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The Graduation approach's impact goes well beyond that of the individual participant. Not only does the household greatly benefit from its various interventions, but now studies show subsequent generations are able to stay out of the poverty trap. (Rangpur, Bangladesh). Credit: BRAC/2021

By Gregory Chen
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 10 2022 (IPS)

As we approach 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals look harder than ever to achieve. Shocks to the global economy caused by climate change, COVID-19, and conflict threaten humanity’s survival. For the most vulnerable, trends are moving in the wrong direction with an additional 75 to 95 million people now living in extreme poverty compared to pre-pandemic World Bank projections. By the end of this year more than 657 million people will still be living in extreme poverty substantially more than in 2018.

Though we cannot blame the recent crises alone. Even before the crises of the past few years the globe was beginning to realize addressing extreme poverty required new approaches. Economic growth alone remains insufficient and conventional anti-poverty policies and programs were not addressing the root problems affecting the most marginalized.

What can countries do to end the most severe forms of poverty?

While private organizations like BRAC (where I work) have a role to play, it is governments that are best positioned to take the lead tackling extreme poverty at scale. Governments have the mandate, the infrastructure, and the financing to transform the lives of the most vulnerable people.

Governments increasingly recognize a growing body of research which tells us people in extreme poverty face multiple reinforcing barriers – a lack of nutrition, education, and social exclusion which contribute to a deficit of hope and self-confidence. Together, these multiple factors create a poverty trap that is challenging to escape. Addressing only a few of these barriers at a time is insufficient for people out of poverty traps. Many governments have begun to recognize this in the past decade as growth lifted many out of poverty but large pockets of people remained excluded.

Women gather to discuss social issues and add to their group savings as part of the Bab Amal (Door of Hope) Graduation project in Upper Egypt (Sohag, Egypt). Credit: BRAC/Robert Irven 2022

Escaping a poverty trap requires a “big push” – a significant transfer of resources and\ support that can address multiple barriers in one go. One “big push” proven to break the poverty trap is referred to as the Graduation approach (though it may be called different things in diverse settings). Graduation is a sequenced set of interventions that address the unique circumstances of poverty within the local context. This approach meets participants’ day-to-day needs, provides training and assets for income generation, financial literacy and savings support, and social empowerment through community engagement and life skills training – all facilitated through coaching that calls for regular interactions with participants.

A period of intense coaching enables participants to build resilience and self-confidence by empowering them to save, diversify their sources of income, access safety nets, and develop coping mechanisms to major shocks and build up self confidence. These combined interventions are delivered in a 2-3 year time bound period, empowering participants to begin an upward trajectory out of extreme poverty and with greater ability to link to wider government support.

Graduation programs are designed to positively impact all household members, but the approach focuses on direct engagement with working age women. These women are disproportionately affected by extreme poverty and most likely to use their greater capacities to reinvest in their households’ development.

At its core, Graduation is about recognizing that when empowered with the right tools and resources, people can be agents of change for themselves, their households, and their communities.

A high return on investment

The Graduation approach is an investment with returns that grow over time. Rigorous evaluations report that four years after participants start, Graduation delivered benefits that began to exceed program costs. Compared to standalone narrower interventions like lump sum cash transfers, after 3 to 4 years after the initial intervention, Graduation programs deliver greater household benefits – including greater consumption, income, and savings. Research from India shows that ten years after starting the program, participants see approximately 400% ROI, and projections suggest this return could reach 1100% over the participant’s lifetime. Since the investment is time limited and may not be repeated its ROI over the longer term can save costs and build resilience.

Many Government are Adopting Graduation

Due to Graduation’s proven impact, many governments are investing in the approach, integrating it into existing programs. It is estimated that more than 15 government programs have developed Graduation approaches across Latin American, Africa, and Asia. Among them include governments in Kenya, the Philippines, and India. These are most often not new standalone programs but integrated within existing Graduation programs, where the Graduation package is particularly emphasized for certain target populations.

Yolanda, a participant of the DSWD’s Padayon SLP Graduation project, is visited by her coach Julius, who helps ensure she is making steady progress and has the tools and knowledge she needs to overcome any challenges or shocks. (Iloilo City, Philippines). Credit: BRAC/Robert Irven 2022

In the Philippines, despite the many challenges created by COVID-19 in 2020, participants in the Philippines’ Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Graduation program had more resilient livelihoods and better savings and financial management, according to Asian Development Bank (ADB). The Government of the Philippines is now on its second iteration of Graduation integration offered through the Department of Social Welfare and Development with support from ADB and the Australian government.

The Government of Kenya is also investing in Graduation with the Kenya: Social and Economic Inclusion Project (KSEIP) in partnership with Global Development Incubator, BOMA Project, Village Enterprise, the World Bank, and the UK government (FCDO). Following a successful pilot in 2019, KSEIP will transition from a narrower unconditional cash transfer to a fuller package of Graduation.

A Few Leading Governments are Implementing at Scale

Some governments have moved beyond testing to delivering at scale. In the Province of Bihar in India, a large rural development program (called JEEViKA) established a special window for a Graduation program known as Satat Jevvikoparjan Yojana (SJY), which has reached 140,000 households in extreme poverty since 2018. Other Provinces in India may follow suit expanding their own Graduation programs as well. Additionally, countries such as Ethiopia and South Africa are looking to further adapt their already large scale programs with more Graduation elements added that can deliver long term results.

As governments implement scaled programs we have reasons to be confident that these investments will bring durable results. While we must address today’s crises, our work to dramatically reduce and eliminate extreme poverty will not happen with slipshod short-term band-aids. Governments can begin to fully address extreme poverty with smart investments that will over time lead to permanent changes that eliminate extreme poverty.

While governments will lead, they cannot do it alone. The international community, particularly multilateral institutions, can provide the financing required to operate at scale. NGOs and community-based institutions can be partners in last mile delivery assisting the government where needed. Researchers can focus their methods more on how scaled programs operate (rather than on repeat small scale impact evaluations) so that we can make wider decisions on adapting for scale.

It is high time for us to lean on the evidence, evolve programmatically, put government in the lead, and benefit from all the testing and research that has led us to solutions that can work.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Gregory Chen is Managing Director of BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 10 2022 (IPS)

The dogmatic obsession with and focus on fighting inflation in rich countries are pushing the world economy into recession, with many dire consequences, especially for poorer countries. This phobia is due to myths shared by most central bankers.

Anis Chowdhury

Myth 1: Inflation chokes growth
The common narrative is that inflation hurts growth. Major central banks (CBs), the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) all insist inflation harms growth despite all evidence to the contrary. The myth is based on a few, very exceptional cases.

“Once-in-a-generation inflation in the US and Europe could choke off global growth, with a global recession possible in 2023”, claimed the World Economic Forum Chief Economist’s Outlook under the headline, “Inflation Will Lead Inexorably To Recession”.

The Atlantic recently warned, “Inflation Is Bad… raising the prospect of a period of economic stagnation or even a recession”. The Economist claims, “It hurts investment and makes most people poorer”.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Without evidence, the narrative claims causation runs from inflation to growth, with inevitable “adverse” consequences. But serious economists have found no conclusive supporting evidence.

World Bank chief economist Michael Bruno and William Easterly asked, “Is inflation harmful to growth?” With data from 31 countries for 1961-94, they concluded, “The ratio of fervent beliefs to tangible evidence seems unusually high on this topic, despite extensive previous research”.

OECD evidence for 1961-2021 – Figures 1a & 1b – updates Bruno & Easterly, again contradicting the ‘standard narrative’ of major CBs, BWIs, BIS and others. The inflation-growth relationship is strongly positive when 1974-75 – severe oil spike recession years – are excluded.

The relationship does not become negative even when 1974-75 are included. Also, the “Great Inflation” of 1965-82 did not harm growth. Hence, there is no empirical basis for setting a particular threshold, such as the now standard 2% inflation target – long acknowledged as “plucked from the air”!

Developing countries also have a positive inflation-growth relationship if extreme cases – e.g., inflation rates in excess of 20%, or ‘excessively’ impacted by commodity price volatilities, civil strife, war – are omitted (Figures 2a & 2b).

Figure 2a summarizes evidence for 82 developing countries during 1991-2021. Although slightly weakened, the positive relationship remained, even if the 1981-90 debt crises years are included (Figure 2b).

Myth 2: Inflation always accelerates
Another popular myth is that once inflation begins, it has an inherent tendency to accelerate. As inflation supposedly tends to speed up, not acting decisively to nip it in the bud is deemed dangerous. So, the IMF chief economist advises, “Don’t let inflation ‘genie’ out of the bottle”. Hence, inflation has to be ‘nipped in the bud’.

But, in fact, OECD inflation has never exceeded 16% in the past six decades, including the 1970s’ oil shock years. Inflation does not accelerate easily, even when labour has more bargaining power, or wages are indexed to consumer prices – as in some countries.

Bruno & Easterly only found a high likelihood of inflation accelerating when inflation exceeded 40%. Two MIT economists – Rüdiger Dornbusch and Stanley Fischer, later International Monetary Fund Deputy Managing Director – came to a similar conclusion, describing 15–30% inflation as “moderate”.

Dornbusch & Fischer also stressed, “Most episodes of moderate inflation were triggered by commodity price shocks and were brief; very few ended in higher inflation”. Importantly, they warned, “such [moderate] inflations can be reduced only at a substantial … cost to growth”.

Myth 3: Hyperinflation threatens
Although extremely rare, avoiding hyperinflation has become the pretext for central bankers prioritizing inflation prevention. Hyperinflation – at rates over 50% for at least a month – is undoubtedly harmful for growth. But as IMF research shows, “Since 1947, hyperinflations in market economies have been rare”.

Many of the worst hyperinflation episodes in history were after World War Two and the Soviet demise. Bruno & Easterly also mention breakdowns of economic and political systems – as in Iran or Nicaragua, following revolutions overthrowing corrupt despotic regimes.

A White House staff blog noted, “The inflationary period after World War II is likely a better comparison for the current economic situation than the 1970s and suggests that inflation could quickly decline once supply chains are fully online and pent-up demand levels off”.

Myth 4: Evidence-based policymaking
Central bankers love to claim their policymaking is evidence-based. They cite one another and famous economists to enhance the aura of CB “credibility”.

Unsurprisingly, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand promoted its arbitrary 2% inflation target mainly by endless repetition – not strong evidence or superior logic. They simply “devoted a huge amount of effort” to preaching the new mantra “to everybody who would listen – and some who were reluctant to listen”.

The narrative also suited those concerned about wage pressures. Fighting inflation has provided an excuse to further weaken workers’ working conditions and pay. Thus, labour’s share of income has been declining since the 1970s.

Greater central bank independence (from the executive) has enhanced the influence and power of financial interests – largely at the expense of the real economy. Output and employment growth weakened as a result, worsening the lot of the many, especially in the global South.

Fact: Central banks induce recessions
Inappropriate CB policies have often slowed economic growth without mitigating inflation. Hawkish CB responses to inflation can become self-fulfilling prophecies with high inflation seemingly associated with recessions or growth collapses.

Before becoming Fed chair, Ben Bernanke’s research team concluded, “an important part of the effect of oil price shocks [in the 1970s] on the economy results not from the change in oil prices, per se, but from the resulting tightening of monetary policy”.

Thus, central bank interventions have caused contractions without reducing inflation. The longest US recession after the Great Depression – in the early 1980s – was due to Fed chair Paul Volcker’s 1979-81 interest rate hikes.

A New York Times opinion-editorial recently warned, “The Powell pivot to tighter money in 2021 is the equivalent of Mr. Volcker’s 1981 move”, and “the 2020s economy could resemble the 1980s”.

Fearing an “extremely severe” world recession, Columbia University history professor Adam Tooze has summed up the current CBs’ interest rate hike frenzy as “the single most dramatic simultaneous tightening of monetary policy ever”!

Phobias, especially if based on unfounded beliefs, never offer good bases for sound policymaking.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Poverty, lack of nutrition, domestic violence and teen pregnancy are some of the key drivers of low learning performances and early school dropout racing across Samoa and the Pacific. Credit: Simona Marinescu, United Nations

By Simona Marinescu
APIA, Samoa, Oct 10 2022 (IPS)

With 147 million children around the world missing half of their in-person instruction over the last two years and around 24 million never returning to school, humanity is experiencing a deep learning crisis.

There is no substitute for good education.

As the challenges of our time continue to grow, it is impossible to imagine a future of prosperity and peace on a healthy planet without a functional, forward-looking and highly performing education system.

In recognition of the importance of investing in human capital to help overcome the impact of recent crises and restore growth and development, world leaders have gathered last month at the ‘Transforming Education Summit’ (TES), during the 77th UN General Assembly in New York.

The Summit, convened by the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, was aimed at mobilizing political ambition, joint action, and solutions for a forward looking and adequately financed quality education system.

In preparation for the TES, UN Country Teams, including our UN multi-country office covering the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tokelau, have supported governments conduct nation-wide consultations on the urgent need to reimagine education systems and find long-term solutions to the global learning crisis.

Convened in partnership with civil society, academia and the private sector, these consultations discussed ways of transforming education systems to ensure younger generations have the knowledge and skills necessary to respond to current and future crises.

According to our Multidimension Vulnerability Index, which I helped develop last year with fellow Resident Coordinators across the region, Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like Samoa, are particularly vulnerable to the effects of global shocks and crises including the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

The resulting disruption to supply chains and spikes in energy and food prices have had a significant impact on Samoa and other SIDS, placing them under high debt distress and deepening their need for development-based support.

The decline in tourism during the pandemic has also severely constrained the fiscal space of these Small Island Developing States, reducing the capacity of SIDS governments to reform education systems and provide viable solutions for remote learning. SIDS are among the countries with the highest number of days without any online teaching during the pandemic.

Small Island Developing States are also experiencing some of the highest rates of young people Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET). Poverty, lack of nutrition, domestic violence and teen pregnancy are some of the key drivers of low learning performances and early school dropout racing across Samoa and the Pacific.

In the island of Nauru 51 % of young people are not in education, employment or training: the highest across the region. Samoa’s NEET stands at 38 %.

The lack of income opportunities in domestic markets means that labour migration has become a common solution to filling shortages and tackling joblessness. As a result, reliance on remittance inflows and imported goods and fuels continues to grow.

According to our recent joint policy brief on the structural vulnerabilities impeding progress towards SDG4 in Small Island Developing States, there is a strong positive correlation between increased public investment in education and improved youth NEET rates and overall education outcomes.

It is clear that in order to deliver this much needed economic diversification and enable a digital transformation across the region, we need to support governments of the Small Island Developing States reimagine their education systems.

To address the complex root causes of this learning crisis, as UN Resident Coordinator in Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau, I led a joint UN Country Team effort to mobilize resources from the Joint SDG Fund and other instruments to implement a series of key strategic interventions.

Through these coordinated efforts, we have introduced new social protection measures, implemented programmes through the Spotlight Initiative to end domestic violence, including violence against children and developed an Integrated National Financing Framework to improve management of development financing.

