Africa

A partial view of the exterior of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad that was destroyed by a truck bomb on 19 August 2003. Credit: UN Photo/Timothy Sopp

By Martin Griffiths and Gilles Michaud
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 21 2023 (IPS)

This World Humanitarian Day on 19 August, we marked 20 years since 22 of our colleagues were killed and more than 100 injured when a suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives outside the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, the United Nations headquarters in Iraq. This devastating blow to the UN sent shockwaves across the humanitarian community.

Along with the suicide car bombing near the UN headquarters in Baghdad just three days later, the attack marked a turning point in how the UN perceived security and threats, and how we approached humanitarian operations in dangerous settings.

It triggered an urgent review of the UN’s security arrangements, with the Ahtisaari Panel recognizing the need for new UN security approaches that ensured an acceptable balance between operational objectives and staff security in high-risk environments.

The Panel recommended investment in a new, adequately financed UN security management system with the highest levels of professionalism, expertise, and accountability at its core. As a result, in 2005, the United Nations Department of Safety and Security, or UNDSS, was created, mandated to lead a collective approach to UN security.

In the 20 years since the attack, the number of people who need humanitarian assistance has grown at a near-exponential rate, from around 50 million in 2003 to 339 million today. In response, humanitarian assistance has never reached as many people as it does today and there have never been as many humanitarian workers deployed globally.

In many ways, we have become more flexible and dynamic, changing direction more rapidly when either needs or security risks change. We have incrementally improved our policies, support, and guidance to make right and justifiable decisions.

But the risks to aid workers remain very real. In 2022 alone, 444 aid workers fell victim to violence in 235 separate attacks, with 116 killed, 143 injured and 185 kidnapped. Many of those workers affected were national staff, and the majority were from non-governmental organizations.

The threats to humanitarian workers, already manifold, are now exacerbated by rampant misinformation and disinformation about their intent and goals, and by unabashed disregard for humanitarian law by many parties to conflict.

For us to be able to meet our commitment to affected populations and our obligations to our staff, the humanitarian and security communities must remain committed to moving our partnerships, policies and practices beyond the “gates and guards” approach that predominated immediately following the Canal Hotel bombing, towards one that enables humanitarians to get closer to the people we serve.

We must continuously look for ways to gain access to, and the acceptance of, communities in need. To that end, security approaches must listen to and be attuned to local dynamics and sensitivities.

These efforts to reach communities in need and to stay and deliver even in the most challenging circumstances must receive greater global support. At all levels, we must advocate, jointly and relentlessly, on behalf of our humanitarian workers and principles, and on behalf of the people we serve.

This includes educating parties to conflict on their obligations to respect, protect and provide support to relief personnel. It means demanding, clearly and unequivocally, an end to direct or indiscriminate attacks on civilians, non-combatants, and humanitarian workers during conflicts in breach of international humanitarian law.

And it requires us to challenge the disinformation and misinformation that are increasingly putting them at risk of attack and undermining humanitarian operations.

Finally, we need to continue high-level diplomacy in support of humanitarian operations and humanitarian access, especially in the context of heavy conflict. Recent experience shows that genuine agreements are possible, even when peace seems a distant possibility.

Take for example the evacuation of hundreds of civilians from the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol, Ukraine in 2022, when we negotiated a pause in fighting to create a humanitarian corridor for a joint mission with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN.

Or look at northern Ethiopia where, after months of blockade, the first humanitarian mission reached conflict-affected communities on 31 March 2022. And take the Declaration of Commitment signed by the parties to the conflict in Sudan in which they agreed to protect the civilians of Sudan and recognized their obligations to facilitate humanitarian action.

Despite repeated breaches of the agreement, it has been pivotal in facilitating the re-establishment of humanitarian operations in many parts of the country.

As we reflect on the gains of the past 20 years and how we can build on them to address the challenges of the next 20, we remain resolute in our determination to protect the communities we serve, while also protecting our staff.

This is how we can best honour the memory of those who lost their lives in the Canal Hotel bombing and reaffirm our joint commitment to the noble cause they served.

Martin Griffiths is Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, and Gilles Michaud, Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A young child in Cox’s Bazar engages with her peers at one of BRAC’s Humanitarian Play Labs. CREDIT: BRAC

By Abigail Van Neely
NEW YORK, Aug 21 2023 (IPS)

A Rohingya woman tells a forum of peer counselors the story of her divorce. A survivor of domestic abuse, she has started a new life alone with her daughter. She has weathered a storm of neighbors telling her she was the problem. Now, she provides the support she didn’t have to other women like her.

