Africa

Uganda's first choice goalkeeper, Denis Onyango, will retain the captaincy of the Cranes under newly appointed head coach Johnny McKinstry.

Police say it was in retaliation for an attack on Friday by ethnic Hutu rebels in northern Rwanda.

Protesters gathered in Cairo shouting anti-government slogans on September 21. PHOTO: MOHAMED ABD EL GHANY/REUTERS

By Tasneem Tayeb
Oct 6 2019 (IPS-Partners)

The recent protests in Egypt, sparked by the allegation of financial misappropriations by a government contractor against the country’s current president and former army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, have died down almost as soon as they came to life. The Sisi administration resorted to its usual tactic of using brutal muscle power to clamp down on the protesters and the media. While the national media outlets—very much under the control of Sisi—did not dare breach “professional codes”, the Egyptian State Information Service (SIS), which is responsible for accrediting foreign journalists, warned the media that it has “carefully monitored” the protest coverage.

The SIS also called on the reporters to “strictly abide by professional codes of conduct.” This coming from a suppressive regime, with a track record of detaining journalists and feeding fabricated content to the local media outlets, it would not be hard to read between the lines when it comes to the SIS guidance.

The country’s autocratic regime has also detained Al Jazeera journalist Mahmoud Hussein in solitary confinement for the last 1,017 days, with charges and accusations that till date remain uncorroborated. The detention is in breach of the law of the land, which sets a maximum of 620 days of pretrial detention for people under investigation for felony. To make matters even muddier, there had been reports that the journalist was refused even passable medical attention after he suffered a broken hand, in an episode that carries reverberations from the imprisonment of the country’s first democratically elected president, who died while held in solitary confinement, with inadequate treatment and medicines.

In the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Egypt stood at 163rd out of 180 countries. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) annual report, Egypt held 25 journalists in 2018, and along with Turkey and China, accounted for half of all the journalists detained in 2018.

The situation in Turkey presents a grimmer picture, where 68 journalists had been incarcerated in 2018—all of them facing anti-state charges. Turkey’s uproar over the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, while fully warranted, comes with a slight hint of irony. At a discussion organised by the Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) in Stockholm earlier this year, journalists who have had to flee Turkey in recent times claimed that journalists are being systematically targeted by the Erdogan regime and being brutally punished on the flimsiest of charges. Levent Kenez, former editor-in-chief of Turkey’s Meydan daily newspaper, which the Turkish government had pulled the plug on in 2016, said, “Defendants are not selected randomly, but systematically. When analysing cases, one can easily notice that those who were critical of the government, reported on corruption or exposed Erdogan’s support for jihadist elements at home or abroad, were blacklisted long before.”

Closer to home, in India, media outlets in Kashmir are struggling to cover events after the abrogation of Article 370 and 35A in August this year. A recent report by two rights networks—Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) and the Free Speech Collective (FSC)—presents a despairing picture of the condition of journalists and media in Kashmir. The report reveals a “high degree of surveillance, informal ‘investigations’ and even arrest of journalists who publish reports considered adverse to the government or security forces; controls on the facilities available for print publication; government advertising to select publications; restrictions on mobility in select areas including hospitals and the most crippling communications shutdown of all time. Significantly, there is no official curfew, no official notification for the shutdown.”

The arrest of journalists has become a common scenario in the enchanting valley, which is also one of the most militarised zones in the world with the presence of around 900,000 troops. According to CPJ, as of September 24, at least four journalists have been detained since July 25 this year. While one was released later, the whereabouts of Qazi Shibli, editor of news website The Kashmiriyat, remain unknown, and two others—MT Rasool of Rising Kashmir and Sheikh Saleem of Kashmir Convener—have been kept in detention in a government-owned guest house in the valley’s Bandipora town, without any reason behind their arrest being forthcoming.

Apart from the fear of arbitrary detention, according to Kunal Majumder of CPJ, “communication blackout, the internet shutdown, limited access to government officials and politicians, strict controls on the flow of information, restrictions on travel, direct and indirect intimidation of journalists, and the long-running problem of dwindling government advertising revenue” have muzzled the media in Kashmir.