Enhancing learning outcomes and transforming Samoa into a knowledge society has been at the heart of our joint interventions over the last few years.

The Samoa-Knowledge Society Initiative (SKS-I) funded by the Government of India through the UN – India Development Partnership Fund has been jointly implemented by UNDP and UNESCO in 2020-2022 with the aim of enhancing digital development and promoting lifelong learning opportunities across the country.

Since its launch, the initiative has helped generate more digital resources throughout Samoa, including a free-access digital library and a lifelong learning platform to facilitate online open learning.

Through our new Cooperation Framework (2023-2027) – the joint five-year roadmap for development planning between the UN and the Governments of the 14 Pacific Countries and Territories we assist in the region, we are working to incentivize more young people to continue their education and acquire the professional skills necessary for better paying and more secure jobs.

Our Cooperation Framework therefore places a greater emphasis on expanding investment in blue, green and circular economies, accelerating the digital transformation and improving natural capital conservation.

With resources I mobilized from the Joint SDG Fund, UNEP, UNESCAP, and UNESCO are working on enhancing ecosystem services to diversify sources of growth and improve debt sustainability.

Aside from these efforts to strengthen the green economy, we are mobilizing resources from the Joint SDG fund to expand access to more nutritious sources of food in order to improve health outcomes and educational performance across Samoa. To help reach this goal, we have supported a range of national dialogues on reimagining food systems and are currently implementing a joint FAO–WFP programme to strengthen food value chains and change consumption patterns.

Although considerable work is underway, Samoa’s progress towards achieving the SDGs will remain slow unless access to more sustainable sources of development financing for mid-income Small Island Developing States is made available.

Redesigning social contracts and expanding access to adequately financed quality education is a prerequisite for building long term resilience in SIDS; and one which our UN team in Samoa is working hard to deliver.

Simona Marinescu, Ph.D. is UN Resident Coordinator for Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau. This article was written with editorial support from the Development Coordination Office (DCO).

To learn more visit: https://samoa.un.org/.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Palestinian journalist, Mohammad Awad, reporting from the field. Credit: UNESCO

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 10 2022 (IPS)

The United Nations has singled out 42 countries (out of 193 member states) for condemnation– virtually blacklisting them– for retaliating against human rights activists and journalists

If you cooperate with the United Nations and complain about human rights abuses in your home country, chances are you will find yourself either jailed, persecuted, tortured or under government surveillance.

The 42 countries include some of the world’s worst authoritarian regimes with a notoriety for extensive human rights abuses.

Highlighting a number of “disturbing trends” over the past year, the annual report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres details how people — mainly victims of human rights violations, human rights defenders and journalists – suffered reprisals and intimidation by States and non-State actors.

This included people being detained, targeted by restrictive legislation and surveilled both online and offline. People who tried to cooperate with the UN, or were perceived as doing so, were also affected.

In a third of the countries named in the report, individuals and groups, including civil society organizations (CSOs), either refrained from cooperating or only agreed to report their cases anonymously out of fear of reprisals.

“Despite positive developments, including pledges and shared commitments by Member States against reprisals, this report shows the extent to which people are pursued and persecuted for raising human rights concerns with the UN”.

“And we know that, shocking though this number is, many cases of reprisals are not even reported,” says Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ilze Brands Kehris.

The 42 States referred to in the report (which covers the period from 1 May 2021 to 30 April 2022) include Afghanistan, Andorra, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Laos People’s Democratic Republic, Libya, Maldives, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Philippines, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, State of Palestine, Thailand, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Viet Nam, and Yemen.

Police use water cannons to disperse anti-government protesters during a demonstration in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sept. 24, 2022. Credit: Voice of America

Dr. Simon Adams, President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture, the largest international organization that treats survivors and advocates for an end to torture worldwide, told IPS the UN is an impartial humanitarian organization dedicated to the advancement of humanity.

“When some states or armed groups perceive civil society activists or journalists speaking to the United Nations as constituting a threat to their interests, they are violating the ‘faith in fundamental human rights’ that the UN Charter proudly encapsulates,” he said.

‘We the peoples,’ where ever we may be in the world, have a right to speak directly to UN representatives without some malevolent authority leaning over our shoulders, tapping our phone, or threatening us with detention or disappearance,” he said.

Human rights defenders in the countries mentioned in the UN Secretary-General’s report not only deserve our respect and solidarity, they need protection, declared Dr Adams.

When Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week congratulated Ales Bialiatski and the organizations Memorial and the Centre for Civil Liberties on being awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, he said this year’s recognition shines a spotlight on the power of civil society in advance of peace. 

“Civil society groups (CSOs) are the oxygen of democracy, and catalysts for peace, social progress and economic growth. They help keep governments accountable and carry the voices of the vulnerable into the halls of power”.  

Yet today, civic space is narrowing across the world, the Secretary-General warned.  

“Human rights defenders, women’s rights advocates, environmental activists, journalists and others face arbitrary arrest, harsh prison sentences, smear campaigns, crippling fines and violent attacks,” he declared.

“As we congratulate this year’s winners, let us pledge to defend the brave defenders of universal values of peace, hope and dignity,” Guterres said.

Meanwhile, responding to a decision by the UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC), to establish an independent monitoring mechanism on the human rights situation in Russia, Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said her organization welcomes the decision to finally bring Russia’s human rights record under scrutiny.

Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, she pointed out, “the country has seen its political opposition crushed, grassroots NGOs and activists outlawed, independent media shuttered, and civil society as a whole scorched to the ground”.

“Russia’s unlawful aggression in Ukraine could not be a clearer demonstration of Vladimir Putin’s longstanding disregard for life and human rights.”

Callamard said the establishment of this important mechanism will be a long overdue lifeline to civil society in Russia, independent media and many others standing up to repression.

“We call on all states to support the swift establishment of this monitoring and reporting mandate, and to fully support victims of human rights and humanitarian law violations committed by the national authorities”.

“We call on the Russian authorities to heed the clear message that the Human Rights Council sends with the establishment of this mechanism, and to fundamentally change course to cease its violations at home and abroad,” she declared.

Providing an update on the military regime in Myanmar, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters October 6, that according to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), at least 170 journalists have been arrested since the military takeover in Myanmar in February last year.

Nearly 70 journalists, including 12 women, remain under detention. UNESCO has also recorded over 200 incidents of media repression, including killings, arrests, detention, criminal cases, imprisonments, and raids of editorial offices.

Forty-four journalists, which include seven women, have been sentenced for criminal offences by local courts, he said. Also, media workers report that they experience digital surveillance of mobile phones and social media platforms. UNESCO remains committed to protecting and defending their press freedom.

Meanwhile, the UN report said the surveillance of individuals and groups who cooperate with the UN continued to be reported in all regions with growing evidence of online surveillance and cyberattacks. The massive digital shift accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic also increased challenges relating to cyber-security, privacy, and access to online spaces.

Another concerning global trend is the use and impact of restrictive legislation that prevents and punishes cooperation with the UN, resulting in some cases of people being sentenced to long prison terms or placed under house arrest. There were recurring and similar allegations of intimidation reported in a number of countries, which could indicate a pattern.

Another global trend is self-censorship, choosing not to cooperate with the UN or doing so anonymously amid concerns for their safety. Increased surveillance and monitoring, as well as the fear of criminal liability, have created what the report terms a “chilling effect” of silence, stopping people from cooperating further with the UN and deterring others from doing so, according to the report.

As in previous years, the report shows that intimidation and reprisals disproportionally affect certain populations and groups, including representatives of indigenous peoples, minorities or those who work on environment and climate change issues, as well as people who may suffer discrimination based on age, sexual orientation and gender.

“The risks affecting women victims, as well as women human rights defenders and peace builders, who share testimony and cooperate with the UN remain daunting. We will continue to work to ensure that all can safely engage with the UN,” Brands Kehris stressed, as she presented the report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The report, entitled ‘Cooperation with the United Nations, its representatives and mechanisms in the field of human rights’ (A/HRC/51/47), including extensive annexes detailing cases country by country, can be accessed online.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5147-cooperation-united-nations-its-representatives-and-mechanisms

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Elena Seungeun Lee and Julie Hyunsung Lee
SEOUL, Bangkok, Oct 7 2022 (IPS-Partners)

When Elena Seungeun Lee discovered the extent of education inequity, she decided to do something about it. She started a YouTube channel, We Learn to Share, to teach online what she learned at school. We Learn to Share has become a student-led global NGO dedicated to bridging educational gaps, with more than 50 teenage volunteers from 11 countries and 29 high schools, and three universities around the world. We Learn to Share is solely led and run by teenagers who have beautiful sharing minds. This video was produced by Elena and fellow student Hyunsung Julie Lee.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Cattle are important for economic growth and in supporting livelihoods across Africa. Livestock farmers in Nkayi, Zimbabwe, tending to their cattle. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
Bulawayo, Oct 7 2022 (IPS)

Meat, milk, and eggs are bad for you, and livestock is bad for the environment.

Growing negative narratives about cattle’s contribution to climate change are shrinking the growth of the strategic livestock sector on which the livelihoods of more than 1.3 billion people in the world depend.

In Africa, livestock farming is life, providing food, nutrition, jobs, draught power, income generation, and a source of cultural significance. But the benefits of keeping cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs are lost when it comes to the impact of livestock on the environment are mentioned.

As a result,  livestock farmers are suffering from the low investment in the livestock sector, which has the potential to drive economic growth, address poverty and achieve many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Researchers, farmers, and entrepreneurs, lamenting the negative perception about livestock in contributing to climate change, are calling for a balanced discussion to highlight livestock production, not as a problem but as a solution in tackling climate change, especially in developing countries.

Ian Wright, Deputy Director at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya, admits that livestock production is today topical for its negative impact on the environment, an area where it can provide a solution. There are suggestions that milk, meat, and eggs are becoming foods to avoid, yet livestock is one of the fastest-growing economic sectors in Africa, he said.

“Livestock and livestock systems are very different in different regions of the world, and the cultural significance and economic importance varies but the contribution of livestock to food and nutrition security in Africa is absolutely critical,” Wright told IPS in an interview. He added that the majority of people in Africa tend not to eat adequate sources of protein and micronutrients, in contrast to the situation in the Global North, where people will benefit from eating less meat and animal-sourced foods.

We can ‘meat’ in the middle

“The global discussions around livestock tend to be dominated by voices from the Global North, so it is important we ensure that perspectives on the role of livestock from the Global South, including Africa,  are heard at the top table of global events like the Conference of Parties (COP 27) to articulate the positives about the role of livestock which no doubt has its challenges,” Wright said.

“The livestock sector must address these shortcomings as there are opportunities to make livestock part of the resilience and adaptation efforts; for example,  climate variability makes cropping too risky, but livestock can still be raised producing food from land that cannot produce crops.”

Better livestock management and improved feed regime can help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from livestock, while sustainable rangeland management promotes the fixing of carbon in the soil.

Livestock production contributes to about 40 percent of the global value of agricultural output while supporting the livelihoods, food, and nutrition security of billions of people around the world, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

A growing population and rapid urbanization are also driving an appetite for animal-sourced foods from eggs, milk, beef, and pork, which are also some of the best and often affordable sources of protein. Livestock provides energy-dense and micronutrient-rich foods, which are important for pregnant women and particularly babies in the first 1 000 days of life.

Scientists are clear about livestock’s huge hoof print.  Assessments by the FAO show that total emissions from global livestock represent 14.5 percent of all human-induced GHG emissions. Cattle, in particular, are responsible for the most emissions, at about 65 percent of the livestock sector’s emissions, largely of dangerous methane gas. As a result, there is a growing movement to stop eating meat and instead tuck it into plant-based diets to promote health and save the environment.

However, Africa is one of the regions in the world where malnutrition is rising. More people are going hungry, and even more, have no access to nutritious food. Livestock is a solution.

The World Bank notes that Africa is losing between 3 and 16 percent of its GDP annually because of childhood stunting, and animal-sourced foods can contribute to reducing that problem, says Adegbola Adesogen, Director of the Food Systems Institute and the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems at the University of Florida.

“We should prioritize livestock-sourced foods in nutrition and increase access to these foods across Africa because there is low consumption of animal-sourced foods in Africa, Adesogen urged. “For example, the consumption of meat in Nigeria is about less than five percent of what is consumed in Argentina, yet the animal-sourced foods contain a plethora of  vital macro and micro nutrients which are vital for children of Africa for their growth and health yet most of the interventions address malnutrition in Africa neglect animal-sourced foods.”

Investing in livestock

The livestock sector attracts little investment compared to other agriculture sectors but contributes up to 40 percent of the agriculture GDP in Africa. Of the $129 billion Official Development Assistance in 2020, only 4,3 of that was funneled into agriculture, and livestock received just 1.3 percent, Wright noted.

Smallholder farmer, Emma Naluyima from Uganda, who has integrated crop growing and livestock in growing a thriving farm enterprise on an acre of land, says supportive policies are critical in promoting the development of the livestock and the livelihoods of livestock farmers.

Naluyima, speaking during a panel discussion at a session hosted by the ILRI during the 2022 Alliance for a Green Revolution Forum in Rwanda, highlighted that livestock is productive and profitable when farmers are supported to do it correctly.  Naluyima’s one-acre integrated farm, based on the recycling of farm resources to provide natural fertilizers and pesticides as well as biogas, generates $100,000 in income annually.

While many countries in Africa have failed to allocate at least 10 percent of their public expenditure on agriculture in line with the Malabo Declaration on Agriculture commitments, the livestock sector was barely getting more than 3 percent of the agriculture budget, yet it has the potential to transform the continent’s food systems.

Wright says livestock can solve multiple food system challenges in Africa as it is a significant contributor to the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. For a continent that continues to bear the double burden of food and nutritional insecurity, livestock-sourced foods can reduce malnutrition for the most vulnerable communities, he said.

“The livestock sector must address these shortcomings as there are opportunities to make livestock part of the resilience and adaptation efforts; for example, climate variability makes cropping too risky, but livestock can still be raised producing food from land that cannot produce crops,” said Wright.

ILRI has worked with various governments to develop Livestock Investment Master Plans, which have enabled governments and the private sector to get the best value from the sector, which battles to show a return on investment. For example, through a developed Livestock Investment Master plan, the government of Ethiopia was able to leverage $500 million from private sector investment in the livestock value chain.

“With the right policies and a balanced narrative about the livestock sector, livestock can attract investment and boost economic growth in Africa,” said Wright.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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An indigenous protestor demonstrates outside Brazil’s Ministry of Justice in June, following the disappearance of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon. Their murders drew global attention to the dangers environmental defenders face in the region (Image: Antonio Molina / Foto Arena / Alamy)

By Fermín Koop
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 7 2022 (IPS)

Since November 2020, the threats, intimidation and pressure I have experienced due to my work in defence of human rights and nature are similar to those suffered by dozens of leaders living in the region. I have lived through the assassinations of three friends and environmental leaders.”

