Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Wizkid performs in London, United Kingdom. Photo: Alamy/Michael Tubi

By Franck Kuwonu, Africa Renewal*
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 16 2018 (IPS)

It is a cold evening in Antwerp, Belgium’s second-largest city, famous for diamonds, beer, art and high-end fashion. Inside a small restaurant, a mix of the latest American pop and rap—clearly enjoyed by diners—is playing on a radio. Nigerians Olalekan Adetiran and Adaobi Okereke, enjoying a kebab dinner, are startled when the radio begins playing the unmistakable “Ma Lo”—a catchy, midtempo and bass-laden song by popular Nigerian artistes Tiwa Savage and Wizkid.

The song, currently a hit in Nigeria and across Africa, awakens thoughts of home; they cannot stop smiling at the pleasant surprise. They are visiting Belgium as part of a tour of European countries and their cultural landmarks.

A week earlier, barely two months after its release, the eye-popping video of the song had been viewed on YouTube more than 10 million times—and counting.

For Mr. Adetiran, hearing “Ma Lo” on a Belgian radio station not known to cater to African communities confirms that music from Naija (as Nigerians fondly refer to their country), is going places. It reflects the greater reach of a new generation of Nigerian artists.

Just like the country’s movie industry, Nollywood, Nigerian music is drawing interest from beyond the borders, showcasing the vitality of a creative industry that the government is now depending on, among other sectors, to diversify the economy and foster development.

Greater recognition

Last November, Wizkid won the Best International Act category at the 2017 MOBO (Music of Black Origin) Awards held in London, the first for an Africa-based artist. He beat back competition from more established global celebrities such as Jay-Z, Drake, DJ Khaled and Kendrick Lamar.

At the same MOBO Awards, Davido, another Nigerian artist, took home the Best African Act award for “If,” one of his hit songs—a love-themed ballad with a blend of Nigerian rhythms and R & B.

Since its release in February 2017, the official “If” video has racked up more than 60 million views on YouTube, the highest number of YouTube views for any Nigerian music video and one of the highest ever recorded for a song by an African artist.

Across the African continent, other musical groups, such as Kenya’s boy band Sauti Sol, Tanzania’s Diamond Platnumz and South Africa’s Mafikizolo, have collaborated with or featured Nigerian top stars in attempts to gain international appeal. Reuters news service calls Nigerian music a “cultural export.”

The Nigerian government is now looking to the creative industries, including performing arts and music, to generate revenues.

A billion-dollar industry?

“When we talk about diversifying the economy it is not just about agriculture or solid minerals alone, it is about the creative industry—about the films, theatre and music,”
Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s minister of information and culture


In rebasing or recalculating its GDP in 2013, the Nigerian government included formerly neglected sectors, such as the entertainment industries led by Nollywood. As a result, the country’s GDP increased sharply, from $270 billion to $510 billion, overtaking South Africa that year as the continent’s biggest economy, notes the Brookings Institution, a US-based nonprofit public policy think tank.

Brookings reports, however, that the GDP rise didn’t show an increase in wealth and that a recent crash in the price of oil, the country’s main export, is slowing economic growth.

Nigerian music sales revenues were estimated at $56 million in 2014, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), an international accounting and auditing firm. The firm projects sales revenues to reach $88 million by 2019.

Globally, the creative industry is among the most dynamic economic sectors. It “provides new opportunities for developing countries to leapfrog into emerging high-growth areas of the world economy,” the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), a UN body that deals with trade, investment and development issues, said in a 2016 report.

Over the last decade, Europe has been the largest exporter of creative products, although exports from developing countries are growing fast too, UNCTAD reported.

According to PwC, lumped together, annual revenues from music, movies, art and fashion in Nigeria will grow from $4.8 billion in 2015 to more than $8 billion in 2019,.

Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics reports that the local music sector grew “in real terms by 8.4% for the first three months of 2016” and that in the first quarter of 2017, the sector grew by 12% compared with the same period one year prior.

The growth may be attributed to a reversal in music consumption patterns, according to local media reports. Up to the early 2000s, the music in clubs and on the radio in Nigeria was dominated by British and American hit songs.