Often governments also resort to the use of soft power coercion to control and suppress the media; this is usually done through curtailing commercial revenues of media houses. In most of these cases, the governments not only cut down their own advertisement to these news outlets, but also discourage big corporations from giving advertisements to these media platforms. By doing this, the government tries to cripple the media outlets so that they go out of operation due to shortage of fund. A classic example of this is our own country, where the government had in 2015 asked the largest telecoms and consumer goods companies in Bangladesh to “restrict” their advertising in two of the mainstream newspapers.

Francis Fukuyama, in his book “Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy,” suggested that three elements are essential for a well-ordered society and good governance: a strong state, the rule of law and democratic accountability. However, rule of law and democratic accountability run contrary to the idea of a strong state, because when a state becomes strong, it becomes prone to discouraging accountability and rule of law. So how does one strike a balance between the three? Through a set of democratic institutions that enable a stable equilibrium.

Free press, by design, is one such institution. If there are dissenting voices within these ranks, they can easily be quashed. Alternatively, they can also spark constructive debates—debates that are the lifeblood of vibrant democracies.

Which path should we take? That is entirely up to us.

Tasneem Tayeb is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star. Her Twitter handle is @TayebTasneem.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Press freedom: Forking paths in a world of discontent appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Credit: Bigstock.

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 5 2019 (IPS)

European and North American countries will take a major stride in cleaning up the atmosphere next Monday, 7 October, through the implementation of an amended legally binding treaty to limit the amount of emissions polluting the air.

With 18 countries and the European Union now having ratified the amended treaty, from a total of 51 who have signed, including many of the countries which are part of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the official entry into force marks an important step to curb pollutants closely-linked to climate change, ecosystem degeneration, and potentially life-threatening human health.

The Gothenburg Protocol, established back in 1999, sets forth legally-binding emissions reduction commitments for 2020 and beyond, for major air pollutants, and is rooted in the UNECE’s 1979 Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), originally intended to stop the occurrence of acid rain.

Beyond targeting well-known air pollutants, the Protocol was updated in 2012 to include reduction of fine particulate matter, pollutants shown to cause devastating climate change effects over short periods of time.

 

7 million premature deaths per year

UN experts have deemed air pollution a human rights violation – a deadly, man-made problem responsible for some seven million premature deaths, every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

UN experts have deemed air pollution a human rights violation - a deadly, man-made problem responsible for some seven million premature deaths, every year, according to the World Health Organization


The agency has said toxic air is “the world’s largest single environmental health risk” and a leading cause of death by cancer.

The Protocol sets emission ceilings for major polluters: sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ammonia (NH3), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5), shown to damage human health.

The compounds are released from various household and ambient sources; from motor fuel combustion, to heat and power generation, to cooking and heating fuels; having lasting health effects even with only mild exposure.

Of the pollutants the Protocol aims to target, Particulate Matter, NOx and (SO2), show the strongest evidence of causing harm, WHO found.

Smoke poses the most serious threat to humans, as a pollutant composed of fine particles that can enter the lungs, travel through the bloodstream and penetrate vital organs.

Approximately 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using polluting fuels, and around 3.8 million die each year from exposure to air pollution., WHO says.

Slashing levels of particulate matter, specifically a component known as black carbon, could also help in the fight against climate change. Scientists have found that black carbon, which has light-absorbing properties, remains in the atmosphere for little time, yet has drastically darkened snow and ice in the Artic region, thereby contributing to regional warming.

 

40 years – clean air

As parties break new ground in clean air policy, additional UNECE Member States are expected to ratify the Protocol in coming months.

The 1979 LRTAP Convention will see 40 years since its inception in December, growing from 32 countries to now 51 Parties, and giving birth to eight protocols which have set emission reduction commitments through the decades, including Gothenburg.

UNECE has recognized that the LRTAP and its protocols have reached achievements that are “unparalleled”, from decoupling emissions and economic growth, cutting back certain air pollutants by 40 to 80 per cent, recovering forest soils from acidification, and avoiding some 600,000 premature deaths per year.

In another bid to protect human health and the environment this week, a group of more than 100 scientific experts have advised the elimination of a new group of hazardous chemicals, during the 15th meeting of the Stockholm Pollutant Review Committee (POPRC-15).

