Africa

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The world's oldest president, aged 92, won Tunisia's first free presidential elections in 2014.

Preview followed by live coverage of Thursday's Africa Cup of Nations game between Madagascar and Burundi.

By PRESS RELEASE
Jun 27 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(ESCAP) – A crowdfunding platform for women farmers, online marketplaces for women-produced goods and services, and e-wallet enabled lending were among ten of the winning business models which will be co-funded by the United Nations to improve access to finance for women-owned, managed or led micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the region.

Launched by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) in March 2019, the Women Fintech MSME Innovation Fund will support the implementation of the winning private sector FinTech and digital business solutions for women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, Myanmar, Nepal, Samoa and Viet Nam.

“We received over 100 innovative proposals from businesses registered in more than 20 countries around the region. The breadth of proposals received was impressive. It is encouraging to see how digital finance and digital solutions can be used to address some of the barriers women-led MSMEs face in accessing finance and advancing their business. ESCAP is grateful to the Government of Canada for their support to this initiative,” shared ESCAP Deputy Executive Secretary Hongjoo Hahm.

MSMEs are a vital source of employment and a significant contributor to the GDP. However, more than 45 per cent of MSMEs in Asia and the Pacific experience financial access constraints. Socio-cultural norms mean women-led enterprises have to overcome gender-specific barriers to access institutional credit and other financial services.

“To address the issues that female business owners face, we need entrepreneur-centric solutions that will allow her to grow her business and reach her full potential,” said Andrew Shaw, Senior Advisor, Fintech and Financial Inclusion at the Dutch development Bank (FMO).

The Women MSME Fintech Innovation Fund provides risk capital and technical assistance to pilot technology enabled financial service solutions for women-led enterprises. Out of the 110 applications received, the top 30 proposals were asked to pitch their ideas to an independent investment committee made up of industry experts and regulators.

Over the next year, ESCAP and UNCDF will provide financial and technical support to the ten winning companies as they develop and pilot their business initiatives. In the short-term, the initiatives aim to support more than 9,000 women led MSMEs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, Myanmar, Nepal, Samoa and Viet Nam. The winning companies include the following:

• iFarmer (Bangladesh)
• Romoni Services (Bangladesh)
• BanhJi FinTech (Cambodia)
• SHE Investments (Cambodia)
• HFC Bank (Fiji)
• InfoCorp (Myanmar)
• Aeloi Technologies (Nepal)
• SparrowPay (Nepal)
• SkyEye (Samoa)
• Tinh Thuong Microfinance Institution (Viet Nam)

“Transforming towards digital economy requires inclusive partnerships and concerted effort towards enhancing MSMEs competitiveness. We thank ESCAP, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Canada, FMO and Visa for their collaboration and support for bringing in the much-needed synergy on advancing women MSMEs through use of the UNCDF SHIFT Innovation Fund mechanism,” said Rajeev Kumar Gupta, SHIFT ASEAN and SAARC Programme Manager, UNCDF.

Similarly, Mr. Arif Qayyum, Senior Director of Social Impact in Asia Pacific, Visa, stated: “We believe that given the right opportunities and support, women owned-business and entrepreneurs can have a significant impact on economic growth. Partnerships such as the Women Fintech MSME Innovation Fund will give FinTechs the support they need to implement locally-relevant solutions to help more women-owned MSMEs thrive with access to formal financial services.”

The Women MSME FinTech Innovation Fund is part of a regional programme ‘Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship: Creating a Gender-Responsive Entrepreneurial Ecosystem’ funded by the Government of Canada and implemented by ESCAP in partnership with UNCDF. The programme aims to support the growth of women entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region through addressing the challenges faced at three levels: enabling policy environment, access to finance and use of ICT for entrepreneurship. Funding support is also provided by FMO and Visa Inc.

For more information about the winning business models and how they plan to support women entrepreneurs, please visit: https://adobe.ly/2X6jWb5.