Not anymore. Reportedly, most Nigerians now prefer songs by their local artists to those by foreigners, even the big ones in the West.

“When I go out, I want to hear songs by Davido or Whizkid or Tekno; like other people, I cannot enjoy myself listening to songs by foreign artistes anymore,” says Benjamin Gabriel, who lives in Abuja. With a population of about 180 million, Nigerian artists have a huge market to tap into. The big ones like Whizkid and Davido are feeling the love—maybe the cash too!

The new oil

“We are ready to explore and exploit the ‘new oil,’” Nigeria’s minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed, commented ahead of a creative industry financing conference held in Lagos last July.

“When we talk about diversifying the economy it is not just about agriculture or solid minerals alone, it is about the creative industry—about the films, theatre and music,” Mr. Mohammed said.

He was reacting to UNCTAD’s findings that the creative industry contributed £84.1 (about $115.5) billion to the British economy in 2014 and $698 billion to the US economy that same year. “Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind,” Mr. Mohammed declared.

The Nigerian government is already providing incentives to investors in the sector, including a recent $1 million venture capital fund to provide seed money for young and talented Nigerians looking to set up business in creative industries.

The government is also allowing the industry “pioneer status,” meaning that those investing in motion picture, video and television production, music production, publishing, distribution, exhibition and photography can enjoy a three- to five-year tax holiday.

Other incentives, such as government-backed and privately backed investment funds, are also being implemented.

Yet as hopes of a vibrant industry rise, pervasive copyright violations could stunt its growth.

Profits are “scattered”

In December 2017, the Nigerian police charged three people in Lagos with copyright violations. Their arrests had been widely reported in the country months earlier. “Piracy: Three suspects arrested at Alaba with N50 million [US$139,000] worth of materials,” Premium Times, a Lagos-based newspaper, announced in a headline.

Alaba market in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, is famous for electronics, but it is also notorious for all things fake and cheap, attracting customers from across West Africa to East Africa.

Recent efforts by the authorities to fight piracy led to police raids of Alaba and other markets in the country, resulting in the seizure of pirated items worth $40 million.

Despite such raids, the business of pirated music and movie CDs continues unabated, turning enforcement efforts into a game of Whack-A-Mole. With minimal returns from CD sales, Nigerian artists rely on ringtone sales, corporate sponsorship contracts and paid performances to make ends meet. Most Nigerian artists now prefer online releases of their songs.

Still, online release poses its own challenges. For example, Mr. Adetiran and Mr. Okereke recall visiting in March 2017 a club in Dakar, Senegal, where DJs spun Nigerian beats nonstop. The two realised only much later that those songs had been downloaded from the Internet.

“When you create your content and put it out, it’s scattered,” Harrysong, a Nigerian singer, told the New York Times in June 2017, echoing Mr. Adetiran and Mr. Okereke’s experience. He was expressing performers’ sense of powerlessness as they lose control of sales and distribution of their music.

The Times summed it up like this: “Nigeria’s Afrobeat music scene is booming, but profits go to pirates.”

*Africa Renewal, a magazine published by the United Nations, was launched in 1987. It was formerly published as Africa Recovery/Afrique Relance. 

This article was originally published here

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By WAM
ABU DHABI, Aug 16 2018 (WAM)

Responding to urgent international appeals, the Emirates Red Crescent, ERC, has provided shelters, tents, covers and food to those stricken by the floods that hit many provinces in Eastern Sudan and Kerala, India, as well as those affected by the earthquake that catapulted the province of Lombok, Indonesia.

The ERC’s rapid humanitarian and rescue response aims to ease the suffering of those affected by floods and earthquakes. The heavy rains in August in Sudan and India led to the deaths of many people, left thousands of families homeless, and seriously damaged public facilities.

Dr. Mohammed Ateeq Al Falahi, Secretary-General of the ERC, stated that the ERC will coordinate with the Sudanese Red Crescent and relevant local authorities to distribute aid and basic supplies to those affected, including tents, shelter, equipment, food parcels and water pumps.

