Africa

Kenya's first coal power station would increase greenhouse gas emissions by 700%, campaigners say.

By Caley Pigliucci
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

The feeling in the air at a recent meeting of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was one of compassion and benevolence.

The focus was on children as Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs), a subject that everyone at the panel discussion argued is delicate and politically sensitive.

Alexandra Martins, the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer at the UNODC, pointed out that “”Nobody is a lost cause, and there is always a possibility to rehabilitate and reintegrate children from these groups.”

Two of her words were repeated by almost every speaker: “rehabilitate and reintegrate”.

The meeting was meant to discuss the release of the UNODC Handbook on Children Recruited and Exploited by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups.

The roadmap’s main goal is to provide UN’s 193 Member States with guidance on how to treat children associated with terrorist and violent extremist groups. It argues for an approach to rehabilitate those associated with or accused of being FTFs, and to reintegrate them back into their communities.

Though many of the children accused have taken part in terrorism, the UNODC advocates for a change in the way Member States handle the children.

Speaking during the release of the handbook, Dr. Jehangir Khan, Director at the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism/Counter Terrorism Centre (UN OCT/CCT), said “children must be seen first and foremost as victims.”

The roadmap was released alongside 4 technical assistance tools: UNODC Handbook on Children Recruited and Exploited by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups: The Role of the Justice System (2018); the UNODC Training Manual on Prevention of Child Recruitment by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups (May 2019); the UNODC Training Manual on Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Child Victims of Recruitment by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups (to be released in July 2019); the UNODC Training Manual on Justice for Children in the Context of Counter-Terrorism (May 2019).

The documents are based on three years of technical assistance work conducted by the UNODC to Member States that have found children as FTFs.

One country already advocating its support for the Roadmap is Lebanon. Until 2013, children accused of being or associated with terrorist fighters were kept in adult prisons and tried as such.

“It is in prison that I learned the meaning of life” one of the boys, aged 19, remarked in a video played by the representative from Lebanon stated.

A step in the direction of treating children as victims came in 2013, when they were moved to a juvenile prison.

Lebanon’s Head of the Prison Administration at the Ministry of Justice of Lebanon, Judge Raja AbiNader, said: “By showing them the same respect we showed the rest of the children, things started to change.”

Martins told IPS that there are many such countries, like Lebanon, whose children and communities have already benefited from the guidance offered in the Roadmap.

“As a result of the protocol, children deprived of liberty for association with Boko Haram were released and transferred to child protection authorities to begin a process of reintegration in their communities,” she said.

Martins stated that more than 30 countries have received guidance on child FTFs from the UNODC’s, from 6 different regions (West Africa, East Africa, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia).

Despite the Roadmap offering guidance, at the panel discussion, Martins clarified that “there is no one size fits all approach” on handling children.

There have been different approaches offered on handling the children in general, and specifically when dealing with different genders.

There will be a second event during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September that Martins hopes will “promote the guidance further.”

Gender and the Roadmap

But there appears to be some disagreement still on the treatment of boys and girls during the rehabilitation and reintegration processes.

Under international law (Havana Rule 87.d., Bangkok Rules), boys and girls must be held in separate detention facilities. But the Roadmap encourages them to still engage together, to foster development.

The Roadmap also advocates for targeted approaches on the treatment of girls.

Martins told IPS that girls are “considerably more vulnerable to both physical and sexual abuse and require special attention in this regard.”

She noted that “girls deprived of liberty are exposed to other forms of sexual violence such as threats of rape, touching, ‘virginity testing’, being stripped naked, invasive body searches, insults and humiliations of a sexual nature.”

Given these sensitive issues, and the fact that girls are different physiologically and often psychologically from boys at certain development stages, the Roadmap advocates for an awareness of gender and for specific targeted approaches.

“A section in the manual alludes that girl victims of recruitment and exploitation by terrorist and violent extremist groups require specific approaches to reintegration, because of their increased exposure to violence at multiple levels and from different actors,” Martins said.

But it is not clear yet that this section on gender differences has been implemented.

While Martins says the Roadmap takes seriously the different approaches for girls and boys, Judge AbiNader told IPS that in Lebanon “Very honestly, we’re not working specifically with girls concerning rehabilitation.”

As of June 7th, Lebanon has 10 boys and 2 girls in prison for being associated with or accused of being FTFs.

When asked why there were not specific programs that tackle children of divergent genders differently, he argued that they girls “should be treated the same” during rehabilitation.

