s fact-checking project Birthgap Facts found no credible data supporting the film’s claim that 80% of childless women were “childless by circumstance” as opposed to by choice.

What the data does show is that women exercising their right to choose if and when to have children results in delaying childbirth, smaller families, and a decline in teen pregnancy. Those outcomes are beneficial and should be celebrated, not stigmatized.

According to the United Nations, at least 12 million girls are married before they reach the age of 18 every year, and more than 650 million women alive today were married as children. Around 257 million women globally face unintended pregnancies due to lack of access to contraception, abortion care, and counseling.

At current levels of consumption, today’s population of eight billion is driving resource depletion, soil erosion, water shortages, species extinctions, and climate catastrophe. Over a billion children are already at “extremely high risk” from climate change.

High fertility rates and population growth undermine climate resilience and complicate efforts to end poverty and hunger and ensure basic services and infrastructure.

These are the real threats to the future, not some imagined conspiracy to stigmatize reproductive choices and hold fertility rates down. They make Shaw’s proposal of “social engineering” to reverse the imaginary threat of depopulation all the more reprehensible.

By distorting and lying about childlessness, he’s trying to manipulate young people and their governments into prioritizing procreation over education and career. This purports to avoid a dystopian future, yet it would actually usher one in.

Rather than manufacturing a crisis whose remedy entails “social engineering” to roll back progress on human rights and women’s control over their own lives, we should focus on the real crisis fueled by pronatalist pressures from family, religion, and governments that force millions into motherhood against their wishes, often by means of coercion and sexual violence.

The rhetoric of the Budapest summit, Natal, “Birthgap” and their ilk claiming they’re simply trying to help families and alleviate the heartbreak of “unplanned childlessness” is insidious, and we should recognize and call it out for what it is: another arrow in the pronatalist quiver, another weapon wielded against hard-fought gains in gender equality and reproductive autonomy.

Nandita Bajaj is the Executive Director of the NGO Population Balance and an adjunct lecturer at the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University. Her research and advocacy work focuses on the combined impacts of pronatalism and human expansionism on reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

The UN’s high-level appointments have mostly been on the basis of “equitable geographical rotation”—with Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean taking turns.

But a proposal for future appointments and for candidates for elective office-– based on gender rotation—is gaining ground against a world body which is mostly male-oriented even at its highest echelons, with nine all-male Secretaries-General (UNSG) and only 4 women out of 78 presidents of the General Assembly.

In an interview with IPS, Natalie Samarasinghe, Global Director for Advocacy, Open Society Foundations and co-founder of the 1-for-7 Billion campaign “for a more open and inclusive UNSG selection process”, said so-called temporary special measures have proven successful in transforming the landscape for women across sectors, from national politics to company boards and senior UN positions.

But these measures can only go so far, as it is governments who nominate and appoint candidates to posts such as the Secretary-General (SG), President of the General Assembly (PGA) and heads of multiple UN agencies.

She pointed out that decades have shown that warm words aren’t enough. As the Group of Women Leaders has shown, 13 international organizations have never had a female leader, including the United Nations, International Labour Organization and the World Bank.

A further five have only had one, including the UN Refugee Agency and UN Development Programme. And of the 78 presidents of the General Assembly, only four have been women.

“Gender rotation of the GA presidency is not a complex reform: it would require only a simple resolution and mean that states would have to put forward qualified female candidates (of which there are plenty) at least every other year, instead of just talking about it. This is something that could be considered for other senior positions too,” she said.

For the appointment of the Secretary-General, she said, it seems states are finally waking up. In 2021, the GA noted for the first time that “there is yet to be a woman Secretary-General” and invited states “to bear this in mind in the future, when nominating candidates”.

But even this tame language provoked pushback, especially from the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council. While the focus was on objections by Russia, UN watchers have noted that all permanent members worked to undermine the language on gender, albeit with more sophisticated arguments, she noted

“During the last SG selection process, I deliberately called for the “best possible person” to be appointed, noting how many women would more than fit the bill. That was because saying it had to be a woman sat uneasily with disrupting regional pre-emption”.

“Today, when the normative functions of the UN may well be its strongest, and most needed, I have no qualms in calling for Madam Secretary-General,” Samarasinghe declared.

Susana Malcorra, President, Global Women Leaders (GWL), told IPS “GWL Voices is actively advocating for better gender representation in all organizations of the System, both in the institutions and in their governing bodies.”

“Our Flagship Report: Numbers Matter, launched in March, shows how under-represented women have been in the history of the 33 multilateral organizations”.

“After that, we have launched two campaigns: “Mme. Secretary-General” (to ensure that a woman succeeds Antonio Guterres) and #GenderAlternationUNPGA. We have launched the latter through this OpEd that I authored in Devex”.

Some Presidents, at the request of GWL Voices, Malcorra said, raised these questions in their statements at the High Level week in September:

President of Slovenia: https://x.com/mfespinosaEC/status/1704318856909426781?s=20
President of Spain: https://x.com/GWLvoices/status/1704649522192724357?s=20
President of Botswarna: https://x.com/GWLvoices/status/1704646411390783751?s=20

Joseph Chamie, a consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division, told IPS: First, it is unfortunately the case that Goal 5 of the SDGs to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls by 2030 is unlikely to be met.

Second, given that the United Nations has the long-standing tradition for geographical and regional rotations on most senior appointments and elections, it seems both reasonable and desirable to be guided by gender rotations for each region.

Third, if gender rotations are adopted as a guideline by the United Nations for appointments and elections, including the Security Council, the rotations need to be applied for each and every major region, said Chamie who has worked in various regions of the world and is the author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”

Finally, while gender rotation by region for UN appointments and elections would be desirable, clearly much more needs to be done, especially by some countries, to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls.