For media enquiries, please contact:
Ms. Kavita Sukanandan, Public Information Officer, Strategic Communications and Advocacy Section, ESCAP, T: (66) 2 288 1869 / E: sukanandan@un.org

The post 10 digital solutions for women entrepreneurs win support from United Nations’ FinTech Innovation Fund appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Amir Ali, 75, plays a violin in front of his house in Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Reuters file photo

By Thomson Reuters Foundation, London
Jun 27 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Myanmar must grant citizenship to stateless Rohingya with roots in the country, a senior UN investigator said yesterday, as she urged the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi to “be the democrat she once told us she was”.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar does not recognise the Muslim Rohingya as citizens despite a long history in the country.

Hundreds of thousands fled to neighbouring Bangladesh following a 2017 crackdown by the military, which UN investigators say was executed with “genocidal intent”.

“I have seen much brutality in the different parts of my career but the rape and forced eviction of the Rohingya shook me to my core,” said Radhika Coomaraswamy, a member of the UN fact-finding mission that gathered evidence on the violence.

Coomaraswamy said statelessness was at the root of the “horrific” Rohingya crisis, which was among the worst she had seen, second only to the Rwandan genocide.

He told how soldiers shot at fleeing villagers, gang raped women and burned down houses with children inside.

Myanmar has rejected a report by the United Nations investigators calling for top generals to be prosecuted for genocide, saying the international community is making “false allegations”.

Coomaraswamy was speaking after addressing a global conference on statelessness in The Hague where the plight of the Rohingya is in the spotlight.

The Rohingya are among an estimated 10 to 15 million stateless people in the world who are not recognized as citizens of any country.

Sometimes called “legal ghosts”, stateless people are deprived of basic rights from education to employment and vulnerable to exploitation, violence and arbitrary detention.

“These are heartbreaking issues and one is never quite the same after … seeing the impact that forced statelessness has,” Coomaraswamy told delegates.

Bulldozed villages

The Rohingya are the world’s largest stateless population. About 900,000 are in Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands remain in Myanmar and others are scattered throughout Asia.

Coomaraswamy said she was struck by one elderly refugee she met who showed her a dirty plastic bag of papers.

These included the citizenship document her grandparents had received at independence, a paper from 1982 denying her citizenship, and a card she had just received stating she was a “Bengali Muslim” which gave her access to some services.

“She was holding it like this was her life. She had left everything behind (when she fled) including even her jewellery. She said she sleeps with this bag under her pillow,” Coomaraswamy told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Myanmar has said it will take back some Rohingya who can show they have a long history in the country. But many fled to Bangladesh with nothing, and many do not want to return without full citizenship.

Coomaraswamy urged the international community to stop pressuring Rohingya to return and ensure those behind the violence are brought to justice.

“Before you force people to go back into Myanmar you must make sure the conditions are right and the Rohingyas will have … a clear pathway to citizenship,” she said.

“The problem is their villages have been bulldozed — without a tree standing.”

She said those still in Myanmar were in decrepit camps with severe restrictions on their movement, limited access to food and healthcare and sky-high malnutrition rates.

Subterranean world

The mission will hand its evidence to a new prosecutorial authority in September so that it can build cases against the generals behind the atrocities, she said.

Coomaraswamy said the desperation and sadness was overwhelming when investigators met refugees immediately after the August 2017 violence.

When the team returned to Bangladesh last month the Rohingya were “much more organized, much clearer on what they want and deeply disappointed in the international community,” she said.

“They would like to see justice and citizenship.”

She said the continued defence of the military by Myanmar’s civilian leader and Nobel peace prize winner Suu Kyi posed serious concern.

“We would hope she would change and be the democrat she once told us she was and have … the Rohingyas (who lived there) come back … with a guarantee of full rights.”

Coomaraswamy told the conference that increasing numbers of people globally were ending up stateless after “falling between the cracks”.

They lived in a “subterranean world” without formal rights, documents or sense of belonging, at risk of violence and easy prey to traffickers.

“Statelessness is no longer the exception in the world – it has become endemic,” she said.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Myanmar must give Rohingya ‘pathway to citizenship’: UN investigator appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Fergus Watt and Richard Ponzio
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 27 2019 (IPS)

Despite the polarization and stasis that characterizes so much of the present politics at the United Nations, Secretary-General António Guterres is betting that the 75th anniversary of the organization, in 2020, will provide an opportunity for the international community to begin to address the “crisis in multilateralism,” and to shape a more robust and effective organization.

