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Economic Ghosts Block Post-Lockdown Recovery

Tue, 06/09/2020 - 05:31

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 9 2020 (IPS)

As governments the world over struggle to revive their economies after the debilitating lockdowns they imposed following their failure to undertake adequate precautionary containment measures to curb Covid-19 contagion, neoliberal naysayers are already warning against needed deficit financing for relief and recovery.

Deficit financing options
The range of deficit financing options has changed little since first legitimized by Roosevelt and Keynes in the 1930s and used extensively to finance wartime government spending.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

First, debt financing has typically involved government borrowing. More recent understandings of sovereign debt stress the implications of the source of borrowing, domestic or external, e.g., Japan’s total government debt now greatly exceeds double its annual national income, but this is not considered problematic as most of it is domestically held by Japanese.

Second, price controls, general or selective, can cut both ways, and may require subsidies. Price controls on extracted natural resources can also enable governments to capture resource rents to augment revenue.

Third, the widespread use of unconventional monetary measures since the 2008 global financial crisis has forced economists to reconsider earlier monetarist articles of faith about deficit financing by ‘taxing’ everyone via inflation, also giving an unexpected boost to modern monetary theory.

Exchange rate policy
Finally, an overvalued exchange rate has been favoured by elites who travel and purchase abroad wanting strong currencies, which they often portray as cause for national pride. After all, governments collect taxes in domestic currency, but pay for international debt and imports with foreign exchange.

However, a strong exchange rate only provides a temporary solution, worsening balance of payments’ difficulties in the longer term, favouring consumers over producers, and importers over exporters, besides encouraging consumption at the expense of savings. Increasing imports for consumption either deplete foreign exchange reserves or require external borrowing.

Overvalued exchange rates’ potential for fighting inflation is risky as balance of payments deficits cannot be sustained indefinitely. Exchange rate-based currency board and stabilization arrangements in transition and developing economies are similarly problematic. Economies maintaining overvalued exchange rates have often later experienced severe currency crises.

Quasi-nationalist development ideologies and weak elite opposition enabled many East Asian economies to use undervalued exchange rates to discourage imports and promote exports, with effective protection for import-substituting industries conditional on successful exports.

Macroeconomic populism?
Deficit spending supposedly responded to ‘populist’ demands by ‘distributional coalitions’ of interest groups demanding higher wages, cheap housing, public healthcare and free schooling. Undoubtedly, their political support was sought by regimes, elected or otherwise, who were typically unwilling or unable to collect enough revenue to sustain such expenditure.

In recent decades, macroeconomic populism has become a catch-all explanation for deficit financing, ostensibly to finance redistributive government spending, regardless of actual expenditure patterns. But rather than populist redistribution, deficit spending was often for ‘security’ (i.e., the military and police) or physical infrastructure, rather than social expenditure, or corruption.

The narrative implies that regimes could not resist demands for redistribution, presumably the price of retaining political authority and influence. Undoubtedly, government capacities to directly tax incomes and assets have been constrained, with the influential generally better able to evade taxes.

Sovereign debt and fiscal crises, due to borrowing to spend beyond budgetary means, were rarely due to ‘excessive’ populist demands. The actual reasons for budgetary deficits were often multiple as well as historically and politically specific, rather than simply due to regimes succumbing to redistributive claims.

US presidential endorsement of Arthur Laffer’s ‘supply side’ economics’ claim of greater growth due to more investments with lower taxes on the rich fuelled the counter-revolution against progressive taxation. Nevertheless, ‘macroeconomic populism’ became the default explanation for all manner of deficit financing, including ‘soft budget constraints’ in ‘communist’ ‘command economies’.

Latin American populist fables
Although there have been few truly ‘populist’ regimes in Latin America, most famously Peronist Argentina, ‘macroeconomic populism’ has become a catch-all term, used to explain why governments increase spending and run budgetary deficits.

Undoubtedly, many Latin American regimes pursued import-substituting industrialization using high tariffs to protect ‘infant industries’ from the 1930s. But high import tariffs augmented, rather than diminished government revenues, in contrast to the tax breaks and subsidies for export growth.

Although precipitated by then US Federal Reserve Bank chairman Paul Volcker raising bank interest rates from 1980 to kill inflation, the Latin American debt crises from 1982 were again misleadingly primarily attributed to preceding populist macroeconomic policies.

Similarly, the significant improvements in popular wellbeing earlier this century in Brazil under the PT, Uruguay under the Frente Amplio, Ecuador under Correa and Bolivia under Morales primarily involved massive employment generation and secondarily, ‘productive’ social protection, rather than the unsustainable transfers depicted by macroeconomic populism.

Neoliberal ghosts return
Macroeconomic populism thus became the default formulaic Washington Consensus ‘explanation’ for deficit financing from the 1980s to explain away all manner of fiscal deficits, and to justify policies imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions, precipitating the region’s ‘lost decade’.

The International Monetary Fund required short-term macroeconomic (price) stabilization policies to counter often runaway inflation. The World Bank’s typically medium-term ‘neoliberal’ structural adjustment policies sought to liberalize not only goods and services markets, but also those for finance, labour and social services, previously provided by governments and state enterprises.

Reviving ideological ghosts from the past, neoliberal commentators are once again warning against deficit financing. Instead of recognizing the need for consistently counter-cyclical fiscal policies over the duration of business cycles, they dogmatically insist on minimal annual budget shortfalls in the short-term, and on balancing budgets by next year, regardless of the recession’s nature and duration.

The stagnation of the last decade was due to the failure to reform adequately after the global financial crisis. Covid-19 recessions are undoubtedly different from recent financial crises, and will need bolder monetary, supply-side and industrial policy measures to catalyse and sustain economic relief, recovery and restructuring measures to address previous maladies and the post-lockdown malaise.

The crisis presents us with an opportunity to do better, to move forward. There is much to learn and do to progress, including abandoning the very modes of thinking which have led to the mess we are in. Exorcising ghosts from the past will be imperative.

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Categories: Africa

We Need to Slow down and Reconnect with Our Ocean for the Future of the Planet

Mon, 06/08/2020 - 18:00

By Stuart Minchin
Jun 8 2020 (IPS)

COVID19 has brought the world to a halt. The devastating impact of the global pandemic on people’s lives and the world’s economy is a jarring and historic turning point for all of us but it is also an opportunity to re-think many of our practices.

As we mark World Oceans Day, the current global slowdown may be the reset our Ocean needs and the Pacific region is asking the world to reflect on our past to inform innovation for our future.

COVID has disrupted the global transport sector massively, and the increasing reliance on global shipping as flights are grounded presents both challenges and opportunities for the safety and livelihoods of the Pacific region.

More than 16,000 Pacific people work in the Maritime sector, many of whom remain stranded in foreign countries or on vessels as a result of COVID19. Across the Pacific, local restrictions have severely curtailed access to supplies like fuel for local fishing boats, bringing to the fore the issue of food security and the need for longer term, sustainable solutions.

As we mark World Oceans Day this year, we should challenge ourselves to find the opportunities inherent in this crisis to improve our ocean management and stewardship. This can only be accomplished by shifting the status quo and the current global slowdown may be just the reset our Ocean needs.

Our Blue Pacific region is 98 per cent ocean and Pacific Islanders are custodians of 20 per cent of the world’s exclusive economic zones with the healthiest tuna stocks globally. This is not by coincidence, as thousands of years of wise and careful stewardship has contributed to the Pacific’s current status as one of the healthiest regions of our global ocean. The world has much to learn from the traditional knowledge developed over time in the Pacific.

Reef fish are a critical protein for many Pacific communities and populations. Fish such as parrotfish, snappers and emperors shown here for sale in Suva markets in Fiji.

As we grapple with the slow degradation of our oceans globally, and recognise the critical importance the ocean plays in driving global weather patterns, addressing climate change and supplying food and protein to the world’s population, we should reflect on how combining traditional knowledge and science can lead us to find effective solutions.

Now more than ever, we need to harness the opportunities within our ocean, not only for economic benefit, but for the sustainable future of our Blue Continent.

Innovation for Sustainable & Safe Maritime Transport

The majority of islands across the Pacific are remote, accessible only by ships or boats. As I write, 75 per cent of all the bulk fuel imported across the Pacific is used for either road or maritime transport. Finding effective ways to transition from the reliance on fossil fuels to cleaner and more effective technology is critical for the development of the region’s blue economy. There are innovative approaches, both in terms of technologies and using aspects of traditional practices, which are already being implemented by countries and partners working towards the protection of our ocean.

In Vanuatu for example, a cargo ferry was fitted with a solar marine system last year (2019). The instalment of this system is now projected to save the ship operator AU$62,000 per year in fuel costs, and results in a 32 per cent reduction in emissions at anchorage. The year before, the Solomon Islands transitioned lighting systems through a ‘Green Ports’ initiative saving the Solomon Islands Ports Authority AU$180,000 annually with a 160-tonne reduction in emissions and a 13% reduction on overall energy consumption. This example increased the safety of ships docking at night, led to the reduction of operational costs and resulted in increased productivity with a significant reduction in carbon emissions and reliance on fossil fuel.

Camakau or outrigger traditional canoe in Moturiki thanks to a partnership with the Uto Ni Yalo Trust.

In Fiji, traditional boatbuilding is making a resurgence as some communities are discovering the benefits of wind-powered canoes over outboard engines for inter-island transport over short distances. Due to COVID19 the communities of Moturiki relied on wind-powered transport to provide food and to access the local health centre as they were unable to access fuel supplies during the lockdown period.

The agreement by the governments of Fiji, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu to be part of the Pacific Blue Shipping Partnership should be commended. They are setting themselves a target of a 40 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, and full decarbonisation by 2050.

At SPC, our Pacific Community Centre for Ocean Science (PCCOS) is one arm of the broader effort driving evidence and science-based understanding of our ocean. A better understanding informs targeted and effective decision-making around our oceans and all that lies within it. It is an opportunity to ensure that the action we take contributes directly to the low carbon transition that is so vital for the health of our ocean, our climate and a new, sustainable relationship between humankind and the natural world.

This Oceans Day is a time for us to reflect on the mix of science, innovation and traditional practices we need for stewardship of the Ocean we want. The Pacific region is not just made up of small islands, rather we are large ocean states and we have much to contribute to the global efforts for sustainable management of our Oceans.

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Excerpt:

Stuart Minchin, is Director-General Pacific Community (SPC)

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Categories: Africa

2nd World Food Safety Day

Mon, 06/08/2020 - 16:54

By Dr Renata Clarke
ROME, Jun 8 2020 (IPS)

Few things are as natural and as necessary as eating food. However, if food producers, food processors, food handlers and consumers do not follow good food safety practices, food can become contaminated and rather than nourishing us and bringing us pleasure it can make us sick or even kill us.

According to World Health Organization (WHO) Statistics, the public health burden of unsafe food is very high: in 2015 they estimated that over 600 million people fall ill and 420 000 die every year from foodborne diseases. It was at the launching of the WHO 2015 Report on the Burden of Foodborne disease that Awilo Ochieng Pernet, the then Chairperson of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the global body responsible for developing food safety and food quality standards, made a call for the establishment of a World Food Safety Day (WFSD). She recognized the need for broader ownership of food safety responsibilities and a regular reminder throughout society that “food safety is everyone’s business”. That call was heeded and here we are…

This year, the second annual celebration of WFSD, in the midst of the COVID, the message of WFSD takes on a particular resonance in the Caribbean.

Firstly, the vulnerability of several Caribbean countries to disruptions in global supply chains has led to re-energized calls for attention to resilient food systems and a regional approach to food security. We will not have efficient regional trade of food if countries do not have confidence in the each other’s ability to reliably produce and market food safely. No government wants to be bring sub-standard food into its country. Facilitating intra-regional trade requires that CARICOM countries have transparent, robust and science-based systems of food control. There is considerable work that Caribbean countries still need to do to achieve this: it requires careful planning and appropriate investment. Many countries have weak legal frameworks for assuring food safety, weak and poorly coordinated institutions and under-equipped food safety laboratories. These are the basic elements of national food safety systems.