“Countries blatantly denying women and girls their basic human rights should be highlighted and strongly encouraged to end their discriminatory policies”, declared Chamie.

Antonia Kirkland, Global Lead on Legal Equality & Access to Justice at Equality Now, told IPS the majority of countries are failing to meet Sustainable Development Goal 5 – achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls – and 54% have no laws on key issues of gender equality, such as marriage and divorce rights.

For example, only 14 countries, just .07%, have full legal equality between men and women, she pointed out.

“Sexual harassment and sexual exploitation by UN staff within and outside the UN still persists, with cases going unreported for fear of retaliation and stigma. And while parity has been achieved within the senior management level of the UN, it has not yet been reached within the executive heads of UN agencies nor the general staff ranks.

“In addition to further strengthening policy and legal frameworks within the UN around the world, a feminist woman Secretary-General is needed to lead and encourage a culture of equality and inclusivity based on fundamental human rights standards.

“Beyond reaffirming previous resolutions referring to “gender balance.” and strongly encouraging member states to bear in mind there have only been male Secretary-Generals – as the General Assembly did in a September resolution – the UN should fully endorse a gender rotation, or gender alternation as GWL Voices and others are calling for.

“Building on previous campaigns for a woman Secretary-General, UNA-UK, a co-founder of the 1-for-8 Billion (formerly the 1-for-7 Billion) campaign has clearly called on UN Member States to consider only nominating women candidates and undertake other important reforms to make the selection process as transparent and inclusive as possible.”

While gender equality is everyone’s responsibility, Kirkland said, representation is important because women have been excluded from decision-making roles for far too long.

“However, it is important to be represented by women who are progressive, feminist, and work for substantive gender equality for everyone, everywhere, including further marginalized communities.”

Meanwhile, the notion of geographic distribution remains firmly embedded in the UN system, according to civil society organizations (CSOs).

When it comes to state representation in bodies such as ECOSOC or the Human Rights Council, it is sacrosanct, baked into the Charter, resolutions and rules of procedure.

When it comes to staff appointments, it is a matter of principle and reflected in several resolutions and processes (e.g. A/41/206 which affirms “the principle of equitable geographic distribution, and the need for rotation in the composition of the upper echelons of the secretariat”)

The idea of ‘rotation’ between regions is handled differently depending on the post. For the President of the General Assembly, rotation through the regional groups is stipulated (GA rules of procedure, rule 30). That has been followed since 1966.

For the Secretary-General, the idea gathered steam after Waldheim – the third, and not particularly effective, postholder from WEOG, and again when Boutros-Ghali was not appointed to a second term (African diplomats argued that their region had ‘lost out’).

In 2015, Eastern European countries fielded a number of candidates, with the region saying that it had never occupied the post and some were resentful of the push that year – within the UN and outside through the 1-for-7 Billion campaign (now 1-for-8 Billion: https://1for8billion.org/) – for the emphasis to be on merit first.

But in practice every appointment process has featured candidates from different regions, and the postholder is not, of course, supposed to represent any one region.

For several other senior appointments, the big issue is not so much rotation but breaking the stranglehold that particular states have on these posts.

Between 1995 and 2022, just five states – the permanent members of the Security Council – were appointed to over 20% of senior posts (https://cic.nyu.edu/data/un-senior-appointments-dashboard/)

Despite the GA’s position that no national of a state should succeed another national of that state (e.g. GA resolution 46/232), certain nationalities dominate posts such as DPO, OCHA, DPPA, DESA etc.

The last non-French person appointed to head UN peace operations was Kofi Annan in 1993. OCHA has been headed by Brits for 16 years.

On gender, several references refer to the need for equal and fair distribution based on gender as well as geographic balance (e.g. GA res 69/321). There is no reference to rotation, nor has this principle been applied in practice.

There has been progress on gender parity on other senior posts (USGs, heads and deputy heads of peace operations and resident coordinators).

This has been the result of a concerted effort: a clear vision championed at the highest levels and translated into a systemwide strategy with targets and so-called ‘temporary special measures’ (e.g. parity on shortlists, or an explanation as to why this was not possible)

Currently, the UN has five regional groups – the Asia-Pacific states, the African states, the East European States (even though Eastern Europe has ceased to exist after the end of the Cold War), the Latin American and Caribbean states and the Western European and Other States (includes Australia and New Zealand).

The US does not belong to any regional groups but is designated as an “observer” in the Western European and Other States Group.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

Ajay Banga was anointed World Bank president for promoting financial inclusion. Thanks to its success and interest rate hikes, more poor people are drowning in debt as consumer prices rise.

Meritocratic leadership?
Since the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank were set up by the United Nations Conference at Bretton Woods in 1944, the US president’s nominee has been automatically appointed Bank president. By convention then, the Bank president is a US citizen, while the IMF head is European.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The official IMF historian noted US authorities believed “the Bank would have to be headed by a US citizen in order to win the confidence of the banking community, and that it would be impracticable to appoint US citizens to head both the Bank and the Fund.”

Banga went to the World Bank in Washington, DC from the business world. He had spent his entire career in transnational corporations, moving from Nestlé in India to Citigroup’s microfinance division, and then Mastercard. In 2020, he became chair of the International Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1919.

For over a decade, he was chief executive officer (CEO) of Mastercard, which he denies is a credit card company. He gave shareholders a cumulative total return of 1,581% – almost five times the S&P500 market average! By 2020, it was the 21st most valuable corporation in the world, having risen from 256th when he took over.

Like most US appointees to head the Bank, Banga had no experience or earlier interest in development finance. Now, he is obliged to pursue US interests and agendas. He has already announced he will rely on the private sector for funds and ideas.

South African laboratory
Long the world’s most unequal society, South Africa (SA) became a laboratory for financial experimentation from the 1990s, from commercial microcredit to mass collateralization of welfare payments.