Similar scenes occur across refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. Here, BRAC, an international NGO based in Bangladesh, has developed a program to train counselors who can provide mental health services to Rohingya refugees. This includes 200 community members who have begun to practice the psychosocial skills they’ve learned in their own lives.

A Growing Need for Support

Over 900,000 Rohingya have fled to Cox’s Bazar since massive-scale violence against Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State began in 2017, the UN Refugee Agency reports. The prolonged exposure of the ethnic minority group to persecution and displacement has likely increased the refugees’ vulnerability to an array of mental health issues, a 2019 systematic review found. Their struggles include post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and gender-based violence.

Around the world, there is growing attention to the importance of socio-emotional learning as a skill to help people in areas of crisis cope with challenges. Educators are often tasked not only with providing traditional academic instruction but with building resilience in children. They are asked to create a sense of normalcy in environments that are anything but normal.

The teaching the children need is much more than about reading, writing, and math; but about giving young children a safe space to practice socio-emotional skills. CREDIT: BRAC

“It’s about not only teaching [kids] how to read and how to do mathematics … in these settings, kids and teachers themselves have the need for psychosocial support,” Ramya Vivekanandan, the senior education specialist at the Global Partnership for Education, said.

Teachers, caregivers, and frontline mental health providers are overburdened, Vivekanandan explains. They lack adequate pay, working conditions, and professional development. As they try to support the growing number of people in crisis, who will support them?

For some counselors in Cox’s Bazar, the answer is each other.

Community Care

Even when resources are available, stigmas around mental health can prevent support from being received. Taifur Islam, a Bangladeshi psychologist responsible for mental health training and supervision at BRAC, says people in the communities he works with are rarely taught to identify their feelings. When you are struggling to access basic needs, Islam explains, it is easy to forget that emotional well-being can improve productivity. If a person seeks help, they may be labeled ‘crazy.’

Training people to take care of their own communities can be a powerful way to overcome stigma in a culturally relevant way.

BRAC’s Humanitarian Play Labs were established in 2017 to give Rohingya children a safe space to practice socio-emotional skills through play. Erum Mariam, the executive director of the BRAC Institute of Educational Development, explains that each play lab is tailored to fit the community it serves. Rohingya children now rhyme, chant, and dance in 304 Humanitarian Play Labs across the camps in Cox’s Bazar.

“We discovered the Rohingya culture through the children. And the whole model is based on knowing the culture,” Mariam said.

‘Play leaders’ are recruited from the camps and trained in play pedagogy. Mariam watched Rohingya women who had never worked before embracing their new roles. As they covered the ceilings of their play spaces with rainbows of flowers – the kind of tapestry that would hang from their homes in Myanmar – Mariam realized that a new kind of social capital could be earned by nurturing joy. Traditional play didn’t just help uprooted children shape their sense of identity – it was also healing for the community.

If a play leader notices a child is withdrawn or restless, they can refer the child to a ‘para counselor’ who has been trained by BRAC’s psychologists to address the mental health needs of children and their family members. Almost half of the 469 para counselors in Cox’s Bazar are recruited from the Rohingya community, while the rest come from around Bangladesh. Most para counselors are women.

Many para counselors are uniquely positioned to empathize with the people they serve as they go door to door, building awareness. This is crucial because it creates a bottom-up system of care without prescribing what well-being should look like, Chris Henderson, a specialist on education in emergencies, says.

At the same time, by supporting others, mental health providers are learning to take care of themselves.

Learning by Doing

A play leader engages the children in the session. Humanitarian professionals encourage frontline teachers, caregivers, and counselors to actualize their own ideas for improvement. CREDIT: BRAC

For months, Suchitra Rani watched violence against Rohingya people every time she turned on the news. When she was recruited by BRAC to become a para counselor in Cox’s Bazar, she saw an opportunity to make a difference. Alongside fellow trainees, Rani, a social worker originally from Magura, poured over new words she learned in the foreign Rohingya dialect and worked to find her place in the community.

Rani tested what she had learned about the value of psychosocial support and cultural sensitivity when she met a 15-year-old Rohingya girl too scared to tell her single mother she was pregnant. Terrified of bringing shame to the family, the girl had an abortion at home. As the young woman spiraled into depression, Rani felt herself slipping into her own fears of inadequacy.