Al Falahi added that the ERC’s efforts in Kerala include providing basic supplies to affected families, in cooperation with the UAE Consulate in Kerala, as well as exploring their needs and identifying the best ways of providing aid, to help those affected by seasonal rains and floods that left 14,000 families homeless.

The ERC is currently seeking to access the shelter camps of the affected families, to meet their urgent needs, he further added.

In Lombok, Indonesia, the ERC conducted humanitarian operations to fulfil the needs of those affected by the earthquake that recently hit the province, which led to the deaths of 14 people and injured 105 more. The earthquake also destroyed many homes and 4,000 people were evacuated to safer areas, in coordination with the UAE Embassy in Jakarta and the Indonesian Red Cross.

An ERC delegation today travelled to Indonesia to provide humanitarian support to those affected.

WAM/Tariq alfaham/Hatem Mohamed

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Smallholder coffee farmers. Credit: SAFE Platform

By Carol Gribnau
Aug 15 2018 (IPS)

While participating in this year’s High-level Political Forum (HLPF), one thing became crystal clear to me. Come 2030, we will not have healthy and affordable food if we continue with business as usual. But no one institution can single handedly change the course of our food system. The key to ensuring a sustainable food system is involving a diverse group of actors – from smallholder farmers to government – to generate ideas for change, together.

Save our coffee

Look at the coffee sector. Everybody loves their cup of coffee, but will we still be able to drink it in the future? Our recently launched 2018 Coffee Barometer, which measures the sector’s sustainability, finds that coffee has a global retail value of USD 200 billion, but less than 10 percent of it stays in producing countries. Without increased investments in sustainable coffee production and a living wage for the 25 million smallholder farmers who produce that coffee, our future supply is at risk.

This is why Hivos works in multi-stakeholder partnerships in Latin America (the SAFE Platform) and East Africa (the 4s@scale program) which together – through targeted support to both male and female farmers – have already benefited over 200,000 coffee farmers.

Carol Gribnau

How multi-stakeholder collaboration works

Everyone recognizes the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration, but it’s good to understand exactly what we’re talking about. Connecting multiple stakeholders with various interested parties within a food system allows us to look at the challenges from a whole new perspective and address them in a way we never could if everyone worked independently to solve a problem. This sort of collaboration works best with:

Tailor-made approaches

There’s not one food system but multiple, very context-specific food systems. This requires a tailored approach for each scenario, where different actors work together to gain a deep understanding of local circumstances before designing solutions. The “Lab” approach, which Hivos applies in several countries, allows for exactly that and helps the actors move from global to national and local platforms. Given the complexity of food systems, local platforms are likely to be the most effective.

The right people at the table

The transformation towards sustainable food systems requires involving key actors, especially those whose voices are rarely heard in policy making: small-scale producers, (low-income) consumers and women. Making their food system visible to policymakers is crucial to ensure that policy and local realities are on the same page and power imbalances are addressed. Multi-stakeholder platforms that do not truly involve these key actors are not well designed. The choices of the convener who brings everyone to the table are critical.

One Plan for One Planet

Engaging multiple actors to transform the food system was in fact a hot topic from 9 to 17 July at the HLPF. It was a significant event for us to showcase our work on SDG 12 (“Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”). Together with the World Wildlife Fund and the governments of Switzerland and South Africa, Hivos co-leads the Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) program, one of the six programs within the One Planet Network, the official multi-stakeholder network putting SDG 12 into action.

Changing the food system in Zambia

Hivos promotes local multi-actor platforms – so called Food Change Labs – in several countries through our Sustainable Diets for All program. I presented one of these at the HLPF as a concrete example of using multi-stakeholder partnerships to support implementation on the ground.

The Zambia Food Change Lab brings together low-income consumers, traders, traditional leaders, producers, and government authorities, among others, to address the limited crop diversity on Zambian farms and in local diets. It’s a facilitated, safe space for them to build a collective understanding of Zambia’s current food system, generate ideas for change, and test these innovations on the ground. It fosters long-term engagement, collective leadership, and joint initiatives. When they work together, the impact is far-reaching and long-lasting. Outcomes such as strengthened capacities, networks and trust between actors have the potential to positively influence the system for many years to come.