Óscar Sampayo has actively opposed oil and mining developments in the Magdalena Medio region of Colombia, documenting their impact on the local community and environment. He has been threatened on several occasions by paramilitary groups involved in drug trafficking, such as the Águilas Negras, or Black Eagles.

After Brazil, Colombia is the country with the second highest number of murders of environmental leaders in the last decade, according to the latest report by British human rights NGO Global Witness. Since 2012, a total of 1,733 activists have been killed worldwide, with 68% of cases occurring in Latin America.

The figures underestimate the true scale of the violence, the authors of the “Decade of Defiance” report add. Many cases go unreported as they occur in conflict zones or in places where there are restrictions on press freedom and civil society, and inadequate independent monitoring of attacks.

In addition, few perpetrators of killings are brought to justice because governments fail to adequately investigate the crimes. Authorities, the report says, either ignore or actively obstruct investigations into killings, often “due to the collusion between corporate and state interests”.

“All over the world, Indigenous peoples and environmental defenders risk their lives for the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. Activists and communities play a crucial role as a first line of defence against ecological collapse,” said Mike Davis, Global Witness’ CEO.

 

A decade of killings

Since Global Witness began reporting on environmental defenders ten years ago, Brazil has had the highest number of killings. Around a third of the 342 activists killed in the country since 2012 were indigenous or Afro-descendant, and more than 85% of the killings took place in the Brazilian Amazon.

 

Source: Global Witness

 

The Amazon has become the main arena for violence and impunity against defenders, the report’s authors say. Since President Jair Bolsonaro came to power in 2018, deforestation and illegal mining have been encouraged, while the budgets of forest protection agencies have been cut.

Earlier this year, the murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and a local indigenous expert, Bruno Pereira, drew global attention to conditions in parts of the Amazon. Phillips and Pereira had travelled to the Javari Valley, an area known to be a hotbed of illegal activities.

“For protesting against these environmental crimes and harms to our health, we have been subjected to death threats, legal harassment and smear campaigns,” says Eliete Paraguassu, a Quilombola woman from the state of Bahia. “We will continue to fight the systematic environmental racism enacted toward Quilombos and the indigenous communities of Brazil.”

“All over the world, Indigenous peoples and environmental defenders risk their lives for the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. Activists and communities play a crucial role as a first line of defence against ecological collapse”

Mike Davis, Global Witness’ CEO

In Colombia, the signing of the peace agreement with armed groups is now more than five years old, but its implementation has not been adequate, Global Witness states. This has maintained land disputes and violence towards the most vulnerable groups, such as small- and medium-scale farmers and indigenous peoples.

Such was the case of Sandra Liliana Peña, a leader of an indigenous community in the department of Cauca, one of the bloodiest areas of the country. She had spoken out against the growth of illegal crops and subsequently suffered threats. In 2021, she was shot dead by four armed men.

Mexico has also become one of the most dangerous countries for environmental defenders, with 154 murders recorded in the last decade, most of which took place between 2017 and 2021. Forced disappearances are now commonplace, carried out by organised criminal groups and corrupt government officials, the report reads.

Indigenous territories in Mexico are said to be particularly vulnerable to large-scale extractive projects led by national and foreign companies, and supported by the government. Concerns have been expressed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights over the lack of consultation with communities, and over attacks on those who oppose such projects.

Global Witness highlights a case from September 2021, when authorities discovered six sets of human remains near community land belonging to Yaqui peoples, in the south of the state of Sonora. The remains were thought to belong to some of a group of ten men who had disappeared the previous July. After multiple disappearances, the community targeted companies interested in Yaqui land. While officials blamed drug cartels, some community members reportedly suspect government and corporate involvement.

 

The way forward

Global Witness declares that the situation for environmental defenders around the world has worsened rather than improved in recent years. The growing climate and biodiversity crises, as well as the expansion of authoritarian governments, have given rise to an increase in killings since 2018.

In 2021, the year analysed by the recent report, 200 environmental defenders were killed – or four per week. Mexico was the country with the highest number of murders (54), followed by Colombia (33) and Brazil (26). Nearly 80% of the killings in Brazil, Peru and Venezuela were in the Amazon.

Despite the grim statistics and the increase in the number of deaths in recent years, researchers highlight some progress. In Honduras, a former energy executive was sentenced in June this year to 22 years in prison for ordering and planning the murder of activist Berta Cáceres in 2016.

Also highlighted as cause for encouragement is the Escazú Agreement, which entered into force in 2021. It is the first treaty on environment and human rights for Latin America and has among its objectives to prevent and investigate attacks on environmental defenders. Twelve Latin American countries have now ratified the agreement, including Mexico, though others such as Colombia and Brazil have yet to do so.

Global Witness calls on governments to ensure the safety of environmental defenders by creating new laws where they do not exist and enforcing existing ones. At the same time, companies must identify and mitigate any harm from their operations on defenders and ensure corporate accountability at all levels of action.

“Each and every death of a defender is a sign that our economic system is broken,” Global Witness affirms. “Fuelled by the pursuit of profit and power, there is a war over nature and the frontlines are the Earth’s remaining biodiverse regions.”

This article was originally published by China Dialogue

 

Delvin Lugo at High Line Nine Galleries in NYC. Credit: A. McKenzie

By SWAN
NEW YORK, Oct 7 2022 (IPS)

For two months over the summer, Caribbean-American artist Delvin Lugo presented his first solo show in New York City, exhibiting large, vibrant canvases at High Line Nine Galleries on Manhattan’s West Side and featuring queer communities in his homeland, the Dominican Republic.

The exhibition, titled “Caribbean Summer”, pulled visitors in with its vivid colours and animated characters and also exemplified the success of alternative art events. The gallery space was provided by non-profit arts group Chashama, which describes itself as helping to “create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive world by partnering with property owners to transform unused real estate”.

These spaces – including galleries that normally close their doors for the summer – are used for “artists, small businesses, and for free community-centric art classes”. According to Lugo, the organisation’s assistance made his show possible and has also provided motivation to continue producing work.

The 44-year-old artist said he’s particularly interested in portraying LGBTQ activists and in expanding his work to include more countries of the Caribbean. The following (edited) interview took place in Manhattan during the exhibition.

SWAN: How did the show come about?

DELVIN LUGO: So, this exhibition is a response to work that I was doing before. I had just finished a series that was about my childhood, growing up a young, gay man in the Dominican Republic, because I lived there until I was twelve years old. And I’d spent so much time kinda dealing with the past that it got to the point that I was like: you know what, I actually don’t know anything happening with the queer culture and the lives of people in DR right now. Yes, I do go back and visit, but when I go back, I go to see my relatives in the countryside, so this was a way to really educate myself and really connect with the queer community in the Dominican Republic. And in this case, it’s Santo Domingo that I’m focusing on.

SWAN: What steps did you take to make the connections?

DL: Well, I really started by reaching out to individuals on social media that maybe I’d seen stories written about, or things that caught my eye on Instagram… so, I reached out to them, and we kind of started a dialogue first. Then when I was ready to start painting, I decided to go meet them in person, and the theme that I had in mind was “chosen family”. I had a few ideas about what the situation was like there, but I really, really didn’t know.

It wasn’t until I started meeting people and they started telling me that basically they had no rights… and so I wanted to focus on artists and activists – people I really admired, people that are doing the work and doing the fight. That’s really how it started. I went there, I told my contacts to bring their chosen family, and we hung out and took pictures, and I came back here and that’s how the paintings were formed, from all the information that I had. And I usually don’t just work from one picture, I do a collage of many photos, and then I paint from that collage.

 

Credit: A. McKenzie

 

SWAN: So, there’s no painting that comes from just one photo?

DL: Well, in some cases, I borrowed pictures from an association that hosts Gay Pride marches, and I used the people pictured, but I added myself, or the car, or different aspects. With these images, I was inspired by the spirit – the spirit of celebration, the spirit of individuality… and I kind of just worked around the image, adding myself as the driver and so on.

SWAN: The paintings are super colourful, really striking – was that the intention from the start?

DL: I’ve been working with vibrant colours recently, and I knew that it was gonna be very bright… the Caribbean is bright, colourful, and also I wanted to make the paint symbolize the heat, the climate in DR as well. It also feels like summer with the hot pink. But I really do know most of these individuals. Except for some young people in one picture, I know everyone, like Agatha, a trans woman and gay activist from the Bahamas who lives in the Dominican Republic.

SWAN: Can you tell us about your own journey – have you always wanted to be an artist?

DL: I did, you know. It was one of those things that when I was done with school, I really needed to work to survive, so I took jobs and somehow I was always able to get jobs in fashion, and that really kept me busy for a long time.

 

Credit: A. McKenzie

 

SWAN: What did you do in fashion?

DL: When I started, I did sales, like showroom wholesale, but most of the time I was working as a fashion stylist, being an assistant and then doing my own work. And that’s a fulltime job. Then slowly but surely, I started doing my own projects, like ink drawings, just things for myself, to be creative.

And that developed into my drawing more and playing with oils, which is something I had done before. To get back into it, I went to continuing education classes. I needed to be reintroduced to oils because I’d forgotten so many techniques and things that you need to know.

From then, I kept painting, praying for more time to work at it. Then Covid happened, I was let go from my job, and, in the beginning, I kept thinking that they might call me back any minute, and I truly worked around the clock on my painting for the first two months. The job didn’t call me back, but at that point it was great because by then I’d got used to an everyday practice. I can tell you that from the beginning of 2020 to even now, the way that I’ve seen my work grow and even the way that I think, and the way that I approach painting, it has been quite a learning experience.

SWAN: So, this is your first real solo show?

DL: Yeah, it really is. I’ve done a number of group shows, but this opportunity came with Chashama and I applied for it. I was already working on all these pieces, so this was the right time. It’s an introduction to my work, it’s not like a full solo show in a way.

SWAN: How long have you lived in New York?

DL: So, my family left DR in 1990, when I was twelve, and we lived in Rhode Island and then I made my way to New York in ’97 and I’ve been here ever since.

SWAN: Where next, with the art?

DL: I want to continue painting, because it’s such a privilege to have a studio, to have a full-time practice, and I really do want to continue that. I’ve been painting from home up until October last year, and when I got my first studio – even though it’s the size of this table here – I couldn’t wait to get to the studio.

I was there to do my own thing. Still, I actually get annoyed when people tell me: “Oh, it must be so wonderful, you’re in your studio, doing your art…” It is great, but it’s also really frustrating because I’m hitting my head against the wall many a day, or leaving angry because something didn’t go right. It’s a fight.

So, for me, it’s truly just to continue creating, to continue painting, following my instincts, following the stories. I really want to continue in the same path of representing and bringing a focus to the LGBTQ community, not just in DR, but in any other parts of the world. I think it would be an interesting project actually to go elsewhere to meet the queer culture and showing them in the painting, even like in other places in the Caribbean, like Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica. That would be really interesting. – AM / SWAN

 

A view of the new Caucaia landfill, near Fortaleza, capital of the state of Ceará in northeastern Brazil, which receives about 5,000 tons of garbage a day. It already produces biogas, but will do so on a larger scale in a few years. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
FORTALEZA, Brazil, Oct 7 2022 (IPS)

Garbage that has accumulated since 1991 in the two landfills in the municipality of Caucaia has become a biomethane deposit that supplies industrial and commercial companies, thermoelectric plants and homes in Ceará, a state in northeastern Brazil.

The GNR Fortaleza plant extracts biogas from 700 wells installed in the landfills and refines it to obtain what it calls renewable natural gas – which gives the company its name – as opposed to fossil natural gas.

The plant, with a total area of 73 hectares, is located between two open-air landfills that resemble small plateaus in Caucaia, a municipality about 15 kilometers from the state capital Fortaleza, whose outskirts it forms part of, and produces about 100,000 cubic meters of biogas per day.

In addition to the climate benefit of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, biomethane today costs 30 percent less than its fossil equivalent, said Thales Motta, director of GNR Fortaleza as representative of Ecometano, a Rio de Janeiro-based company specializing in the use of biomass gases.

“It is a good business” because its price is adjusted according to national inflation and is not subject to exchange rate fluctuations and international hydrocarbon prices, as is the case with fossil gas, he told IPS.

 

 

Ecometano partnered with Marquise Ambiental, a company that manages landfills locally and in other parts of Brazil, to create the GNR in Caucaia.

Another decisive collaboration came from the state-owned Ceará Gas Company (Cegás), which agreed to incorporate biomethane into its natural gas distribution network, right from the start, in 2018, when the new fuel cost 30 percent more than fossil natural gas and faced misgivings about its quality and stability of supply, Motta said.

The agreement allows for the direct injection of biomethane into the Cegás grid and a share of around 15 percent of the consumption of the distributor’s 24,000 customers.

Industry is the main consumer, accounting for 46.26 percent of the total, followed by thermal power plants and motor vehicles. Residential consumption amounts to just 0.73 percent. Cegás prioritizes large consumers.

Ecometano is a pioneer in the production of biomethane from waste. It started in 2014 with a smaller plant, with a capacity for 14,000 cubic meters per day, GNR Dos Arcos, located in São Pedro da Aldeia, a coastal city of 108,000 people 140 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro.

In Caucaia, a municipality of 370,000 people near the coast of Ceará, the new landfill, in operation since 2019, receives 5,000 tons of garbage daily from Greater Fortaleza and its 4.2 million inhabitants.

The old landfill, which opened in 1991 and is now closed, is still the main source of biogas. But production is in continuous decline, unlike the new one, which is growing with the daily influx of garbage brought in by hundreds of trucks.

GNR Fortaleza’s experience has encouraged the dissemination of similar plants in metropolitan regions and large cities, due to the profitability of the business and because reducing methane emissions is key to mitigating the climate crisis.

Methane is at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, the gas with the highest emissions, in terms of global warming. The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) on climate change, held in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021, set a goal of cutting methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid of Israel addresses the UN General Assembly’s seventy-seventh session. September 2022. He told delegates a two-State solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “the right thing” for Israel, but he cautioned that a future Palestinian state must not be “another terror base”. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Oct 7 2022 (IPS)

By all accounts Israel is considered a democratic country, but a close look at its domestic political combustion sadly reveals that Israel’s democracy is in tatters and is tearing at the seams. This is due to the political leaders’ dismal failure to summon their collective resourcefulness and energy to respond to the call of the hour

Righting the Wrong

Israel is now in the midst of its fifth election in four years. None of the coalition governments that were formed during this period has lasted more than a year. Why is that? The answer is fairly simple but extremely troubling.

Although the political parties are broadly divided into two camps, left vs. right, nearly fifteen political parties are running for 120 seats in the Knesset (Parliament). Most, but not all, will pass the threshold of 3.25 percent to qualify for the minimum of four seats.

The country’s political squabbles are centered around personalities and not policies: who gets what position in the government, how to lure or bribe this or the other party’s leader to join the government, which ministry the numerous contending politicians want to hold (regardless of qualifications), the financial appropriations promised for pet projects, and the list goes on.