Several CARICOM countries have launched COVID-19 response and recovery plans to mitigate impacts on food security and agriculture. These plans involve the introduction of new techniques and technologies that enable more competitive and sustainable production systems. Innovations in food production necessarily requires vigilance and proactivity in terms of identifying new patterns of food safety risk and controlling them to ensure that the public’s health is protected. This celebration of WFSD should serve as an instigation for a reflection on the adequacy of current food safety monitoring and surveillance.

Finally, a word about markets. For this year’s WFSD, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and WHO, have put a focus on the theme “Safe food in markets”. I would like to state out front, that there have been no cases of COVID-19 being transmitted by food. It is not a foodborne disease. However, in the context of COVID-19, food businesses and food markets need to re-inforce hygiene practices and enable safe physical distances during all operations. Traditional markets and farmers markets play an important social function both in terms of providing food and in terms of providing income. With loss of jobs in the tourism and service sectors, in some Caribbean countries we have seen upsurge in street vending of food. Very often the management and the infrastructure of the markets do not allow adequate bio-safety and food safety. Repeated incidents of the emergence of zoonotic diseases (caused by germs spread between humans and animals) that are linked to poor sanitation and hygiene in markets demonstrate clearly that we cannot be complacent about hygiene management in markets. Another very visible change in food marketing in the Caribbean during the COVID-19 Pandemic has been the expansion of various forms of on-line food sales. E-commerce has long been considered a potential growth area, particularly in many developing countries. However, it is important for food safety regulators to consider whether legislative frameworks need to be updated to ensure that food chain actors involved in e-commerce have the same responsibilities for food safety as do food businesses operating ”traditionally”.

Dynamism of food systems is going to increase. Caribbean countries must invest in their capacities for effective food control as an essential contribution to building resilience in effort to reduce food insecurity.

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Excerpt:

Dr Renata Clarke is Sub-regional Coordinator Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

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Categories: Africa

How a Global Ocean Treaty Could Protect Biodiversity in the High Seas

Mon, 06/08/2020 - 13:20

A trawler in Johnstone Strait, BC, Canada. Human activities such as pollution, overfishing, mining, geo-engineering and climate change have made an international agreement to protect the high seas more critical than ever. Credit: Winky/cc by 2.0

By External Source
Jun 8 2020 (IPS)

Oceans cover 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface. But, because many of us spend most of our lives on land, the 362 million square kilometres of blue out there aren’t always top of mind.

While vast, oceans are not empty. They are teeming with life and connected to society through history and culture, shipping and economic activity, geopolitics and recreation.

But oceans — along with coastal people and marine species — are vulnerable, and good ocean governance is critical to protect these expanses from pollution, overfishing and climate change, to name just some of the threats.

The laws, institutions and regulations in place for the oceans are a multi-layered patchwork and always a work in progress.

Common heritage of humankind

Some characterize oceans as the “common heritage of humankind.” As such, the United Nations plays a critical role in ocean governance, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is a key international agreement. The agreement grants coastal and island states authority over swaths of ocean extending 200 nautical miles (360 kilometres) from the shore. These are called exclusive economic zones (EEZ).

EEZs are domestic spaces. Countries enshrine law and delegate authority to state agencies that lead monitoring, management and enforcement in these zones.

Indigenous peoples also assert jurisdictional authority and coastal peoples hold critical insight about coastal and marine ecosystems. Governance is improved when state agencies share power and collaborate.

For example, during the Newfoundland cod collapse, inshore fishermen had local ecological knowledge about changing cod stock dynamics that might have helped avoid the disaster.

A turtle swims in a Marine Protected Area. Credit: Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Areas beyond national jurisdiction

A vast portion of the ocean lies beyond EEZs: 64 per cent by area and 95 per cent by volume. These regions are often referred to as the high seas. The high seas are important for international trade, fishing fleets, undersea telecommunications cables and are of commercial interest to mining companies. The high seas also host a wide array of ecosystems and species. Many of these are understudied or altogether unrecorded.

UN agreements identify high seas using a technical term “areas beyond national jurisdiction” that refers to the water column. The sea floor is identified separately and called “the area.” UNCLOS and other pieces of international law regulate activity in these spaces and are responsible for ensuring that no single country or company dominates or benefits unfairly.

Other multilateral, sector-based arrangements manage particularly complex resources. For example, regional fisheries management organizations bring nation states together to collaborate on monitoring and managing fish stocks, like tuna, that have large ranges and cross multiple borders and boundaries.

The biodiversity governance gap

Currently, international law does not meaningfully address biodiversity monitoring and conservation in the high seas. This “biodiversity governance gap” has been of concern for the past two decades.

Without a binding mechanism under international law, countries are not obligated to co-operate on developing and implementing conservation measures in the high seas. In addition, monitoring the impacts of various economic activities, such as fishing and mining, on biodiversity is piecemeal and inadequate. Marine species or even entire ecosystems could be lost before we have had a chance to identify and understand them.

On Dec. 24, 2017, the UN General Assembly voted to convene a multi-year process to develop a treaty on “the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction.”

Three of the scheduled negotiation sessions have taken place, while the fourth and final one, scheduled for March 2020, was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Some progress has been made. Notably, the draft treaty addresses four key areas: marine genetic resources; area-based management tools, including marine protected areas; environmental impact assessments and capacity building and the transfer of marine technology.

Yet, many disagreements remain.

For example, countries diverge on the extent to which governance should prioritize the principle of oceans as the “common heritage of humankind.” Very pragmatic questions underlie this tension: should marine genetic sequences be commercialized? If so, how would this work and will it be possible to agree on a way to share benefits fairly? These are critical and how they are addressed will determine if persistent inequities between the Global North and Global South are lessened or exacerbated.

Another challenge relates to marine protected areas (MPAs), especially how they are defined and implemented. What levels of protection are needed for an area to count as an MPA? How much should the treaty predetermine processes used to establish new MPAs and how will MPA rules be enforced?

Credit: Christopher Pala/IPS

COVID-19: Negotiations cut adrift?

Has postponing the final round of negotiations cut high seas biodiversity negotiations adrift? A European research team is surveying participants and experts to learn what impact the disruption may have. However, it is unlikely that the treaty will fall completely by the wayside. Delegates and negotiators may well continue to informally discuss options with one another and refine positions with an eye towards reaching consensus when rescheduling is possible.

A ratified treaty covering biodiversity in the high seas would be an exciting layer to add to the ocean governance patchwork.

But, delegates and negotiators always have to make concessions during talks, and disagreements often persist after the treaty has been signed. Implementation can be as challenging and contentious as negotiation itself. Various human dimensions and economic challenges will also continue to need attention, including human trafficking, perverse fishing subsidies and our collective responsibility to small island states that may be submerged as sea levels rise.

These challenges point to other international forums — the World Trade Organization, International Labour Organization and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change — and serve to remind us of the myriad ways that we are all connected to, and by, oceans.

Jennifer Silver, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Guelph; Leslie Acton, Assistant Professor, The University of Southern Mississippi; Lisa Campbell, Professor of Marine Affairs and Policy, Duke University, and Noella Gray, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Guelph

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

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Categories: Africa

COVID 19 – Conspiracy or Apocalypse? – Part II

Mon, 06/08/2020 - 10:38

By Daud Khan and Leila Yasmine Khan
AMSTERDAM/ROME, Jun 8 2020 (IPS)

As the COVID-19 virus spread rapidly around the globe, so did various theories about what caused the pandemic. According to the standard scientific theory, the virus originated in bats; crossed over to humans, probably via another intermediate host; and then spread rapidly across the globe.

While the mainstream scientific theory sufficed for some, a large number of people saw the pandemic as the work of cold-hearted military or industrial strategists. An equally large number of people saw it as some kind of divine or natural retribution for an increasingly recalcrinant human race. It’s interesting to look at these various alternative theories and to speculate why they have such a strong hold among the public.

In the first of this two part article we looked at the main conspiracy theories – the CIA, the Chinese, Big Pharma, Big Finance, Bill Gates. We suggested that a major factor underlying the popularity of conspiracy theories were primordial fears – fear of illness, of death but, above all, of the unknown.

Given the extent of this fear, which was fanned by the mainstream and social media, many people felt reassured having someone to blame. It meant that someone was in control; that there was a plan; and that once the pandemic had served its purpose, those in control would bring it to an end.

It may take a few cycles while the virus retreats, mutates and returns, but in few years or at most in a decade, we humans will be extinct and the planet will flourish again. The Gaia theory is well captured by some beautiful videos on social media showing how plants and animals are taking over urban areas

In this second part, we turn to look at a second set of theories that we call the apocalyptic theories. Those who subscribe to these theories see the COVID-19 outbreak as the revenge of God or nature, or both, against the arrogance of humans.

The most radical of these theories is that Gaia – the primordial mother earth of Greek mythology and the self-equilibrating super organism, postulated by James Lovelock in his seminal book – is rebelling against humans.

Rebelling against the pollution and the poisoning of soils, waters and the air; against the plundering of forests and minerals; and against the tens of thousands of aircrafts buzzing around her day and night, and the hundreds of millions of cars constantly crawling all over her. According to this theory, the virus is Gaia’s revenge and marks the end of the age of humans.

Other apocalyptic theorists feel that the pandemic is not a punishment from an ephemeral mother goddess. But rather it is a punishment from an angry and vengeful deity who is seeing his divine project going off track. Mankind is progressively turning away from religion, from morals and traditions, and from family values.

The pandemic is God’s admonition to us to return to the righteous path. And, for this reason, it has focused more on the godless and materialistic west, where among other misdeeds, old people are sent to nursing homes rather than being kept in the family. In these theories, humankind may survive, but in order to do so, they must rediscover their moral compass and return to righteous way of life – whatever that means.

For those who subscribe to these theories, it is anathema to suggest social distancing and the closing of places of worship. In order for humans to survive, we must do exactly the opposite – gather together, preferably in temples, mosques and churches to seeking collective forgiveness from an angry god. This is despite the fact that mainstream religious leaders, from the Pope to the Grand Mufti of Al-Azhar, have not said a word about Divine Will playing any role in the pandemic.

A more modest version of apocalyptic theories is that humans have overstepped a few boundaries and all we need to do is make some tweaks to our lifestyle to get back on track. One such theory relates to the waves emanating from the 5G telephone systems.

Proponents suggest that these waves facilitate the spread of the virus while also weakening human immune systems. The fact that Wuhan, where the virus originated, is one of the places with the highest densities of 5G networks, apparently provides clear proof of the link between COVID and telephone waves. So all we need to do is take a step back and decommission all the 5G towers. And since the telecom companies will not do this, activists in some countries have taken it on themselves to set them alight.

So why are apocalyptic theories, even the most bizarre ones, so common? If primordial fear drives conspiracy theorists, what drives the apocalyptic theorists? In our view it is collective guilt. We have been warned, and warned again, and warned yet again about continued misuse of resources and lack of attention to planetary health.

We have been admonished time and time again about superfluous consumption, about waste of food and other essentials, and of the over use of fossil fuels and plastics. We all know that our lifestyle is unsustainable and that that we are causing irreversible climate change. But despite this knowledge, and despite thousands of words written, documentaries screened, learned scientific conferences convened, and hours of speeches by political leaders, we have failed to take the clear and drastic actions needed to make our lifestyles more sustainable. Knowing that we have been collectively misbehaving, it is almost a logical conclusion that a global disaster is a consequence of our bad actions.

Conspiracy and apocalyptic theories are widespread. And if they are related to fear and guilt, then such fear and guilt must also perforce be widespread. Is this a cause for concern? Very much so. At an individual level, negative thoughts have clear negative effects on our mental and physical wellbeing.