The compounds Perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS) and its salts, which are widely used in a number of consumer goods from carpets to clothing and leather, have shown to be detrimental to the human nervous system, brain development and endocrine system and thyroid hormone.

A follow-up 2020 meeting will further review impacts of two additional hazardous chemicals, Dechlorane Plus and Methoxychlor, taking into account the substances’ toxic impact on humans and wildlife, which would lead action toward their elimination, or reduction in production and use.

 

This story was originally published by UN News

The post Ground-breaking Clean Air Protocol to Guard Human Health and the Planet, Enters into Force appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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The post Can Cities Save the World? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The UNCCD says land degradation costs the global economy over 15 trillion dollars annually. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Oct 4 2019 (IPS)

Desertification is not cheap. It has social, cultural, environmental and of course economic costs to reverse what it destroys.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) the scourge of desertification is costing the global economy up to 15 trillion dollars annually, making it urgent to restore degraded land to mitigate climate change. In August 2019, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s report  said better management of land can curb greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. IPCC scientists said tackling land degradation can help keep temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius, a goal global governments are dithering to meet.

Holistic management, pioneered 50 years ago by acclaimed Zimbabwean ecologist, Allan Savory, is proving effective in the restoration of degraded land in many parts of the world where it is being applied.

The United States-based Savory is co-founder of the Savory Institute, a movement with a mission to regenerate the world’s grasslands through holistic management in order to address the global issues of desertification, climate change, and food and water insecurity. The Savory Institute is working along with its partner organisation, the Africa Centre for Holistic Management (ACHM), located 36km from the resort town of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, to regenerate deteriorating land in this southern African nation.

“It is all about the decisions we make,” says Sarah Savory, who works with the ACHM Education and training team. “Every decision we make always affect something else, because everything is connected – all people, plants, land, waters and animals. Trying to separate any of them like we do and manage successfully is no different to trying to successfully separate and manage the hydrogen in water.”

Savory talked to IPS about the management framework. Excerpts from the interview:

Inter Press Service (IPS): What is holistic management all about?

Sarah Savory (SS): Holistic management is not a practise at all. It is a management framework and anybody in the world can use it. From an individual making a decision and wanting to improve things in their daily lives or governments or organisations can use it to form a policy. All human actions are based on needs, desires and wants to address problems. What the framework does is it asks you to change the reason you make decisions. 
Did you know that we could change our world by just changing the context, or reason, we make our decisions? And we can make the change as individuals wanting a better world, or as any organisation wanting to develop better policies.

IPS: What is the context and where do we start?

SS: First of all, we have to STOP blaming coal, oil and livestock for causing global desertification and climate change. Those are all natural resources so how can they possibly be to blame? Only our management of those things can be causing problems. 

It is our management that places millions of animals in barbaric, inhumane, force-fed factories at great cost to our health, economy and environment and it is our management that calls fossil resources fossil fuels and burns them at a destructive rate. We could turn everything around today. Context is the foundation of holistic management. It is a statement about your most deeply held values, it is how you want your life to be, and the behaviours that will bring that about.

IPS: How does holistic management work?

SS: Within the holistic management framework, once you have formed your context and the reason you are going to make your decisions, you then get on with deciding what actions to take, what practices to use. Many practices are good but holistic management helps people know which and where any practice or action is appropriate.  For example, while a practice might be appropriate for one farmer in his unique holistic context, it might be completely wrong for his neighbour who will be dealing with his own completely different and unique complexity. 
Anyone can use this framework but people who manage land are truly dealing with all social, cultural and environmental complexity, so in those situations, they get to learn about animal impact and the holistic grazing process, which is a new, biological tool that can be used, in the right situation, to regenerate land.

IPS: Your institute has devised the holistic planned grazing process, what is this about?

SS: All the world’s grasslands developed together with many millions of large herding animals that remained concentrated and moving in the presence of the pack-hunting predators that evolved with them. These grazing herds and their predators were vital to maintaining the health of the grasslands. The herds churn up and aerate the soil with their hooves while simultaneously grazing, trampling and fertilising the grass, forming protective mulch over the soil, preparing it for the next growing season. This mulched soil will hold our rain which will filter down into the soil, instead of running off, taking our precious top soil and silting up our rivers. 