And to cap it all, just about every head of each party feels they are the most qualified to become the prime minister, yet none can clearly articulate a national agenda to set the nation on a steady course to safeguard its democracy and political stability.

The gravest threat to Israel’s democracy, however, is the sheer failure of all party leaders to grasp that the country is polarized and divided almost evenly between the anti-Netanyahu and pro-Netanyahu blocs (which largely but not exclusively align with left and right), and that neither of the political blocs has been able to form a functioning coalition government that enjoys a stable majority in the Knesset.

Presently, numerous polls which are conducted almost daily show that the result of the coming election will not be much different. The competing two blocks are hovering around 57 and 59 seats, and the country may well have to endure another exhausting cycle of elections and still end up with roughly the same configuration.

One would think that under such circumstances—when the country is existentially threatened by Iran which is racing toward acquiring nuclear weapons, when the West Bank is simmering with violence and Palestinian casualties are mounting, when the prospect of a Palestinian uprising of unprecedented scale is becoming increasingly plausible, when extremist groups such Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah pose an omnipresent danger, when social cohesiveness is sourly lacking, when poverty is rampant and debilitating the social fabric—the leaders of all parties would come to their senses and put the nation’s interest above their own and their party’s.

Together, one would expect that they would seek common ground and reach a consensus to address the urgent issues facing the nation. But that is not the case.

The extent of Israel’s political malaise and the erosion of its democracy cannot be better exemplified by any other than the despicable former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No prime minister in Israel’s history has been as corrupt or would stoop so low to get his way like Netanyahu.

His lust for power knows no bounds. He faces three criminal charges and is willing to destroy the judiciary to make these charges disappear. He is willing to sell the soul of the nation to the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the fascist, Kahanist leader of Otzma Yehudit who is known to seek the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel, as long as he could help Netanyahu form the next government.

So, when you have a country that has been governed consecutively for more than 12 years by a bigot like Netanyahu who potentially can still form the new government, you know that Israel’s democracy is suffering from an endemic malaise and needs major political remedies.

Just like here in the US, if the Republican party manages to cheat its way through the electoral college and Trump, the most morally bankrupt former president, wins the next presidential election in 2024, our democracy will be shattered and the American dream will wither and die. Israel could face the same fate under Netanyahu.

Thus, if Netanyahu is left with an ounce of dignity and a shred of concern for the nation’s future, he should step aside, face the court with poise, and ask for forgiveness and President Herzog may well pardon him for his service to the nation. This will pave the way for the establishment of a stable wide-based coalition government that can endure and attend to the urgent business of the country.

More than any time in its history, Israel today is in desperate need of a decent, honest, courageous, visionary, and decisive leader to meet the call of the hour. Yair Lapid meets some of the above attributes. He has demonstrated exemplary capability of making the necessary compromises to reach a consensus for the sake of the country.

He is politically savvy and has shown that in his meetings and dealings with global leaders. He demonstrated courage when he stated at the UN General Assembly that the a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the only viable option.

He bravely spoke time and again against the occupation and its demoralizing effect on the entire country. He passionately advocated for equality among Israeli Jews and Arabs, and called for lifting the poor out of their miserable existence. And finally, he strived to nurture a healthy and cohesive society which is the beating heart that sustains democracy.

This round of elections may well be one of the most consequential since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967. Every political leader, regardless of his or her political leanings, should ask themselves what kind of a country Israel should be in 10 to 15 years. The Israelis want unity of purpose, they want to preserve their democracy, prosperity, security, and peace.

Normalizing relations with more Arab countries is of paramount importance and it should be pursued, but it will not save Israel’s democracy. Nor will using Israel’s remarkable new technologies to buy political influence abroad, however desirable that may be.

Nor will multiplying its trade with foreign nations, which is extremely vital to Israel’s economy and should be further expanded. Nor will maintaining its military prowess and credible deterrence, which is critical to the country’s national security.

Nor will making remarkable advances in just about every sphere of endeavor, including medicine, agronomy, chemistry, military innovations, engineering, electronics, and so many other fields, which are outstanding achievements that every Israeli should be proud of. Indeed, regardless of how crucial all of the above are to the country, none will preserve and safeguard Israel’s democracy.

Israel cannot secure and sustain its democracy unless the political leadership engenders social cohesiveness and equality with a functioning political system that offers political stability and where the national interests come first.

Moreover, Israel cannot and will never be a free nation and a true democracy until it ends the infamous occupation which dishonors Israel at every turn. It is, to be sure, the Achilles’ heel that will eventually make or break Israel’s democracy.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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On the suspension bridge that crosses the Vilcanota River, in the village of Secsencalla, in the Andes highlands region of Cuzco, Peru, a group of men who have been taking steps towards a new form of masculinity without machismo pose for a photo. From left to right: Saul Huamán, Rolando Tito, Hilario Quispe and Brian Junior Quispe. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
CUZCO, Peru , Oct 6 2022 (IPS)

“My father was very ‘machista’, he used to beat my mother… It was a very sad life,” said Dionisio Ticuña, a resident of the rural community of Canincunca, on the outskirts of the town of Huaro, in the southern Peruvian highlands region of Cuzco more than 3,000 meters above sea level.

Today, at 66 years of age, he is happy that he managed to not copy the model of masculinity that his father showed him, in which being a man was demonstrated by exercising power and violence over women and children."I have been married to my wife Delia for 35 years, we have raised our children and I can say that you feel great peace when you learn to respect your partner and to show your innermost emotions.” -- Dionisio Ticuña

“Now I am an enemy of the ‘wife beaters’, I don’t hang out with the ones who were raised that way and I don’t pay attention to the taunts or ugly things they might say to me,” he said in an interview with IPS in his new adobe house, which he built in 2020 and where he lives with his wife and their youngest daughter, 20. Their three other children, two boys and a girl, have already become independent.

In this South American country of 33 million people, tolerance of violence, particularly gender-based violence, is high, and there is a strong division of roles within couples.

A nationwide survey on social relationships, conducted in 2019 by the governmental National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), showed that 52 percent of women believed they should first fulfill their role as mothers and wives before pursuing their dreams, 33 percent believed that if they were unfaithful they should be punished by their husband, and 27 percent said they deserved to be punished if they disrespected their husband.

The survey also found that a high proportion of Peruvians agreed with the physical punishment of children. Of those interviewed, 46 percent thought it was a parental right and 34 percent believed it helped discipline children so they would not become lazy.

Katherine Pozo, a Cuzco lawyer with the rural development program of the Flora Tristán Peruvian Women’s Center, told IPS that masculinity in Peru, particularly in rural areas, is still very machista or sexist.

“The ideas acquired in childhood and transmitted from generation to generation are that men have power over women, that women owe them obedience, and that women’s role is to take care of their men and take care of the home and the family. This thinking is an obstacle to the integral experience of their masculinities and to the recognition of women’s rights,” she said in an interview at her home in Cuzco, the regional capital.

Dionisio Ticuña, a resident of the rural community of Canincunca, in the Andean region of Cuzco in southern Peru, stands in front of his new adobe house, built in 2020. At the age of 66, he has achieved the tranquility of a life without machismo, which he experienced as a child in his family. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Based on that analysis the Center decided to involve men in the work they do in rural communities in Cuzco to help women exercise their rights and have greater autonomy in making decisions about their lives, promoting the approach to a new kind of masculinity among men.

In 2018 the Center launched this process, convinced that it was necessary to raise awareness among men about gender equality so that women’s efforts to break down discrimination could flourish. The project will continue until next year and is supported by two Spanish institutions: the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation and Muguen Gainetik.

IPS visited different Quechua indigenous villages in Cuzco´s Andes highlands to talk to farmers who are working to shed gender prejudices and beliefs that, they acknowledge, have brought them unhappiness. Now, they are gradually taking significant steps with the support of the Center, which is working to generate a new view of masculinity in these communities.

“I have been married to my wife Delia for 35 years, we have raised our children and I can say that you feel great peace when you learn to respect your partner and to show your innermost emotions,” said Ticuña, a participant in the initiative.

“Being head of household is hard, but it doesn’t give me the right to mistreat. I decided not to be like my father and to be a different kind of person in order to lead a happy life with her and our children,” he said, sitting at the entrance to his home in Canincunca.

Hilario Quispe, a farmer from the Secsencalla farming community in the town of Andahuaylillas, in the Peruvian highlands region of Cuzco, poses for a photo with his wife Hilaria Mena. For him it was a revelation to understand that the tasks she performs at home are work, and his commitment now is to share them. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Recognizing that women do work

Hilario Quispe, a 49-year-old farmer from the Secsencalla community in the town of Andahuaylillas, told IPS that in his area there is a great deal of machismo.

In his home, at 3100 meters above sea level, he said that he has been able to understand that women also work when they are at home.

“Actually, they do more than men, we have only one job, but they wash, cook, weave, take care of the children, look after the animals, go out to the fields…And I used to say: my wife doesn’t work,” he reflected.

Because of the distribution of tasks based on stereotyped gender roles, women spend more time than men on unremunerated care tasks in the household.

INEI reported in 2021 that in the different regions of the country, Peruvian women have a greater overall workload than men because the family responsibilities fall on their shoulders.

In rural areas, women work an average of 76 hours per week, 47 of which are in unpaid activities involving work in the home, both caring for their families and their crops.

In the case of men, their overall workload is 64 hours per week, most of which, 44 hours, are devoted to paid work.

Saúl Huamán is a family farmer in the rural community of Secsencalla. He recognizes that machismo is still a daily reality in Peru’s Andes highlands regions, but he strives to demonstrate day by day that he can be different and can achieve a life based on respect with his partner and their six-month-old son, Luas. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Breaking down stereotypes

Pozo, with the Flora Tristán Center, cited data from the official report that found that in the countryside, married women spend 17 hours a week in kitchen activities and men only four; in housekeeping seven and their partners three; and in childcare 11 and their husbands seven.

Quispe, who with his wife, Hilaria Mena, has four children between the ages of six and 17, said it was a revelation to understand that the different activities his wife performs at home are work.

“If she wasn’t there, everything would fall apart. But I am not going to wait for that to happen, I am committed to stop being machista. Those ideas that have been put in our minds as children do not help us have a good life,” he remarked.

The department of Cuzco is a Peruvian tourist area, where the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu is the main attraction. It has more than 1.3 million inhabitants, of which 40 percent live in rural areas where agriculture is one of the main activities. Much of it is subsistence farming, which requires the participation of the different members of the family.

This is precisely the case of the Secsencalla farming community, where, although the new generations have made it to higher education, they are still tied to the land.

Rolando Tito sits next to his mother Faustina Ocsa. He believes that men can experience their masculinity differently, without machismo or violence, with equal relationships with women. The university student is also actively involved in agricultural work in his rural village of Secsencalla, in the Andean region of Cuzco, in southern Peru. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Rolando Tito, 25, is in his third year of systems engineering at the National University of Cuzco, and helps his mother, Faustina Ocsa, 64, with the agricultural work.

“I want to better myself and continue helping my mother, she is a widow and although she was unable to study, she always encouraged me to do so. Times are no longer like hers when women didn’t have opportunities, but there are still men who think they should stay in the kitchen,” he told IPS, with his Quechua-speaking mother at his side.

Sitting by the entrance to the community’s bodega, which is often used as a center for meetings and gatherings, with the help of a translator, his mother recalled that she experienced a lot of violence, that fathers were not supportive of their daughters and that they mistreated their wives. And she said she hoped that her son would be a good man who would not follow in the footsteps of the men who came before him.

“I have learned about equality between men and women,” her son said. “For example, I am helping in the house, I am cooking and washing, that does not make me less of a man, and when I have a partner I will not have the idea that she has to serve me. Together we will work in the house and on the farm.”

Brian Junior Quispe, a 19-year-old from the community, who is about to begin studying veterinary medicine, said he now knows that “men should not take advantage of women, but rather support each other to get ahead together.”

The same sentiment was expressed by Saúl Huamán, 35, who has become a father for the first time with his baby Luas, six months old.

“Now I have to worry about three mouths to feed. I used to be a machine operator but now I only work in the fields and I have to work hard to make it profitable. With my wife Sonia we share the chores, while she cooks I watch the baby, and I am also learning to prepare meals,” he says as his smiling wife listens.

Pozo the attorney recognized that it is not easy to change cultural patterns so strongly rooted in the communities, but said that it is not impossible.

“It is like sowing the seed of equality, you have to water and nurture it, and then harvest the fruits, which is a better life for women and men,” she said.

Bindya Rana, a Karachi-based transgender activist and founder and president of Gender Interactive Alliance (GIA), and Shahzadi Rai, a Karachi-based transgender person, believe that the debate over the law protecting the rights of transgender persons is problematic. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Karachi, Oct 6 2022 (IPS)

It has taken four years for some politicians to oppose a landmark law protecting the rights of transgender persons, saying it’s against Islam and the country’s constitution.

“This is an imposed, imported, anti-Islam, anti-Quran legislation,” said Senator Mushtaq Ahmed, a Pakistani politician belonging to the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), spearheading the campaign. “The West is hitting at the two strongest institutions of the Muslim Ummah – the family and marriage; they want to weaken us,” he told IPS from Peshawar, adding that this will “open the road” for homosexuality and same-sex marriage. 

According to Ahmed, for the last four years, the government, with support from non-governmental organizations, was “shamelessly pushing the agenda of Europe and America,” terming it “cultural terrorism.”

Other politicians have also joined in voicing their concerns. For instance, PTI senator, Mohsin Aziz, said transgender people were homosexuals, and “Qaum-e Loot” referred to homosexuality introduced by the people of Sodom. “The longer we take in making amends, the longer the wrath of God will be upon us,” he added. He is among those who have recently presented amendments to the law.

“Using religion to stoke people’s sentiments sets a very dangerous precedence,” warned Shahzadi Rai, a Karachi-based transgender person. “Spare us; our community cannot fight back.” 

Rai asked that the issue not be seen through the “prism of religion,” adding, “even we do not accept homosexuality.”

Physician Dr Sana Yasir, who has a special interest in gender variance and bodily diversity and offers gender-affirming healthcare services, said there was no mention of homosexuality in the Act.

“The right-wing politicians need such issues to keep their politics alive,” said Anis Haroon, commissioner for the National Commission for Human Rights, which was part of consultations on the Act and fully supported it.

Ahmed had presented certain amendments to the Act last year, and earlier this month, he introduced a brand-new bill for the protection of khunsa, an Arabic word he said was for people “born with birth defects in the genitalia.” If passed, the Act will apply to the entire country and come into force immediately. 

In the proposed bill, khunsa is defined as a person who has a “mixture of male and female genital features or congenital ambiguities.” The person will have the right to register as a male or female based on certification from a medical board.

“I studied the old law for a good two years after it was enacted; held discussions with many jurists, even international ones, medical doctors, religious scholars. Based on the information gathered, I came up with amendments to the 2018 law,” Ahmed said, defending his stance and explaining why it took four years to oppose a law passed by a two-thirds majority in the Senate and the Parliament. He has also filed a petition in the Federal Shariat Court against the 2018 Act.