It took time for Rani to convince the girl to open up to her mother. Talking through feelings of guilt slowly led to acceptance. As they worked to heal fractured family bonds, Rani began to feel surer of herself, too.

Now, the Rohingya community calls Rani a “sister of peace.” Rani says she has become confident in her ability to use the socio-emotional skills she’s learned to both help others and resolve problems in her personal life.

Throughout the program, para counselors have changed the way they communicate their feelings and felt empowered to create more empathetic environments.

Islam recounts a 26-year-old Rohingya refugee’s perilous journey to Cox’s Bazar: In Myanmar, the woman’s husband was killed in front of her. One of her two young children drowned during a river crossing as they fled the country. She arrived at the camp as a single mother without a support network. Only once she had the support of others willing to listen could she speak openly.

Islam remembers counselors telling the woman about the importance of self-care: “If you actually take care of yourself, then you can take care of your child also.”

Toward Empowerment 

According to Henderson, evidence shows that one of the best ways to support someone is to give them a role to help others. In places where there may be a stigma against prioritizing ‘self-care,’ people with their own post-crisis trauma are willing to learn well-being skills to help children.

A collection of teacher stories collected by the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies reveals a similar pattern. Teachers in crisis areas around the world say the socio-emotional skills they learned to help students helped them reduce stress in their own lives, too.

Henderson suggests that the best way international agencies can promote trauma support is by holding up a mirror to the strength already shown by refugee communities like the Rohingya.

Instead of seeing what they lack, Henderson encourages humanitarian professionals to help give frontline teachers, caregivers, and counselors the agency to actualize their own ideas for improvement. Empowered community leaders empower the young people they work with, who, in turn, learn to empower each other. This creates “systems where everyone sees their position of leadership as supporting the next person’s leadership and resilience.”

At the end of her para counselor training, the Rohingya domestic abuse survivor said she wasn’t sure what she would do with the skills she’d learned for working through trauma, Islam remembers. But she did say she wished they were skills she had known before. According to Islam, she is now one of their best para counselors.

“The training is not only to serve the community; that training is something that can actually change your life,” Islam says. It’s why he became a psychologist.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Medardo Pérez, 60, sprays paraquat, a potent herbicide, to kill the weeds growing in his corn crop in the San Isidro canton of the municipality of Santa María Ostuma, in central El Salvador. Most small farmers in Central America use this and other agrochemicals on their crops, just as agribusiness does on monocultures such as bananas, pineapples, coffee and sugar cane. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SANTA MARÍA OSTUMA, El Salvador , Aug 21 2023 (IPS)

In his green cornfield, Salvadoran farmer Medardo Pérez set about filling the hand-held spray pump that hangs on his back, with the right mixture of water and paraquat, a potent herbicide, and began spraying the weeds.

Paraquat, the active ingredient in brands such as Gramaxone, from the German pharmaceutical manufacturer Bayer, is sold without any restrictions in El Salvador and in other nations in Central America and around the world, despite its toxicity and the fact that the label clearly states “controlled product”."We are risking our lives with these poisons, since we don't even use a waterproof cape to protect ourselves, so the chemical wets our backs, it gets inside our bodies, through our pores." -- Medardo Pérez

“We are risking our lives with these poisons, since we don’t even use a waterproof cape to protect ourselves, so the chemical wets our backs, it gets inside our bodies, through our pores,” the farmer from San Isidro, in the municipality of Santa María Ostuma, in the central Salvadoran department of La Paz, told IPS.

Pérez, 60, said he was aware of the risks to his health, but added that using the agrochemical made it easier and faster for him to get rid of the weeds growing in his cornfield on his two-hectare farm.

“Paraquat is restricted here in Guatemala, but it is commonly used in agriculture; any peasant farmer can buy it; it is sold freely,” David Paredes, an activist with the National Network for the Defense of Food Sovereignty in Guatemala, told IPS.

In 2016 the New York Times reported that scientific reports linked paraquat to Parkinson’s disease, and explained that the product could not be sold in Europe but could be marketed in the United States and the rest of the world.

 

Agrochemicals everywhere and no controls

Central America is a region where these and other agrochemicals are imported and marketed with virtually no controls, and where governments appear to have given in to the interests of the powerful transnational corporations that produce and sell them.