Similarly, collective negative sentiments have quick and direct effect on our collective wellbeing and actions. Conspiracy theories or apocalyptic views of the world create anxiety, fear and depression among millions of people and cause immense harm and pain. More worryingly, this fear, anxiety and depression does not seem to go down as the pandemic abates. It seems it’s here to stay and poison our life for several years, if not decades.

Equally worrying is that there are plenty of local situations where such fears and worries can be easily manipulated as is happening in the USA, where President Trump continues to stroke these fears and uses this to apportion blame; or in India, where Prime Minister Modi is blaming Muslims for deliberately spreading the virus to damage the Hindu nation.

Daud Khan is a former United Nations official who lives between Italy and Pakistan. He holds degrees in Economics from the London School of Economics and Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s degrees in Philosophy and in Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric from the University of Amsterdam, as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre).

COVID 19 – Conspiracy or Apocalypse? – Part I

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Categories: Africa

Zimbabwe and US Diplomacy – this Time the Fight is About George Floyd

Mon, 06/08/2020 - 10:37

Zekiya Louis (R) and Manuela Ramirez (L) handing out free water to protesters in Times Square, New York during a protest over the death of George Floyd. Credit: James Reinl/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, ZImbabwe, Jun 8 2020 (IPS)

“As tall as he is, if he continues to do that I will kick him out of the country,” thundered Zimbabwe’s former President Robert Mugabe in 2008, his anger aimed at the then United States ambassador James McGee after the diplomat questioned the results of Zimbabwe’s 2008 general elections.

It was not the first time the late president had threatened a U.S. diplomat. In 2005, Mugabe had threatened to throw out then U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell, telling him “he could go to hell” after Washington’s top man in Harare had criticised the Mugabe administration.

But now, with a new president and administration at the helm, it appears as if the long-running frosty relations between the countries continues.

The recent diplomatic spat between Zimbabwe and the U.S. began after a senior U.S. official accused the southern African country of fomenting unrests across America in the wake of the killing of an unarmed African American man, George Floyd, on May 25.

Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes. His death resulted in nationwide protests across the U.S. and a nationwide movement against police violence and racism. People across the world have joined in solidarity to the #BlackLivesMatter protests.

Last week, the Zimbabwean government summoned the U.S. ambassador Brian Nichols to “discuss” comments made by the Trump administration’s national security advisor Robert O’Brien that described Zimbabwe as a “foreign adversary.”

While the current administration under President Emmerson Mnangagwa has shied away from Mugabe’s bellicose tone, the country’s foreign affairs minister Sibusiso Moyo said in a statement released after his meeting with Nichols that comments made by O’Brien were “false and deeply damaging to deeply damaging to a relationship already complicated due to years of prescriptive megaphone diplomacy and punitive economic sanctions”.

In 2003 the U.S. first imposed travel and financial restrictions on Mugabe, his inner circle and various state companies linked to human rights abuses. They were extended for another year in March.

Moyo added that Zimbabwe had taken note of “the measures deployed by the U.S. authorities to deal with the challenges currently confronting them. At the same time, we recall the harsh U.S. criticism and condemnation of our own response to multiple instances of illegal, violent civil unrest”.

These comments also came days after the U.S. and the European Union had released a joint statement criticising a spate of human rights violations in Zimbabwe where members of the police and the military were accused of assaulting and kidnapping citizens.

However, analysts note that the frosty diplomatic relations between the two countries have come a long way, and it will take time to restore mutual trust and respect.

“Even in the Obama Administration, Zimbabwe was an ‘easy hit’. There were far more authoritarian regimes than Robert Mugabe’s but, with the ending of Apartheid, Zimbabwe in its land nationalisations presented itself as a ‘black/white’ issue, an Apartheid in reverse. So it became an easy country to criticise because what were complex issues could be presented so starkly and simply,” Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told IPS.

“Two of America’s recent ambassadors, Johnnie Carson and, currently, Brian Nichols, are black – so there are presentational issues in being too critical. In Zambia, the ‘offending’ U.S. Ambassador who was white was recalled at the demand of the Zambian Government,” Chan told IPS by email.

Despite these concerns and ongoing rift with the U.S. and EU, the Zimbabwean government has turned to public relations lobbyists to reboot its battered imagine.

“The Zimbabwe regime is propped up by human rights abuses, by repression, by silencing the masses, this is why they continue with abuses while hoping that propaganda and public relations will clean their soiled image internationally,” Dewa Mavhinga, Human Rights Watch’s southern Africa director, told IPS.

“As a result, the Zimbabwe government spends huge amounts paying PR companies in Washington DC in the hope that those companies will help with image issues, but the truth is simply that the Zimbabwe government must stop abuses and start respecting human rights. No-one in the international community will respect a country that allows abductions, torture and rampant rape of women,” Dewa told IPS.

Government spokesperson Nick Mangwana would later tell local media that Zimbabwe was not seeking to be enemies with the U.S., something Chan, the international politics professor, said Zimbabwe cannot afford.

“Zimbabwe desperately needs to retain as good a set of relations as possible with the U.S. as part of the West. The country is basically bankrupt. It almost begs for help. Even in moments of argument, it cannot afford to alienate a country like the U.S.,” Chan said.

While Zimbabwe has in the past threatened to expel “meddlesome” U.S. ambassadors, the current government has resisted the temptation.

“Removing an ambassador would be a major diplomatic step. If the Zimbabwean government were to remove him (ambassador Nichols), the U.S. would likely react by suspending, temporarily at least, Zimbabwean diplomats in the U.S. or reduce its diplomatic presence in Zimbabwean until the government made some meaningful progress on political and economic reforms,” Nathan Hayes, an analyst with the United Kingdom-based Economist Intelligence Unit, told IPS.

“Ultimately, it would not be a game Zimbabwe would win,” he said.

After he was summoned by Zimbabwe’s foreign affairs minister, U.S. ambassador Nichols issued his own statement, looking beyond the ongoing row which served as a reminder of the U.S. continuing humanitarian support of Zimbabwe.

“The American people’s unwavering commitment to the welfare of Zimbabwe’s people has kept us the largest assistance donor,” Nichols said.

In January this year, the U.S. reported that it had provided $318 million to Zimbabwe in 2019, adding “notwithstanding ongoing anti-democratic and repressive practices by the Government of Zimbabwe which continue to affect the bilateral relationship, the United States remains the ‎largest provider of health and humanitarian assistance”.

According to the U.S. Agency for International Aid (USAID), the U.S. has provided “more than $3.2 billion in development assistance to Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980”.

“Zimbabwe must be careful about biting the hand that feeds it,” Piers Pigou, Crisis Group’s Senior Consultant for Southern Africa, told IPS.

“The colourful posturing and allegations from the government that are levelled at successive U.S. Ambassadors, invariably reflect a clumsy ideological posturing that seeks to avoid an empirically rooted engagement on the substantive issues of contestation,” Pigou told IPS.

“Zimbabwe’s credibility as a commentator and protector of human rights will only develop once it puts in place, develops and invests in the institutional capacity, competencies and independence of its democracy supporting institutions and builds an identifiable culture of accountability,” he said.

As anger against the U.S. swelled across the globe in condemnation of Floyd’s death, in Zimbabwe ruling Zanu PF supporters had planned to hold a demonstration on Jun. 4 outside the U.S. embassy in Harare in what could have done nothing to promote entente between the two countries.

Police denied the ruling party supporters permission to stage the protest, citing COVID-19 restrictions.

“The U.S. and Zimbabwe have open antagonism. There is a clash of pretentious political ideologies,” William Mpofu, a political analyst and researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, told IPS.

“Under Mugabe the ideology was pretentious pan-Africanist radicalism. The U.S. has pretended to democracy and liberalism. These two rhetorics have a natural antagonism but they are both fake and fundamentalist. The U.S. can do without Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe cannot survive without U.S.,” Mpofu said.

With coronavirus lockdown restrictions that have seen countrywide state sanctioned human rights abuses in Zimbabwe in place indefinitely, and with general elections coming in 2023, elections historically marred by state sponsored repression, analysts are watching whether this will further sour relations between the two countries.

The post Zimbabwe and US Diplomacy – this Time the Fight is About George Floyd appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

A recent diplomatic spat between Zimbabwe and the U.S. began after a senior U.S. official accused Zimbabwe of fomenting unrests across America in the wake of the killing of the unarmed African American, George Floyd.

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Categories: Africa

Agroecology. The Challenge of Farming for the Future

Mon, 06/08/2020 - 07:48

Credit: DegreesOfLatitude

By Elena L. Pasquini
ROME, Jun 8 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The COVID-19 outbreak has brought the world back to the essentials: health and food. Fighting the spread of the virus while ensuring access to food has proven to be a challenge in many countries. The loss of income is reducing families’ ability to feed themselves; movement restrictions and lack of labour for planting and harvesting are a strain on the chain that brings food from field to fork. Hundreds of millions of the most vulnerable people are on the brink of acute hunger, and food insecurity is likely to increase globally.

The fragility of the food chain and the role played by agriculture in the multiple, unfolding crises—including climate change, diminishing biodiversity, and nutritional crises in the forms of undernutrition and overnutrition—are not new issues. But the current emergency is adding a sense of urgency to the need of rethinking the way in which food is produced, distributed and consumed.

COVID-19 “is exacerbating a lot of weaknesses in our current food systems,” Emile Frison, member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, told Degrees of Latitude. “The vulnerability of … large industrial production systems has been clearly shown through this pandemic …,” he stressed.

What strategies exist to build food systems that are resilient to shocks? What alternatives are there to industrial agriculture?

Agroecology is one of those models. No longer niche, it is at the core of global and national legislations, and is increasingly being implemented on farms. Is it economically feasible? Can it feed a growing world population? What are the constraints for the transition to agroecological food systems?

That is what we are going to investigate in our series of articles devoted to the future of food.

This article was first published by Degrees of Latitude

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Categories: Africa

Water, Climate, Conflict & Migration: Coping with 1 Billion People on the Move by 2050

Mon, 06/08/2020 - 07:45

Padma River Basin, Bangladesh Credit: Nidhi Nagabhatla

By Nidhi Nagabhatla
HAMILTON, Canada, Jun 8 2020 (IPS)

Do migrants willingly choose to flee their homes, or is migration the only option available?

There is no clear, one-size-fits-all explanation for a decision to migrate — a choice that will be made today by many people worldwide, and by an ever-rising number in years to come because of a lack of access to water, climate disasters, a health crisis and other problems.

Data are scarce on the multiple causes, or “push factors,” limiting our understanding of migration. What we can say, though, is that context is everything.

UN University researchers and others far beyond have been looking for direct and indirect links between migration and the water crisis, which has different faces — unsafe water in many places, chronic flooding or drought in others.

The challenge is separating those push factors from the social, economic, and political conditions that contribute to the multi-dimensional realities of vulnerable migrant populations, all of them simply striving for dignity, safety, stability, and sustainably in their lives.

A new report, ‘Water and Migration: A Global Overview,’ (https://bit.ly/3gxDgE7) from UNU’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, offers insights into water and migration interlinkages, and suggests how to tackle existing gaps and needs.

Its information can be understood easily by stakeholders and proposes ideas for better informed migration-related policymaking, including a three-dimensional framework applicable by scholars and planners at multiple scales and in various settings.

The Report also describes some discomforting patterns and trends, among them:

• Migration reflects the systemic inequalities and social justice issues pertaining to water rights and climate change adaptation. Lack of access to water, bad water quality, and a lack of support for those impacted by extreme water-related situations constitute barriers to a sustainable future for humankind.

Case studies in the report provide concrete examples of the migration consequences in water and climate troubled situations:

• The plight of island nations facing both rising seas and more frequent, more intense extreme weather events.

In addition, the added health burdens imposed on people and communities by water pollution and contamination create vicious cycles of poverty, inequality and forced mobility.

While the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda does not include an explicit migration target, its mitigation should be considered in the context of SDGs that aim to strengthen capacities related to water, gender, climate, and institutions. These issues resonate even as the world deals with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recent news stories have chronicled the plight of desperate migrant workers trapped in the COVID-19 crisis in India, and of displaced people in refugee camps where social distancing is unachievable, as is access to soap and water, the most basic preventive measure against the disease.