The right-wing Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI-Fazl) and parliamentarians belonging to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have also voiced their concern and opposed the 2018 act. 

“Allah has just mentioned sons and daughters in the Quran; there is no mention of another gender,” said PTI’s senator, Fauzia Arshad, speaking to IPS. She has also presented amendments to the Senate’s standing committee on human rights.

The country’s top religious advisory body, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), has also termed it unIslamic law.

“We respect the rights of the transgenders given in the 2018 Act, but when it transgresses beyond biology, and psychology and sociology come into play, we have reservations,” said Dr Qibla Ayaz, chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology, talking to IPS from Islamabad. He also said the council was never approached when the bill was debated.   

The law, instead of defining gender, has defined gender identity: A person’s innermost and individual sense of self as male, female, or a blend of both or neither, that can correspond or not to the sex assigned at birth. It also refers to gender expression: A person’s presentation of their gender identity and/or the one others perceive.

 JI, meanwhile, has defined gender as a “person’s expression as per his or her sex which is not different than the sex assigned to him or her at the time of birth or as per the advice of a medical board.”

“We do not believe in self-perceived gender identity of a person and are asking for a medical board to be constituted to ascertain that,” said Ahmed.

Arshad endorsed this: “The sex of a person is determined from where the person urinates and should be determined by a medical board.”

“Self-perception of who you think you want to be, and not what you are born as is not in the Quran.”

“CII has some reservations about the self-perceived identity,” said Ayaz.

To rule out “real from fake” transgender people, Ahmed’s bill has recommended constituting a gender reassignment medical board in every district, which would include a professor doctor, a male and a female general surgeon, a psychologist, and a chief medical officer. 

“Any sex reassignment surgery to change the genitalia will be prohibited if the person is diagnosed with a psychological disorder or gender dysphoria,” he said. Arshad agreed with this view.

“A medical board can help people figure out their gender identity by offering them personality tests and blood works. They can help decrease the intensity of gender dysphoria by offering non-medical and medical interventions,” said Yasir. 

But the board cannot reject someone’s “experienced gender,” she asserted.

Yasir added there was no mention of a geneticist, a psychiatrist, or those trained in transgender health on the board.

Healthcare professionals argue that constituting medical boards in Pakistan’s 160 districts is nearly impossible. The complex issue requires genetic testing (from abroad), which is expensive for a resource-stretched country like Pakistan, and meticulous diagnosis by scarce experts. 

The trans community has rejected the option of the constitution of a medical board outright. 

“We will never allow anyone to examine us,” said Bindya Rana, a Karachi-based transgender activist and founder and president of Gender Interactive Alliance (GIA). “We know, who we are, just like the men and women in this country know who they are!” 

If this debate has done one thing, it is to validate and increase transphobia.

“Harassment, discrimination, and violence have increased due to the negative propaganda led by Jamat-e-Islami,” said Reem Sharif, a trans activist based in Islamabad.

“A week ago, one transgender was murdered. The alleged murderer is behind bars, but during interrogation, he told the police that he was on jihad as killing transgenders would take him straight to heaven. He is sure he will be released and will finish off the job,” said Rai.

She also recalled the horrific attack on three well-known transwomen in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Swabi two weeks back. “They received several bullets, but fortunately, all survived,” she said. The attack spread panic and fear among the community. Rai said the transphobia was “contained, but now it is out in the open.”

“There is a definite backlash,” agreed Lahore-based Moon Chaudhary. “Ten days ago, in Lahore, a few trans persons were publicly harassed at a posh locality. They were forcefully disrobed, asked about their gender, and then raped,” she said.

According to Aisha Mughal, the “more visible trans activists” like her, are increasingly feeling vulnerable. “Bullying is going on, and people are openly threatening. She gets scores of text messages from unknown numbers referring to her as a “man,” causing “mental torment.”

Rai said she feared for her life since she was actively participating in defending the law on various TV channels, and participating in debates organized by clerics. “I’m worried and have told my flatmates to be vigilant and take extra precautions in letting in their friends.” 

Transgender activists are also fighting on another front – cyberspace. 

“I am being misgendered on national television; then the same clips are shared on social media, which go viral. I am accused of being a man and feigning as a woman,” said Mughal. She said some are provoking people to go on a jihad against them and setting a “dangerous precedent.”

“I thought I was strong and would be able to handle online abuse, but it is taking a toll and affecting my mental health,” Rai admitted. For instance, of the 900 comments on a video clip on social media, 600 were abusive. There were some that were downright violent in nature, calling for her murder or burning her to death. “My photos are being circulated with vulgar messages attached,” she added.

Although Rana admitted the campaign against the 2018 law has brought “irreparable damage” to the transgender cause, she is confident the newly-presented bill by JI was just to create a storm in a teacup and will not see the light of day. 

“All that we worked for, for years, has come to naught,” she lamented. While the law prohibited discrimination against transgender persons seeking education, healthcare, employment, or trade, Rana said, “we never benefitted on any score” except the right to change the name and gender on the national identity card, the driving license, and the passport. For us, even that was a big win,” she said. About 28,000 transgender persons had their gender corrected. But now, even that right is in danger. 

Ahmed said his struggle would continue. “If the khunsa bill finds no takers, we [JI] will take it to the Supreme Court of Pakistan and start street protests,” he warned, adding: “It’s a ticking time bomb!” 

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Jan Servaes
BRUSSELS (IDN), Oct 6 2022 (IPS)

“If all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves”. This quote from the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is in the introduction to Dipo Faloyin’s book ‘Africa is not a country‘. It summarizes Faloyin’s book nicely.

Born in Chicago, raised in Lagos and currently based in London, Nigerian Dipo Faloyin is a senior editor at VICE, the online news service founded in New York in December 2013, which distributes documentaries daily through its website and YouTube channel. VICE promotes itself as “the definitive guide to illuminating information” about “under-reported stories”.

Africa is bigger than Canada, the US and China combined

Africa is big, about 30 million square kilometers, just under twice the size of Russia or bigger than Canada, the United States and China combined! This is not clearly visible on most world maps due to the common use of the Mercator projection. It makes countries near the poles appear larger and those at the equator smaller. However, Africa is a rich and diverse place. It includes more than 1,500 languages and 16 percent of the world’s population.

Repeated stereotypes

“Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘black’ or ‘safari’ in your title,” Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina suggested in a 2005 satirical essay. He scoffed at the repeated stereotypes in international coverage of Africa.

Faloyin also argues that there is rarely a balanced or nuanced view of Africa because clichés about poverty, famine and disasters dominate the reporting and Hollywood romance about Africa.

‘Powerless victims’

These writers criticize international coverage of Africa for its emphasis on the suffering of powerless victims. This is spiced up with the occasional celebrity visit or a beautiful shot of wildlife. In doing so, they point to the absurdity of reporting that attempts to capture a vast continent of more than 50 countries in broad generalizations.

Above all, they disdain what is often called Afro-pessimism. This is the tendency to depoliticize stories in sub-Saharan Africa and reduce them to hopeless humanitarian crises or harrowing images.

“Africa Rising”

While the wars, famines, plagues and epidemics were the only ‘news’ from Africa for years, a ‘new’ story has been added for some time. In May 2000 there was the famous front page of The Economist portraying Africa as the hopeless continent; in 2011 this image was replaced by a cover full of clear skies and with the headline ‘Africa Rising‘.

Time magazine followed suit with a cover of the same title. Suddenly the continent is buzzing with mobile phones and energetic companies. Michela Wrong called this the new mandatory slogan in the New York Times of March 20, 2015, now that “it is fashionable these days to be upbeat about Africa”.

Incomplete and inaccurate

“This book is a portrait of modern Africa that pushes back against harmful stereotypes to tell a more comprehensive story — based on all the humanity that has been brushed aside to accommodate a single vision of blood, strife and majestic shots of rolling savannahs and large yellow sunsets. . It will unspool the inaccurate story of a continent dragging this bludgeoned narrative towards reality,” Faloyin states explicitly on page 7.

The danger of a neoliberal agenda

The problem is that all reductionist stereotypes are incomplete and inaccurate. And in particular, the latest characterization of Africa as a place full of entrepreneurs, complete with its own ‘silicon savannah‘, has other problems.

In a part of the world that continues to face staggering levels of inequality, there is a danger that Africa will get too close to a neoliberal agenda and goals. Whatever successes the new companies may achieve, there is not much evidence of a trickle-down effect for those at the bottom of society.

Of course, there are success stories in many places that demonstrate the capabilities of developing African economies. Some countries in Africa, such as Benin, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Ivory Coast, Tanzania or Rwanda are currently among the fastest growing economies in the world. But the ‘Africa Rising’ stories ignore the plight of those who are still far behind in societies that, outside the family or immediate community, don’t offer much of a social safety net, which in most Western societies (to some extent) is visible.

We can therefore sympathize with the plight of Africans who board rickety boats and try to build a new life abroad. Yet it is well known that the so-called economic migrants seeking a better future across the Mediterranean are not the ones at the bottom, who could never afford or even consider such a journey.

Colorful and sometimes funny

“Few things unite the continent more in frustration than the comically inaccurate way Africa and its people are portrayed in popular culture. It’s at times deliberately dismissive, often nonsensical and occasionally inadvertently hilarious” (p. 199).

Faloyin has a smooth pen and colors his book with several well-chosen examples. He examines each country’s colonial heritage and explores a variety of topics, from describing urban life in Lagos and the lively West African rivalry over who makes the best Jollov rice, to the still lingering case of stolen art treasures in Western museums — “90 percent of Africa’s material cultural legacy is being kept outside of the continent” (p. 258) — to the story of democracy in seven dictatorships and the dangers of stereotypes in popular culture.

Africa is home to 54 countries, including island nations along the coast of the continent. These countries are home to diverse groups of people who speak different languages and practice a wide variety of customs.

Take Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa. More than 250 different ethnic groups live among the population of more than 200 million inhabitants. While English is the official language of the former British colony, the many languages of ethnic groups indigenous to the West African nation, such as Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo, are also spoken. In addition, Nigerians practice Christianity, Islam and indigenous religions.

So much for the myth that all Africans are the same. The most populous nation on the continent certainly proves otherwise.

Or take Egypt. In particular, the country borders Libya to the west, Sudan to the south, the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Red Sea to the east and Israel and the Gaza Strip to the northeast. Despite its location, Egypt is often described not as an African nation, but as the Middle East – the region where Europe, Africa and Asia converge.

This omission stems mainly from the fact that Egypt’s population of more than 100 million is strongly Arab – with a small minority of Nubians in the south – a drastic difference from the population of Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to scientific research, the ancient Egyptians – known for their pyramids and advanced civilization – were biologically neither European nor Sub-Saharan African, but a genetically distinct group. These people are located on the African continent. Their existence also reveals the diversity of Africa.

The ‘white savior’

Occasionally, the image of the “white savior” also sneaks into Faloyin’s story. Sometimes rightly so, as the West is presented as a ‘white savior’ during the colonization and partition of Africa on 15 November 1884 at the Berlin Conference in the absence of any African representation: “Only 30 per cent of all borders in the world are in Africa, yet nearly 60 per cent of all territorial disputes that have made it to the International Court of Justice come from the continent” (p. 46).

The more recent search in 2012 for Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army is also discussed in detail. Faloyin sarcastically concludes: “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege” (p. 79).

Reprehensible paternalism

The continued affirmation of a paternalistic and ignorant perspective, be it the helpless savages or the noble poor, is fundamentally reprehensible and will not lead to satisfying contributions of any kind in the long run. All the more so since, as Howard French also argued, Africa has been the hub of the machine of modernity for Europe.

What’s the remedy?

But Faloyin also falls short. “While Faloyin excels at articulating the complaint (about the white savior), he has little to offer as a remedy to a problem rooted in a centuries-old global power imbalance. Fairness dictates, too, a recognition that intellectual laziness is hardly the white man’s exclusive preserve,” adds Michela Wrong in The New York Times of August 31, 2022.

Myths and stereotypes

Our views on groups of people stem from socialization, including our parents, peers, national culture, subcultures, and especially the mass media. This is called implicit or unconscious bias. Everyone makes these generalizations, and they help and protect us in this complex world.

They are too simple and mainly based on group membership based on limited characteristics, such as age, a physical characteristic, gender, race or nationality. Generalizations can be helpful, but stereotypes are dangerous.

Based on oversimplified, fixed assumptions about groups of people, stereotypes are often ‘justified’ within social systems, to cover up deeper myths. Africa has been the target of an unfathomable amount of stereotyping, which has led to the widespread belief in much false information.

Many myths about Africa go back centuries. In modern times, new stereotypes about the continent have emerged. Sensation- and simplification-oriented news media continue to associate Africa with famine, war, poverty and political corruption.

This is not to say that such problems do not exist in Africa. Of course, they do. But even in prosperous countries, poverty, abuse of power and chronic diseases play a role in daily life. While the African continent faces enormous challenges, not every African is in need, nor is every African nation in crisis.

Reference:

Dipo Faloyin (2022), Africa is not a country. Breaking Stereotypes of Modern Africa, Harvill Secker, London, 380 pp. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/444389/africa-is-not-a-country-by-faloyin-dipo/9781787302952

Jan Servaes was UNESCO-Chair in Communication for Sustainable Social Change at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He taught ‘international communication’ in Australia, Belgium, China, Hong Kong, the US, Netherlands and Thailand, in addition to short-term projects at about 120 universities in 55 countries. He is editor of the 2020 Handbook on Communication for Development and Social Change
https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-10-7035-8

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By External Source
Oct 5 2022 (IPS-Partners)

 

Sigrid van Aken is the CEO of Novamedia/Postcode Lottery Group, a private company with a social purpose, that brings together business and ideals. It sets up and operates Postcode Lotteries worldwide to raise funds for charity. With a lucky winning postcode (zipcode), neighbours win together. At the same time, thanks to these player communities, vital funding is raised for charities and good causes (yearly €825 million), making the Postcode Lottery Group the 3rd largest private charity donor in the world after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

Since 2013, Sigrid has been a member of the international Executive Board. Postcode Lotteries are operated in the Netherlands, Great-Britain, Sweden, Germany and Norway.

Sigrid has extensive international managerial experience as a (non-)executive board member in a public-private context. She also has expertise in areas such as the financing of charities, corporate governance, international lottery-legislation, public affairs and stakeholder management.

ECW: With September’s UN General Assembly, Transforming Education Summit, Global Citizen Festival and ECW’s High-Level Steering Group Meeting recently concluded, what key lessons should we take forward to accelerate the delivery of education in emergencies?

Sigrid van Aken: We live in unprecedented times. The continuing hangover from COVID-19 along with never ending conflicts, increased climate-related disasters and growing food and fuel insecurity, are taking their toll. Society’s most vulnerable suffer the most, with 222 million school-age children and adolescents in crisis situations needing access to education or better quality education. Now more than ever, investment and a united approach is urgently needed to provide education to the millions of children out of school.