Leading microcredit authority Milford Bateman has shown how the SA microcredit business enriched a small white elite while economically dividing and undermining poor urban and rural black communities.

In the 1990s, male senior managers of SA financial institutions abused ‘seniority’ for their own private short-term financial gains to defraud customers, shareholders, governments and the general public.

Usurious debt promotion
Bateman, Patrick Bond, Lena Lavinas and Erin Torkelson have shown how Banga’s SA ‘financial inclusion’ initiative involved ‘predatory financing’. As CEO, he mobilized MasterCard to promote and profit from it.

Over a decade ago, Banga pioneered a major ‘fintech’ (financial technology) partnership with Net1, a data services firm in SA. Later, in 2016, the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) bought 22%, its single largest share.

The IFC bought into Net1 to extend ‘tested’ financial services to the poor. Although Net1 was already known to be very problematic, the IFC was keen to promote private fintech platforms regardless of their consequences for the poor.

Of SA’s 60 million people, over 40% receive small monthly grants for unemployment relief, child support, retirement pensions and disability. With Mastercard’s ‘cashless’ electronic payment services appreciated for convenience and efficiency, Banga admitted, “If these guys use their card, I’m going to make money”.

Once card expenses exceed grant income, Net1 charges ‘service fees’, including a usurious 5% monthly interest rate! By 2015-17, it was earning more from financial inclusion than from distributing government grants. Thus, Net1’s shadow banking system remained unregulated.

Net1 lost its contract after bad publicity about its actual impact on the SA poor. Later, it was found to be sabotaging the state-owned post office (PO) asked to take over. Long under-funded and struggling to manage, the SAPO may soon lose the contract to another private fintech provider.

Welfare payments as debt collateral
While its digital payment services delivered monthly payments to all welfare recipients, these transfer streams effectively guaranteed credit extended. Thus, despite usurious credit terms, it faced little risk of default.

This de-risking strategy turned government welfare benefit payment commitments into debt collateral. Thus, regular cash transfers monetizing poverty relief and mitigating deprivation also served to service usurious debt.

Despite dubious evidence, World Bank staff claimed billions would escape poverty through greater access to digitalized microfinance services – small loans, savings opportunities, money transfer payments and technology, debit orders, etc. – run by ‘profit-seeking’ fintech platforms.

Much better access to such services had been enabled over a decade earlier by endorsing and celebrating microfinance and increasingly widespread credit/debit card access. But even ex-cheerleaders now agree microfinance has not reduced poverty.

Previously celebrated early fintech platforms have become quite problematic, and are now widely seen as exploitive of users. Even the Paypal CEO admits financial inclusion is essentially a buzzword for incorporating more into the financial system.

Innovation for exploitation
Two ostensible development programmes – cash transfers and financial inclusion – were very profitably integrated by Banga in SA. The public-private partnership between the government cash transfer programme and the private fintech payment-cum-credit services has become a usurious techno-financial monopoly.

Cash transfers and other services are increasingly delivered using financial inclusion technologies. With such technologies disbursing cash transfers, government-funded poverty relief programmes have been used to expand such credit facilities.

This link has enabled offering credit to cash transferees. As Erin Torkelson has shown, the Net1’s involvement in the SA cash transfer programme enabled a financial monopoly based on proprietary technology.

Government-funded cash transfers have thus provide security for more borrowing by the poor, virtually eliminating risk for the creditor. As all risk is borne by the borrowers, technologies bundling cash transfer payments with easy credit facilities ensure they cannot default.

Such bundling ensured the poor could not default, while encouraging recipients to borrow. By making the monthly government grants serve as collateral for credit, the programmes have ensured nearly risk-free profit for usurious creditors while deepening the indebtedness of the poor.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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It is thought to be the largest number of people ever to arrive in the Spanish archipelago in one go.

A view of Caracas from the south side of the narrow valley where it sits, dotted with houses and residential buildings where full occupancy was the norm until a few years ago. As a result of the massive migration of young people and adults, more and more homes are left unoccupied or inhabited only by the elderly and young children. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

Gladys swore she would not cry in front of her small children, but she still had to wipe away a couple of tears when she turned her head and looked, perhaps for the last time, at her dream house on Margarita Island in Venezuela, from where she migrated, driven by a lack of income and by fear.

“It hurts to leave your own home, the most precious material asset for a family like ours (she works in administration, her husband is a mechanic, and they have two boys), but we lost our jobs and were robbed in broad daylight in the middle of the city. That led us to decide to emigrate,” she told IPS from Miami, Florida in the U.S.

Due to the economic, social and political crisis, which gave rise to a complex humanitarian emergency, 7.7 million Venezuelans, according to United Nations agencies, have migrated from this country, the vast majority in the last decade, and the flow is not slowing down, especially to other countries in the region."It hurts to leave your own home, the most precious material asset for a family like ours, but we lost our jobs and were robbed in broad daylight in the middle of the city. That led us to decide to emigrate." -- Gladys

The family of Gladys, who like other people who talked to IPS preferred not to give her last name, tried their luck in Colombia, Panama and Spain, before finally settling in the United States, “and the worry about the house followed us like a shadow, but fortunately we made a deal with an enterprising young man who takes care of it, improves it and pays a modest rent.”

There are thousands like her. Migrants try not to leave their homes empty and abandoned, because they could lose them. For this reason, since most migrants are adults in their most productive age and young people, relatives of other ages remain in the homes, giving Venezuela the appearance of being a country of elderly people and children.

“I have to close up my home,” said Juan Manuel Flores, from San Antonio de Los Altos, a satellite city of Caracas with many middle class houses. “The neighbors will take care of it. It took us more than five years to build it and it cost between 150,000 and 200,000 dollars. Now I can’t get more than 60,000 dollars for it. We are not just going to give it away for that price.”