Add to that the stigma, discrimination, and xenophobia endured by migrants that continue to rise during the pandemic.

Even at this moment, with the world fixated on the pandemic crisis, we cannot afford to put migration’s long-term causes on the back burner.

While the cost of responses may cause concerns, the cost of no decisions will certainly surpass that. There may be no clear, simple solution but having up-to-date evidence and data will surely help.

On World Environment Day ( https://bit.ly/3dnKkks) last week (June 5), we were all encouraged to consider human interdependencies with nature.

Let us also acknowledge that water and climate-related disasters, ecological degradation and other environmental burdens causes economic, health and wellbeing disparities for migrants and populations living in vulnerable settings.

The post Water, Climate, Conflict & Migration: Coping with 1 Billion People on the Move by 2050 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nidhi Nagabhatla is Principal Researcher, Water Security at the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, funded by the Government of Canada and hosted by McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada

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Categories: Africa

Post-COVID recovery should lock in ocean sustainability, says Commonwealth Secretary-General

Mon, 06/08/2020 - 07:34

PRESS RELEASE

By External Source
Jun 8 2020 (IPS-Partners)

The Commonwealth Secretary-General is urging governments to ensure their countries’ post-COVID economic recoveries are environmentally sustainable and safe for the ocean.

Forty-seven of the Commonwealth’s 54 member countries have a coastline while 25 are either small island developing states or ‘big ocean states’ relying heavily on the ocean for food and income.

On World Oceans Day (8 June), Secretary-General Patricia Scotland calls on countries to reform development strategies in a way that supports vibrant and sustainable blue and green economies.

Patricia Scotland

She said: “The ocean is the life blood of so many Commonwealth countries and our environment should be the cornerstone as we put plans in place to recover our economies. The Commonwealth covers more than a third of coastal oceans in the world, contributing to a global ocean-based economy valued at US$3 to 6 trillion per year.

“COVID-19 impact has radically altered some of our key economic sectors and transformed the way we live, communicate and do business. While the fallout from the pandemic has had a huge impact on our blue economies, it also presents a crucial opportunity to strategise on how to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable economic practices built on climate resilience and ocean sustainability.

“The Commonwealth Blue Charter is one of the most effective platforms for global ocean action in the international landscape today. I commend the work of our member countries through the action groups and welcome the support we have received from national, regional and global partners, enabling us to mobilise together for ocean health.”

The Blue Charter is the Commonwealth’s commitment to work together to protect the ocean and meet global ocean commitments. Ten action groups, led by 13 champion countries, are driving the flagship initiative. More than 40 countries have signed up to one or more of these action groups, and counting.

Commonwealth Blue Charter action groups include: Sustainable Aquaculture (led by Cyprus), Sustainable Blue Economy (Kenya), Coral Reef Protection and Restoration (Australia, Belize, Mauritius), Mangrove Ecosystems and Livelihoods (Sri Lanka), Ocean Acidification (New Zealand), Ocean and Climate Change (Fiji), Ocean Observations (Canada), Commonwealth Clean Ocean Alliance (marine plastic pollution – United Kingdom, Vanuatu), Marine Protected Areas (Seychelles) and Sustainable Coastal Fisheries (Kiribati) .

Members of the private sector, academia and civil society – including Vulcan Inc, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, Nekton Foundation and many others – are also engaged as Blue Charter partners.

To find out more about the Commonwealth Blue Charter, visit the website.

Notes to Editor

For interviews with the Commonwealth Secretary-General on this issue, please contact Josephine Latu-Sanft via email or WhatsApp +44 7587657269

Media Contact

Josephine Latu-Sanft
Communications Division
Commonwealth Secretariat
T. +44 (0)20 7747 6476
Email: j.latu-sanft@commonwealth.int

Website thecommonwealth.org
Join the conversation Tweets by @commonwealthsec

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Excerpt:

PRESS RELEASE

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Categories: Africa

Press Freedom Under COVID-19 Lockdown in Asia

Fri, 06/05/2020 - 14:49

Jerald Aruldas, a journalist from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and his colleague, were held by city police for 9 hours for reporting on stories around alleged government corruption around the food aid distribution system and how doctors in Coimbatore faced food shortages while working during the COVID-19 lockdown. Courtesy: Jerald Aruldas

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 5 2020 (IPS)

Governments have made the media “a scapegoat” across Asia, targeting journalists who are simply reporting on the failures or shortcomings of their leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, press freedom experts have warned.

“Governments have said that the real emergency caused by the pandemic has made it necessary for them to prevent the spread of false information that might, for example, cause panic,” Steven Butler, Asia programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS. “Of course, in at least some cases it’s the government decisions themselves that have led to confusion and panic, and the media has simply become the scapegoat.”

Butler spoke to IPS following an appeal by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet who on Wednesday warned that censorship has become more severe in countries across Asia under the pandemic. She requested governments around the world to take “proportionate” actions in case someone is spreading false information, and that those actions must comply with requirements of “legality, necessity, proportionality, [and serving] a legitimate public health objective”.

“When you have a police official defining necessity of a person’s arrest and detention on the basis that a ruling party politician came to the police station to file a case against the person, there is much to be concerned about how authorities interpret necessity, proportion and legality,” Saad Hammadi, Regional Campaigner of the South Asia division at Amnesty International, told IPS.

He was speaking about the plight of Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol who had disappeared for almost two months before he was “found” and taken to police custody — just in time for World Press Freedom Day.

Before Kajol’s disappearance and subsequent arrest, he was already facing charges under Bangladesh’s highly controversial Digital Security Act.

There are similar cases across Asia.

In May, IPS reported on a number of cases in India where journalists were also arrested or detained for criticising the government.

In India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, journalist Jerald Aruldas and photographer M Balaji had been detained for 9 hours after a series of pieces that exposed corruption in the government food aid distribution system, and the food issues that doctors in Coimbatore city faced. Their editor, Andrew Sam Raja Pandian, was subsequently arrested and released but was charged under several sections of criminal laws as well as The Disaster Management Act, 2005 for publishing the stories.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) records show governments in 12 countries across Asia are targeting journalists or anyone expressing their criticism about the pandemic response: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

For people in all 12 countries where the arrests have taken place, the stifling of press freedom is not new. According to Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom 2020 Index, all 12 countries ranked quite low, with Malaysia and Nepal being the least restrictive among the group, and China and Vietnam being some of the most restrictive.

‘Fake news’ used as an excuse to restrict press freedom

In all these countries, the charges are some variation of the trope that any criticism is “false news”. Governments are making arrests or detaining those speaking up with the excuse that their so-called “fake news” incites panic among communities. In Cambodia, a child as young as 14 was arrested, along with 30 other individuals, for sharing commentary on social media.

In Bangladesh, China, and India, health personnel, journalists and ordinary citizens have been detained or arrested for voicing similar concerns about their respective government’s response, or lack thereof. In Nepal, a bureaucrat was arrested for criticising the government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis.

“It’s unacceptable that even one person is persecuted for legitimately exercising their right to freedom of expression but since March this year, at least 16 journalists have been detained or sued on charges that are in contravention of the rights protected under international law on freedom of expression,” Hammadi of Amnesty International told IPS.

Bachelet said it’s crucial to remain alert and vigilant about misinformation at this time. During the first few weeks of the coronavirus crisis — even before it was termed a “pandemic” — misinformation surrounding the disease had become a crucial concern. In response to this, the World Health Organisation launched the EPI-WIN, which would provide users information in a timely manner, filtering out an overload of information without solutions.

An already existing problem

While the OHCHR statement came almost six months into the coronavirus crisis, experts have been ringing alarm bells about the issue for some time now.

In May, while observing World Press Freedom Day, Hammadi wrote that it’s important to be vigilant against those who are “exploiting” this moment to spread misinformation, but warned that “some governments are themselves exploiting this moment – to suppress relevant information uncomfortable for the government or use the situation as a pretext to crack down on critical voices”.

Butler of the CPJ told IPS that these are countries that were already armed with the trope of “false news” to charge journalists. And the pandemic only exacerbated that.

“Additional emergency legislation and decrees have increased pressure on journalists as governments boost efforts to control the flow of information,” Butler said. “In many cases, they have used these powers to go after journalists who report shortcomings in the government response to the pandemic. In some cases, the charges against journalists have been incredibly petty.”

In her appeal, Bachelet warned that heads of state must not use the crisis “to restrict dissent or the free flow of information and debate.”

“A diversity of viewpoints will foster greater understanding of the challenges we face and help us better overcome them,” she said. “It will also help countries to have a vibrant debate on the root causes and good practices needed to overcome the longer-term socio-economic and other impacts. This debate is crucial for countries to build back better after the crisis.”

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Categories: Africa

High Volatility

Fri, 06/05/2020 - 13:46

By Manuel Manonelles
BARCELONA, Jun 5 2020 (IPS)

Six months after the outbreak, the new global scenario resulting from the impact of COVID-19 is gradually becoming much more defined. From the very beginning, we sensed that little good could result from a situation so surprising and unexpected. Now it is becoming increasingly clear that we are entering times of extreme volatility in the international sphere. Times of uncertainty and incandescence as we have not seen for years.

The unrest in the United States and Brazil are clear signs in this direction. It is not by coincidence that they are occurring in the two countries with the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases in the world. The US in its way to the two million cases and with more than 100,000 deaths; and Brazil has exceeded half a million cases and more than thirty thousand dead, without taking into account the underreporting in both cases.

The destabilizing potential of COVID-19 in some of the world's major powers, and in parallel with the relations among them, is substantive; as is the resulting uncertainty

While it is true that the origin of the worst riots in decades in the United States is the death at the hands of the Minneapolis Police of an African-American citizen, it is obvious that the resulting anger has been fuelled by the accumulated frustration of recent months. A time when structural racism in the United States has been overwhelmingly confirmed by the percentage of coronavirus deaths in the African American population, much higher than in the white one. The result is forty cities in the US with curfews, the deployment of the National Guard and Military Police in various States, and the militarization of the capital, Washington DC; quite serious.

The point, however, is that these are not two isolated situations, and that the destabilizing potential of COVID-19 in some of the world’s major powers, and in parallel with the relations among them, is substantive; as is the resulting uncertainty.

Keeping with the case of the United States, the confrontation between President Trump and several Governors –almost leading to a constitutional crisis -, the attacks on the WHO or the progressive and dangerous escalation of tension with China, always in the context of the coronavirus crisis, do not predict anything good.

And all this in the context of an electoral year in the US, with an epidemiological curve that is resisting to significantly decline, with 40 extra millions of unemployed … and one of the most controversial presidents in history who is running for re-election. Territory paid for by uncertainty.

Moreover, the references from the White House to the “Chinese virus” have had no real effect on Beijing, and rather have helped consolidate the evolution towards a more aggressive foreign policy such as that promoted by president Xi Jinping. In fact, the comparison of how the United States is facing the pandemic with respect to China, with all its shadows and doubts, does not burden Washington.

And after Hong Kong comes Taiwan. Very few days separate the announcement of the new legislation on Hong Kong, with its implications, the Beijing government withdrew the word “peaceful” from its annual call for reunification with this island. In a matter of few weeks, these two events added up to the seventh incident -so far this year – between the Chinese and Taiwanese air forces; new skirmishes between Chinese and Indian troops in the disputed border area in the Himalayas (and the consequent sending of reinforcements to both sides of the border). To this, we have to add the sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat by the Chinese Coast Guard in waters also under discussion; or reports of incidents with Chinese ships around a Malaysian-managed oil rig.

Nor can we ignore the situation in the Russian Federation. After 400,000 cases of COVID-19, and a growing case curve, Putin is experiencing its lowest popularity in a long time, while the follow-up on social media of its main opponents rises like foam. Even more, this is pending on a referendum on July 1 to approve the constitutional reform that must perpetuate him in power. Referendum that will do little to contain the pandemic.