We have learned from our partners, reiterated at the recent meetings and summits on education, that alongside access to education, a focus is needed on ensuring children and youth are achieving minimum standards in their learning. Only one in ten crisis-impacted children attending primary or secondary education are achieving basic levels in reading and mathematics.

At the Postcode Lottery Group, our vision is that the civil society is a force for good, and for positive change. Our mission is to strengthen the civil society. We set up and operate Postcode Lotteries worldwide to raise funds for a wide range of charities, addressing areas like education and human rights, frequently focused on women and children. Players of the Postcode Lotteries have raised over €12 billion for more than 11,000 charities and social organisations around the world.

We enter into long-term partnerships with charities, trusting them as the experts to spend the money where it is most needed. We understand that being flexible in how funding can be used, provides the freedom to flex with need and try new innovative ways of working which could have greater impact to enable real change. The freedom of unrestricted funding provides an opportunity for our partners to leverage support from elsewhere.

We can commit to long-term partnerships thanks to the millions of players in our subscription-based community lotteries across five European countries: the Netherlands, Sweden, Great Britain, Germany and Norway. The Postcode Lottery is a unique format; tickets relate to the players own postcode (or, in the US zip code). This way everyone playing in the same street or area can win together, while raising money for good causes. It is all about strengthening community and engaging people from all walks of life in a safe and responsible lottery which even when you don’t win, your community through the charities supported, does.

Many of our charity partners, such as Theirworld, Plan International, Red Cross, Save the Children, UNICEF and Action Against Hunger are providing support to those in need of humanitarian assistance through centres for psychosocial support, trauma counselling and school feeding programmes so that displaced and refugee children stay safe. And we know from our charity partners that this whole child approach, which includes social and emotional well-being for each child, is crucial. This can only be achieved through diverse partners on all levels and types, that actively look for sustainable and locally led solutions.

We must accelerate the delivery of education in emergencies, and it was clear to all attendees at these gatherings in September that we cannot afford to leave these children behind and must be held accountable to Education Cannot Wait’s commitment.

ECW: Today, 222 million crisis-impacted children urgently need education support. Why is it important for other private sector partners to invest in Education Cannot Wait’s work to deliver quality education to children left furthest behind to help realize their 222 Million Dreams?

Sigrid van Aken: We know that the poorest households are the least resilient to crisis situations. Added to this, women and girls are unfairly disadvantaged, with school attendance reducing and girls being pulled out of schools too early. We all know the impact of education beyond the school classroom is undeniable. On behalf of donors, Education Cannot Wait is committed to ensuring learning remains a key focus, and with more partners, they can make education a reality rather than the dream it is for so many children.

Despite the increase in humanitarian funding for education in emergencies, the funding gap for education is widening more than in other sectors. More private donors are needed to help place education within the reach of every child, everywhere.

The Postcode Lottery Group is supporting initiatives that drive positive change for those who have less opportunity or chance in life. Our lotteries are enablers of change, and we use our communication channels to encourage and share with others, reaching millions of people every day.

In addition to the support we provide to the work of Education Cannot Wait, thanks to our millions of players, many civil society organizations working on education are supported each year with flexible support that they can invest wherever the need is greatest.

ECW: The Postcode Lottery Group, with Theirworld, has provided funding for ECW’s COVID-19 education in emergencies response in the Greek Islands. Why is it important for the Postcode Lottery to invest funding into education responses to refugee crises in places like Greece?

Sigrid van Aken: Nations like Greece host hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers, a third of whom are children, many of these are girls or children with disabilities. We provided €1.35 million to fund emergency education so that despite the turmoil they faced, education remains available to them.

Without access to education, refugee children, wherever they are, face an uncertain future. We believe that even in a crisis, learning should never stop and thanks to the support of our lottery players we were able to put our funds behind this. We are committed to supporting those who share this belief such as our partners UNICEF, UNHCR and Theirworld to provide education with inclusion and equity for refugee children in the Greek Islands and elsewhere so that no one is left behind.

ECW: From a broader perspective, why is funding for education in places like Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen important for the private sector and businesses worldwide?

Sigrid van Aken: Children in these countries should have access to the same possibilities offered by education. Education offers a different future for them and can provide protection against early marriage, reduce exposure to gender-based violence, and prevent them from becoming a child soldier.

In these places in particular, funding of safe learning spaces, smaller classrooms, inclusive learning environments, school nutrition programmes, psychosocial support services and training for educators is urgently needed. While for the individual it improves their life chances, it also supports communities, the environment and opportunities for the next generation.

The Postcode Lottery Group believes in long-term investment without which continuity of learning cannot happen and help the millions of children living in the toughest parts of the planet.

ECW: As the CEO of Novamedia/Postcode Lottery Group, you are an inspiring, dynamic leader. How can we best empower girls to become inspiring, engaging women leaders of tomorrow?

Sigrid van Aken: By providing strong role models. For every child, role models play an important part in developing their own dreams for the future. I wish that every child will come across these individuals and have the confidence to think big, to pursue their dreams and fully develop their talents. Young girls in particular benefit from inspiring women in leadership positions, so they can see themselves doing something similar in the future. I am personally inspired by young woman who fearlessly work towards their goals and mission in life, and I am lucky to meet many in my daily work.

ECW: Through our 222 Million Dreams campaign, ECW calls on donors, private sector, high-net-worth individuals and philanthropic foundations to mobilize US$1.5 billion for ECW so we can reach 20 million children over the next four years. Why should donors invest in ECW as our High-Level Financing Conference approaches in February 2023?

Sigrid van Aken: As Education Cannot Wait has outlined, this call is not just about accessing education, it is about turning crisis-affected children and adolescents’ dreams into reality.

Access to a quality education in times of humanitarian crisis is the right of every child and Education Cannot Wait is already working with over 7 million children across 40 crisis-affected countries.

Supporting ECW and its holistic approach to education – and addressing the barriers to education through multi-year programmes – will have impact on those who are let the furthest behind in the most challenging of situations. Without education these children can never meet the challenges they face now or will in the future.

ECW: Our readers would like to know a little about you on a personal level. As a dynamic leader, we would like to know what are some of the books that have most influenced you and why would you recommend them to others?

Sigrid van Aken: Recently I attended the UN Transforming Education Summit and Theirworld dinner. I was privileged to be seated next to the President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Dr. Julius Maada. He told me he grew up in a village far from the city. His mother could not read. And it is education that got him where he is today. As President, he made education a policy priority and has launched the National Education Sector Plan 2022-2026 under the theme, “Transforming Education for All.” His government has provided substantial levels of funding to meet the needs of the education sector, and to free access to quality education.

This inspires me greatly because it expresses hope about what drives people in their lives, on being there for others and making something of it together. I felt similar hope reading the book of the Dutch author Rutger Bregman, ‘Humankind.’ An inspiring tribute to humankind’s better natures. He shows that at root humans are friendly, peaceful and healthy, and that there is a high degree of cooperation and communal spirt when times get rough.

What drives people in their lives, being there for their fellow man and making something of it together, is also strongly expressed in the latest book by Nobel laureate, world-renowned doctor, and noted human rights activist Dr. Denis Mukwege, ‘The Power of Women: A Doctor’s Journey of Hope and Healing.’ An impressive book on women, survivors of sexual violence during conflict, and their resilience, enduring strength and power. The strength of women gives hope for the potential of individuals to turn the tide. And Dr. Mukwege also hopes to inspire men to speak out and join the struggle, rather than leaving women to fight the battle alone. A powerful read.

I get along very well with Erdoğan. The tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them.                                                                                                                                  Donald Trump

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Oct 5 2022 (IPS)

After President Putin had given a speech, garnered with accusations and myths, a mega-show at the Red Square celebrated the re-entry of four Ukrainian regions to the bosom of Mother Russia. This while a mass mobilization was preparing to throw hundreds of thousands of young men into the hell of war. Why are people trusting, supporting and even admiring a political leader like Putin? One of many reasons might be his stance as Supreme Leader, a Strongman.

The Halo Effect is a tendency to unconditionally accommodate positive impressions of a single individual, a cognitive bias that influence personal opinions and feelings in a wide array of areas – religion, morals, patriotism, etc. The Halo Effect makes it possible for a political leader to exercise complete authority over millions of people. Historic and terrifying examples of this are the Führer Adolf Hitler, the Vozhd Joseph Stalin, the Duce Benito Mussolini, and the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong.

This is far from being a recent phenomenon, some examples of Strongmen are power-hungry personalities like Qin Shi Huangdi, Augustus, Djingis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Shaka, Suharto, and Kim Il-Sung. Individuals guilty of leading their supporters into an Inferno of violence and misery. Political Strongmen generally maintain their grip on other people’s minds through lies and myths, while manipulating mass media to spread propaganda and fake news, as well as organizing spectacles and mass rallies,

In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari mentions that chimpanzees, the human specie’s closest relatives, have social instincts allowing them to form friendships and hierarchies that facilitate communal hunting, gathering and defense against predators. However, thousands of chimps cannot create a stock market, a United Nations, a Vatican. They cannot unite behind an Alpha Male, or topple him through a revolution, nor create a Government ruled by common law, or build a temple.

What makes humans unique is their sophisticated use of language, making it possible to ”gossip”, i.e. to talk about who is courting whom, who is a cheat, and who is an honest person. Such information may keep together a group of twenty, or fifty members, but seldom more than a hundred individuals. To achieve mass mobilization for work or war, much more than plain gossip is needed. According to Harari this is made possible through humans’ ability to fantasize and share their stories with others.

It is abstract notions that bind us together. Tales about deities, life after death, human rights, laws and justice. Human constructs like money and nations are based on mental innovations that have become materialized. The majority of the world’s population no longer belongs to tribes where sorcerers and priests told tales about guardian spirits and divine punishments. Instead we trust business-people, artists, priests and lawyers. Most of us are now living in a world governed by huge business corporations, mass media, sophisticated weaponry and manipulating politicians, maintained through shared myths and ideas.

Through preserved texts, computers and other means of communication we are now able to continuously increase and store large quantities of knowledge. And not only that, we are able to store and maintain information that actually is alien to ”reality” – invented conspiracies, ghosts, nations, limited liability companies, and even human rights. Fantasies are transformed into an actual existence.

We are gradually distancing ourselves from nature, creating our own world. However, this does not mean that we have got rid of our animal instincts. We are still likely to become subordinated to alpha males who use mental innovations to subdue us through repressive violence. chauvinism, and various kinds of media manipulation.

Even if Strongmen have been with us throughout human history, this does not mean that the phenomenon has constantly dominated our entire existence. Like all human behaviour, domination of our species is submitted to trends and change. It now seems to exist a current global trend that favours a return of the Strongman, combined with a spreading disrespect of compassion, human rights and a shared responsibility for the well-being of our world and planet.

The world’s two most populous nations, India and China, are currently under the spell of increasingly autocratic leaders. In India Naendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Indian People’s Party, was once accused of condoning the Gujarat riots in 2002, when at least 790 Muslims and 250 Hindus were killed, followed by further outbreaks of violence against the minority Muslim population in the federal state of Gujarat, where Modi was Chief Minister. He is now the undisputed leader of the Indian Republic. According to the respected Indian historian Ramachandra Guha since May 2014, the vast resources of the State have been devoted to making the prime minister the face of every programme, every advertisement, every poster. Modi is India, India is Modi.

The 2019 Balakot Airstrike, during which Indian warplanes bombed alleged terrorist training camps inside Pakistan, Modi’s support increased and during the general election campaign that followed Modi declared: ”When you vote for the Lotus [his party symbol], you are not pushing a button but pressing a trigger to shoot terrorists in the head.”

In China, the hitherto all dominating Communist Party has become ”rejuvenated” and strengthened under the leadership of Xi Jinping and the party propaganda machine is creating a cult of personality around Xi Dada, Uncle Xi, whose presidential time limit was abolished in 2018, meaning that he could stay in power for life. Xi Jinping Thought has been incorporated in the Chinese Constitution, a distinction previously only accorded to Mao Zedong.

Unchallenged autocratic regimes are maintained in several nations, like those of Saudi Arabia’s royal family and the emirs in the United Emirates. The political and ruthless repression in North Korea continues unabated under the Sogun, Military First, policy of the Il-sung dynasty. However, Strongmen are present within several democracies, ostentatiously in countries like Russia, the Philippines, Turkey, the Republic of India, Hungary, Israel, as well as in the US and several nations in Latin America and Africa. Even if such politicians use to state they respect ”democratic norms”, they are nevertheless intent to erode them.

A common trait among Strongmen seems to be efforts to limit judicial independence. Both Saudi Arabia’s bin Salman and China’s Xi Jinping have used much needed ”anti-corruption campaigns” to get rid of opponents, while terrifying several members of their nations’ political elite. In China over a million people have been arrested and imprisoned in connection with such campaigns, while some have been executed. Poland’s Kaczynski and Hungary’s Orbán have changed constitutional arrangements to bring courts under their control. Donald Trump has rather than lauding the US’ independent courts and free elections, castigated judges as biased if they ruled against him and famously tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Like Trump, Natanyahu in Israel and Bolsonaro in Brazil have complained about ”fake news” and a ”deep state” working against them. When Nethanyahu lost power in 2021 he made Trump-like claims that he had the been victim of the ”greatest election fraud in the history of any democracy.”

In Turkey more than 4,000 judges and prosecutors were purged, as well as academicians and army officers, after a State of Emergency had been declared by Erdoğan in 2016. The concept of The Deep State has for decades been used by Erdoğan to label opponents among traditional politicians and it was adopted by Trump when he declared that he was going to ”drain the swamp of Washington”.

Political Strongmen have a tendency to scoff at ”political correctness”, generally connected with human rights’ advocates, supporters of minorities and environmentalists. In spite of their dictatorial cravings, Strongmen like to state they are supported by the ”common people”, declaring that even if they disdain institutions they love ”the people”. Their politics are funded on the concept of ”we and them”, ”black or white”, and the ones who are not with me are against me. Opponents are ridiculed and demonized as ”outsiders” or ”perverts”, epithets attached to immigrants, as well as ethnic-, religious- and/or sexual minorities. It is also common to accuse shady foreign forces of plotting against the Nation. Russian and Chinese politicians regularly refer to ”Western plots to split the Nation”. Or, like Orbán, indicate that sinister, global cabals are trying to annihilate Hungarian culture by promoting mass migration and ”liberal dissolution of morals”. His favorite scapegoat is the philanthropist Georg Soros, who also have had the honour of being denounced by Putin, Trump, Erdoğan, Orbán and Bolsonaro.

Popular scapegoats can also be the EU, NATO, neighbouring nations, or Superpowers. Muslims are often sorted out as particularly dangerous, not only fanatics and terrorists, but all of them. Blaming ”others” is a simple solution to complex problems. A simplicity expressed in three words slogans – ”Get Brexit Done!”, ”Build the Wall!”, ”Law and Order!”, ”Lock them Up!”, or even in two words like ”Americans (or Italians, Hungarians, Swedes, etc.) First!”