Flores, a teacher at a school where he earns less than 200 dollars a month, is preparing to travel to Spain, where his wife and adult daughters have gone ahead of him. “I will return to Venezuela when the country and its economy improve, and housing prices will rise again,” he told IPS, although without much conviction.

Solitude eats away at houses and buildings even in sought-after areas of the residential and commercial municipality of Chacao, in eastern Caracas. The real estate and construction market is suffering in Venezuela from the general economic crisis and in particular from the oversupply of housing created by those leaving the country. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

Why not rent out their house? “Because the laws and the authorities always favor the tenant, and if they have children it is impossible to get them out when the lease is up, whether they pay the rent or not, and they end up staying in the house for years,” said Nancy, a pastry chef, also from San Antonio, who left a niece in charge of her apartment when she moved to Brazil last year.

A survey of migrants in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, released in October 2022 by the Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants in Venezuela (R4V), led by United Nations agencies, showed that only 23 percent considered the homes they left behind in their country to be safe.

Selling is also not an option in most cases, because the magnitude of the exodus over the last decade has so depressed demand that the most that can be obtained for a property is 15 or 20 percent of the value it had 15 years ago, if you are lucky. So selling a home even if you want to is a long, difficult process that provides meager results.

Those who have no other choice say that they are not selling their home but “giving it away” for whatever they can get, with great regret, mostly to internal migrants from other parts of the country, who “take refuge” in Caracas because outside the capital there are recurrent power outages, and scarcity of water and fuel, in addition to other shortages.

“Real estate deteriorates, ceases to serve those who need it and remains an important asset that produces nothing for the owner, for example a migrant who needs to pay rent as soon as they arrive in another country,” Roberto Orta, president of the Venezuelan Real Estate Chamber, told IPS.

The businessman said “this is an issue that, we have proposed, should be addressed with political will in order to reform the laws that constrain the real estate market, to benefit both landlords and tenants. Up to 250,000 homes could be freed up in five years.”

A view of the working-class neighborhood of 23 de Enero on the west side of Caracas. In low-income barrios, closed, empty houses are almost non-existent, as those who decide to emigrate look for relatives to move in, to avoid the risk of the homes being invaded or robbed. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

A trade is born

In the residential buildings located in Caracas and other cities, closing up an apartment and moving outside the country is not the same as leaving a house abandoned to solitude and neglect, because the neighbors, for their own safety and in order to pay the common expenses, keep watch and take care to prevent strangers from occupying the empty apartments.

But houses, especially middle-class homes, are an attractive and easy target for crime and even for people who want to occupy them by de facto means. That is why a new profession has appeared: the home caretaker.

“I have taken care of three houses in housing developments in the southeast (of Caracas), it’s the way I make ends meet,” said Daniel, who also works as a self-employed gardener. “I would go to one house twice a week, three times a week to another, and every day to another.”

He explains that in the last house “the owners were Portuguese business owners who went away and left three dogs. I would go to a pet food store to pick up the food, feed the dogs, check around the house and that was it.”

Family friends of the owners have now taken charge of the dogs and Daniel no longer receives payment for taking care of them. “I don’t have an account in dollars, I was paid through a restaurant friend of the owners, who does have an offshore account,” he said.

To pay for caretakers from abroad, intermediaries are indispensable, since in Venezuela, whose currency has been made nearly worthless by the economic crisis, there is a de facto dollarization, without agreement from the U.S. authorities, who also use sanctions to block the transactions of government bodies.

Daniel is saving up to join one of the groups forming in Antímano, the working-class neighborhood where he lives in the southwest of the capital, to migrate as well. He said that “I didn’t leave a few weeks ago because I hadn’t sold my motorcycle yet, otherwise right now I would be in the Darien,” the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama that thousands of migrants cross every day.

A more successful caretaker is Arturo, who is in charge of two houses with large living rooms, corridors, yards, a swimming pool and parking area. He is paid a modest fee to care for and maintain the homes, but is authorized to rent them out for social gatherings and parties.

“In both cases the owners are people with good incomes, they left with their children to study abroad and plan to return in a few years if conditions in the country change. They would like to find their homes as they left them,” he said.

When he rents out the property for a day or a night, guests can use the yards, swimming pool and even awnings, tables and chairs. But Arturo closes off access to the more private parts of the house and hires assistants to watch out for damages or disturbances. “I live well, I keep up the houses and each one brings me about 3,000 dollars in profits per month,” Arturo said.

President Nicolás Maduro delivers a batch of houses in the northwestern state of Falcón, which form part of the 4.6 million homes that the government claims to have built and provided to Venezuelan families since 2013. The figure is questioned by organizations dedicated to monitoring economic and social rights. CREDIT: Minhvi

No empty houses in the shantytowns

In the shantytowns of the cities and towns of this country – which has a population of 33.7 million according to government figures and 28 million according to university studies – the situation is different and there are hardly any empty or unoccupied houses.

“In the shantytowns, no house is left empty. The very next day someone can invade it, occupy it, or take what is left inside by those who left, furniture or household goods. Someone stays in charge, the grandfather or in-laws, a trusted neighbor, or a relative is brought from the interior of the country,” explained Alejandra, from the Gramoven area.

She lives in a shantytown of informally constructed dwellings in the northwest of Caracas, similar to the ones that cover most of the many hills and hollows occupied by the capital’s most disadvantaged inhabitants.

“Many people leave, the young people emigrate, my children want to leave through the Darien jungle. But nobody leaves their house empty. If you do, you lose it,” Alejandra said.

In Santa Bárbara del Zulia, on the hot plains south of western Lake Maracaibo, “the situation is the same,” Julio, a bricklayer who migrated to Colombia for four years and has returned to care for his elderly parents, told IPS.