Some 51 million people live in the region and 20 percent of jobs are in the agricultural sector, which accounts for a total of seven percent of the GDP of the seven countries of Central America.

In addition to small farmers, agroindustry in the region uses agrochemicals intensively to produce monocultures for export, such as bananas, pineapples, African palm, coffee and sugarcane.

Sugarcane is the raw material for the sugar that the region exports to the United States, Europe and even China, through trade agreements.

The sugar agribusiness uses glyphosate, patented in 1974 by the U.S.-based Monsanto, to accelerate sugarcane ripening, but there are reports around the world about the damage caused to the environment and to health, including possible cancer risks, as warned by environmental watchdog Greenpeace.

And yet it continues to be widely used in the region and in other parts of the world. Glyphosate is known by commercial names such as Roundup, also owned now by Germany’s Bayer.

“There is indiscriminate use of agrochemicals by agribusiness,” Paredes said from his country’s capital, Guatemala City.

Paredes shared with IPS the preliminary results of a study, still underway, that has detected the presence of 49 chemicals in the water due to the use of pesticides, half of them banned in more than 120 countries, he said.

The research has been carried out along the southern coast of the country, where monocultures such as sugar cane, banana, African palm and pineapple are predominant, he said.

 

Juan Mejía, a small farmer, takes a break from his daily chores on his two-hectare plot in the El Carrizal canton, in the municipality of Santa María Ostuma, El Salvador. Mejía still continues to use herbicides such as paraquat, but has reduced their use by 90 percent, and is now shifting to agroecological production. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala

 

The fight against agrochemicals

“Glyphosate is applied through aerial spraying, it is very common in that area, and when the wind spreads it to the crops of poor communities, their harvests are destroyed,” he said.

The same is true in El Salvador, where environmental organizations have been carrying out the Bitter Sugar campaign for several years, against the indiscriminate use of glyphosate, in particular, and agrochemicals in general.

“In this campaign we have protested the fact that spraying by light aircraft continues, and that it is punishable, as an environmental crime,” Alejandro Labrador, of the Ecological Unit of El Salvador (UNES), told IPS.

In September 2013, El Salvador’s single-chamber legislature approved a ban on 50 agrochemicals, including paraquat and glyphosate. But the decree was rejected by then President Mauricio Funes and the bill has been bogged down ever since.

However, except for a list of 11 products – including paraquat and glyphosate – the agrochemicals that the legislature wanted to ban were already regulated by other national and international regulations, although in practice there is little or no state control over their use in the fields.

“The corporate lobby twisted their arm,” Labrador said, alluding to the failed attempt to ban them via legislative decree.

He also hinted at the influence exercised over presidents and government officials by transnational biotechnology corporations such as Bayer and Monsanto, whose interests are usually defended by the agricultural chambers of the Central American region.

He added that El Salvador is the Central American country that imports the most agrochemicals per year, “at a very high cost to ecosystems and people’s health.”

In this regard, in the last decade, the use of glyphosate during the sugar cane harvest has been linked to a high rate of kidney failure in El Salvador.

This nation has the highest rate of deaths from chronic kidney disease in Central America: 47 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year, according to a UNES report published in 2021, which states that 80,000 tons of fertilizers, 3,000 tons of herbicides and 1,200 tons of fungicides are imported annually into El Salvador.

 

The bittersweet taste of pineapple

In Costa Rica, the use of pesticides is also intensive in monoculture export crops like bananas and, above all, pineapples, activist Erlinda Quesada, of the National Front of Sectors Affected by Pineapple Production, told IPS.

Quesada pointed out that the product known generically as bromacil has been linked to cases of cancer, while nemagon has been linked to cases of infertility in men and women.

“It happened to us with the nemagon in banana production, which sterilized a lot of men in Costa Rica,” said Quesada, from Guásimo, a municipality in the province of Limón, on the country’s Atlantic coast.

Complaints from environmental organizations led the government to ban bromacil in 2017, due to the impact on underground water sources.

“However, I doubt that they have stopped using it,” Quesada said.

A report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) revealed in May 2022 that Costa Rica uses up to eight times more pesticides per hectare than other Latin American countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

“The average apparent use of pesticides in agriculture between 2012 and 2020 was 34.45 kilos per hectare, a figure higher than previous estimates” in the Central American country, the report cited, more than in OECD members Canada, the United States, Mexico, Chile and Colombia.