In this context, the images of a few months ago in which Russia sent cargo planes full of masks to the United States or deployed military support in the fight against coronavirus in northern Italy are far away. Nor has Russia been able to avoid tensions with China, with mutual reproaches over the closure of land borders or the importation of new cases from one country to another.

Latin America is a growing area of concern which, along with the United States, is the new epicentre of the pandemic, bringing over 3 million cases over the 2.3 million in Europe. The paradigmatic case is the aforementioned Brazil, with a “denialist” president, a faithful follower of the Trump doctrine, despite already being the second country in the world in number of COVID-19 cases.

We will see how countries like Chile react now that they have surpassed 100,000 cases, dragging a season of instability with a strongly contested government on the street (which it should be recalled that was forced to move the COP25 Climate Summit from Santiago de Chile to Madrid). Another case is Peru, which, despite having taken stricter measures, is already approaching 180,000 cases. The coronavirus is also growing in the Persian Gulf and India, where the world’s largest confinement is being lifted, affecting approximately 1.3 million people.

It is in a context like this, where there are few countries in the world – and less among the great powers- that can really show off for their management of the pandemic, that incentives and the temptation to find internal or external scapegoats to divert attention or redirect public anger are particularly high. If we add controversial or autocratic leadership, pre-existing tensions or the worrisome short-term forecasts in the economic field, the scenario we face is unpromising, and above all uncertain.

While in Europe the storm (or its first wave) calms down, in the rest of the world the pandemic grows, together with its resulting instability and volatility.

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Excerpt:

Manuel Manonelles is Associate Professor of International Relations, Blanquerna/University Ramon Llull, Barcelona

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Categories: Africa

Safeguarding Africa’s Food Security in the Age of COVID-19

Fri, 06/05/2020 - 09:25

By Pritha Mitra and Seung Mo Choi
Jun 5 2020 (IPS)

Food security in sub-Saharan Africa is under threat. The ability of many Africans to access sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs has been disrupted by successive natural disasters and epidemics. Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, locust outbreaks in eastern Africa, and droughts in southern and eastern Africa are some examples. The COVID-19 pandemic is just the latest catastrophe to have swollen the ranks of 240 million people going hungry in the region. In some countries, over 70 percent of the population has problems accessing food.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s most food-insecure region, and in the June 2020 sub-Saharan Africa Regional Economic Outlook, we show that climate change is increasing that insecurity.

The sub-Saharan is particularly vulnerable to the forces of climate change. Almost half the population lives below the poverty line and depends on rain-fed agriculture, herding, and fishing to survive . With each climate shock, whether drought, flood or cyclone, farmers suffer directly, while shortages elevate the price of food for all.

Lives lost, increased vulnerability

Africans are easily pushed into food insecurity because their ability to adapt is limited by many factors, including low savings and access to finance and insurance. As a result, lives are lost, malnutrition rises, health worsens, and school enrollment drops. All this, ultimately damages the economy’s productive capacity.

During these times of COVID-19, we are seeing these challenges play out.

Credit: International Monetary Fund

The measures to contain and manage the COVID-19 pandemic, while critical to saving lives, risks exacerbating food insecurity. Border closures, lockdowns, and curfews intended to slow the spread of the disease are disrupting supply chains that, even under normal circumstances, struggle to stock markets, and supply farmers with seeds and other inputs.

Designing COVID-19–era measures to improve food security

At this critical juncture, sub-Saharan Africa needs to prioritize policies targeted at reducing risks to food security as part of fiscal stimulus packages to counter the pandemic. Our analysis suggests these policies should focus on increasing agricultural output, and strengthening households’ ability to withstand shocks. This would have the added benefit of reducing inequalities while boosting economic growth and jobs.

Boosting agricultural output

Even before the pandemic, many countries in the region were proactive in protecting their food supply by raising crop productivity and reducing their sensitivity to inclement weather. For example, Mozambique is the location of a global pilot for newly-developed, heat-tolerant bean seeds, while in Ethiopia, some farmers’ yields rose by up to 40 percent after the development of rust-resistant wheat varieties (rust is brought on by higher temperatures and volatile rainfall).

Maintaining this momentum calls for continued progress in improving irrigation, seeds, and erosion protection, all of which would substantially boost production. Meanwhile raising farmers’ awareness would also accelerate implementation of these measures.

Withstanding shocks: An outsized impact

Adapting to climate change is critical to safeguarding the hard-earned progress in economic development sub-Saharan Africa has achieved in recent decades. However, adaptation will be especially challenging given countries’ limited capacity and financial resources.

The priority then should be on making progress in select, critical areas which could have an outsized impact in reducing the chances of a family becoming food insecure when faced with shocks from climate change or epidemics.

For instance, progress in finance, telecoms, housing, and health care can reduce a family’s chance of facing food shortages by 30 percent:

Social assistance also has a major impact as it is critical in compensating people for lost income and purchasing power after a shock hits. Insurance and disaster risk financing can be critical too, but the success of these programs in sub-Saharan Africa often relies on government subsidies and improvements in financial literacy.

Concentrating adaptation strategies in sub-Saharan Africa on policies that have outsized impacts, including on food security, will help reduce their costs. Implementation of these strategies will be expensive—$30–50 billion (2–3 percent of regional GDP) each year over the next decade, according to many experts.

But investment now will be far less costly than the price of frequent disaster relief in the future, both for lives and livelihoods. Our analysis finds that savings from reduced post-disaster spending could be many times the cost of upfront investment in building resilience and coping mechanisms.

Securing sources of financing is especially challenging against the background of the pandemic and rising global risk aversion. But by stepping up financial support for adaptation to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, development partners can make a tremendous difference in helping Africans put food on the table and recover from the pandemic.

Credit: International Monetary Fund

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Categories: Africa

Philippines’ Senior Citizens Vulnerabilities Increase Because of COVID-19 Lockdown

Fri, 06/05/2020 - 09:19

Senior citizens supervise the construction of a community-run tree nursery and collective farm in Alangalang of Philippine’s Eastern Visayas region. Courtesy: Divisoria Peatland Farmers Association/WEAVER

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India , Jun 5 2020 (IPS)

In the Philippines, May has long been a month of joy when farmers harvest their rice crop and celebrate the Pahiyas harvest festival. But this year, the mood was somber. The food production and supply system also affected, thanks to the coronavirus lockdown, and the economy frozen. As a result, millions of Filipinos, especially senior citizens, are now looking at an uncertain future.

The country reopened gradually on Jun. 1, with some businesses being allowed to open.

Vulnerable Elderly in a Pandemic

Currently, 8.2 million of the country’s 109 million people are in the 60 and above age group, with almost 5 percent of the population aged 65 years and above. However, according to projections made by the Commission of Population and Development, a government institution, the numbers are growing and by 2030 the Philippines will have an elderly population of above 7 percent, putting it alongside the ageing Asian countries of Japan, China and South Korea.

But the welfare of the elderly has been a matter of public concern in the Philippines.

The country’s Human Rights Commission says that at least 40 percent of senior citizens experience abuse of some kind. This includes verbal, physical and financial abuse, perpetrated mostly by their children and other family members.

The commission, however, admits that there is a dearth of credible research done on the issue. A 2017 presentation by the advocacy group Coalition of Services of the Elderly also mentions that elderly Filipinos often become “the subject of discrimination, ridicule and even abuse. Some consider them merely as objects of charity and not individuals with inherent, equal and universal rights as other members of the society”.

An urban slum in Manila, Philippines. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the vulnerabilities of the urban poor, especially senior citizens. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

As part of its current work in Asia, the Asian Population and Development Association is looking primarily into the issue of the advanced ageing of Asian societies.

It’s policy brief on Ageing in Asia acknowledges that “policy responses to population ageing inherently involve questions of values, any responses require both the active involvement of parliamentarians and the creation of platforms for public discussions on these issues”.

Indeed, the abuse of senior citizens has prompted lawmakers in the Philippines to propose a special law to protect them. The “Anti-Elder Abuse Act,” was introduced to parliament last January and proposes to fine and penalise those who abuse senior citizens physically, psychologically, financially or sexually.

The proposed law also recognises senior citizens as a vulnerable sector who should receive a PhP 5,000 to PhP 8,000 (between $100 to $160) in cash assistance. It was approved by the country’s House of Representatives in February but is still to be formally passed into law.

But in the meantime, the lockdown and subsequent restrictions put into place to fight the COVID-19 pandemic increased the vulnerabilities of the elderly. Local media regularly reported on senior Filipinos suffering from a lack of food and medicine as they remained indoors.

Risa Hontiveros, the Philippines first socialist woman senator and one of the country’s youngest lawmakers, has been a fierce advocate for senior citizen’s rights and protection. Hontiveros tells IPS that the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the vulnerabilities of the Filipino elderly, particularly the poor.

“Since the government imposed what it calls the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) under which people are prohibited from leaving their houses except for frontliners and other essential personnel, poor senior citizens who still work, many in the informal sector, have been deprived of their main source of livelihood. They are left with very little choice but to rely on local government food packages that are simply not enough, and in many cases, inconsistent in their distribution,” Hontiveros says.

Fighting Curbs on Working Elderly

The lockdown in the Philippines started on Mar. 8 and and by the end of April the government had announced people over 60 and younger than 20 would be forbidden from leaving their homes even after “enhanced community quarantine” measures were lifted in early May.

It drew massive protests from senior citizens as an overwhelming majority of them (over 6 million) were still in active jobs. The country currently has a workforce of 45 million.

The regulation was based on the number of COVID-19 patients and casualties aged 60 and above, and initial cases that showed transmission occurred mainly among the elderly who generally have weaker immune systems.

An elderly pedicab driver in Manila. The elderly, especially from poor communities, continue to face multiple vulnerabilities and sustainability challenges in the Philippines, which have increased due to the COVID19 pandemic. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

But seniors citizens argued that not many of them are sickly or weak and those who were still earning, have to support their families financially.

To put a blanket curb on their mobility served to push them towards acute financial struggle and insecurities.

Finally, in May, the government allowed senior citizen who are part of the formal workforce to return to work. The stay-home order for those outside of the organised job sector, however, still remains valid and continues to be opposed by senior citizens who have taken social media to voice their anger.

According to members of one such group on Facebook “Seniors sa Panahon ng COVID”, the government’s decisions are only hurting the already vulnerable seniors further.

“It only goes to show that our voices are still not being heard by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF) ) and we will remain in ISOLATION until full quarantine is lifted and by approximating it, it might last until somewhere next year. That is too much already for us to be imprisoned in our homes,” Virgilio Dedeles, one of the group members, says.

Missing Essentials

For poor senior citizens, locked in their homes and dependent on aid, this means continued uncertainty and vulnerability.

76-year-old Lola Rosita of Malabon city says that since the lockdown began, the government has provided relief goods twice, but it’s still not enough. “We really need medicines to treat our current health conditions, hygiene kits, and face masks but we can’t buy them,” Rosita tells IPS.

The struggles of seniors living with disabilities is even greater.

Lola Paz, 71, from Bagong Silangan in Quezon city has a leg impairment due to avascular necrosis. She says that the government relief works are inadequate and lacking transparency.

“Based on my observation, the government doesn’t make any considerations to older persons. They know that older persons are at risk but we are ignored, especially as we face all these difficulties. We, [senior citizens] should be one of the priorities,” she tells IPS.

Hontiveros also agrees.

However, the unclear guidelines and their actual implementation have caused much confusion in communities.

Quarantine guidelines failed to consider elderly couples and the elderly living alone, making access to food and other basic commodities difficult.

“My office, in partnership with the Coalition of Services of the Elderly and other senior citizens’ organisation launched a relief mission that provided immuno-packs containing masks, milk, vitamins, rice and other food items,” Hontiveros says.

Mobilising for Food Security

But in some provinces, senior citizens are using innovative ways such as diverse use of land and community farming to save off insecurities.