“And it hasn’t been discussed because the number [of girls in prison for accusations of being FTFs] is so low,” he added.

Despite the low numbers of accused girls in detention facilities, Martins believes that targeted women’s health education should be provided, and that “Access to age- and gender-specific programmes and services, such as counselling for sexual abuse or violence, has to be given to girls.”

Though the UNODC has advocated a change in outlook on children involved with terrorist organizations, the Roadmap’s release is just the beginning of that change being implemented.

The post A Roadmap for Children as Victims, not Terrorists appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The move shocks many as the largely cashless society fears a local currency that fuelled hyperinflation.

Fatou "Toufah" Jallow says Mr Jammeh sexually assaulted her after she had won a beauty pageant.

A helicopter company insists a motorway rescue was an emergency, not a billionaire escaping traffic.

Midfielder Amr Warda is sent home from the Africa Cup of Nations by hosts Egypt after social media conversations are leaked.

Credit: Bigstock.

By Esther Ngumbi
ILLINOIS, United States, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

The U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Mark Green recently concluded a one-week visit to USAID-funded programs at several African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya and Mozambique. His goal was to promote sustainable paths to self-reliance, including in the context of food security programs.

Finding sustainable pathways to self-reliance, especially for many African countries whose citizens continue to be affected by hunger and food insecurity, is indeed important. Presently, over 257 million African citizens are hungry. In addition, according to a recent report titled For Lack of Will – Child Hunger in Africa, over 50 percent of all child deaths in Africa are caused by hunger.

Importantly, achieving food security will set the stage and pave way for African citizens to meet their food needs, create surpluses for export and tap on the opportunities that come with urbanization and transition from developing to emerging economies.

There are many strategies and pathways that African countries must implement to attain food security, and this includes learning from countries that have made remarkable progress in this area, including the U.S.

Of course, no country is perfect and hunger and food insecurity is still an issue that affects close to 40 million people in the U.S., (around 12 percent of the population). Still, the U.S. has made remarkable progress and great strides in achieving food security for all its citizens.

As a result, there are lessons African governments can learn from them as they work to attain food security and improve childhood nutrition.

The frameworks that have propelled the U.S. to become food secure encompass a multitude of several interlinked targeted strategies and initiatives, including prioritizing the agricultural sector, investing in innovative agricultural initiatives that are resilient and responsive to new challenges such as climate change, and building safety nets that can be tapped upon by citizens who need the help.

The frameworks that have propelled the U.S. to become food secure encompass a multitude of several interlinked targeted strategies and initiatives, including prioritizing the agricultural sector, investing in innovative agricultural initiatives that are resilient and responsive to new challenges such as climate change, and building safety nets that can be tapped upon by citizens who need the help

Further, many of the initiatives have clear goals, targets, benchmarks and indicators of success. In addition, these initiatives have built-in monitoring and evaluations systems to ensure they achieve the intended outcomes.

Take California, for example, also referred to as the agricultural powerhouse of the U.S. Despite facing drought, one of the extremities that comes with a changing climate, recent Agricultural Statistics Review shows that investing in innovative agricultural initiatives has allowed the State to maintain sustainable agricultural crop production, and, consequently become food secure.

The State of Illinois ranks nationally and internationally in maize and soybean output, and has maintained these rankings despite the many challenges farmers face including a changing climate. By using all the available and recent agricultural technologies and tools such as improved seed varieties, farmers have been to maintain crop yields, translating into food security. Furthermore, the United States Department of Agriculture continuously supports all states and provides detailed reports and resources that farmers can consult.

Importantly, the frameworks that have allowed the U.S. to be food secure have a common backbone — the land-grant university system. Through it, many Land-Grant Universities in the U.S. such as University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Cornell University, Purdue University, consistently carry agricultural research coupled with a functioning extension service arm that delivers discoveries and recent science-based information to farmers and rural communities.

For example, Purdue and University of Kentucky recently collaborated with USDA in an effort to provide research, extension and other assistance to rural communities.  Cornell University has Small Farms program dedicated to supporting farmers.  Other Land-Grant universities with similar programs include Penn State University, Virginia State University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Complimenting these efforts have been investments by both the State and Federal governments agencies such as the USDA and advancements in new technologies and equipment, irrigation systems, soil health building systems, access to water and electricity, improved production systems and production practices, infrastructure like roads, and sound policies as well as risk management.