On 14 June, the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus a “modalities resolution” (A/RES/73/299, titled “Commemoration of the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the United Nations”) setting out the framework and practical arrangements for actions by various UN stakeholders to mark the UN’s 75th anniversary.

A growing civil society network, the “UN2020 Initiative,” has campaigned since early 2017 for using this anniversary as an opportunity to involve governments and other UN stakeholders in a process of stocktaking, review and consideration of measures to strengthen the organization.

And prospects for a stand-alone resolution for UN75 gained momentum earlier this year with the active encouragement from the President of the General Assembly, Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador.

The resolution identifies the theme for the 75th anniversary (which is meant to guide all activities, meetings and conferences organized by the United Nations in 2020) as “The future we want, the United Nations we need: reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism.”

A Leaders Summit is scheduled for 21 September 2020, while “meaningful observance ceremonies” took place on June 26 (the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Charter) and October 24 (UN Day). A youth plenary will also be organized in the spring of 2020.

An outcome document will be adopted at the Leaders’ Summit. Arrangements for the negotiation of this political declaration are to be determined by the President of the 74th session of the General Assembly, Ambassador Tijani Muhammad-Bande of Nigeria.

Against this backdrop, the Secretary-General has appointed a Special Adviser for 75th Anniversary Preparations, highly-regarded Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond of Chile, who had previously served in the S-G’s Executive Office as Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Coordination.

At a meeting June 5-7 hosted by the Washington-based Stimson Center, along with the Global Challenges Foundation, One Earth Future Foundation, and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York Office, Hochschild shared with civil society representatives a draft of the Secretary-General’s ambitious plans for a “UN@75” program of activities.

The Secretariat aims to stimulate a “global dialogue” at the local, national and international levels on “The future we want, the United Nations we need.”

From “classrooms to board rooms, village houses to houses of parliament,” the intention is to employ a mix of intellectual, communications, media, and engagement tools in order to catalyze widespread public engagement on the role of the UN system in addressing global challenges.

All 130 UN Resident Coordinators will be involved, as will UN regional commissions and many UN agencies and programmes. Young people in particular are expected to be drivers of this worldwide dialogue.

The planning document for UN@75 recognizes that an unprecedented confluence of existential threats, systems changes and new actors, including the role of mega-corporations and tech giants, present new governance challenges.

These changes “are occurring faster than public institutions ability to adapt or regulate.” The document calls for “a reflection on successes as well as failures, inviting transformational thinking about the potentially momentous paradigm shifts for how the multilateral system as a whole confronts global challenges.”

More than a simple commemoration, these proposals go far beyond what was organized for the UN’s 70th anniversary in 2015.

Considering the current levels of international hostility and indifference to the very idea of international cooperation and a rules-based world order, the commitment of Mr. Guterres to an ambitious UN@75 program, though commendable, surely faces long odds. Many public officials in similar circumstances would be more risk-averse.

Is there a public appetite for such a far-reaching worldwide dialogue about the United Nations and global governance? We shall see.

The post Will “UN@75” Revive Multilateralism? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Fergus Watt coordinates the civil society-led UN2020 Initiative. Richard Ponzio directs the Just Security 2020 program at the Stimson Center in Washington D.C.

The post Will “UN@75” Revive Multilateralism? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

It follows an attempt at a regional coup, in which the army chief of staff was shot dead.

Frank Bainimarama is Prime Minister of Fiji

By Frank Bainimarama
SUVA, Fiji, Jun 27 2019 (IPS)

SUVA, Fiji, 27 June 2019 (IPS) — Are the most climate-vulnerable nations of the world right to demand that developed and major economies commit to carbon neutrality by 2050?

Should the poorest nations of the world insist that the “haves” put their significant economic and political resources behind aggressive efforts to combat climate change?

Frank Bainimarama

Do we have the right to expect political leaders to show the courage, vision and will to lead their citizens to responsible action to stem the growth of global warming?

The answer is yes, of course, and the reason is simple: We cannot save the world from climate catastrophe if the largest emitters of CO2 don’t step up now.

And the most vulnerable countries of the world cannot adequately reduce our emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change without economic support from the developed world that is flexible and accessible. Governments, private financial institutions, international financial institutions and foundations must be a part of the solution.