Food Lab campaign for food diversity in Zambia. Credit: Hivos

Call to action

On our last day at HLPF 2018, Hivos Director Edwin Huizing called on national governments to speed up their transitions, the private sector to bring a business case for a more solid, sustainable, and inclusive food system, and civil society organizations to build bridges with local communities and showcase best practices. Securing the active participation of Southern actors is particularly vital.

This opinion piece was originally published here

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Excerpt:

Carol Gribnau is director of the Hivos global Green Energy and Green Food programs

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By WAM
SHARJAH, Aug 15 2018 (WAM)

The amount of water produced in the Emirate of Sharjah during the first half of 2018, reached more than 18.308.9 billion gallons of water, according to the latest statistics issued by the Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (SEWA).

The statistics indicated that the housing sector accounted for the largest percentage of water consumed, 63.32%, during the first half of this year while the percentage of water consumed in the commercial sector during the first six months of this year 23.38%, while the government sector accounted for 8.36% of quantities water consumed in the industrial sector, the percentage of water consumed was 4.87% and in the agricultural sector it was 0.08%.

Dr. Rashid Al Leem, Chairman of SEWA, said that SEWA is exerting great efforts to produce, desalinate and distribute water to consumers and is making efforts to raise awareness about the importance of water conservation and use it optimally.

Tariq alfaham

WAM/Hatem Mohamed

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A health officer on the outskirts of Itipo prepares to open a barrier for a motorbike driver who has undergone screening . Photo: IOM

By IOM Democratic Republic of the Congo
Aug 15 2018 (IOM)

The mighty Congo River both connects Kinshasa with Equateur Province where an Ebola epidemic began in May 2018 and separates the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from Congo-Brazzaville, hidden in the haze on the other bank.

“Epidemiological surveillance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a massive challenge,” said Pierre Dimany while looking out to the river. Pierre is the Kinshasa coordinator of the National Programme for Border Hygiene (PNHF), a partner of IOM, the UN Migration Agency, in the Ebola response.

On Tuesday 24 July, the country’s ninth epidemic was officially declared over, some two-and-a-half months after it began. In previous epidemics, cases were usually confined to remote areas in DRC’s vast rainforest, but this time around a total of four were reported in the Equateur provincial capital Mbandaka. This sparked fears that the fever, which often kills in a matter of days, would take hold of the city and work its way downstream to Kinshasa, where an estimated 12 million people live.

“We were all scared,” admitted Djo Ipaso Yoka, a young teacher recruited to carry out screenings at a post in Mbandaka at one of the points of entry to Wendji Secli motorbike taxi park.

The epidemic started in two health zones deep in the equatorial forest, Bikoro and Iboko. The first victim, a health worker, had treated an old woman, who had come into a village from the forest because she was sick. From there the virus spread to Mbandaka in Bikoro health zone.

Although the epidemic in Equateur was declared over, the country is constantly threatened by outbreaks. A new epidemic, the tenth in the DRC, was declared just days after the end of the Equateur outbreak. This latest medical emergency has sparked grave concern, as it is occurring in the east of the country close to a town with road links into neighbouring Uganda.

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Over 700 West Bank children were detained by Israeli military forces between 2012 and 2017, with 72 percent of them enduring physical violence after the arrest, according to Defense for Children International Palestine. Photo credit: UNICEF/El Baba

By Carmen Arroyo
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 15 2018 (IPS)

Over 700 West Bank children were detained by Israeli military forces between 2012 and 2017, with 72 percent of them enduring physical violence after the arrest, according to Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP).  

With the release of Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi in late July, the constant arrests of Palestinian children by Israeli forces have been in the spotlight once again, with DCIP saying that 727 children had been detained in the last five years.“Reforms undertaken by Israeli military authorities tend to be cosmetic in nature rather than substantively addressing physical violence and torture by Israeli military and police forces.” -- Brad Parker, international advocacy officer and attorney at Defense for Children International Palestine.

“Ill-treatment of Palestinian child detainees by Israeli forces is widespread, systematic and institutionalised throughout the Israeli military detention system,” Brad Parker, international advocacy officer and attorney at DCIP, told IPS.