The USDA, for example, recently announced that it would support all U.S. farmers impacted by recent trade disruption. This is in addition to several other programs for farmers that are impacted by other extremities that come with a changing climate.

At the same time, the U.S. also invested in improving its phytosanitary standards, further allowing it to trade commodities, allowing for export-led economy. In addition, U.S. citizens have access to food they cannot produce all the times.

A recent technical brief showed that many African countries phytosanitary standards are not up to date, further limiting African countries from benefiting from exporting and importing food.

Countries in Africa that are the most food secure such as Tunisia, Mauritius, Morocco, Algeria, Ghana, Senegal and South Africa and those which are making progress toward being more food secure such as Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria and Kenya have achieved their progress by using some of the same strategies as the U.S, through USAID Feed the Future Initiative, and other USAID funded programs and initiatives such as  USAID Feed the Future Innovation labs .

Other African countries can follow suit. Of course, other foundational frameworks these countries have are stable democracies and export-driven economies.

Building a food secure future can be achieved when countries are open to weighing in on proven strategies.  Time is now.

 

Esther Ngumbi is Distinguished Post Doctoral Researcher, Entomology Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois, World Policy Institute Senior Fellow, Aspen Institute New Voices Food Security Fellow, Clinton Global University Initiative Agriculture Commitments Mentor and Ambassador

 

The post Fighting Food Insecurity in Africa – Lessons from the United States appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The Manchester City footballer and his wife Rita "failed to pay certain expenses", a judge says.

Delegates at the International Labor Conference in Geneva which adopted a landmark Treaty last week.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

Against the back drop of widespread charges of sexual abuse and harassment at workplaces– including the United Nations– the International Labour Conference (ILC) last week adopted a “Convention” and a set of “Recommendations” to protect workers and employees worldwide.

According to the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO), whose broad policies are set by the ILC, the Convention will enter into force 12 months after two member States have ratified it. The “Recommendation”, which is not legally binding, provides guidelines on how the Convention could be applied.

Rothna Begum, women’s rights senior researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Geneva, told IPS the treaty needs to be ratified by a couple of states before it can start to go into effect (and it takes another year after the initial ratification to come into force).

The Convention, she said, is an international treaty that is binding on Member States that ratify it, while the accompanying Recommendation provides more detailed guidance on how to apply the Convention.

“The Recommendation is not binding but it provides the necessary guidance for understanding the obligations set out in the Convention.”

She pointed out that there is also a resolution that once adopted will direct the ILO to have a strategy to have a ratification campaign and to help governments, employers’ organizations and workers’ organizations to implement it.

Paula Donovan, a women’s rights activist and co-Director of AIDS-Free World and Code Blue Campaign, told IPS: “It’s breathtaking to realize that less than a decade ago, few imagined that such a progressive convention could be adopted at the ILO at all, never mind by a landslide”

Ironically, she pointed out, the UN’s unique immunity means that its own workplaces won’t be affected, even in countries that ratify this convention.

“But last week’s victory should inspire the hope that the UN might choose to change with the times, and actually join the revolution it champions,” she declared.

Asked about its implementation, Dr Palitha Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, told IPS: “The question of whether the ILO convention on violence and harassment in the world of work is mandatory or voluntary would depend on its own provisions”.

Generally, ILO conventions, of which there were 189 as of July 2018, permit states parties to implement their own treaty obligations using their own mechanisms.

In general, he said, treaties are best implemented where the states parties feel obliged to implement them in their own domestic jurisdictions because implementation is in their own best interest.

Voluntary implementation produces the best results. Where a treaty has mandatory provisions, their implementation would require the creation of a range of international implementation mechanisms, which is not easy, said Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

Asked about the effectiveness of the treaty and its implementation by member states, he said this would depend on the convention itself.

If it is a requirement for the Convention to be ratified for it to enter into force for a particular signatory state, until such ratification is effected, the convention would not be legally binding on that state.

There are many examples where states had signed international conventions but not ratified them, he noted.

“In such cases, due to the provisions of the convention itself, non-ratifying states would not be legally bound by its provisions. Other treaties, provide for them to be legally binding on signature alone. This is a choice that the negotiating states must make,” he added.

Asked if ILO should assign the task of monitoring how the treaty is being implemented, Dr Kohona said” “It is not uncommon for the organization, under whose auspices a treaty is negotiated, to be given the task of monitoring its implementation by participating States.

But the treaty/convention must make the necessary provision for this. Environment conventions generally confer this responsibility on the bodies established under them, he declared.