Last week, European Union leaders missed a critical opportunity to develop a more aggressive collective mitigation target by 2020 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Perhaps more importantly, they had a chance to lead the world to carbon neutrality, but they failed to step up at the critical moment.

Their failure was a bitter disappointment to countries, like Fiji, that are doing everything within our means to achieve those same results. Island nations are determined to lead by example.

We have laid the ground work, but unfortunately, our efforts, strenuous though they may be, will not be enough alone. We need developed economies—and advanced developing economies—to make the same strenuous effort.

We are at a critical juncture in this fight, at a point where we know we can still act globally to change the course of human-made climate change or fail to act and face the reverberations of climate, environmental and biodiversity crises for generations to come.

The political and scientific ground has shifted under our feet since we signed the Paris Agreement in 2015. Governments have changed, and populists and climate sceptics have gained ascendancy in some countries.

Then, last October, the IPCC released its Special Report on 1.5 Degrees, which made it clear that time is closing in on us; we simply don’t have the time to turn the tide that we thought we had in Paris.

It was a struggle then for small island states and members of the High Ambition Coalition to win the inclusion in the Paris Agreement of an aspiration to limit global warming to of 1.5 degrees, when the official goal of the agreement was 2 degrees.

Now we find that we are less than 12 years away from dramatic, far-reaching, and possibly irreversible consequences of surpassing 1.5 degrees of warming if we keep going the way we’re going. We simply cannot miss opportunities like the one the EU missed last week, and we must embrace all possible solutions.

There are three things we need to focus on now. First, we need to reduce the amount of carbon we are releasing into the atmosphere. This means that countries need to set much more ambitious targets in their national climate commitments under the Paris Agreement that lead to rapid decarbonisation of high-emitting industries and sectors.

I am encouraged to see that the number of countries that are stepping up to the 2020 deadline is growing, but I’m both proud and concerned that most of these are from the developing world. The names of many developed and major economies are still notably absent from this list.

Second, we need to remove more of the carbon that has already been emitted into the atmosphere and this means massively increasing our investment in nature — developing and implementing natural climate solutions that can be implemented worldwide.

Nature has the incredible power to remove carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere, but we are currently failing to protect this vital resource. We will not be able to achieve 1.5 degrees without dramatically recalibrating how we look after and restore our natural landscapes. Under the leadership of China and New Zealand, we are expecting a big step forward on this front at the upcoming UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit (in New York on September 23 this year).

And, third, developed and major economies should increase the amount — and rapidly deploy — climate finance for developing countries to allow us to achieve and increase our mitigation targets, as well as urgently build our resilience to the impacts of climate change. This means at least $100 billion a year by 2020.

The irony of the EU’s failure of will is that so many European leaders understand fully what is at stake, and many individual European countries—and non-European countries—are beginning to take responsible action.

Still, it is a sad fact that the Marshall Islands and Fiji—two of the most marginal carbon emitters in the world—are the only two countries to have officially submitted long-term plans to the UN for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

The Paris Agreement committed signatories to achieving net carbon neutrality by the second half of the 21st century, but it was unclear what was intended by the term “second half.”

We know now that the deadline must be the beginning of the second half, not the end. Fifty years of ambiguous wiggle room, 50 years of hesitancy, and 50 years of procrastination will lead us to the catastrophe we fear.

Setting a date for achieving net-zero, matched with boosting short-term action, is critical and that’s where national leadership comes in. It gives all the relevant stakeholders, government departments, businesses and citizens the signal they need to start making concerted changes.

If developing countries can develop robust emissions-reduction targets that truly drive us toward the goals we agreed to in Paris, then other nations can, too.

The EU, and the rest of the developed world, can still change course. The UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in September will provide a forum for every country to lay out their climate ambitions before the world and be judged.

I urge developed countries to come to New York with the most aggressive and most ambitious plans they can devise. In Paris, the small island states used our moral weight to push the world to accept the aspiration of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. In New York, vulnerable developing countries must do the same.

We cannot accept that countries with the means to do more will sit on the sidelines and do less.