The holistic planned grazing of livestock is a new, biological tool available within the Holistic Management Framework, which is used to help regenerate land, in certain situations. This process ensures that the livestock are mimicking nature, as closely as possible, in order to consistently regenerate land, reverse desertification and restore biodiversity for wildlife and the people who live amongst them. 

Holistic planned grazing is not a “grazing plan” because herds of wildlife would never follow a grazing plan – they would naturally and constantly shift and change their movements according to all the variables going on around them: we are always dealing with ever-changing social, cultural, economic and environmental complexity.

IPS: Why is this framework not being adopted widely by governments and organisations?

SS: History and research shows that people struggle to accept or adapt new thinking and counter intuitive insights and this the huge problem we face, as well as the fact that no organisation will ever lead a change – historically, it is only when enough of the public opinion shifts that an organisation will make a shift and start changing policies.

For the first time in history, we are successfully addressing the knock-on effects and damage of centuries of reductionist management, which now threatens humanity as a whole. Where holistic management has been properly practiced, there isn’t a single case of it not leading to improvement. 

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The post Q&A: Holistic Land Management – Only a Movement can Prevent Desertification appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A new United Nations report on children and armed conflict in Afghanistan found that 12,599 youngsters had been confirmed killed or injured by fighting between 2015-2018 — 82 percent more than between 2011-2014. A mother and her children who live amid bomb rubble on Kabul's outskirts in this picture dated 2008. Credit: Anand Gopal/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations has warned that the past four years were among the deadliest for children in Afghanistan since the United States-led invasion of 2001, with nearly 13,000 youngsters killed and injured in that period.

U.N. secretary-general António Guterres’ new report on children and armed conflict in Afghanistan found that 12,599 youngsters had been confirmed killed or injured by fighting between 2015-2018 — 82 percent more than between 2011-2014.

The report serves as a potent reminder that while peace talks between the U.S and the Taliban, a hardline Afghan militant group, have made fitful progress, life for ordinary Afghans remains blighted by violence and hardship.

Speaking with reporters on Thursday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Guterres was “deeply disturbed by the scale, severity and recurrence of grave violations endured by boys and girls” in Afghanistan over recent years.  

“The recruitment of children, mostly by armed groups, including the Taliban and Daesh, continued to be documented, as were over 800 attacks on schools and hospitals,” added Dujarric, using an alternate name for the Islamic State (IS) group. 

The 17-page study, which bore Guterres’ name but was compiled by his special envoy on children in wartime, Virginia Gamba, said that youngsters made up almost a third of all civilian casualties in Afghanistan. 

They were mostly killed or maimed by fighting on the ground, improvised explosive devices, airstrikes, suicide bomb blasts, and from unexploded weapons that detonated unexpectedly after they were deployed. 

“Children in Afghanistan have known nothing but heartbreaking realities as a result of violence and war,” Gamba said in a statement accompanying her report.

“The number of child casualties is appalling, and I urge all parties to immediately put an end to the suffering of children.” 

The U.N. blamed the Taliban, Afghanistan’s branch of IS, and other armed groups for most (43 percent) of the 3,450 children who were killed and 9,149 others who were maimed in the 18-year-old war.

Still, 30 percent of child casualties were blamed on Afghan security forces, pro-government forces, the U.S. and other international partners — a large increase on the previous four-year period.

Gamba noted the growing civilian death toll since the Afghan Air Force became capable of launching aerial attacks in 2015. Since the beginning of that year, some 1,049 children were killed or injured in attacks from the skies.

In one extreme case, Afghan Air Force helicopters in April 2018 fired rockets and heavy machine guns at an open-air graduation ceremony at a madrasa in Dasht-e Archi district of Kunduz Province, killing at least 30 children and injuring 51 others, the report said.

The Taliban, IS and Afghan security forces continue enlisting children as soldiers, the report said. Once they are released from service in militant groups, youngsters frequently end up in jail on national security charges.

“While the protection and well-being of children can only be reached through long-term peace, we must seize all available opportunities to improve right now the protection of boys and girls in Afghanistan,” added Gamba.