Ma. Victoria (Mavic) Cabrera Balleza, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, told IPS the adoption of the ILO Convention on Violence and Harassment is a watershed moment in the struggle to eliminate violence against women in the workplace.

When it is ratified and fully and effectively enforced, this will change the lives of women around the world, she added.

“When women know they are safe, they will be more productive, more inspired and more motivated. That would be beneficial to everyone — to the women themselves, to the labor movement, to the business sector and to governments,” said Cabrera Balleza.

“This also proves that the #MeToo movement is or could be diverse. It’s not only for white women or women in North America and Europe. I sincerely hope that more women –especially in workplaces in developing countries will speak up about the harassment and violence committed against them; that all perpetrators will be brought to justice.”

She pointed out that the new treaty has proven that #MeToo can really be #WeToo! The next step is to get all governments to ratify the treaty.

“Civil society around the world should unite and mobilize to ensure that no government will get away with not ratifying it. Equally if not more important, ensure that the governments, the employers, the unions and workers’ associations are all held accountable for the enforcement of this groundbreaking treaty,” she declared.

Asked if the Convention applies to international institutions like the United Nations, an ILO spokesman told IPS that it applies to Member States that have ratified it, “and could be also used as reference for policies in international organizations.”

The new Convention—the Violence and Harassment Convention – was adopted by 439 votes in favour, seven against, with 30 abstentions. The Violence and Harassment Recommendation was passed with 397 votes in favour, 12 against and 4 abstentions.

After the adoption of the treaty, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said the new standards recognize the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment.

”The next step is to put these protections into practice, so that we create a better, safer, decent, working environment for women and men. I am sure that, given the co-operation and solidarity we have seen on this issue, and the public demand for action, we will see speedy and widespread ratifications and action to implement.”

In a statement released last week the Center for Women’s Global leadership said the progress in moving from widespread awareness of gender-based violence (GBV) in the world of work, to a mechanism providing accountability to end it, is the direct result of pressure and support from women’s rights and labor rights advocates around the world, including the 16 Days community who embraced our global call to action #ILOendGBV.

“These new standards recognize a broad definition of “worker” and “world of work,” which has the potential to address the diverse range of work realities for women; and we welcome an acknowledged link between domestic violence and GBV in the world of work”

An intersectional approach will be required in implementation, to ensure these standards are inclusive of marginalized women workers and encompass situations of vulnerability.

This Convention will positively impact billions of women around the world, and provide a strong foundation for continued progress in our effort to secure equality, regardless of identity, the statement added.

“ We will look to states and employers to develop promising practices, so that they not only meet these new standards, but reflect true leadership in honoring women’s rights as human rights, and the right to decent conditions of work as a human right,” the statement added.

Meanwhile, according to HRW, the treaty was adopted at the ILO’s International Labour Conference (ILC) comprising governments, worker representatives, and employer representatives.

ILO members spent two years negotiating the legally binding convention and an accompanying recommendation that provides guidance on implementing the convention obligations.

The treaty would cover workers, trainees, workers whose employment has been terminated, job seekers, and others, and applies to both formal and informal sectors. It also recognizes the impact of domestic violence on work. The ILC is the body that develops, adopts, and monitors international labor standards.

The treaty would require governments that ratify it to develop national laws prohibiting workplace violence and to take preventive measures such as information campaigns and requiring companies to have workplace policies on violence.

The treaty also obligates governments to monitor the issue and to provide access to remedies through complaint mechanisms, witness protection measures, and victim services, and to provide measures to protect against retaliation.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post How Effective is a Non-Binding Treaty Aimed at Ending Harassment at Work Places? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A politician sparks a diplomatic row by threatening to beat up Tanzanian traders if they do not leave.

As the world’s soils store more carbon than the planet’s atmosphere, the restoration of soil and degraded land is therefore essential in the fight against climate change with a potential to store up to 3 million tons of carbon annually. Pictured here is a 2012 reclamation project of desertified, sandified land on either side of the Sudu desert road in Wengniute County, China. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

The international community still has a long way to go to chart a new, sustainable course for humanity. But the upcoming climate change meetings provide a renewed opportunity to tackle climate change head on.

Ahead of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September, governments are gearing up to convene in Abu Dhabi for a preparatory meeting Jun. 30 to Jul. 1. The meeting is expected to have the highest official international participation since the Paris Agreement in 2015.