“You can’t leave your house alone in these towns,” said Julio. “When my parents went to Maracaibo and Caracas for medical treatment, they went and came back quickly, because the Community Council warned them not to leave their house empty for too long, because they would not be able to ward off people who wanted to occupy it.”

The Community Councils are committees set up by the government to represent and manage community affairs – such as the distribution of bags of subsidized food to poor families – and they channel decisions by the government.

“But people are leaving anyway. It’s something that won’t stop as long as people here earn only a pittance and can’t even eat properly (the minimum wage and official pensions in Venezuela are equivalent to four dollars a month). People care about their houses, but food has to come first,” said Julio.

View of a row of houses practically abandoned by most of their inhabitants in a town in eastern Venezuela. Migration from the countryside and small towns to large cities and oil producing areas marked the 20th century in Venezuela. And today, migration from this country mainly to other Latin American nations has become a regional crisis. CREDIT: VV

A matter for the government and the business community

While the plight of people leaving their homes continues to drag on, the government of President Nicolás Maduro announces more or less twice a year the construction of hundreds of thousands of new homes, in a program initiated by his late predecessor Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), called “Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission”.

According to official figures, since 2011, 4.6 million homes have been built and delivered by the Mission, mostly residential complexes to which the president goes to personally hand over the keys of one or more houses to their new inhabitants.

In accordance with the Mission, the occupants are tenants, not owners, so they cannot sell the homes. If they leave, the home can be reassigned to new tenants. To avoid this, those who choose to move to another city or country first look for relatives who can move into the house, and thus keep it.

However, the official figures on the number of homes built is not borne out by anecdotal evidence, to judge by the myriad of informal self-built houses still occupied in the slums, and by reports from business and civil society organizations.

The Chamber of Construction reports that the sector has decreased 96 percent in the last 10 years, and that its members employ 20,000 workers, down from 1.2 million in better times, while cement companies are working at 10 percent of their capacity and the steel industry at seven percent.

The civil society organization Provea, which specializes in the study of economic, social and cultural rights, has compared and contrasted the figures of the Housing Mission – which have not been audited, according to Provea – with independent studies, and reached the conclusion that the government has built and delivered only 130,856 housing units in 10 years.

In 1955 the Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva (1908-1985) published his famous novel “Casas Muertas” (Dead Houses), describing the decline of Ortiz, a town in the central plains, caused by the loss of its population due to malaria and emigration to the big cities and oil production centers.

The flow of Venezuelan emigration in this century has not been enough to turn this into a country of dead houses. But its many closed doors bear witness to a collapse that has pushed millions of its inhabitants abroad, as do the small number of lights that are lit at night in the buildings of Caracas and other cities.

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Kalkani Choolburra, Aboriginal Programs Coordinator at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, showing the many uses of native plants. Here, she is weaving with a Lomandra leaf. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Oct 3 2023 (IPS)

Growing up in Sydney, Kalkani Choolburra, a Girramay, Kuku Yalanji, Kalkadoon and Pitta Pitta woman from Far North Queensland, would frequently travel with her family up and down Australia’s eastern seaboard. Her grandfathers and uncles would bring fresh catch of dugong, her favourite bush food, and she would go hunting for the short-necked turtle with her aunties and female cousins.

The traditional or subsistence hunting of dugongs and turtles has been an important part of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous Australians) people’s social and cultural lives. Its meat has been a vital source of protein for these communities, who have sustained themselves on the native flora and fauna for thousands of years.

Now, national and international chefs are incorporating some of these native Indigenous produce – notably Kakadu plum, Davidson plum, lemon myrtle, wattle seed, quandong, finger lime, bush tomato, muntries, mountain pepper, saltbush – into their dishes ranging from sushi and samosa, pizza and pies to cakes and muffins.

These quintessentially native Indigenous ingredients are also being used in condiments, relishes, sauces, and marmalades and infused into chocolates, teas and beverages for their unique flavours and textures.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest and recognition of the nutritive and medicinal properties of native Indigenous plants and fruits. Professor Yasmina Sultanbawa, Director of the ARC Training Centre for Uniquely Australian Foods at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, recalls taking lemon myrtle to her lectures a decade ago. She would crush the leaves and ask her students to smell and identify them.

“They didn’t know what it was back then, but now they immediately recognise it as lemon myrtle,” Sultanbawa tells IPS. “The market for native Indigenous foods is growing because it is rich in nutrients. For example, the vitamin C content in Kakadu plum is about 75 times more than in an orange; folates (a natural form of vitamin B9 or folic acid) and fibre in green plum is much higher than in a mango; and kangaroo meat has only 2 per cent fat and a high concentration of conjugated linoleic acid and omega 3.”

In a study co-authored with Dharini Sivakumar, Sultanbawa argues that including native Indigenous foods in the diet could help reduce malnutrition.

“Legumes like wattle seed are low in carbohydrates and have a very high content of protein, fibre, zinc and iron comparable to chickpeas. Wattle seed is also a great functional ingredient for adding value to other foods; for example, it can be incorporated into breads made with wheat flour. What makes native Indigenous foods attractive is that you don’t have to add a lot of it to get the nutritional benefit,” she adds.

A 2019-20 market study of Australia’s native foods and botanicals industry by researchers at The University of Sydney, supported by Australian Native Foods and Botanicals (ANFAB), forecasted the native food sector would grow to 40 million Australian dollars (about USD 25,2m) in farm gate value, A$100m (about USD 63,1m) in middle market value and A$160m (about USD 101m) in total retail value by 2025.