The post We Cannot Save the World from Climate Catastrophe if Largest Emitters of CO2 Don’t Step up Now appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Frank Bainimarama is Prime Minister of Fiji

The post We Cannot Save the World from Climate Catastrophe if Largest Emitters of CO2 Don’t Step up Now appeared first on Inter Press Service.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard determined that Saudi Arabia is “responsible” for the “extrajudicial” murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi. Courtesy: United Nations Photo/Manuel Elias

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 27 2019 (IPS)

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was deliberately killed at the hands of state actors and journalists around the world are increasingly seeing the same fate, said a United Nations expert.

After a six-month investigation, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard determined that Saudi Arabia is “responsible” for the “extrajudicial” murder of Washington Post writer Khashoggi.

“This killing was a result of an elaborate mission involving extensive coordination and significant human and financial resources. It was overseen, planned, and endorsed by high level officials and it was premeditated,” she said to the Human Rights Council.

“The right to life is a right at the core of international human rights protection. If the international community ignores targeted killing designed to silence peaceful expression, it puts at risk the protection on which all human rights depend,” Callamard added.

Since it occurred at a consulate in Turkey, the killing cannot be considered a “domestic matter” and violates the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations as well as the prohibition against extraterritorial use of force in times of peace, making it an international crime.

Callamard pointed to the need to establish a U.N. criminal investigation to ensure the delivery of justice, noting that the inquiry undertaken by the Saudi authorities was woefully inadequate.

“The investigation carried out by the Saudi authorities has failed to address the chain of command. It is not only a question of who ordered the killing—criminal responsibility can be derived from direct or indirect incitement or from the failure to prevent and protect,” she said.

The government of Saudi Arabia continues to deny its involvement and rejected the new report, stating that it is based on “prejudice and pre-fabricated ideas.”

While the killing of Khashoggi was brutal, his story is just one of many cases of targeting journalists around the world.

“This execution is emblematic of a global pattern of targeted killings of journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists,” Callamard said.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 80 journalists were killed, 348 imprisoned, and 60 held hostage in 2018, reflecting an unprecedented level of violence against journalists.

Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a Mexican journalist who investigated cartels, was killed in May 2017.

Just days after, Valdez’s colleagues and widow began receiving messages infected with a spyware known as Pegasus, which was bought by the Mexican government from Israeli cyber warfare company NSO Group.

According to the NSO Group, Pegasus is only sold to governments for the purposes of fighting terror and investigating crime. However, digital watchdog Citizen Lab found 24 questionable targets, including some of Mexico’s most prominent journalists.

The programme has also been used elsewhere by repressive governments such as the United Arab Emirates which targeted and imprisoned human rights defender Ahmed Manor for his social media posts. In Canada, critic of the Saudi regime and friend of Khashoggi, Omar Abdulaziz, was also infected with the spyware by a Saudi Arabia-linked operator.

While a suspect was arrested in 2018 for the murder of Valdez, it is unclear if they are the main culprit.

“The arrest of a suspect in the murder of Javier Valdez Cárdenas is a welcome step, but we urge the Mexican authorities to identify all those responsible for the killing, including the mastermind,” said Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Mexico Representative Jan-Albert Hootsen.

“Too often, investigations into the murders of Mexican journalists stall after low-level suspects have been arrested, which allows impunity to thrive,” he added.

The Mexican government also launched an investigation into the misuse of such surveillance technology, but as yet no one has been punished.

Callamard urged Saudi Arabia to release those imprisoned for their opinion or belief and to undertake an in-depth assessment of the institutions “that made the crime against Mr. Khashoggi possible.”

She also stressed the need to strengthen laws to protect individuals against targeted killings, including the sharing of information if an individual is at risk.

“There are clear signs of increasingly aggressive tactics by States and non-State actors to permanently silence those who criticise them. The international community must take stock of these hostile environments, it must take stock of the findings of my investigation into the killing of Mr. Khashoggi,” Callamard told the Human Rights Council.

“Denunciations are important, but they are no longer sufficient. The international community must demand accountability and non repetition. It must strengthen protections and prevention urgently. Silence and inaction will only cause further injustice and global instability,” she added.

Related Articles

• Don’t “Whitewash” Khashoggi’s Murder
• Truth Never Dies: Justice for Slain Journalists
• “A Year of Shame” for Middle East and North Africa

The post Beyond Saudi Arabia: The World Is Failing Journalists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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