Much more could be written about political Strongmen, let us, however, return to the enigmatic Vladimir Putin. In 2018, his powerful press secretary Dmitry Peskov, multi-millionaire as so many of Putin’s closest associates, declared;

There’s a demand in the world for special sovereign leaders, for decisive ones who do not fit into general frameworks and so on. Putin’s Russia was the starting point.

Main Sources: Rachman, Gideon (2022) The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World and Harari, Yuval Noah (2014) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

I get along very well with Erdoğan. The tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them.                                                                                                                                  Donald Trump

Tanzanian officials tour the Kingfisher upstream oil project in Uganda. The African Union has adopted a position of energy access which includes deploying all forms of energy resources, including non-renewable and renewables, to address the energy crisis in the continent. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
Kampala, Oct 5 2022 (IPS)

Thirty-year-old Difasi Amooti Kisembo is one of the demonstrators near the EU delegation offices in Kampala. He and a handful of others have traveled from Uganda’s oil and gas-rich Albertine region’s district to Uganda’s capital Kampala to express their displeasure with an EU Parliament’s resolution against the planned construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.

“EU Stop neocolonialism and imperialism on Uganda’s oil projects,” reads the placard that Kisembo holding. Next to Kisembo is Lucas Eikiriza with a message: “Our pipeline is safe, EU stand aside”.

While there is opposition to the planned construction of a 1,443km pipeline from Uganda through Tanzania and Tilenga and Kingfisher upstream oil projects in Uganda, Kisembo told IPS that he has, over the last 16 years, patiently waited to see oil flow from this formerly sleepy and remote part of Uganda.

“I have not seen that oil with my eyes, but I’m already seeing the benefits. The roads are very good now, there were grass-thatched huts all over my village, but those have been replaced with iron-roofed (ones) thanks to oil that was discovered in Bunyoro,” Kisembo told IPS. “So when I heard that the Europeans want the government to stop the projects, I said that we, the young Banyoro, should stand up against that nonsense just like our forefathers fought the British colonialists.”

TotalEnergies and its partner China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) in February decided to invest more than $10 billion into Lake Albert Development Project.

The landscape in Buliisa and Hoima districts has drastically changed with a number of needed infrastructures like the Central Processing Facility, an international airport, and well pads under construction.

“Everyone is going to gain. Anytime I’m sure that everybody is going to enjoy this oil and the developments which are coming in,” said Peter Mayanja, a real estate dealer and owner of Farm Bridge Investments, told IPS

President Yoweri Museveni in February said, “This project is a very important one for this region. This money will boost our economy,”

The EU parliament in mid-September adopted a resolution denouncing the Tilenga and EACOP projects by TotalEnergies, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or CNOOC Group, backed by the governments of Uganda and Tanzania.

“Put an end to the extractive activities in protected and sensitive ecosystems, including the shores of Lake Albert,” reads part of the resolution. They suggested that to have a chance to limit global warming to 1,5°C, no new oil extraction project should be developed.

The resolution has since attracted criticism from Uganda, Tanzania, and from some of the advocates in Africa who believe that Africa should be allowed to harness their oil and gas discoveries to develop their economies as they transition to renewable energy sources.

Uganda’s Vice President, Jessica Alupo, took the matter to the just concluded UN General Assembly in New York. She said it is hypocritical for countries that have been at the center of polluting the environment to preach to countries that have borne the impact of those environmental violations how to act responsibly. “Our view is that development should be environmentally friendly, inclusive, and provide benefits for all; it should leave no one behind,” Alupo said

While Uganda’s International Relations Minister, Henry Okello Oryem, told IPS, “So the European don’t want Africa to develop its natural resources? And yet it is the only way to solve our problems. Our people continue to cut trees as the cheapest source of fuel. So if we don’t avail them with alternatives like gas, who will?” asked Oryem.

On the other hand, Proscovia Nabbanja, the chief executive of the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC), which has stakes in EACOP, told IPS that the suggestion by the wealthier nations to Africa and other developing countries to leave their oil and gas underground was unfair.

“While I understand the concerns related to climate change, I don’t want to ignore the value that the projects bring to alleviate energy poverty, which is a critical issue in Uganda, improving the economy, and also propelling our country to industrialization,” said Nabbanja.

Uganda expects 160,000 jobs to be created by the projects located in Uganda’s Albertine Graben, bordering DRC. The East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is expected to create five thousand jobs during its construction.

NJ Ayuk, executive chair of the African Energy Chamber lobby group told IPS the EU Parliament’s resolution was part of the overall move to block the extraction of oil and gas in Africa. He said apart from Uganda’s case, there are similar attempts to block fight the proposed onshore liquefied natural gas project at Lindi — which could help commercialize about 50 trillion cubic feet of offshore gas by Tanzania.

Ayuk told IPS that some of the campaigns are being funded by groups from the west to civil society organizations based in countries that have vast oil and gas resources.

Sizeable deposits of oil and gas have been discovered in Uganda, Namibia, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Ghana, Angola, DRC, and South Sudan, among others.

“I want the civil society to fiercely advocate for the environment so that we don’t have any kind of environmental risks. But it is important that they don’t put out misinformation,” said Ayuk. “It is really important because that misinformation comes to the detriment of young people who need jobs. It comes to the detriment of a country that needs investment, that wants to grow. That wants to survive on its resources without going for aid.”

He said the drive against investment in fossil fuel in Africa is an ideological position from the western countries against Africa’s oil and gas discoveries.

“Africans are asking themselves why should we pay the price and punishment for western countries that have taken our resources, have invested and developed their economies, and now that it is our time, you tell us that we cannot because it is going to hurt the environment. When you were doing it, didn’t you think it was going to hurt the environment?” asked Ayuk.

Modestus Martin Lumato, Director General Energy and Water Utilities Regulatory Authority (EWURA), who recently visited Uganda, told IPS that 70% of Tanzania’s power generation is from natural gas and that abandoning it that fast would negatively impact the country.

“Sixty of our industries are powered by natural gas. In 2010 we discovered a huge deposit of natural gas in the deep sea; Tanzania is looking forward to exporting it. We expect oil and gas companies to invest over $30 billion in a project planned to produce 10 million tons per annum,” said Lumato.

Tanzania’s natural gas reserves are said to be equivalent to US$150 billion- or 6-times Tanzania’s current GDP.

COP 27 Africa to Talk Tough

A number of meetings have been held in Africa in preparation for the 27th UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP27) will be held in Egypt from November 7 to 18, 2022.

In mid-July, a technical committee of the African Union adopted “The African Common Position on Energy Access and Just Transition”. It stipulates that Africa will continue to deploy all forms of its abundant energy resources, including non-renewable and renewable, to address the energy crisis in the continent.

This position was discussed at the 4th Africa Climate talks at the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique, as well as African Climate Week in Togo.

Linus Mafor, a Senior Environmental Affairs Officer leading work on energy, infrastructure, and climate change at the African Climate Policy, said the Africa position was aimed at attaining sustainable energy for Africa.

He told IPS that Africa accounts for 17% of the global population and contributes to less than 4% of emissions, and it is the least energized region in the world.

“Africa is home to 78% of people who don’t have electricity; at the same time, it needs to industrialize, it needs to close the development gap to meet the SDG. So there should be a win-win situation. Let Africa use its natural gas as a transition fuel to renewable energy,” said Mafor.

According to Mafor, energy poverty is holding Africa from development. “Africa has got a rich source of energy, whether fossils or renewables. The demand is there, but the supply is not there; we can’t progress on SDGs or Africa Union Agenda 2063 if there is a huge energy access problem that is not addressed,” he said

The African Union, through UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), has indicated that over the past ten years, less than two percent of the public clean energy investment globally went to Africa.

That finding was buttressed by the International Energy Agency’s  Cost of Capital Dashboard launched this month. It observed that emerging and developing economies, excluding China, account for less than one-fifth of global investment in clean energy.

One of the key barriers, according to IEA, is a high cost of capital, reflecting some real and perceived risks about investment in these economies

The COP26 in Glasgow noted with regret that developed country parties had not met the $100 billion goal annually. At COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the African Group wants developed country parties to agree to honor the $100 billion in climate finance promise.

The Special Representative of COP27, President-Designate Wael Aboulmagd, has indicated the developed countries have fallen short of delivering the $100 billion.

“It has never been delivered … But what people don’t talk about is if we had the $100 billion, would we be much better off? The $100 is an arbitrary figure that was put out of thin air that has no reality on the ground,” observed Aboulmagd.

“We as responsible global citizens said we will come along on the understanding that appropriate funding will be there. So this trust has been broken by failure to deliver year, after year,” said Aboulmagd.

According to Aboulmagd, at present, only 2% of renewable energy investment from the private sector goes to Africa.

“With more than 600 million in Africa lacking access to basic electricity, universal access to energy is a priority,” he said.

Back in Uganda and Tanzania, Ayuk told IPS that citizens like Zephaniah and Mayanja, and Awadh should be worried about campaigns trying to block projects like Lake Albert Development and EACOP.

“They should be worried because there is a very strong movement saying the money should not come into African oil and gas. I think we need to rally African financing for projects.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Adolescent girls collecting water, Luweero, Uganda. Credit: Esther Nsapu/Education Development Center (EDC)
 
On December 19, 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/170 declaring October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child.

By Amy West and Sharon Iwachu
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 5 2022 (IPS)

This year commemorates the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl Child. While the last decade has seen greater attention on the positive development needs of girls, we must move beyond documenting the barriers that girls face to investing in and prioritizing girl-centered solutions to the critical development challenges of our world.

In light of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, air pollution and biodiversity highlighted in UN Common Agenda consultations in August, the vital role adolescent girls can play in climate-responsive solutions should not be underestimated.

Adolescent girls are among the most vulnerable to climate stress, natural disasters, and environmental degradation. With women, they are an estimated 80% of those displaced by climate-related disaster and represent 60% of the global population facing chronic hunger due to food insecurity.

Recent UNFPA studies have established the links between climate change, reduced and lost access to resources, and the pressures that result on households to survive. Families affected by climate change often have limited resources to begin with and even less after an acute weather-related disaster.

For those dependent on the environment for nutrition, health and household resources, this pressure results in early marriage or trafficking of girls for the sake of generating a source of income and/or reducing a household burden.

When climate change exacerbates existing inequities or the exclusion of girls – including their protection and access to functional, soft, life and technical skills development – household, community, and national level health and education outcomes are negatively affected; sometimes even for generations.

But what if we could change this harmful dynamic? What if we could effectively link the resilience, optimism, and resourcefulness of adolescent girls to new ways of investing in climate-related mitigation strategies?

Credit: UNICEF

What if we could turn existing environmental threats into “tipping-point” opportunities for better approaches to and investments in adolescent girls’ social and economic development?

With the most to lose from the harmful effects of climate change, girls and women also have the most to gain from climate-friendly development strategies that allow them to be active participants in and key contributors to community-led responses.

Adolescent girls can be the strongest catalysts for behavior and systems change if we understand their existing assets, the spaces they occupy, and the influence – invisible or otherwise – they have within households and communities.

Findings from an econometric study spanning four decades from the 1960s to early 2000s showed that adolescent girls’ rates of enrollment and retention in school significantly reduced weather-related death, injury and displacement at community level.

This is because with every year of education or skills training, adolescent girls’ self-confidence, leadership, communication, life and livelihoods skills increased.

As these more educated and skilled girls enter adulthood, they have greater decision-making power and create demonstrably healthier, safer, and more productive households.

There is a clear opportunity to connect the dots for those who occupy and are best placed to protect the land and its resources, as well as reinforce the health and safety of their households. In rural areas, especially, adolescent girls will become the next generation’s agricultural labor force.

If women worldwide are 40% of the agricultural labor force and responsible for more than half the world’s food production, and if education and skills training are prioritized for them, households will move beyond subsistence level farming to engage more as micro-businesses supporting farm-to-table supply and value chains.

This strengthens women-led engagement in diversifying agricultural approaches, through aquaculture and apiculture, and the connection of these innovations to economic development, as well as better health and nutrition outcomes.

To this end, climate-adaptive food systems can have a virtuous relationship, sustaining local suppliers and reinforcing local food security, and effectively weather-proofing communities by ensuring that everyone – in particular women and girls – has access to the knowledge and skills to save lives and sustain livelihoods.

We can take steps to harness the strength and resilience of adolescent girls everywhere even as we act urgently to mitigate the deleterious effects of climate-risk.

First, we must invest more in secondary education where the highest rates of dropout for girls occurs between lower and upper secondary level. This investment should include building context-relevant climate-smart skills for the resilience of households and communities.

Second, we must support the start-up of environmentally-friendly and climate-adaptive small businesses as part of workforce development and smart-financing strategies inclusive of adolescent girls and young women, especially in rural areas where green jobs can strengthen rural to urban supply chains and overall food security.

And finally, we must build community development plans that include ways young people, in particular adolescent girls, can support conservation and climate-risk reduction efforts as part of civic engagement – which will continue to reduce death, injury and displacement.

Without these forward-thinking investments in adolescent girls as key stakeholders in community development, harmful social and cultural attitudes that pit a woman’s role as a mother or wife against learning and livelihoods (and dismiss her right to own land) will continue, continuing a trend of lost opportunity on the grandest of scales.

Amy West of Education Development Center and Sharon Iwachu, Global G.L.O.W., Girl Advocacy Committee Alumni with Art of a Child in Uganda. EDC and Global G.L.O.W. are active members in the Coalition for Adolescent Girls (CAG), a member-led and driven organization dedicated to supporting, investing in, and improving the lives of adolescent girls.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Women gather at the Punto Violeta, a center where different government agencies and social organisations seek to address the gender-based violence suffered by women in the Padre Mugica neighborhood, or Villa 31, a shantytown in Argentina's capital city. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 4 2022 (IPS)

The Padre Carlos Mugica neighborhood looks like another city within the Argentine capital, which most people usually see from up above as they drive past on the freeway but have never visited. It is a shantytown in the heart of Buenos Aires, of enormous vitality and where women are organizing to confront the various forms of violence that affect them.

“I have a history of gender violence. And what I found here is that many other women have experienced similar situations in their lives,” says Graciela, seated at the table of the weekly Women’s Meeting, in a small locale in the most modern sector of the neighborhood, called Punto Violeta, which has become a reference point for victims of violence."We centralize the care at the Punto Violeta because, although the violence here is no different from that in other parts of the city, many women find it difficult to leave the neighborhood because they don't know how." -- Carolina Ferro

Traditionally known in Buenos Aires as Villa 31 and home to more than 40,000 inhabitants, the neighborhood’s name honors a Catholic priest and activist who worked with poor families, who was killed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

The slum is located on more than 70 hectares of publicly owned railway land just a few minutes from the center of the capital and separated by the train tracks from Recoleta, one of the city’s most upscale neighborhoods. Families started to occupy the area 90 years ago and the shantytown grew as a result of the successive crises that hit the Argentine economy and with the influx of poor immigrants from Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru.