 

One of the one-liter cans of paraquat that Salvadoran farmer Medardo Pérez used during a day’s work to eliminate weeds in his cornfield. Paraquat is one of the most widely used agrochemicals in Central America and the world, despite health risks and environmental contamination. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

 

A blow to food sovereignty

The focus on intensively produced monocultures among national and international economic leaders has ended up damaging the capacity to produce food for the local population, Wendy Cruz, of the local affiliate of the international farmers’ rights movement Via Campesina, told IPS from Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital.

“Now it is the consortiums and elites that occupy large tracts of land to produce for global markets, and agrotoxins increasingly weaken the capacity of the land to produce food for our people,” Cruz said.

“We need to push for a change of model, with governments adopting an agroecological vision that sustains life,” she said.

Seeds of passion fertilize Brazil’s semiarid Northeast

This vision of producing agricultural products without damaging the environment with agrochemicals is shared by another Salvadoran, Juan Mejía, a 67-year-old small farmer who grows some of his products using ecological fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

Paraquat is still used, he said, to “burn the weeds,” but on a smaller scale, and he is trying to use it less and less. He also uses – but “very little” – Monarca, another Bayer pesticide, whose active ingredient is thiacloprid.

“We have learned to work organically, maybe not 100 percent, but as much as possible,” said Mejía, during a break in the work on his two-hectare plot, located in the canton of El Carrizal, also in Santa María Ostuma, in central El Salvador.

Mejía produces organic fertilizer known as gallinacea and a pesticide based on chili, onion, garlic and a little soap, with which he combats whiteflies, a pest that damages growing vegetables.

“It’s effective, but it doesn’t work automatically, right away, it takes a little more time,” he said.

He added: “We farmers have always mistakenly wanted to see immediate results, like we get with chemicals. But organic agriculture is a process, it is slower, but more beneficial to our health and the environment.”

In addition to milpa, a traditional ancestral pre-Hispanic system of planting corn, beans, chili peppers and pipián, a type of zucchini, Mejía grows citrus fruits, plantains (cooking bananas) and cacao.

“We have diversified and included other crops, such as green leafy vegetables, so that we are not buying contaminated products and are harvesting our own, healthier food,” he said.

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In the wake of harsh climate change and erratic weather conditions, women and girls are most affected. They often walk miles to collect fresh water which makes them vulnerable to rape and other crimes and infringement of their rights. This podcast is highlighting simple water solutions for women and girls.

 

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There is an urgent need to have actionable strategies to help strengthen plants and agricultural resilience to drought, heat waves, elevated temperatures, flooding, extreme precipitation, and insect outbreaks. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, USA, Aug 18 2023 (IPS)

Across the U.S., and around the world, extremes in weather patterns, from drought to excessive heat to flooding to wildfires to outbreaks of insect pests and disease have become frequent and are predicted to continue to become more intense because of climate change, and the warming of our planet.

These reoccurring climate-linked extreme events serve as warning signals that no state, country, or region is immune to climate change. Leaders and citizens in all areas must act with urgency to mitigate this existential threat to humanity.

As leaders around the world consider climate mitigation initiatives, they need to be sure to strengthen agricultural crops’ resilience to extreme heat, drought, insect herbivory and flooding, that have become increasingly common

These record-breaking and historical extremes in weather, impacting farmers and our ability to grow essential agricultural crops such as maize, wheat, soybeans, wheat, and vegetables including tomatoes, mark a pivotal moment for all of us, including scientists, and policy makers at both the state and federal levels. Much more needs to happen to strengthen agricultural systems of today so that crops can withstand these adversities.

As leaders around the world consider climate mitigation initiatives, they need to be sure to strengthen agricultural crops’ resilience to extreme heat, drought, insect herbivory and flooding, that have become increasingly common.

Like humans, crops are sensitive to drought and extreme heat and the interactions of drought and heat. When temperatures are high, normal crop growth and development is affected. Further, several important crop physiological processes such as respiration, photosynthesis and transpiration are affected by heat stress.

Similarly, agricultural crops including maize and vegetable crops such as tomato are also sensitive to excessive rainfall and flooding stress when it happens individually or in combination with other stressors. Evidence to date reveals that, in fact, excessive rainfall results in maize yield losses of comparable magnitude to drought.