The report comes after U.S. and Taliban negotiators struck a draft peace deal last month aimed at leading to drawdowns of the 14,000 U.S. troops and thousands of NATO troops in the landlocked, South Asian country.

U.S. President Donald Trump broke off talks after Taliban militants carried out a Sept. 5 bomb attack in the capital Kabul that killed 12 people, including a U.S. soldier. Pakistan and the Taliban have since called for a fresh round of negotiations.

The Taliban currently controls more territory than it has since 2001, when the U.S invaded following the 9/11 attacks. The war has become deadlocked, with casualties rising among civilians and combatants despite fitful progress at peace talks in Qatar.

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The post Afghan War Deadly for Children Despite Peace Process: UN appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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By Ambassador Jan Eliasson
STOCKHOLM, Oct 4 2019 (IPS)

We will look at how modern conflicts will be affected by the recent unprecedented technological and societal developments. The nature of conflict is also changing. It is becoming more protracted, complex and unpredictable.

And let us not forget the wider picture – that modern conflicts are occuring against the backdrop of climate change, inequalities between and inside countries, injustice and human rights violations.

All this is already altering the way we live, work and relate to one another. It also profoundly impacts national and international security.

Artificial intelligence is all around us. From smartphones to smart cars, from drones to social media feeds, from streaming services to google translate software. In many ways, it does under the circumstances make our lives more comfortable.

Yet, the downside of advancing technology is the growing potential for harm. The same technology used in remote controls of home appliances may be used to “switch off” a power grid, a city or even a whole country.

“Cyber warfare”, “lethal autonomous weapons systems” – these expressions have already firmly entered our vocabulary. Even “space wars” might soon be more than just a product of once wild imagination.

Ambassador Jan Eliasson

In a way, this is not new. The history of warfare and international security is the history of technological innovation. From spear to rifle, from rifle to machine gun and from machine gun to drones. From conventional to nuclear. New technologies and new weapons have changed the conditions of warfare since prehistorical times.

As new technologies such as autonomous weapons become easier to use, small groups or even individuals may gain access to such weapons, using them to cause harm on a massive scale. This new vulnerability leads to new levels of risks and to new fears.

At the same time, advances in technology have the potential to reduce the scale or impact of violence through the development of new modes of protection. For example, greater precision in targeting should lead to less loss of civilian lives. Regretfully this is often not the case.

Digital connectivity, big data, high tech facial recognition technology – all these technologies are already used by humanitarian actors to provide a more efficient humanitarian response. Families separated by war have a chance to get reunited much faster thanks to new technologies.

So, is it a perfect storm or a window of opportunity?

Can the technological revolution bring us to catastrophes or will it offer innovative solutions? Will we lose human control over technology or will it become a tool of peace?

What if, one day human and artificial intelligence together could design formulas for prevention and conflict resolution?
Albert Einstein once said: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”. As an optimist – even though, lately, a worried optimist – I hope that we, together, can prove this to be wrong. It is our humanity that must prevail.

In the end, it all comes down to people and to values. To the fundamental principle of humanity. To “We, the peoples, …”. The first three words of the UN Charter.

Before I pass the floor to our distinguished key-note speaker and a dear friend of mine, UN USG Izumi Nakamitsu, I would like to say a few words of gratitude.

I would like to say Thank You to our partners and co-organisers of today´s event – Munich Security Conference, Crisis Management Initiative, MSB – The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency and Mercy Corps.

A special thanks also to the Swedish Parliament that founded SIPRI as an international, independent organization in 1966 and to the speaker Norlén for being present here today.

Finally, I would also like to thank a special friend of SIPRI, Baron Per Taube, for his generous support of this conference and many other SIPRI initiatives and dialogues.

The post Modern Conflicts Against the Backdrop of Climate Change, Inequalities, Injustice & Human Rights Violations appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ambassador Jan Eliasson, in an address to the fourth Stockholm Security Conference.

 

Ambassador Jan Eliasson is a Swedish diplomat and Chair of the Governing Board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). He was Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations from July 2012 to December 2016 and Sweden's Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2006

The post Modern Conflicts Against the Backdrop of Climate Change, Inequalities, Injustice & Human Rights Violations appeared first on Inter Press Service.