71-year-old Lola (Grandma) Anita lives in Alangalang, a town in the country’s second-largest peatland — the Leyte Sab-e Basin.

But she is not retired. These days Anita spends hours supervising a plant nursery that is part of a community initiative led by senior citizens to ensure food security for all through environmental conservation.

The nursery is run by Divisoria Peatland Farmers Association (DPFA), a collective that has joined hands with local government to restore the peatlands endangered by indiscriminate agricultural activities, deforestation, land degradation and occasional forest fire.

The restoration of the peatland – originally an initiative of the ASEAN Peatland Forest Project – aims to replant areas to suitable crops for local people and restore the natural, indigenous vegetation in some areas.

In the nursery, Anita is joined by several other senior citizens who are collectively growing plants and vegetables that are indigenous to their province and which can help restore the peatland eco-system.

Since the COVID-19 crisis began, farmers have not able to market their produce due to travel restrictions.

But with their collective subsistence farming, these senior citizens are not just restoring the peatland eco-system, but are sustaining their community, checking potential food loss while doing this sustainably.

The collective nursery is part of a larger plan, explains Paulia Lawsin Naira, founder of a local NGO called WEAVER, which works closely with the peatland restorers by mobilising and training them.

“Each of the plants grown here has multiple uses and can open up more livelihood opportunities for the locals. For example, Lanipao is used both for fuel wood and house construction and Ticog grass is used for handicrafts,” Lawsin tells IPS.

For Anita, being able to sustain their community while doing this sustainably is the need of the hour.

“COVID-19 has affected us [senior citizens] so much. The nursery helps me stay productive and also earn by making meaningful contributions to our environment,” she tells IPS.

The post Philippines’ Senior Citizens Vulnerabilities Increase Because of COVID-19 Lockdown appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

The Bible, Donald Trump and Plastic

Fri, 06/05/2020 - 07:32

Credit: u/USMCinUSA

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 5 2020 (IPS)

Another episode of the spectacular show that could be called The Greatest Story Ever Told: The Saga of the Trump Presidency, scripted and acted by Trump himself, took place on 1st of June.

As U.S. cities were scenes of demonstrations and looting, President Trump declared himself to be ”the president of law and order” and said he was going to dispatch ”thousands and thousands” of law enforcement personell to Washington, to stop the ”destruction of property”. Meanwhile, tear gas, rubber bullets, shields and horses were used to empty the Lafayette Park in front of the White House from demonstrators. When the coast was clear it was time for the President´s photo-op. With a solemn expression Donald J. Trump walked across the park, between rows of police officers in full riot gear. He positioned himself in front of the boarded-up St. John’s Church. The President was handed a bible, which he raised, pointed to and said ”A Bible”. With a grave face he remained silent for a moment, before continuing: ”We have a great country. That’s my thoughts. Greatest country in the world. We will make it greater. We will make it even greater. It won’t take long. It’s not going to take long. You see what’s going on. You see it coming back.” That was all – bad play-acting, nothing more. No substantial message, no mentioning of the fact that the riots were the result of failed social justice, unequal distribution of wealth and benefits, insufficient and inadequate education, health services and housing, and endemic racism that the richest nation on the planet has been unable to tackle and which have become worse during the inept and reckless Trump administration.

To use church and bible as props is just another example of the Society of Spectacle that the former TV show host is trying to promote while he as U.S. President is serving greed and egocentrism instead of trying to bolster a decent living standard for his compatriots and address the greatest threat to humankind – the collapse of our natural habitat. I doubt if Trump ever read much, or anything at all, in the bible. If he began doing so he would already after the first page find that humans were chosen to ”rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen 1:28). A task that cannot be compatible with the extinction of the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky and every living creature moving on ground. Whatever Trump intended by his bible waiving it could not have been to convey a message to take care of human lives and nature. Donald Trump, self-proclaimed upholder of Christan faith, is among other things a great supporter of plastic, a product that after having been popular for eighty years now is threatening to choke the world to death.

In 1869, a New York firm offered USD 10,000 to anyone who could find a substitute for ivory. Winner was a certain John Wesley Hyatt, who for the first time in human history invented a material unconstrained by the limits of nature, i.e. it could be manufactured without materials like wood, metal, stone, bone, tusk, and horn. Synthetic polymers were produced through a chemical process based on petrolium as the essential raw material. Plastic could imitate several natural substances and be crafted into a wide variety of shapes. It was improved by several chemists, among them some Nobel Prize winners, and was during the last century marketed as ”the material of a thousand uses”. However, the plastics´ spread all over the world did not begin in earnest until World War II, when the U.S. industry came to consider an increased production of plastic just as important to victory as military success. After the end of the war, production of plastic continued unabated. Considered to be an inexpensive, safe and clean substance, plastic eventually became the symbol of a future of abundant material wealth, finally liberated from the limitations that nature for thousands of years had imposed on human ingenuity. However, the chemical structure of most plastics renders them resistant to processes of natural degradation and they remain as harmful waste for thousands of years.

Approximately, 380 million tonnes of plastic is produced worldwide each year, 10 percent is recycled and 12 percent burned, while at least five million metric tonnes of plastic waste enter the oceans. More than 90 percent of all seabirds contain plastic in their organism and it is estimated that by 2050 it will by weight be more plastic than fish in the oceans.

Compounds used to manufacture plastics are released into air and water and thus enter all organic life, not the least humans. Plastic harms the human endocrine system – phthalates, bisphenol A (BRA), a component used in several plastics, imitates the female hormone estrogen and cause damage to thyroid hormones, which play a vital role in the metabolism, growth and development of the human body. Other chemicals used in the production of plastics cause skin inflammatory diseases and asthma. Children, as well as women in their reproduction age, are most at risk of having their immune- and reproductive systems damaged by hormone-disrupting chemicals used in plastics and regularly released into the environment. Recent studies have also found a link between phthalates and a rise in autism among children.

Unfortunately, plastic production and plastic waste is just one example of our mindless and ruthless destruction of earth’s precious resources. President Trump’s bible waiving in support of his political agenda is both pathetic and offensive. If religion is going to be a useful tool for the salvation of mankind we ought to emphasize compassion and cooperation inherent in the message of several religions, instead of the hate, violence and contempt for others preached by fanatics in support of their own twisted religious ideas. If we were in need of a global faith it ought to be in the form of a religious conviction fomenting support to the protection of the natural resources the entire creation depends upon.

Instead of waiving the bible, and any other scriptures, let us implement what is best for all of us and not follow a leader like Trump who pays homage to greed and profit at the expense of nature. When he in August last year inaugurated a huge plastic producing plant in Pennsylvania, Trump stated that ”elimination of fossil fuels” would not create any new jobs and invited ”the Pennsylvanians” to admire ”his” initiative to bring jobs to ailing areas and consider this to be a valid reason to vote for his re-election as the U.S. president. When asked if it was wise to spend so much money and effort on producing such a harmful product as plastic, Trump did true to form blame China: ”Well, we have a tremendous plastics [sic] coming over from Asia, from China, and various others [sic], It’s not our plastic that’s floating over in the ocean […] No, plastics are fine, but you have to know what to do with them.”

As of May 2020 the Trump administration has rolled back 64 environmental rules and regulations, and an additional 34 rollbacks are in progress. Trump has been a stout supporter of coal and oil production and his administration supports energy development on federal land, including gas and oil drilling in national parks, as well as in nearly all U.S. waters, the largest expansion of offshore oil and gas leasing ever proposed. The Trump administration has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, replaced the Clean Power Plan with something called Affordable Clean Energy Rule that does not cap emissions. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution-control policies have been rewritten, something that in particular benefits the plastic industry, since it eases control of its waste management. Furthermore, the Trump administration has repealed the nation’s Clean Water Rule and is currently proposing significant cuts in funding and changes in the implementation of the Endangered Species Act. When he waves his unread bible, Trump probably thinks it might make voters conclude he is God’s chosen candidate. However, it is actually hard to believe if God intended humans to be ”rulers of the earth” he expected that such a rule would contribute to the destruction of our habitat.

Unlike Trump, as a true God´s servant, Pope Francis in his encyclica Laudato si, Praise Be to You, stated that we currently experience a relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment, caused by apathy, the reckless pursuit of profits, excessive faith in technology and political short-sightedness, and declared: ”Here I would state once more that the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics. But I am concerned to encourage an honest and open debate so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good.” A message that probably would not suite Donald J. Trump while he for political reasons tries to make use of the bible.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

The post The Bible, Donald Trump and Plastic appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

"I love L.A. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful.
Everybody's plastic – but I love plastic. I want to be plastic."
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Andy Warhol

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Categories: Africa

Covid-19: Caring for Care Workers

Fri, 06/05/2020 - 06:47

Credit: UN Women

By Lan Mercado, Mohammad Naciri, and Yamini Mishra
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 5 2020 (IPS)

COVID-19 has brought the world to a halt. Nations, businesses, and schools have closed, and billions are confined to their homes. Yet millions of care workers step out daily to keep the lights on and support those in need.

The majority of them are women – nurses, community health workers, sanitation workers, and others. They earn little and are grossly undervalued despite keeping our society and economy running.

Other forms of care – looking after families, cooking, cleaning, and fetching water aren’t paid at all. This ‘invisible’ work contributes over US$10.8 trillion a year to the global economy, and before COVID-19, women and girls provided 12.5 billion hours of free care work every day.

On average, women spend over 4 hours for every hour men spend on care work in Asia and the Pacific – over 4 times as much. Women spend nearly 11 times in Cambodia and Pakistan, 10 times in India, and 3 times in Bangladesh, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Yet, when Asia launched Covid-19 responses and stimulus packages, women and care work’s amiss. This callous neglect is a result of prioritizing the economy above everything else, compounded by social norms that undervalue care work and leave the burden to women and girls.

Care work, with no pay, has deprived women and girls of education, skill development, and gainful employment. It has left women with precarious jobs, insecure incomes, and no social safety. The pandemic has multiplied the load on care systems, already depleted and unfair, falling mostly on women.

Lockdowns have increased child and elderly care for women.

With schools shut in 188 countries,1.5 billion students and over 63 million primary teachers are confined to their homes. Social gender norms have left women and girls spending more time caring and providing educational support to children.

Older people are at greater risk to COVID-19, and in Asia, where elderly often live with their children, women will shoulder the responsibility for looking after them.

Times of uncertainty and disease worsens inequalities for women.

By default, women are more likely to be in poorly paid jobs at the lowest ends of value chains without a chance at education or building skills. With a looming global depression, they are likely to be the first fired and last re-hired.

There’s a high risk of losing fragile yet meaningful gains made in formal workforces – limiting women’s ability to support themselves and families, especially for female-headed households.

80 percent of world’s domestic workers are women. Uncertainty looms for many domestic workers who travel internationally from the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and elsewhere.

Women send US$300 billion home yearly, half of total global remittances. Migrant women losing jobs due to restrictions will hit their families back home.

As caregivers, women face higher risks from Covid-19.

Globally, 70% of poorly paid health care workers are women – in frontlines – often without training or proper safety equipment. In China’s Hubei province, 90% of health workers are women.

Each ASHA community health worker from India’s Panjab visits at least 25 homes a day to screen suspected patients; majority without safety equipment, training, and testing, and COVID-19 cases are rising among them.

Within homes too, women hold the main responsibility of care for patients discharged from hospitals or placed in quarantine at home.

Women and girls, locked-down in their homes, are facing escalating domestic violence – likely stuck with their abusers. Life-saving support to survivors from front-line services, such as heath, police, and social welfare may be slow or at a halt altogether as they are overburdened.

We need to act now to protect women and girls and recognize care work that is sustaining us through this crisis:

Asia must come together to save lives of all including caregivers from COVID -19

Care workers including unpaid carers must have social protection

Businesses must respect human rights and be responsible for workers

Looking beyond, as we build anew our broken economies and societies, we must reduce, redistribute, and represent care work once and for all:

ASEAN, SAARC, and governments need inclusive Regional Action Groups to develop regional and national policies

We must professionalize care work

Finally, we must promote healthier social norms on care work, share care work equally, mobilize public support, and call for flexible work arrangements to balance work and family commitments.