July was an eventful month for Palestine. On the one hand, the observer state of Palestine was chosen to lead the Group 77 at the United Nations, making it a big win for Palestine and increasing the tensions with Israel. G77 is the largest bloc of developing countries, currently with 135 countries, and Palestine spoke at the General Assembly. Palestine will assume leadership of the G77 by January 2019, replacing Egypt.

On the other hand, some days later the 17-year-old Palestinian activist, Tamimi, was released after an eight-month stay in an Israeli prison. She was arrested after she hit an armed Israeli soldier at the entrance of her village, Nabi Saleh. The scene was recorded and the video made her well known worldwide.

Commenting on Tamimi’s case, Parker said: “Ahed’s detention, prosecution, plea agreement, and sentencing in Israel’s military court system is not exceptional, but illustrates the widespread, systematic, and institutionalised ill-treatment of Palestinian child detainees by Israeli forces and the fair trial denials inherent in Israel’s military detention system.”

“Now that she has been released, attention will likely wane but she has and continues to highlight the plight of the hundreds of other Palestinian child detainees that continue to be detained and prosecuted in Israel’s military court system,” he added.

Palestinian child arrests are becoming pervasive and the legitimacy of the methods used to process their arrests is quite questionable. According to DCIP, out of the 727 children processed by Israeli military courts, 700 had no parent or legal counsel present during the interrogation. Additionally, 117 spent more than 10 days in solitary confinement. For Parker, “the ill-treatment of Palestinian child detainees by Israeli forces has been one of the more high profile Palestinian rights issues raised by the international community.”

With Palestine’s new leadership position at the U.N., the observer state could draw international attention towards this issue. But some experts remain sceptical as to whether this will prove to be true. Vijay Prashad, director at Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, said: “The G77 is hampered as countries that once were stalwarts in the fight against colonialism—such as India—are now hesitant. They need to be called to account.”

Asked about the role of the international system and institutions such as the U.N. to stop Palestinian child abuses in the West Bank, Prashad was adamant that there must be more action.

“The U.N. must be more vigorous. It is one thing to have declared the settlements as illegal and another to do nothing about it,” he said.

He went on, stating, “there needs to be more action by countries that abhor this policy of colonisation. Much more vocal condemnation, more stringent policies against the Israeli government [is needed].” 

Parker called the Israeli authorities to responsibility.

“Despite sustained engagement by [U.N. Children’s Fund] UNICEF and repeated calls to end night arrests and ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention, Israeli authorities have persistently failed to implement practical changes to stop violence against Palestinian child detainees or guarantee due process rights and basic fair trial rights,” he said.

In response to the question of whether there had been any reforms within the Israeli military, Parker answered: “Reforms undertaken by Israeli military authorities tend to be cosmetic in nature rather than substantively addressing physical violence and torture by Israeli military and police forces.”

The international community is taking a stand with, for example, briefings and reports by different U.N. agencies and the current United States bill that focuses on the rights of Palestinian children detainees called the “Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act”.

According to Parker, this is not enough as Israel keeps breaking international justice agreements.

“Regardless of guilt or innocence or the gravity of an alleged offence, international juvenile justice standards, which Israel has obligated itself to implement by ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, demand that children should only be deprived of their liberty as a measure of last resort, must not be unlawfully or arbitrarily detained, and must not be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” Parker said.

When asked whether the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem— enacted by U.S. president Donald Trump—has increased tensions, Prashad said: “Israeli policy has been whipped past illegality long before Trump became president. It has certainly intensified. But it is the same U.S. policy of appeasement of Israel’s ambitions.”

Parker, on the other hand, did see changes.

“Large-scale demonstrations, marches and clashes throughout the West Bank following the Trump administration’s decision to publicly recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December corresponded with a spike in the number of Palestinian child detainees held in Israeli military detention,” Parker said.

“Systemic impunity is the norm when it comes to Israeli’s 50-plus year military occupation of Palestinians, so demanding justice and accountability and ultimately an end to occupation is what is needed to end grave human rights violations against children,” he said.