A spread of Lilly Pilly, Davidson Plum, Finger Lime marmalade and traditional Aboriginal bread, Damper, which is made by crushing a variety of native seeds into flour and then baking the dough in the ashes of a fire. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

Besides being used in traditional and modern cuisine, many of these native Indigenous botanicals are being used in cosmetics, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries. For example, the vitamin C-rich, pink-red native Lilly Pilly fruit has good astringent properties that boosts collagen production within the skin. It is used today in a variety of anti-ageing skincare products.

The COVID-19 pandemic craze for superfoods and television cooking shows, such as Australian MasterChef, has also contributed to the increasing popularity of native Indigenous foods.

They can now be found on grocery superstore shelves. According to a spokesperson for Coles Group Ltd., a leading Australian retailer, “We currently work with nine Indigenous-run businesses that sell products with native ingredients, including Kurrajong Kitchen Oaklees original crackers, Yaru still mineral water and Seven Season Green Ant gin, on our shelves.”

Recently, The Coles Nurture Fund awarded Indigenous-owned family business Walaja Raw Bush Honey a grant of A$330,000 (about USD 208,470) to create a new, medicinal grade, premium Melaleuca honey that is sustainably made in the West Kimberley region on Yawuru Country (Country is a term used by Indigenous Australians to describe the lands, waterways and seas to which they are connected through ancestral ties and family origins).

Although the demand is growing, supply is limited because much of the native Indigenous produce is currently wild-harvested.

“Native foods have never been cultivated to be mass produced. They grow now as they’ve grown since the beginning of their time, culturally and sustainably. It’s best left like that,” says Choolburra, who is the Aboriginal Programs Coordinator at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney.

As Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Joe Morrison says, “Bush foods (food native to Australia and historically eaten by Indigenous Australians) are a fundamental part of Indigenous identity and our traditions that span thousands of years of connection to Country.”

But climate change presents a growing challenge with extreme weather conditions, including frequent storms, soil erosion, salinity in fresh water and ocean acidification threatening the ecosystems supporting native flora and fauna.

Choolburra says, “We (Indigenous Australians) are adapting our sustainability practices to meet the challenges of climate change, which is impacting everything in various ways. For example, many areas now facilitate cultural burns (Indigenous fire practice) in order to manage land and provide nutrients. In many cases, the production or harvesting of native foods is left to local communities in order to sustain the amount of quality produce.”

She occasionally leads the Aboriginal Bush Tucker Tour, which provides visitors from across the world an opportunity to learn about the traditional knowledge and cultural significance of native Indigenous flora and its many innovative uses.

On a cool, wet Sydney day, as we walk along the rich foliage in the Botanic Gardens, she plucks the long, flat green leaf from the native Lomandra plant, a vital source of food and survival and referred to as the ‘corner shop’ in some Indigenous Australians’ cultures and shows us how it can be woven to make baskets.

Pointing at the Dianella bush, she relates the old practice when children were told to hide in it – if they got lost. The Dianella’s sharp-edged leaves would repel snakes, and the children could attract attention by blowing in the hollow base of the leaf to make a whistling sound. The edible blue-purple berries, with tiny, nutty seeds from some of the Dianella species, are rich in vitamin C.

However, she warns that like anything consumed in large quantities, some of the popular nutritious plants, such as warrigal greens, used as a substitute for common spinach, and the sandpaper fig could cause diarrhoea or vomiting if eaten too much.

As the native Indigenous food industry grows, experts say, there is a need to enhance Indigenous communities’ participation to ensure they reap the benefits. “Australia needs to brand and market native Indigenous foods as its authentic cuisine. This will foster cultural knowledge about our Indigenous heritage and biodiversity,” Sultanbawa tells IPS.

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In a world characterised by economic crises, conflicts, and natural disasters, the uptick in migration is proving to be one of the most important geopolitical phenomena of the century. The adverse effects of climate change and environmental degradation are increasingly driving people from their homes--IOM

By Lansana Gberie
GENEVA, Switzerland, Oct 3 2023 (IPS)

On 14 June, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued his flagship annual report, Global Trends: Forced Displacement 2022. It states that by the end of 2022, the number of people displaced by war, persecution, violence and human rights abuse had dramatically increased by 19.1 million — the biggest increase on record — reaching a total of 108.4 million.

This record-breaking displacement resulted mainly from the war in Ukraine and the eruption of conflict in Sudan. Ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, in Africa’s Sahel region and elsewhere also contributed, as did prominent natural disasters related to climate change.

Rush to conflict, slow to solution

In the report, High Commissioner Filippo Grandi was right to blame this tragedy on people who “are far too quick to rush to conflict, and way too slow to find solutions,” leading to such “devastation, displacement and anguish for each of the millions of people forcibly uprooted from their homes.”

On Monday 15 May 2023, the Member States of IOM elected Ms. Amy Pope as its new Director General.

Yet, to blame the perpetrators of such conflicts is not to absolve the rest of the world for responding so appallingly to such displacements. This is inevitably irregular or illegal migration. On the day that the UN report was released, as many as 600 men, women and children perished needlessly when a human smuggler’s boat, Adriana, capsized off the coast of Greece.

In the following month of July, news photographs showed 27 bodies of African migrants along with dozens of inebriated figures stranded along the Libya-Tunisia border. A few weeks later on 21 August, Human Rights Watch reported that border guards of an important Middle Eastern country had carried out “widespread and systematic” abuse of hundreds of African migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross its border between March 2022 and June 2023.

That country has rejected the allegation as false. If the evidence proves otherwise, then we could consider this an extreme example of “a kind of grim and tragic monotony,” the phrase used by the American Quaker humanitarian Louis W. Schneider in 1954 to characterize the world’s aggressive attitude toward unwanted migrants.

Lansana Gberie

Secure borders, safe passages

Perhaps more pernicious, because more subtle and more easily replicable elsewhere, is the growing practice by wealthy countries of providing training, logistical coordination and other high-tech support to poorer countries so that those poorer countries can forcibly prevent migration to the rich ones.