Ultimately, because of extremes brought about by climate change, plants’ normal growth is affected with consequences for yields, food supply and security as well as agriculture. This is problematic for many reasons, including because agriculture is an important sector of economies of the US, the UK, France and many African countries.

Of concern are the cascading consequences and other legacy effects that may linger on, long after extreme events such as drought have happened. These legacy effects affect both soils, microbial communities living in the soils and the health of crop plants that are grown in years to come.

Clearly, there is an urgent need to have actionable strategies to help strengthen plants and agricultural resilience to drought, heat waves, elevated temperatures, flooding, extreme precipitation, and insect outbreaks.

Strengthening the resilience of agricultural and crop plants demands the incorporation of multiple actionable strategies.

Among the actionable strategies is to encourage farmers to adopt climate-smart practices. Climate smart practices include many approaches ranging from planting heat and drought tolerant crop varieties to planting varieties that have been bred to enhance their photosynthetic capacities and water use efficiencies when periods of stress occur, to applying products such as silicon and silicone nanoparticles to applying inoculants that are made from naturally occurring beneficial soil microbes that can confer tolerance to heat and drought among other stressors.

In addition, growers can adopt soil health conservation practices including planting cover crops, mulching, and practicing no till or reduced tillage. All these practices ultimately improve soil health. It’s a win-win,

In parallel, there is need to fund research to understand how agricultural crops respond to drought, flooding, insect herbivory outbreaks and other climate-linked stresses. There is need to fund research that breeds crops that can grow under the new climate extremes including crops that can grow and produce when two stressors happen in combination.

All these actionable strategies require some form of capital; hence it is important for growers to be assisted with the capital and other inputs they need to adopt climate-smart strategies and other soil health conservation practices. Governments, NGO’s, private funders must work together and create partnerships that seek to ensure that growers and researchers have funds needed to adopt these practices.

In dealing with climate change extremes that threaten the growth, development, and the health of agricultural crops that are important to meet our food security needs, we must choose to facilitate the adoption of practices that strengthen crops resilience to these stressors. Every investment in research and funding the adoption of these strategies by growers helps.

Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Women outside an emergency vehicle aimed at helping those affected by flooding. CREDIT: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN , Aug 18 2023 (IPS)

Torrential monsoon rains have left the people, especially women, in crisis as they are still grappling to recover from the last year’s floods in Pakistan.

“We are yet to return to normal lives after devastation caused by severe rains in June 2002 when the new series of rains have started only to further aggravate our problems,” Jannat Bibi, a resident of Kalam in the Swat Valley, told IPS.

Bibi, 44, a housewife, along with co-villagers, must walk about a kilometre twice a day to collect drinking water for her 10-member family. She says they want the government to provide them with essential needs like food, water, shelter, and medication.

“A new ongoing wave of monsoon rains has left us high and dry as we are facing a host of ailments due to contaminated water.”

“Some non-governmental organisations have given us mineral water, utensils and foodstuff last year in June when torrential rain damaged our mud-built houses, but this year, there’s nobody to extend us a helping hand despite severe floods,” she says.

Most people in the neighbourhood fear that more rain would bring more misery for them as the people have yet to rebuild their homes while roads and health facilities were in shambles.

Dr Farooq Khan in Swat district says the people desperately require clean drinking water as cases of diarrhoea have been increasing among them.

“There are more cases of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue, haemorrhagic fever (DHF) and Leishmaniasis because the people are exposed to mosquitoes-bites, the transmitters of these diseases, due to pools of stagnant water which serves as breeding grounds for mosquitoes,” Khan said.

Power breakdowns create problems because people cannot get drinking water from wells, and they often store it in uncovered pots, which serve as breeding spots for mosquitoes. “Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded 18,000 dengue Haemorrhagic fever patients and 18 deaths in 2022,” he said.

National Disaster Management Authority says at least 86 people, including eight children, have been killed by floods and landslides triggered by monsoon rains that have lashed Pakistan since last month. In June 2022, a flood killed 289 people, it says.

“Women are the worst victim of climatic changes as they stay home and have to prepare food, wash clothes and look after children, therefore, we need to focus on their welfare,” Dr Javid Khan, a local physician in Malakand district, which is adjacent to Swat, says.

According to him, about 20 cholera cases have been recorded because people use water contaminated by sewerage pipes during floods.

“The World Health Organization is establishing two diarrhoea treatment centres to prevent outbreaks of food and water-borne diseases,” he said.