“This summit is a unique opportunity to make sure that climate is not perceived as an environmental issue…the summit allows us to bring climate into the overall agenda of development of a country,” said Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on the Climate Summit, Luis Alfonso de Alba.

“I think that’s the only solution for the climate. As long as we keep climate as an environmental issue, we will never achieve the level of transformation that is needed to deal with the problem and particularly to move to a different way in which we consume and produce as a society,” he added.

During the Abu Dhabu climate meeting, governments will make concrete proposals for initiatives on various climate change related issues from finance to energy. An agenda, recommendations, and draft resolutions will then be presented and adopted during the September summit.

In recent years, the climate change debate has been largely focused on energy, particularly the use of fossil fuels. Most recently, European Union (EU) leaders failed to reach a consensus on how to make the EU carbon neutral by 2050 as coal-reliant countries rejected the proposal. This sparked protests across the continent, including a 40,000-strong rally at a German coal mine.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres also called for an end to new coal plants after 2020 as well as fossil fuel subsidies.

While such moves are essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable land management is another crucial aspect that is often overlooked.

According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the land use sector represents almost 25 percent of total global emissions. As the world’s soils store more carbon than the planet’s atmosphere, the restoration of soil and degraded land is therefore essential in the fight against climate change with a potential to store up to three million tons of carbon annually.

Agroforestry could be an essential tool to address land degradation and help communities to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

A land management system where trees and shrubs are grown together with crops and pasture, agroforestry has been found to provide numerous benefits including improved soil and water quality, increased biodiversity, high crop yields and thus incomes, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and increased carbon sequestration. 

In Niger, agroforestry has helped restore five million hectares of land through the planting of 200 million trees. This has resulted in an additional half a million tons of grain production each year, improving climate change resilience and food security of an estimated 2.5 million people.

Such sustainable land management is therefore a potential low-hanging fruit for achieving nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement.

Already, 40 percent of developing countries propose agroforestry as a measure in their NDCs, including 70 percent of African countries.

However, current commitments for long-term climate action remain insufficient as it covers only one-third of emissions reductions required by 2030.

In fact, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston that even if current targets are met, the world is still at risk of a “climate apartheid” where the wealthy are able to pay to escape heat and hunger while the rest is left to suffer.

“Maintaining the current course is a recipe for economic catastrophe,” the U.N. expert said.

“States have marched past every scientific warning and threshold, and what was once considered catastrophic warming now seems like a best-case scenario. Even today, too many countries are taking short-sighted steps in the wrong direction,” Alston added.

De Alba echoed similar sentiments regarding the uneven commitment to climate action, stating: “If we are dealing and trying to improve the transition of energy, if we are concerned about land degradation and the protection of the forests, if we are all looking into innovation—I think we are all working for climate change whether we label it that way or not.”

Countries must therefore not only scale up their commitments, but also address and close existing gaps.

For instance, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) found that agroforestry is not included in countries’ measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems, including the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) own systems.

If agroforestry remains excluded from MRV, its contributions to national and international climate objectives will remain invisible.

“If agroforestry trees aren’t counted in MRV systems, then in many ways they don’t count. Only if agroforestry resources are measured, reported and verified will countries gain access to the financial and other support they need to effectively include agroforestry in climate change adaptation and mitigation,” CGIAR said in a study, recommending the creation of guidelines for agroforestry reporting.

De Alba stressed the need for the international community to act quickly.

“Fighting climate change is compatible with growth, compatible with the fight against poverty…it is important that we continue the work from Abu Dhabi into the summit to get the best results.”

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By Sivananthi Thanenthiran
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2019 (IPS)

The increase in world population by 2 billion in the next 30 years will present a serious global challenge especially if we do not find new paradigms of development thought and renewed global political leadership.

Our region, the Asia and the Pacific region is already home to 60 per cent of the world’s population – some 4.3 billion people, with India and China being the most populous countries.

A further increase in population means it will be harder to achieve the 17 SDGs with the 169 different targets – aimed at fighting poverty, reducing inequality, addressing climate change, ensuring quality primary and secondary education for all children, gender equality, and reduced child mortality – to ensure nobody is left behind.

Marginalised populations already suffer deprivations: poor women, women in living in rural and hard-to-reach areas are those who are unable to access to contraceptive services even when they desire to have a smaller family size. This unmet need amongst those left behind needs to be addressed, if we are looking at ensuring that these groups do not get left behind.

We are currently facing heightened conflicts over resources, accelerated effects of climate change, political strife and economic collapse in a world marked by inequalities.