• Boycott, Divest & Sanctions Campaign Not Anti-Israel but Pro-Palestinian, Says Norwegian MP
• Why Israel Dropped Out of the Security Council Race: Not Enough Votes
• Historic UN Security Council Vote Condemns Israeli Settlements
• Israel Slammed Over Treatment of Palestinian Children in Detention

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By International Organization for Migration
GENEVA, Aug 14 2018 (IOM)

IOM, the UN Migration Agency, reports that 61,517 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in 2018 through 12 August. This compares with 118,436 arrivals across the region through the same period last year, and 265,640 in 2016.

Arrivals to Spain in 2018 continue to outpace all other destinations along the littoral – with 2,170 through less than two weeks of August, or nearly the entire volume (2,476) to Spain through this date in all of 2016. By contrast, arrivals to Italy – 19,231 through 12 August of this year – are lower than arrivals recorded during certain individual months in the years 2015-2017 (see chart below).

Read on: Mediterranean Migrant Arrivals Reach 61,517 in 2018; Deaths Reach 1,524

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Privatization has not provided the miracle cure for the problems (especially the inefficiencies) associated with the public sector. Credit: IPS

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR , Aug 14 2018 (IPS)

Historically, the private sector has been unable or unwilling to affordably provide needed services. Hence, meeting such needs could not be left to the market or private interests. Thus, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) emerged, often under colonial rule, due to such ‘market failure’ as the private sector could not meet the needs of colonial capitalist expansion.

Thus, the establishment of government departments, statutory bodies or even government-owned private companies were deemed essential for maintaining the status quo and to advance state and private, particularly powerful and influential commercial interests.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram. Credit: FAO

SOEs have also been established to advance national public policy priorities. Again, these emerged owing to ‘market failures’ to those who believe that markets would serve the national interest or purpose.

However, neoliberal or libertarian economists do not recognize the existence of national or public interests, characterizing all associated policies as mere subterfuges for advancing particular interests under such guises.

Nevertheless, regardless of their original rationale or intent, many SOEs have undoubtedly become problematic and often inefficient. Yet, privatization is not, and has never been a universal panacea for the myriad problems faced by SOEs.

Causes of inefficiency

Undoubtedly, the track records of SOEs are very mixed and often vary by sector, activity and performance, with different governance and accountability arrangements. While many SOEs may have been quite inefficient, it is crucial to recognize the causes of and address such inefficiencies, rather than simply expect improvements from privatization.

First, SOEs often suffer from unclear, or sometimes even contradictory objectives. Some SOEs may be expected to deliver services to the entire population or to reduce geographical imbalances.

Other SOEs may be expected to enhance growth, promote technological progress or generate jobs. Over-regulation may worsen such problems by imposing contradictory rules.

Privatization has never been a universal panacea. One has to understand the specific nature of a problem; sustainable solutions can only come from careful understanding of the specific problems to be addressed.

To be sure, unclear and contradictory objectives – e.g., to simultaneously maximize sales revenue, address disparities and generate employment — often mean ambiguous performance criteria, open to abuse.

Typically, SOE failure by one criterion (such as cost efficiency) could be excused by citing fulfillment of other objectives (such as employment generation). Importantly, such ambiguity of objectives is not due to public or state ownership per se.

Second, performance criteria for evaluating SOEs — and privatization — are often ambiguous. SOE inefficiencies have often been justified by public policy objectives, such as employment generation, industrial or agricultural development, accelerating technological progress, regional development, affirmative action, or other considerations.

Ineffective monitoring, poor transparency and ambiguous accountability typically compromise SOE performance. Inadequate accountability requirements were a major problem as some public sectors grew rapidly, with policy objectives very loosely and broadly interpreted.

Third, coordination problems have often been exacerbated by inter-ministerial, inter-agency or inter-departmental rivalries. Some consequences included ineffective monitoring, inadequate accountability, or alternatively, over-regulation.

Hazard

Moral hazard has also been a problem as many SOE managements expected sustained financial support from the government due to weak fiscal discipline or ‘soft budget constraints’. In many former state-socialist countries, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, SOEs continued to be financed regardless of performance.