Munir Ahmed, a local environmentalist, says that women, representing about half of the country’s population, are the worst affected by torrential rains.

Last year, massive flooding affected nearly two-thirds of the country’s population in Pakistan, as it submerged the low-lying areas inhabited by poor people, he says.

Rains destroyed 1.7 million homes in Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces which also damaged the water sources and cultivable land, he says.

“As the people were recovering from the past year’s devastation caused by flood, a new spell has started dampening their hopes of recovery,” Ahmed says.

More than 1 300 health facilities and 3 000 schools destroyed by 2022’s floods are yet to be built.

“More than 50 000 pregnant women are finding it hard to undergo mandatory checkups at hospitals because of bad roads and lack of transportation in the country,” according to the Ministry of Health. It says the government is providing alternate sources in the shape of mobile vehicles to ensure their home-based clinical examinations.

Jabina Bibi, of the remote Chitral district, waited in stayed at home despite being six months into her pregnancy and didn’t receive a medical checkup until a local NGO sent a team to her locality, and she managed to source iron tablets for the treatment of severe malnourishment.

“The NGO’s doctors proved a blessing for me, and I delivered a normal baby because they carried out an ultrasound which enabled me to know the date of delivery for which I was taken to the hospital located 50 km away,” she said.

Other women also benefited, but the facilities are scarce, she said.

Chitral experienced more floods in July this year, which killed at least ten people. Water-Aid, and non-profit organisation, says that the floods have left almost 700 000 pregnant women in the country without getting maternal healthcare, leaving them and their newborns without support, food, security, and basic medical care. The miscarriage rate also skyrocketed during this period.

Floods causing landslides also resulted in the displacement of people and the loss of millions of livestock.

In Mansehra district, extensive damage rendered many roads unusable, creating significant transportation difficulties.

“We need to find work because construction activities have stopped, and it’s extremely to travel to other districts to find jobs,” Mushtaq Ahmed, 24, a resident of Mansehra, said. Pakistan is the second country with the most melting glaciers due to global warming, and Mansehra is one of the affected districts.

Climate experts believe that women and children are at a much higher risk of losing their lives during a disaster due to their limited access to resources during emergencies. The situation regarding monsoon rains has been under control as of now, but there are forecasts of potential rains in the coming days, which can hammer the last nail in the coffin of those madly hit by rainwaters last year.

Climate change brings, in its wake, deprivation of people from food security, health, education, and jobs, besides exposing women to violence, displacement, and mental health issues, and the government needs to protect the people from the ill effects of floods, experts say.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Israel's parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem. Credit: Unsplash/Rafael Nir

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Aug 18 2023 (IPS)

The prospect of normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia will have enormous implications on Israel and the entire region. Since it will certainly take a personal sacrifice to put Israel’s national interests first, the question is, will Prime Minister Netanyahu muster the courage to do what’s best for the country

Prime Minister Netanyahu faces a historic opportunity to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and set the country on an unparalleled path of progress, security, and peace. But for that to happen, Netanyahu will have to agree to accept the Saudis’ reported demand to establish a path that will lead to the end of the occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Given, however, Netanyahu’s personal legal woes and his dependence on the most hard-core racist government in Israel’s history to stay in power, will he sacrifice his personal interests by accepting the Saudi demands, which would certainly precipitate the collapse of his government and force him to face his legal peril?

His other choice would be to forfeit such a historic opportunity by continuing to pursue policies that will dismantle Israel’s democracy, convert Israel into an autocracy, intensify the violent conflict with the Palestinians, and put Israel always on the defensive while its enemies lay in wait.

Saudi Arabia is the de facto leading Arab state and is representative of Sunni Islam. Whether or not the Saudis care about the Palestinian cause, they cannot simply abandon the Palestinians to their own devices and still claim the leadership role they highly covet. The Saudis cannot and should not, under any circumstances, agree to normalize relations with Israel unless the Netanyahu government agrees to end the conflict with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution.

For the Palestinians, Saudi Arabia offers the last hope to protect their national interests. Should the Palestinians feel abandoned by the Saudis and have nothing left to lose, they will feel that they have no choice but to resort increasingly to violence against the Israelis with the intent of destabilizing the region and disrupting the normalization process between Israel and the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia. The Palestinians know that should a major conflagration ensue between them and Israel, the Arab states will have little choice but to land on their side.