Different governments have tried to eradicate the slum throughout its history, but in recent years the official view of the neighborhood has changed. Today Villa 31 is halfway through a slow and laborious process of urbanization and integration into Buenos Aires that the city government launched in 2015.

Thus, it has become a strange place, which mixes hope for a better future with the social woes of poverty and overcrowding.

There are wide streets with public transport and modern concrete housing blocks where once there was only a total absence of the state. But there are also still many narrow, dark passageways, where precarious brick and sheet metal houses up to four stories high seem on the verge of crumbling on top of each other.

View of one of the passageways in the Padre Mugica neighborhood, a slum located in the heart of Buenos Aires. The process of regularizing the informal settlement and integrating it with the city began in 2015, but it is only halfway done and narrow passageways lined with precarious housing coexist with modern roads and buildings. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The struggle for a better life

Graciela, who became a single mother at 18 and now has six children she has had to raise on her own, says she lived in the western province of Santa Fe and decided to move to Buenos Aires in search of a better life, after an accident at work in which she lost a hand. “In order to get a disability pension, I had to be here,” she explains. That’s how she ended up in Villa 31.

She says that this year her ex-partner tried to kill her, cutting her neck several times with a knife, so today she has a panic button given to her by the police.

She shares the things that happen to her at the Women’s Meeting every Wednesday, a space where collective solutions are sought for complicated lives, marked by economic difficulties, overcrowded housing, interrupted studies, lack of opportunities, families with conflicts and a permanent struggle to get ahead.

“It is a weekly meeting where we invite all the women of the neighborhood and we work on emotional strength as a preventive strategy against violence. Sometimes women start to feel that what they experience at home is normal,” says Carolina Ferro, a psychologist of the Women’s Encounter Program of the Undersecretariat of Public Safety and Order of the Buenos Aires Ministry of Justice and Security.

Ferro explains that the goal is to bolster the self-esteem of the women victims of violence. “Once they are empowered, they can go out to work to become economically independent or go back to school. We help them to be themselves,” she says during the last meeting in September, in which IPS was allowed to participate.

“This is part of a comprehensive care project. We centralize the care at the Punto Violeta because, although the violence here is no different from that in other parts of the city, many women find it difficult to leave the neighborhood because they don’t know how,” she adds.

Graciela, a mother of six children whom she has had to raise on her own, is one of the participants in the Punto Violeta in Padre Mugica, where women come together to find solutions to the violence they have experienced and to empower themselves to improve their lives, those of their families and the community. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

When the psychologist asks the women what has been the greatest achievement in their lives, excited responses emerge. One says, “Raising my children on my own”; another says, “Going back to school as an adult, and graduating”; and another says, “Having stopped working as a house cleaner to open my own little salon where I do therapeutic massage.”

“This is the first time in my life that I have spoken to a psychologist,” says one of the participants in the meeting, who is anguished because her son, whom she dreamed would become a university graduate and professional, dropped out of school. The group coordinator and her fellow participants insist on the need not to place expectations on another person, whose life cannot be controlled, in order to avoid frustration.

Unceasing violence

In 2021, in this South American country of 45 million people, 251 women were killed by gender violence, an average of one murder every 35 hours, according to the National Registry of Femicides, kept by the Supreme Court of Justice since 2015. In 88 percent of the cases, the victim knew her aggressor, and in 39 percent she lived with him. In 62 percent of the cases she was killed by her partner or ex-partner.

The Supreme Court has been conducting the survey since 2015 and the figures have not varied much, with approximately 20 percent of femicides in the city of Buenos Aires committed in shantytowns and slums. In any case, during 2020, the most critical year of the COVID-19 pandemic, calls to emergency numbers increased fivefold.

Aerial view of the Padre Mugica neighborhood, or Villa 31, as many still call it, with downtown Buenos Aires in the background. The 90-year-old informal settlement now straddles a freeway and has more than 40,000 inhabitants, just minutes from the heart of the Argentine capital. CREDIT: City of Buenos Aires

It was precisely during the pandemic that the Punto Violeta was born, as a government response to a longstanding concrete demand in the neighborhood for a women’s center.

“When the pandemic began and mobility restrictions were imposed, it was a very difficult time in the neighborhood, when some local women told us that we should not forget the women victims of violence, who had been locked in their homes with their aggressors,” Bárbara Bonelli, deputy ombudsperson in the Buenos Aires city government and a driving force behind the creation of the center, told IPS.

Punto Violeta is the name given in Argentina and other countries to spaces designed to promote the defense of the rights of women and sexual minorities, in which public agencies work together with social organizations.

The program in Mugica involves several public agencies, which take turns on different days of the week, with the mission of providing a comprehensive approach to the problem of violence.

At the center victims can file a criminal complaint of gender violence with representatives of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, obtain a protection measure or gain access to psychological care or a social worker.

“Punto Violeta was created to respond to a demand that existed in the neighborhood. I would say that the problem of violence against women is no different in poor neighborhoods, but it does need to be addressed at a local level,” says Bonelli.

“Since it is very difficult for them to leave the neighborhood, the state did not reach these women. We hope that the Punto Violeta will contribute to the effective insertion of women from the neighborhood in terms of employment, education, finance, economic and social issues,” she adds.

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Experts say pastoralists are at the edge of climate change adaptability due to perennial prolonged dry spells and occasional drought. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Oct 4 2022 (IPS)

The sight of children begging for water from motorists along the Garissa highway in the northeastern part of Kenya signals that all is not well. Unable to go to school on an empty stomach, drought-affected children wait for good Samaritans along the road, begging for water and food.

Despite very high temperatures, drought-impacted children wait under the scorching sun for left-over food items and drinks from travelers. Animal carcasses and goats on the verge of death from lack of water and pasture can also be seen along the highway. For even in the face of a looming threat to life from a most prolonged dry spell, pastoralists do not consume dying livestock.

The area is sparsely populated, and the highway is far from busy, but the potential danger facing children on the lonely highway pales in comparison to the possibility of starving to death.

Thirteen-year-old Leah Kilonzi paints a dire picture of a severe food and water shortage, “we have nothing to eat when we wake up in the morning or during lunchtime. We have to wait for nighttime to have a small cup of porridge and boiled maize.”

Younger children lie down a few meters from the road, too hungry to cry and hoping silently that the older children will get something.

Garissa is one out of 23 Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) counties ravaged by an ongoing severe drought as three years have gone by without a drop of rainfall. Children, pregnant and lactating women are severely affected by the acute food shortage, and diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, and malaria are on the rise across drought-stricken regions.

Government data shows that the ongoing drought situation is the climax of four consecutive below-average rainy seasons in ASAL regions of this East African nation. As a result, an estimated 4.2 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, according to the Kenya Drought Flash Appeal.

“The most recent data from the government shows that from March to June 2022, at least 942,000 children under the age of five years living in ASAL regions were suffering from malnutrition. More than 134,000 pregnant or lactating women were malnourished and requiring immediate treatment,” Kariuki Muriithi, a food security expert in northeastern Kenya, tells IPS.

“Overall, at least 229,000 children were suffering from severe acute malnutrition as of June 2022. The situation has since escalated, and the burden of malnutrition is heavier.”

The National Drought Management Authority drought update for the month of September 2022 confirmed that the drought situation continued to worsen in twenty 20 of the 23 ASAL counties.

Putting into perspective the degree and magnitude of the humanitarian crisis in the ASAL region, counties such as Mandera have reached critically alarming levels of malnutrition. The prevalence of global acute malnutrition in the County is 34.7 percent, more than double the emergency threshold of 15 percent.

An estimated 89 percent of Kenya’s land area is classified as ASAL or drylands and is home to about 26 percent of Kenya’s population, according to the state department for development of the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands. ASAL regions are dominated by pastoral communities, their lives characterized by prolonged dry spells and occasional drought, heightening levels of destitution and impoverishment.

The ongoing drought is the most severe in four decades, prompting the government to declare a national drought emergency.

David Korir, a senior officer in the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, says across Kenya’s ASAL regions, the number of people classified as being in an emergency drought situation is at least 785,000, or five percent of all people affected by the drought. At least 2.8 million people, or 18 percent, are classified as being in crisis.

He says nine out of all 23 ASAL counties, including Garissa and Mandera, have over 40 percent of their population classified as being in crisis or worse.

Government projections show that the food security situation is likely to worsen between October and December 2022. As such, at least 3.1 million people are likely to be classified as being in crisis, and another 1.2 million in an emergency.

“Of particular concern is the fact that pastoralists have been pushed to the edge of climate change adaptability. Across ASAL regions, we have about 13 million pastoralists and agro-pastoralists,” he tells IPS.

Pastoralists sustain domestic, regional, and international livestock markets but with more than 1.5 million livestock dead thus far and the cost of surviving livestock declining by up to 40 percent, their livelihoods now hang in the balance.

“Levels of vulnerabilities from prolonged dry spells and droughts are so high that an increasing number of pastoralists can no longer cope with the deepening famine,” he expounds.

Their adaptive capacities are further compromised by perpetual political and socio-economic marginalization.

Faced with rising temperatures, dry wells, and an unyielding sky, Korir speaks of a precarious pastoral economy. He says pastoralists are unable to re-stock animals lost to drought or to explore alternative feeding models such as harvested fodder or commercial feed because natural pasture is no longer an option.

Similarly, they are unable to keep livestock and, particularly, camels, which are more drought resistant because camels are too expensive. A young camel calf that has just been born goes for around $500 to $600, pastoralist Fred Naeku tells IPS.

“Pastoralists have coped with drought by moving from place to place in search of pasture and returning to their home areas when drought situation improves. This is no longer a viable option because the entire horn of Africa is affected, and pastoralists cannot run to neighboring Ethiopia or Somalia for relief,” Korir observes.

“We are increasingly seeing pastoralists with herds of cattle within the City of Nairobi. They are desperate, stranded, and in dire need of a solution and are hopeful that their presence inside one of Africa’s leading cities will provoke their leaders into offering much-needed relief in form of sustainable coping mechanisms.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Some human coronaviruses cause seasonal colds or other mild symptoms. Others can be severe and even fatal. Credit: Unsplash

By External Source
BELLVILLE, South Africa, Oct 4 2022 (IPS)

It’s hard to imagine a time when “coronavirus” wasn’t a household word. But for a long time, this family of viruses had merited very little attention. Believed to be ubiquitous among animals and avian species, the first coronavirus to infect and cause disease in humans was only isolated and identified in the 1960s.

Seven human coronaviruses have been identified since then.

Most cause only relatively minor health concerns: the common cold and seasonal respiratory infections that come around every year. But the 2003 outbreak in China and other parts of Asia of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), caused by SARS-CoV (now renamed as SARS-CoV-1), propelled the virus onto the global stage. Coronaviruses gained further infamy when, in 2012, cases of the much more severe Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) were identified in Saudi Arabia.

Both outbreaks were relatively contained. Not surprisingly, the concern over coronavirus diseases largely faded from the minds of ordinary people. The same was true for virologists, who focused their time and funding on more pressing viruses. Then in late 2019 came SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19.

Fortunately, some researchers had retained an interest in coronaviruses. After all, viruses can mutate and reappear, causing new outbreaks. One such cohort, ourselves among them, works at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. Our laboratory had, among other things, been studying some of the structural proteins that are the building blocks of coronaviruses. These proteins – named spike, nucleocapsid, membrane, and envelope proteins – have different roles, but are essential to how coronaviruses reproduce, spread and cause disease.

In our most recent paper, we examined what possibly sets the human coronaviruses that cause SARS, MERS and COVID-19 apart from the other human coronaviruses that cause milder diseases like seasonal colds. The answer, we argue, lies with the envelope protein.

 

Shedding light on the E protein

The envelope protein is possibly the most enigmatic and least-studied in the coronavirus-suite, owing to its small size and the difficulty of studying it in laboratory settings. In May 2019, two of us published a review paper on what was known about the envelope protein at the time.

The paper has racked up nearly 2,000 citations, most coming after the outbreak of COVID-19 – a testament less to our foresight than to the critical and previously understated role the envelope protein plays in human coronaviruses.

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, based on what we had learnt from the SARS and MERS outbreaks, we were convinced that this protein – once written off as a “minor component” of the virus – was key to the development of disease. It is critical, for instance, in the final assembly of the virus, forming the envelope or wrapping that covers it when all its constituent components come together.

It also plays a role in the virus’s budding, when it exits from the host cell; and in the process known as pathogenesis, or the development and progression of the infection.

And it may hold a clue to either the severity or relative mildness of the disease.

Our ongoing research is beginning to suggest that the structure of the envelope protein may determine the severity of a coronavirus disease, or the difference between a blocked nose on the one hand, and collapsed lungs on the other.

 

The sting in the protein’s “tail”

This led us to our most recent paper. We collaborated with structural bioinformatics expert Ruben Cloete, of the South African National Bioinformatics Institute at the University of the Western Cape, to develop full-length, 3D models of the envelope proteins of five human coronaviruses: SARS-CoV-1 and -2, and MERS-CoV (responsible for the severe SARS, COVID-19 and MERS diseases); and HCoV-229E and HCoV-NL63, responsible for milder diseases. For this work, we relied on a modelling program known as MODELLER, allowing us to explore the proteins in some detail.

 

3D models of the envelope (E) protein for the human coronaviruses that cause SARS (SARS-CoV-1), COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2), MERS (MERS-CoV), and the more seasonal common colds (HCoV-229E and HCoV-NL63). Authors supplied

 

We then used a web server, HADDOCK2.4, to simulate how the envelope protein interacts with the human PALS-1 protein – an interaction already shown to be critical with SARS-CoV-1. Each of the envelope proteins could bind to the PALS-1 protein, but the coronaviruses causing SARS, MERS and COVID-19 appeared to bind more stably to PALS-1.

The answers, we believe, may lie in the conformation or shape of what’s known as the PDZ-binding motif, or PBM, which sits at the tail-end of the envelope protein. This PBM – essentially a distinctive sequence on a protein – acts like a one-of-a-kind key to a very specific lock (known as the PDZ domain) on a host cell protein. This ‘key’ allows the viral protein to interact with the host protein, making the disease worse.

We found that the more flexible, extended coil of the PBM of the coronaviruses behind SARS, MERS and COVID-19 viruses may well be what differentiates them from the more rigid PBM of the coronaviruses that cause milder diseases.

 

Inner workings

It is yet too early to draw definitive conclusions, as these findings will have to be confirmed with more studies – in the laboratory and in living organisms.

But it does shine some light on the inner workings of these coronaviruses and the still-enigmatic envelope protein. In so doing it could offer opportunities for the development of essential life-saving treatments and vaccines.

Dewald Schoeman, PhD Candidate, Molecular Biology and Virology, University of the Western Cape; Burtram C. Fielding, Dean Faculty of Natural Sciences and Professor, University of the Western Cape, and Ruben Cloete, Lecturer in Bioinformatics, University of the Western Cape

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.