These trends cannot be contained within borders and will spill over and the global community must be aware – that this will raise poverty levels, and give rise to displaced persons, refugees and migrants.

Besides these already well documented impacts, the most affected will be women and girls. In most developing countries, women and girls are already marginalised, and will be further pushed into poverty.

In areas we have conducted research in, we can see that climate change has effects on food security – forcing women and girls into hunger and malnutrition; there is increased incidence of lesser education opportunities and increase child marriages.

This essentially impacts a whole gamut of women’s rights, particularly their sexual and reproductive health and rights. This is why we track and monitor governments’ implementation of the landmark International Conference on Population and Development’s Programme of Action (ICPD POA) that took place in Cairo in 1994.

Signed by 179 countries across the world in 1994, the PoA put human rights as the corner stone to address population and development issues, and called for a comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, especially for women and girls.

Governments agreed that reproductive rights, gender equality, equity and women’s empowerment are essential for improving quality of life and achieving sustained social and economic growth and sustainable development.

At the juncture of the 25th anniversary of the ICPD, it is essential for us to look at holistic, rights-based global frameworks to help us get a grip on the challenges we are facing today.

The prediction that the world population will increase by 2 billion in the next 30 years is based on ground realities like high incidence of child marriage and fertility rates. When girls are married younger, they drop out of school and often also get pregnant earlier.

They have little or no access to comprehensive sexuality education which impacts their knowledge of contraception, access and knowledge of abortion services and leads to unwanted pregnancies. Those who are already marginalised, will suffer further deprivations.

Governments in the region should have the political courage to ensure eradication of child marriages, ensure provision of comprehensive sexuality education, and access to sexual and reproductive health services to young people regardless of marital status.

UN data shows that population in the group of 47 least developed countries (LDCs), which includes countries in Asia, is growing 2.5 times faster than the total population of the rest of the world, and is expected to jump from 1 billion inhabitants in 2019 to 1.9 billion in 2050.

It is also predicted that half of the world’s population growth will be concentrated in just nine countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, the United States of America, Uganda and Indonesia.

However, women’s rights are key in slowing down population. It is no coincidence that in many of the above countries in our region as well as others, the status of women and girls is low. It is a fact that sexual and reproductive rights are integral to individual autonomy, to freely decide on matters of sexuality and reproduction, to have the right to consent and bodily integrity. Women need to have control over their bodies and should be able to decide whether or not to have children, when to have children, how many children to have.

In 2016, a study from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Asian Demographic Research Institute (ADRI) at Shanghai University showed that if the world could achieve the 17 SDGs by 2030, it could slow down global population growth to 8.2 to 8.7 billion by 2100.

The Goals 3 and 5 – of good health and well-being and gender equality – help build an enabling environment for the achievement of all other goals. Which is why it is so critical for us to ensure our governments implement the ICPD PoA.

Empowering women is the key to slowing down population. However, population growth cannot be achieved through coercive measures like sterilisation, family planning methods that limit women’s reproductive choices.

Instead, we need to ensure comprehensive sexuality education for in and out-of-school children and youth, eliminate child, early and forced marriage, tackle teenage pregnancies, invest in health care programmes and policies, ensure universal health coverage for all, including the most vulnerable and marginalised, a rights-based approach to family planning where women have access to contraceptive and family planning services of their choice.

Besides these, we need to simultaneously ensure access to safe abortion services to all women and girls and remove all barriers to access abortion so there are no unintended, unplanned or forced pregnancies.

There is also a pressing need to increase investments in girls’ education & address barriers that prevent girls from attending schools. Similarly, we need to increase women’s participation in the labour force, which means addressing gender inequalities inside homes and making work environments safer.

When we shift the focus to people’s development, and enable marginalised women and girls to have choices and exercise decision-making over their life choices, we create the necessary change for the world’s population.

*Sivananthi Thanenthiran is also a SheDecides Champion for Asia Pacific. ARROW has consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC) of the United Nations and works closely with many national partners in countries, regional and global networks around the world, and are able to reach stakeholders in 120 countries.

The post Women’s Rights are Key in Slowing Down Population appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sivananthi Thanenthiran* is the executive director of the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW), a regional feminist NGO based in Malaysia championing sexual and reproductive health and rights in Asia Pacific.

The post Women’s Rights are Key in Slowing Down Population appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Aliou Sall was named in a BBC investigation over links to allegedly corrupt oil and gas deals.