Linked to such pernicious support and coordination is the recent migrant boat tragedy off the coast of West Africa, after patrol boats chased a fishing boat carrying migrants. Maneuvering in pitch darkness to escape, the migrant boat lost its way and struck rocks off a popular beachfront in Dakar, Senegal, killing at least 16 people.

No doubt those countries have legitimate, and probably even humane, reasons for their robust efforts to stop this kind of irregular and dangerous migration: thousands of young Africans have died over the years trying this perilous route. And state sovereignty requires secure borders.

Still, it is hard to shake off the impression that staunching illegal migrant flows is a greater priority than helping desperate young people — often displaced by conflict and ecological disasters — to more secure and prosperous destinations.

The issue is not just a matter of moral consideration. It is a hugely complex problem, clearly one of the great global challenges of our unequal world, and one without an easy fix. Even so, the world must find a more humane and effective way of addressing it.

Humane management of migration

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) was founded in 1951 to “help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people.”

The vision is ennobling, and IOM takes its mission seriously. The organization is currently made up of 175 member states, operating in 180 countries around the world (including my own, Sierra Leone). It employs thousands of people from diverse backgrounds in fulfilling this mission.

In March this year, as chair of the governing council of IOM, I visited two African countries where IOM has a significant presence. My first stop was Morocco — Rabat and Casablanca — where, during two days in March this year, I met with migrants, staff of IOM, senior government officials, diplomats and civil society organizations working with migrants.

Morocco is a critical migration hub — a source country, a transit point, and increasingly, a destination country for migrants. It combines border security arrangements with richer countries to its north with its own efforts to accommodate migrants, though perhaps with a lopsided provision of resources between the two.

Because of Morocco’s strategic location, the African Union in 2020 established the African Migration Observatory (AMO) in Rabat. Headed by an Egyptian diplomat, Ambassador Amira Elfadi, the observatory could potentially assist in monitoring events such as the tragedy at the Tunisia-Libya border. But when I met Ms. Elfadi, she had no staff yet. The AMO needs support for operations as extensive and energetic as those in Kenya.

The most effective combination

I had wide-ranging conversations with IOM staff in both countries, in town halls organised by local IOM leaders. Passion for the work of the organisation was very strong. Passion combined with strong technical knowledge and an eagerness to engage with migrant communities and local authorities at all levels — which I found stronger in Kenya — makes for greater effectiveness.

In May, by resounding vote and unanimous acclamation, IOM elected Amy Pope as its director general. She is a resourceful and energetic American who embodies this combination of passion, knowledge, and enthusiasm for engaging with staff at all levels, with all governments and local authorities, and with migrant communities.

A veteran migrant defender, Ms. Pope is the first woman to head this important organization since its founding 72 years ago. In her vision statement, she committed to a “people-centred” approach, defining this as a commitment to “the migrants, vulnerable people, and the communities IOM serves, IOM’s member states and its workforce.”

Since becoming deputy director of IOM over two years ago, Ms. Pope has consistently pursued this vision with a passion rare in the staid corridors of Geneva power offices. She is now one of a handful of pioneering women to lead important international organizations in Geneva, which hosts a few dozen. All of them assumed their positions within the past four years. It has been a refreshing change.

A novel leadership of a global organization grappling with a large global challenge tends to come with high expectations. It is both the attraction and a pitfall of progressive change. Either way, it will not detract from Ms. Pope’s commitment to posit that she will be as successful only in so far as the world wants her to succeed.

With the extraordinarily grim developments heralding her tenure, the world must embrace her “people-centred” approach. A failure to do so could mean unending calamities like the ones described above.

Dr. Lansana Gberie is Sierra Leone’s Permanent Representative in Geneva. He is Chair of the Governing Council of International Organization for Migration.

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Cecilia Erzuah was awarded the United Nations’ 2023 Military Gender Advocate of the Year. Credit: UN

By Abigail Van Neely
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

Cecilia Erzuah was torn between two opposite career paths at the end of university. The week she was supposed to begin military training, her professor offered her a position as a lecturer.

Erzuah had worked as a teacher before and thought she was pretty good at it. She’d also been in Ghanaian youth cadet programs throughout school. But she’d never seen the military as a viable career before.

“I’m going into the military,” Erzuah decided. She remembers telling her professor she could still lecture, even while serving.

In a way, she did. Years later, Erzuah would host discussions on domestic violence and gender equality as the commander of a Ghanaian engagement platoon with the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei. She was awarded the United Nations’ 2023 Military Gender Advocate of the Year award for her service.

The UN Police Division aims to increase the number of women serving in military contingents to 15% by 2028 from the 10% it last reported in 2016. While Ghana is the largest contributor of women military peacekeepers, Erzuah was the first to receive the award, the UN reports.

Abyei is a contested area between Sudan and South Sudan. Recently, violence in Sudan has “worsened dramatically,” the former UN special envoy for Sudan, Volker Perthes, said. Perthes resigned last week, warning that the “conflict between Sudan’s rival military leaders’ could be morphing into a full-scale civil war’,” AP reported. According to UN humanitarian representative Edem Worsornu, millions of Sudanese people are at risk of famine. Cases of sexual violence have been driven to “distressing levels.”

Erzuah’s experiences working with local communities in the region are a reminder of the everyday people still relying on support. When villages are attacked, “you see nursing mothers [and] parents carrying their children with one hand trying to salvage the few clothing they have and running for their lives,” she says. Peacekeepers help these internally displaced people get to safety.

“The most valuable thing we have in life is our life, and then the peace we enjoy- because how much can you carry with you when you’re running for your life?” Erzuah asked.