Excessive regulation has not helped as it generally proves counter-productive and ultimately ineffective. The powers of SOEs are widely acknowledged to have been abused, but privatization would simply transfer such powers to private hands.

Very often, inadequate managerial and technical skills and experience have weakened SOE performance, especially in developing countries, where the problem has sometimes been exacerbated by efforts to ‘nationalize’ managerial personnel.

Often, SOE managements have lacked adequate or relevant skills, but have also been constrained from addressing them expeditiously. Privatization, however, does not automatically overcome poor managerial capacities and capabilities.

Similarly, the privatization of SOEs which are natural monopolies (such as public utilities) will not overcome inefficiencies due to the monopolistic or monopsonistic nature of the industry or market. The key remaining question is whether privatization is an adequate or appropriate response to address SOE problems.

Throwing baby out with bathwater

SOEs often enjoy monopolistic powers, which can be abused, and hence require appropriate checks and balances. In this regard, there are instances where privatization may well be best. Two examples from Britain and Hungary may be helpful.

The most successful case of privatization in the United Kingdom during the Thatcher period involved National Freight, through a successful Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Thus, truck drivers and other staff co-owned National Freight and developed personal stakes in ensuring its success.

In Hungary, the state became involved in running small stores. Many were poorly run due to over-centralized control. After privatization, most were more successfully run by the new owners who were previously store managers.

Hence, there are circumstances when privatization can result in desirable outcomes, but a few such examples do not mean that privatization is the answer to all SOE problems.

Privatization has never been a universal panacea. One has to understand the specific nature of a problem; sustainable solutions can only come from careful understanding of the specific problems to be addressed.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007.

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Excerpt:

To make the case for privatization from the 1980s, their real problems were often caricatured and exaggerated.

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Typical food store in Brazzaville, Congo. Credit: WHO

By Adelheid Onyango and Bibi Giyose
BRAZZAVILLE, Congo, Aug 14 2018 (IPS)

When faced with a crisis, our natural reaction is to deal with its immediate threats. Ateka* came to the make-shift clinic with profuse diarrhoea: they diagnosed cholera. The urgent concern in the midst of that humanitarian crisis was to treat the infection and send her home as quickly as possible. But she came back to the treatment centre a few days later – not for cholera, but because she was suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Doctors had saved her life but not restored her health. And there were others too, who like Ateka eventually succumbed to severe malnutrition.  

This scene could have taken place in any of the dozen or so African countries that have suffered a cholera outbreak this year alone. Experience from managing epidemics has shown that when the population’s baseline nutritional status is poor, the loss of life is high.

Beyond malnutrition’s damaging impact on bodily health, it weakens the immune system, reducing the body’s resistance to infection and resilience in illness.

Most of the diseases that entail catastrophic costs to individuals, households and national healthcare systems in Africa could be avoided if everyone was living actively and consuming adequate, diverse, safe and nutritious food. After all, a healthy diet not only allows us to grow, develop and prosper, it also protects against obesity, diabetes, raised blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and some cancers.

On the flipside, integrating the treatment of malnutrition in the response to humanitarian crises assures survival and recovery better than an exclusive focus on treating diseases.

As countries across the continent commit themselves to Universal Health Coverage (UHC), the same lessons need to apply. UHC is ultimately about achieving health and wellbeing for all by 2030, a goal that is inextricably linked with that of ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition.

With 11 million Africans falling into poverty every year due to catastrophic out-of-pocket payments for healthcare, no one can question the need to ensure that everyone, everywhere, can obtain the health services they need, when and where they need them, without facing financial hardship.

As wealth patterns and consumption habits change, the African region is now faced with the triple burden of malnutrition – undernutrition coupled with micronutrient deficiencies and increasing levels of obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases.

In 2016, an estimated 59 million children in Africa were stunted (a 17 percent increase since 2000) and 14 million suffered from wasting – a strong predictor of death among children under five. That same year, 10 million were overweight; almost double the figure from 2000. It’s estimated that by 2020, non-communicable diseases will cause around 3.9 million deaths annually in the African region alone.