“Women’s Unpaid and Underpaid Work in the Times of Covid-19: Move towards a new care-compact to rebuild a gender equal Asia,” an online brief/blog by the three agencies detailing issues and recommendation in depth will be made available on the 1st of June at:

https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/news-and-events/stories/2020/06/womens-unpaid-and-underpaid-work-in-the-times-of-covid-19

https://asia.oxfam.org/latest/blogs/womens-unpaid-and-underpaid-work-times-covid-19

The post Covid-19: Caring for Care Workers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Lan Mercado is the Regional Director for Oxfam in Asia; Mohammad Naciri is the Regional Director for UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific; Yamini Mishra is the Director, Global Issues Programme for Amnesty International --- International Secretariat.

The post Covid-19: Caring for Care Workers appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Migrant Women Exploited by Those They Trust

Thu, 06/04/2020 - 19:33

Credit: Unsplash / Gabriel Benois

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, Jun 4 2020 (IPS)

Maliha Masud (25), was promised an affluent life and opportunities for higher education. A bright student studying Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, she wanted to complete her studies and become someone her parents would be proud of. She was promised an opportunity to get her Master’s degree from a good university in the United States but, two years later, was left battered and wounded at the doorstep of a shelter.

Maliha was 20 years old when she married an immigrant living in the United States, who was completing his Master’s at a renowned university. A marriage arranged by a “reputable marriage medium,” she was promised the freedom to study and work after the nuptials. For the dowry, her father sold the family’s only property, bore all expenses for the wedding ceremony, and even bought the entire family plane tickets to travel to the United States.

“I was tricked,” Maliha told IPS. “They robbed me and my parents. My marriage only lasted two years and it was the worst two years of my life. As soon as we arrived in the US, they took my passport, wedding jewelry, and all my student documents. I was barred from leaving the house and the only way I could communicate with my parents was on a landline – and I was only allowed to speak when one of my in-laws’ was present in the room. I was trapped.

“My ex-husband had a love affair with a woman here before marrying me. My in-laws tried to make him end it by getting him married to me against his will. They threatened me, telling me that I was nothing but a refugee, here, and after they found me trying to call the police, they burned all my documents.”

Maliha was beaten and left at the gates of a local shelter in California. After months of treatment, she recuperated. She had no papers to prove her identity and her passport, certificates, along with all her belongings, had been destroyed. With the help of community outreach and the government, she could finally establish her identity and retrieve whatever was left at her in-law’s house. Her husband was taken into custody, was tried for battery and now has a permanent criminal record for domestic violence.

After healing with therapy and trauma assistance, Maliha moved to the East Coast. A New York based NGO named SAFEST (South Asian Fund for Education, Scholarship & Training, Inc) supported her with shelter and helped her to complete her studies. Four years later, she was self-sufficient and became actively involved in helping other women manage trauma and in raising awareness within the immigrant community.

According to the New York Times, the number of homicides by intimate partners in the US rose to 2,237 in 2017. This was a 19 percent increase from the 1,875 killed in 2014. The majority of these victims were women. Women often do not report the abuse to police, believing the process is futile.

Credit: Unsplash / Donald Martinez

According to a survey by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), women who had demonstrated a credible fear of being deported to their native country, 40 percent said they experienced sexual assaults, rape, physical attacks, and threats. Yet, they did not report to the police.

Asked by IPS about the top most priorities for ensuring safety for newly arriving immigrants, Mahila says that the main thing she can emphasize on is access to information: “When a girl gets married and comes to the US, she naturally becomes dependent on her husband and in-laws. I could speak English and could reach out for help. But I felt overwhelmed with fear, with the threat of abandonment, and I had no relatives or ties here.”

Mazeda A. Uddin who runs SAFEST in New York, focuses mostly on the immigrant community from South Asia. She has helped more than 120 women survive extreme domestic violence. She also helps men and the LGBTQ community in terms of rehabilitation and job readiness.

Speaking with IPS, Mazeda said: “I get calls not only from New York state, but also from other states, from girls who are desperate for help, but do not have enough courage to call the police or speak up. Most of the cases we deal with are immigrant women who came to this country by marriage and they are denied a normal life or opportunity to integrate. It is common to see isolation as a tactic to keep them indoors and have documents taken away. Also, threats of deportation, threats of harming relatives back home, and using children as a means to inflict more harm are very common for the Asian demographic.”

She stated that most cases her organization deals with are from India, Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The victims are mostly between 18 and 35 years old, and come to the US under spousal visas and tourist visas. Many, however, live as undocumented people.

According to the Migration Data Portal, female migrants face stronger discrimination and are more vulnerable to mistreatment than male migrants. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) no. 5 aims to achieve gender equality and to empower all women and girls. Over the past 25 years, there has been some progress in reforming laws towards improving gender equality, but discriminatory laws and gaps in legal protection persist in many countries.

Mazeda explains that if women are subjected to gender-based violence, they may qualify for protection through the US asylum program. If a man or a woman declares themselves belonging to the LGBTQ community and can show proof of hostility in their own countries, they too can receive asylum in the US.

SAFEST has partnerships with various organizations that cater to various demographics and minority communities and provide extensive mental, financial, and emotional support for them. Erasing the language barrier by providing linguistic training is especially important in combatting domestic violence. Mazeda sees this as a mandatory requirement. Often, women are crippled by the inability to communicate and remain homebound – a condition exploited by oppressors.

Under the Violence Against Women Act, several immigrants and non-immigrant visa categories are available for victims of partner violence, sexual assault, rape, or human trafficking. Spouses of US citizens or lawful permanent residents (i.e. green-card holders) may be eligible for permanent residence on the basis of that abuse, allowing victims to obtain lawful status without their abuser being notified.

Maliha’s case, and those encountered by Mazeda, show just how impactful the information and knowledge gap can be on the lives of the vulnerable arriving in the United States. Without the ability to properly communicate, or understand the new paradigm of law they are going to be living under, many abuse victims fall through the cracks into lives of indignity. As much as we believe in the depth of our civility, we need community-based, grass-roots efforts, to provide assistance to those in need.

The post Migrant Women Exploited by Those They Trust appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Shedding Some Light at the End of the Covid-19 Tunnel: Plotting a Way Forward

Thu, 06/04/2020 - 17:47

By Asif Zaman
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jun 4 2020 (IPS)

Lockdowns have been the main measures to ‘flatten the curve’ of COVID-19 infections. But lockdowns typically incur huge economic costs, distributed unevenly in economies and societies. In fact, some governments acknowledged that they were choosing ‘life over economy’.

‘Life vs. Economy’: A false dichotomy
As lockdowns have been repeatedly extended arguing that economy can be revived but not the dead, it has become increasingly clear that ‘lives and livelihoods’ are intrinsically intertwined. The longer the lockdowns, higher is the risk of hunger and hence death.

Asif Zaman

Lockdowns can set back progress and people’s welfare irreversibly, especially for the vulnerable. Most ‘casual’ labourers, petty businesses and others in the ‘informal’ economy find it especially difficult to survive extended lockdowns.

With millions already jobless, the International Labour Organization (ILO) warns that nearly half of global workforce are at risk of losing livelihoods. The United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) estimates that a 20% income or consumption contraction could increase poverty levels by 420–580 million. It is estimated that 9 out of every 10 students in the world have been disrupted.

Therefore, many countries, especially developing ones, are under increasing pressure to re-start their economies.

Re-starting the economy: ‘To be or not to be’
The countries that are easing lockdown restrictions are also seeing spikes in the COVID-19 infections. South Korea re-tightened lockdown restrictions after spike in cases. Iran reopened in April to save the economy, but within a month designated Tehran and eight provinces as “red zones”.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and reputed medical journal, The Lancet, warned against scaling back lockdown restrictions too quickly.

Countries now need to find an optimal manner of re-starting the economy. However, the timing and pace of relaxing restrictions will depend, among others, on what the countries have done during the lockdown period, e.g., increase supply of personal protective equipment (PPEs), intensive care beds (ICUs), creating mass awareness about precautionary measures, etc.

Countries also need to maintain law and order and a planned process of opening the economy is required. So, what should this planned process look like? What will the optimal approach be based on?

Here we suggest 3S – Smart, Science-based and Sectoral – solutions

Smart Solutions
Epidemiologists talk of “smart containment” that all can practise. By ‘smart’ we mean effective but cheap; innovative but easy-to-use solutions to minimize the risk of COVID-19 in the workplace. This requires cross-fertilization of ideas from different disciplines: public health experts, clinicians, industrial-organizational psychologists, economists, architects, and engineers. Lessons from the best practices of the globe need to be compiled, customized and tested.

One of the main reasons why countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam have coped better than others is that they learnt difficult lessons after the SARS epidemic of 2002-04. The same can be said about Ghana, Senegal and some other African countries which experienced the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak .

Good primary-health systems can devise and disseminate sensible adaptations as seen in Vietnam and the Indian state of Kerala. Rwanda and the Indian state of Karnataka installed foot-operated handwashing stations at busy places such as bus depots and railway stations. Such facilities should be installed in slums and work places. Local leaders must play an active role to spread health messages, regarding face-masks, and isolation of suspected.

Science Based Solutions
Science means data. Armed with data, governments can continuously refine their policies. Up to date data on both health and socio-economic outcomes will support evidence-based decision-making. However, low statistical capacity needs to be addressed urgently. The solutions for workplace safety must have solid scientific foundation – risk assessment of a workplace and strategies for mitigation must be scientific.

To limit the risk requires an epidemiological approach that focuses on the places and people most likely to spread the disease. Thus, greater focus has to be on high-risk urban slums, prisons and refugee camps where people live in congested quarters with limited facilities for good hygiene practices. For example, architects and urban planners are experimenting with innovative solutions in Dhaka.

Tracing, testing, isolating and treating have to be an integral part. But mass testing is expensive, and the Vietnam experience of targeted approach coupled with contact tracing and selective quarantine seems more suitable for poor countries.

Sectoral Solutions
Solutions for the Garments Industry, Banking Sector, Construction Sector, etc. need to be tailored based on sectoral and site-specific risk assessments. Then, customized protocols for the various sectors need to be developed so that these sectors can start operating by minimizing the risk of contagion.

For example, industrial engineers can redesign the workplace of RMG industries to ensure adequate physical distancing with little changes. The workers’ flow or movement needs to be properly designed and monitored. There should be protocols during entry to the factory and during their stay. Special equipment like automatic/foot operated hand washing stands or disinfection chambers using food grade disinfectants can to be installed at the gate of each floor.

The service sector requires customer/client flow solutions. These solutions ensure customer/client satisfaction and safety of both customer/client and service provider.

The construction industry requires site management protocols such as: site entry/egress procedures, limiting number of workers on site, maintaining worker hygiene, delineating risk zones, etc. The construction project schedule needs to be designed in a way so that workers can work in parallel avoiding high labour-intensive functions.

All sectors need to have customized protocols for COVID-19 cases: procedures for detecting symptoms, isolating infected staff and arranging hospitalization if needed. Psychological counselling is required to elevate worker morale.

Government stimulus packages can be tied to the compliance of the guidelines for workplace safety. Adoption of new risk minimizing technology can also be subsidized through the stimulus package. However, building awareness among entrepreneurs is also critical in successful implementation of such guidelines.

This is a mammoth task to prepare sector-wise customized protocols. These protocols have to be approved by appropriate regulatory bodies. Sectoral experts can play a key role in helping government develop these guidelines. Signs that the virus may be weakening also gives us hope.