The advantages to Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia knows how much it can benefit directly from the normalization of relations with Israel in terms of technology, intelligence sharing, and above all regional security. Riyadh also knows that Israel wants normalization as much, if not more than they themselves.

In addition, the Saudis know how much the Biden administration would like Riyadh and Jerusalem to reach an agreement because it would greatly serve the US’s overall regional geostrategic interests. This includes curbing China’s influence, containing Iran’s nuclear weapon program, weakening extremism, and stabilizing the region to ensure the US’ long-term unchallenged power over a region of pivotal strategic importance.

Knowing how much both the US and Israel would benefit from normalization and how eager they are to conclude such an agreement, the Saudis put forth three major requirements from the US as a prerequisite to normalizing relations with Israel:

Guaranteeing Saudi Arabia’s national security along the line of the US’ commitment to NATO, where an attack on any member state constitutes an attack on all member states, including the US.
Providing nuclear facilities for civilian purposes including the production of clean energy and for medical purposes along with the prestige that goes with it.

Approving the purchase of the US’ most advanced weapons systems, including the F-35 airplane among other arsenals. The Saudis are fully aware that President Biden wants to secure a major win just before the elections by building on the Abraham Accords. Obviously, they are in a position to hand him such a win provided that he meets their requirements.

Regardless of how desirable and far-reaching the implications of normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are, for President Biden it remains an extremely difficult task to achieve due to two major factors.

First, the Saudis’ conditional requirements from the US will certainly evoke significant Congressional resistance. But if the deal ends the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on a two-state solution, over which many Democratic leaders including Senators Chris Van Hollen and Tim Kaine insist, the Senate will more than likely approve it with some modifications because they understand and appreciate how significantly it will benefit the US’ geostrategic interest.

The second and more daunting difficulty President Biden faces is Netanyahu’s objections to making any major concession to the Palestinians, especially one that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. In addition, Netanyahu’s current coalition partners vehemently oppose any major concession to the Palestinians and any such move could lead to the dissolution of his government should Netanyahu make even a partial concession, such as the freezing of settlement expansion or ending any further annexation of Palestinian territory.

Juxtaposed to the position of Netanyahu and his government, it is critical for the Israeli public and a few of the less extreme members in the government to understand how paramount the consequences are for Israel’s future should it normalize relations with Saudi Arabia.

The advantages to Israel

It is hard to exaggerate the enormous advantages Israel would reap. To begin with, it will open the door for normalization of relations with most, if not all, of the Arab and Muslim-majority states, end once and for all Israel’s isolation, and dramatically strengthen its national security, as normalization of relations would inevitably entail security collaboration.

And since any Israeli-Saudi agreement will have to include a definitive roadmap to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it will pull the rug from underneath Israel’s staunch enemy Iran and its proxy Hezbollah, and force Hamas to reconsider its militant posture toward Israel.

Moreover, Israel’s export of technology and other scientific knowhow in all fields of endeavor, along with the export of military hardware, will exponentially grow along with foreign investments, making the country an economic powerhouse with a corresponding political influence.

With that, Israel’s friendship and collaborative relations with the US and the EU will reach new heights and dramatically enhance their shared regional geostrategic interest and mitigate any friction in policy or strategy in dealing with any regional conflict.

Finally, ending the occupation will restore Israel’s moral foundation, mitigate the poisonous hatred between Israel and the Palestinians, restore the dignity and the integrity of the Israeli military, and most importantly, end the dehumanization of Palestinians under occupation.

Should an agreement be reached, given the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicting issues, Saudi Arabia and the US should establish a road map and timeline for the implementation of the various components of the agreement while monitoring the progress made to ensure that both sides are fully complying with the provisions included therein.

Moreover, the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement should be enshrined in a treaty between the two sides that binds future Israeli and Palestinian governments and is guaranteed by the US and Saudi Arabia.

I concede that the prospect of Netanyahu changing his position is remote. But given his inflated ego and his concern over his legacy, coupled with increasing pressure from the US, there might be a small chance that he changes his mind, albeit such a leap is laden with considerable personal risk.

The question is, will he nevertheless muster the courage and rise to the historic occasion, show statesmanship, and leave a legacy of one who sacrificed himself politically for the sake of the nation?

I doubt he will, but miracles do happen, and Israel today is desperately in need of one.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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