In Abyei, Erzuah was charged with maintaining engagement with local leaders and organizations as a liaison between her battalion and the community. “If you don’t engage the community as a peacekeeper, you will be doing things they don’t need,” Erzuah says. “You will exert your energy for nothing.” Local people also share critical knowledge. For instance, they can help UN personnel predict when and where attacks will occur.

But it wasn’t easy to get community members to open up. Many women are wary of men – who they have seen perpetuate the crimes around them, Erzuah explains. Over time, though, Erzuah’s platoon, which consisted of an equal number of men and women, gained the trust of the people they were meant to serve. They had a particular impact on women who were encouraged by the presence of other women in a typically male-dominated field. “When the woman smiles, you feel it is more genuine than the man,” Erzuah jokes. More women have joined community protection committees thanks to the platoon’s outreach efforts.

“On every front, Captain Erzuah’s work has set the standard for ensuring that the needs and concerns of women are reflected across our peacekeeping operations,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at her award ceremony. “The mixed patrols are…boosting the confidence of community members to go about daily activities safely,” Deng Paul Mankuol, a traditional chief in Majbong, said.

Erzuah smiles when she remembers learning about her physiology alongside local women during a breast cancer awareness event last year. “You realize that we are different but the same.”

Still, it’s not easy to be a woman in the military. All peacekeepers must adapt to unfamiliar environments and remain constantly on alert. Erzuah points out that women must also adapt to being on long patrols in areas without infrastructure to support their unique needs, like access to menstruation products.

Peacekeepers must adapt to unfamiliar environments and remain alert. UN Peacekeeping celebrated its 75th anniversary this year. Credit: UN

Ultimately, Erzuah chose her path because she’s never been afraid of a challenge. Growing up, Erzuah aspired to accomplish something that would demand her to be extraordinary. She relishes her current opportunity to show that women can be equally capable: “You feel you’re having the most impact when you will even see admiration in people’s faces.”

When people ask her if she’s afraid, Erzuah says they just want to know what motivates her. She sees the questions as a chance to explain that she struggled to get where she is now but that if she did it, they can, too.

Erzuah designs almost everything she wears – besides her uniform in her free time. She may still just be an “amateur fashion designer,” but she thinks that if she ever wants to be a professional, she can. It’s her belief that a person can be outstanding in any field they set their mind to.
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President Michel giving voice to the cause of small island states at the UN conference in Samoa in 2014. (Photo from the personal collection of James Michel)

By James Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

Everyone knows that small island states are on the frontline of global warming. Rising sea levels, acidification destroying fisheries and coral reefs, and changing patterns of rainfall are just some of the challenges. Some low-lying islands have already been lost to the ocean.

These challenges are real and can hardly be understated. Yet there is another side to the story, too: one that tells of a creative response and new opportunities. The fact is that small island states are on the frontline of the Blue Economy.

Several years ago, in 2016, I wrote a book (Rethinking the Oceans: Towards the Blue Economy) to show why urgent action was needed. The interconnected seas cover most of our planet and yet we have always treated them as second best, as if the riches that are found there will last forever. Instead, I have for long argued that our approach must be sustainable. It must serve not only today’s needs but also tomorrow’s generations.

A decade ago, the idea of the Blue Economy was poorly understood. Why, people would ask, is it any different from how the sea has always been used? Things have changed since then and the question is no longer ‘why’ but ‘how’. In my second book on the subject, Revisiting the Ocean: Living the Blue Economy, I show what progress has been made and where we can find some of the most important changes.

There is a great deal more to be done, not least of all in stemming the relentless flow of harmful practices. But there are already signs of progress. To show this, I look to local communities and business startups, to visionaries and philanthropists, as well as international bodies. Go to remote beaches to see how communities (often led by women) are taking matters into their own hands. Or to the workshops of inventive young entrepreneurs who are finding ways to do things better. I am a realist but also an optimist and in my new book, I try to balance a pervasive sense of impending doom with a strong message of hope.

Kentaste is a local company reviving the coconut industry along the Kenya coast. (Photo courtesy of Joanne Muchai)

COP28 will bring together the great and the good, drawn by the prospect of a new approach. But it will also attract those who are not so enamoured with a sustainable approach to the ocean. Fast-growing nations with, literally, billions of mouths to feed will not so easily be persuaded that sustainability is the right approach. Nor will commercial and other interests which are poised to scrape the ocean floor for rich mineral reserves. Yet, if we are not to destroy our planet, restraint has to win the day. In the crowded rooms of the upcoming event in Dubai, we must lose no opportunity to press the case.

My own nation, Seychelles, has one of the world’s smallest populations and yet, surrounded by a vast stretch of ocean, we have pioneered new ways to sensibly manage this immense gift of nature. Planning our marine space in a rational way is how we are making progress and I commend the lessons to other small island nations. We have also been innovative in attracting funds and the ways we have done this, too, is a shared resource.

Under the auspices of the European Union, Seychelles last year hosted an event where African entrepreneurs displayed their exciting ideas and projects. Fabrics produced from leaves and fish skin gathered locally, natural fertilisers from seaweed, productive ways to recycle fishing nets, and desalination units using renewable energy. With the help of large funding bodies like the UN and EU, much more can be done to unleash creative energy. Revolutions invariably start in small ways and nothing short of an ocean revolution is needed. Urgently!

I look forward to COP28 and I know that the host nation, the United Arab Emirates, will do all that it can to lead by example. Let us go to the conference with enthusiasm, welcoming every new initiative. I will be there, along with friends from other small island states and it is up to us all to make our voice heard.

Copies of my new book will be available at the event (as well as direct from https://www.jamesmichelfoundation.org) and I hope I can share with you some of my own ideas and a record of the wonderful efforts being made around the world to save our precious ocean.

James Michel is a former president of the Republic of Seychelles and a leading international advocate of the Blue Economy.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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