Dr. Asif M. Zaman, Environmental Engineer, MD Esolve Intl Ltd. He also teaches at the North South University, Dhaka, Bangladesh (asif@esolveint.com)

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Categories: Africa

The Struggle for Land and Food in the Locked-down Philippines

Thu, 06/04/2020 - 17:17

Credit: KMP

By Elena L. Pasquini
ROME, Jun 4 2020 (IPS)

Landless farmers who produce rice for the landlords of big “haciendas” can’t get more than a little pocket money from their harsh work—not enough to provide diverse and healthy food for their families. Seasonal workers on sugar-cane plantations know that they can count on only six months of earnings. When summer arrives, those whose irrigation facilities have been destroyed by typhoons, or those who never had any, struggle while waiting for the rain.

That was the snapshot of agriculture in the Philippines when the COVID-19 outbreak hit the country. And it still is. The colonial past shaped a farming sector dominated by large export-oriented monocrop plantations; large plots devoted to agribusinesses, industrial plants, or housing subdivisions; and, still, 7 out of 10 farmers with no land, regardless of decades of attempts to enforce land reform.

“The agriculture in the Philippines is not actually ready for any pandemic,” said Kathryn Manga, community development worker and project officer at Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, KMP, the Peasant Movement of the Philippines, founded in 1985 and supported by the Agroecology Fund. It has more than two million members, representing landless peasants, farmworkers, peasant women, and young farmers.

“Even before COVID, the agriculture in the Philippines was not sufficient to support its people… There was already a crisis, with prices of commodities, even vegetables and rice, that have gone up,” she told Degrees of Latitude.

Farmers have never stopped advocating and putting their lives at risk for “genuine land reform” as a prerequisite for the development of an agricultural model able to ensure food security: “The monocrop practice has really destroyed the ecosystems, the natural resources of our country. We would want Filipino farmers to enjoy a system where they would be able to decide what type of crops to plant. Something they can think of eating with their family,” Manga said.

What farmers grow is now mostly intended for sale, and diversity of production is rare. Manga told the story of those who cultivate rice, one of the most important staple commodities of the country: “When they sell their palay – the palay is the rice – for a low price, they go home with the little money they get … After selling their palay to the landlord … they have to go [back] to the market to buy rice.” Nothing remains for self-consumption because all the rice goes to pay land rents or inputs needed for production.

Farmers in the lockdown

Credit: KMP

COVID-19 containment measures added “chaos” to an already fragile situation, according to Manga. The military and authorities controlled the movement of farmers, preventing them from tending farms and selling their produce. Volunteers who took part in relief operations to bring food to the most vulnerable were detained and charged with the accusation of violating the quarantine, six of them from KMP. However, small-scale agriculture is still proving its resilience in this emergency.

Lockdown “has really been very militaristic,” Manga said. “Check-points were placed in many different regions, [and] also in Metro Manila. … People were just told to stay at home. Without a job, they were not able to eat. For farmers it is very difficult … There’s really no work from home for them.”

Access to food has been an issue not only for rural poor but also for urban communities: “If the Philippines’ government will not really support agriculture, it will be difficult to have food security especially in urban areas, to access good and low-price vegetables in Metro Manila,” she said.

However, networks of farmers have been able to mobilize food even during the lockdown. From Bulacan—50 km north of Manila, where a past programme of KMP helped farmers to occupy unused land—come the vegetables that are feeding the most vulnerable in the city. “These are mostly for urban poor communities, for homeless people, for workers who are not able to go home to their provinces. It started with a Church organization that has a mobile kitchen and looked for a community of farmers who were producing vegetables.”

KNP, whose member organizations have been able to deliver ten thousand kilos of vegetables in the first month of operations, has also launched an online food shop whose profits support their relief activity.

Land, agroecology for resilience

Credit: KMP

At the root of insecurity, however, is a century-long agricultural system based on extensive farming. It has been designed based on the export of high-value commodities like sugar, pineapple, and banana, as well as on production of rice.

Government, according to farmers organizations, has failed to address the crucial question of land distribution and is not providing the support that farmers need for production, including self-production of seeds or irrigation. “There is no production support for the Filipino farmers. There’s an irrigation bill that was passed two years ago, but until now it has not been given a budget by the government,” Manga said.

Farmers plant on land they rent and what they get is barely enough to pay for it. “They do not have the certificate of ownership.” That’s the point, she stressed. “[If] most of their produce has to be as payment, they won’t have extra for their own [consumption].”

“If you have a small plot that you can till, if you can grow a garden with vegetables, it would be easy. Many people [now live on what they] call ‘survival crops,’ crops that they do not really plant regularly, but they find around—root crops or vegetables which grow wild”.

Ownership of land means farmers can choose what to grow for themselves and for their communities in a model of agriculture based on diversification and sustainability. The agroecological model “will bring healthy food to Philippinos and the farmers,” Manga said.

Filipino farmers have practised agroecology for a long time, but monocrop and GMOs planting, according to Manga, has led to a decreased biodiversity and increased dependency on external inputs, including chemicals. Farmers are now trying to replant local seed varieties and are looking for diversification in the farm: “Those who are practising diversified farming still have rice, [but also] vegetables, root crops, fruit trees, and medicinal plants … which is also food for them. They have some animals ….”, she said.

Access to the market remains a major bottleneck: “Many of our farmers still need to go through the middlemen who buy the products at the very low price and then they transport to the nearby markets, in Metro Manila or in the region,” Manga explained. Middlemen, for instance, can pay 16 pesos for squash that will be sold on the market for 50 to 60 pesos each. When KMP offered to buy some farmers’ produce at a higher price, they expressed great concern: “It will make the middlemen angry and many of them will not go back to us,” they said. KMP is trying to overcome the problem by working with local organizations instead of individual farmers.

However, in the long-term, food security is a matter of rights: “The State should recognize the right to food, the right to produce food, the right to till the land, and to have control of the land that farmers have been tilling for generations. Farmers have the right to choose their own production system,” Manga said.

This article was first published by Degrees of Latitude

The post The Struggle for Land and Food in the Locked-down Philippines appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

We Arabs Ask No Favors…..

Thu, 06/04/2020 - 15:35

By El Hassan bin Talal
GENEVA, Jun 4 2020 (IPS)

In these difficult times for the Palestinian people and for justice, the Government of Israel is proposing to add further to the turmoil by unilaterally absorbing large swathes of the Palestinian West Bank of the Jordan River. It might therefore be fitting to remind the world of the chronology of the events leading up to the creation of the State of Israel in May 1948.

HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal

In 1947, the UN had passed Resolution 181, which clearly divided Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Israeli. Sadly, Israel—almost immediately after coming into being—adopted a policy of intimidation aimed at the civilian population of those areas allocated to Palestine, resulting in the Nakba, the catastrophe which led to the fleeing of the inhabitants of those areas to safe haven in neighbouring countries, and adding further to Palestinian diaspora.

As a consequence of the Israeli aggression, the Palestinian people asked Jordan to intervene to protect and ensure their territory. The Arab Legion, largely commanded by British officers, secured East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Israeli occupation. This led to the Rhodes General Armistice of April 1949.

Subsequently, at the Jericho meeting in 1950, Palestinian notables requested the “Constitutional Union” of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem. The agreement was that this should prevail until such time as a Palestinian state could come to fruition, without prejudice to the inherent Palestinian right to Self-Determination.

It would be useful to recall that The Partition Plan Resolution of the General Assembly of 1947, upon which Israel relied for its declaration of statehood on the 14th of May 1948, was meaningless unless Israel accepted the UN Charter under which the territory and people of Palestine were already subject to the legal imprint of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Mandate for Palestine 1922, and the UN Charter of 1945.

The Charter expressly included “the principle of self-determination of peoples”. Israel’s attitude to the UN Charter is consistently selective, invoking what assists its case, and ignoring what destroys it.

In November 1947, my grandfather King Abdullah I wrote in an article in the American Magazine: “We Arabs ask no favours. We ask only that you know the full truth, not half of it. We ask only that when you judge the Palestine question, you put yourself in our place.”

The full article can be found on my late brother King Hussein’s website: http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/kabd_eng.html.

These words were written on the eve of the 53rd anniversary of the 1967 war.

HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal served as Crown Prince of Jordan from 1965-1999 alongside his brother, the late King Hussein of Jordan.

The post We Arabs Ask No Favors….. appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

COVID-19: Reset Food Systems Now for a Better Future

Thu, 06/04/2020 - 15:09

By Cecilia Russell
MILAN, Italy, Jun 4 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the inherent fragility of food systems, Marta Antonelli told an international video conference organised by the Barilla Center for Food Nutrition (BCFN).

However, she said, it also offered an opportunity to reset the way food is produced, distributed and consumed.

The pandemic disrupted the food system, triggering food insecurity and resulted in sharp increases in the cost of food – up to 10 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa. Jobs were lost, children who received one meal a day at school lost access to this source of nutrition, and the pandemic would see an increase in the number of people who go hungry.

Antonelli, who is BCFN’s head of research, said the pandemic had focused global attention on the importance of nutrition. With one in three adults in developed and developing countries overweight or obese with their share of non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes created a community vulnerable to the disease.

Antonelli said the launch of BCFN’s 10-point strategy on Wednesday, June 3, 2020, aimed to create a global dialogue of scientists, businesses, NGOs, civil society about the organisation’s actionable strategy to enable eaters – people – to make healthy and sustainable choices easily.

The wide-ranging 10-point strategy includes creating international best practise for creating healthy food systems – while respecting food preferences and culture, cut down on food loss and waste on farms, kitchens and restaurants, involve business to focus on health and sustainability.

It also includes a call to incentivise technological and digital innovation in food and agricultural information, improving seed security and building and education to empower eaters to make sustainable and healthy food choices.

Speaker after speaker highlighted nutrition and food impact on the COVID-19 pandemic: from its genesis in bats to implications for those sickened by the virus.

“COVID-19 is providing unprecedented opportunities to create a resilient food system that is truly regenerative and restorative, healthier for people, and leaves no one behind. This is also essential to accelerate the transition towards the 2030 Agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which are all directly or indirectly connected to food,” BCFN said in a statement.

Professor Riccardo Valentini of the University of Tuscia, RUDN University of Moscow said habitat destruction was crucial for understanding the genesis of the pandemic. COVID-19 was not China’s problem or the problem of any other one country. It needed to be addressed globally.

This reinforced the theme that there is only one health system: for humans, animals, plants and the environment.

At least two speakers addressed the issue of COVID-19 and nutrition – of food as medicine or how bad nutrition could jeopardise health.

Gabriele Riccardi, of the University of Naples Federico II, said middle- and high-income countries, with their mainly animal-based and refined carbohydrate diets, found it exposed people to the devastating effects the virus. COVID-19 adversely affected people with comorbidity associated with obesity like heart diseases.

It was significant Riccardi said, in the last ten years many countries, which had previously improved nutrition, had moved in the wrong direction. The consumption of fruit and vegetables declined, while the use of meat increased.

He called for a system which supported production that ensured availability and affordability of good nutritious food even in the most remote marketplaces.

Camillo Ricordi, from the University of Miami on the other hand, said early studies indicated that good nutrition, in particular, adequate consumption of vitamins D and C and Omega 3 enhanced the immune system and produced clear benefits in resistance to the disease and ability to decrease inflammation.

Barbara Buchner, of the Climate Policy Initiative said the pandemic was a wake-up call for all social and financial systems to be better prepared for a crisis. She said it was frightening that only 8 percent of public finance was currently channelled into sustainable land use and this was exaggerating the growing crisis of food security in many nations.

She said it was likely that $20 trillion would be spent in the next six to 18 months to stimulate economies as governments globally rollout plans and cash for economic stimulus and enhancing social safety nets.

“We have a window to rebuild our world for more inclusive, more resilient, more sustainable future,” Buchner said. It was essential financial solutions that can drive resources towards sustainable agriculture supply chain were found – for example, through public-private incubator initiatives such as the Global Innovation Lab for climate finance.

She concluded that global solidarity and leadership were critical for maximising the positive impact of the recovery on building a resilient food system that is healthy, healthier for the people, but also for the planet and that leaves no one behind.”

The post COVID-19: Reset Food Systems Now for a Better Future appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

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