Yet most of the diseases that entail catastrophic costs to individuals, households and national healthcare systems in Africa could be avoided if everyone was living actively and consuming adequate, diverse, safe and nutritious food. After all, a healthy diet not only allows us to grow, develop and prosper, it also protects against obesity, diabetes, raised blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and some cancers.

To tackle malnutrition, achieve UHC and ultimately reach the goal of health and wellbeing for all, governments need to put in place the right investments, policies and incentives.

As a starting point, governments need to assure the basic necessities of food security, clean water and improved sanitation to prevent and reduce undernutrition among poor rural communities and urban slum populations in Africa. For example, reduction in open defecation has been successful in reducing undernutrition in Ethiopia, parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Tanzania.

Then, to influence what people eat, we need to do a better job at improving food environments and at educating them about what constitutes a healthy diet. Hippocrates asserted that “all disease begins in the gut,” with the related counsel to “let food be thy medicine.”

Current research on chronic diseases is reasserting the health benefits of consuming minimally-processed staple foods which formed the basis of traditional African diets. This information needs to be communicated to the public through the health and education sectors and complemented by agricultural innovation to increase production of the nutrient-rich grains, crickets, herbs, roots, fruits and vegetables that were the medicine for longevity among our hardy ancestors.

But until that awareness is in place, policies and programmes are urgently needed to protect and promote healthy diets right from birth. This includes regulating the marketing of breast milk substitutes and foods that help establish unhealthy food preferences and eating habits from early childhood.

In South Africa, for example, the country with the highest obesity rate in Sub-Saharan Africa, the government has introduced a ‘sugar tax’ that is expected to increase the price of sugary soft drinks. The hope is that this will encourage consumers to make healthier choices and manufacturers to reduce the amount of sugar in their products.

Finally, governments must create incentives – and apply adequately dissuasive sanctions when necessary – to help food manufacturers collaborate in promoting healthy diets through reformulation and informative labelling, for example. In cases of food contamination, we are very quick to take products off the shelves. Yet we are much slower to react to the illnesses caused by processed foods containing high quantities of salt, sugars, saturated fats and trans fats.

A shortcut to achieving Universal Health Coverage is to reduce the need for costly treatments. And there is no better way to do that than to ensure that everyone, everywhere, preserves their health and has access to safe and nutritious food: let food be thy medicine.

*name has been changed

The post Let Food Be Thy Medicine appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Adelheid Onyango is Adviser for Nutrition at the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa and Bibi Giyose is Senior Nutrition and Food Systems officer, and Special Advisor to the CEO of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

The post Let Food Be Thy Medicine appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By WAM
DUBAI, Aug 14 2018 (WAM)

The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange, DGCX, and the Dubai Islamic Economy Development Centre, DIEDC, on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, to share knowledge, promote Shari’ah-Compliant finance, and help foster Dubai as the global capital of Islamic economy.

Abdulla Mohammed Al Awar, CEO of DIEDC, and Les Male, CEO of DGCX, signed the agreement at DIEDC offices, with the presence of senior representatives from both sides.

Under the MoU, DGCX will work with Dubai Islamic Economy Centre to promote the Shari’ah-Compliant Spot Gold contract, as well as any other Islamic financial commodity product subsequently developed by the DGCX to cater for the Islamic finance sector, while positioning Dubai as the hub of the Islamic economy.

Commenting on the MoU, Al Awar said, “In line with our shared goal to transform Dubai into the global capital of Islamic economy, this partnership articulates the commitment of DIEDC to connect relevant stakeholders of the Islamic economy, and transfer knowledge about Islamic finance instruments, such as Shari’ah Compliant gold and commodity trading. Encouragingly, these instruments are witnessing a high uptake in servicing the growing Islamic finance sector.”

In turn, Male said, “Following the recent launch of the GCC’s first and the world’s only Shari’ah Compliant Spot Gold contract, this partnership with DIEDC comes at an opportune time for the DGCX. Not only will it be a crucial building block towards introducing other successful Shari’ah compliant products on our trading platform, but it will also help shape the progressive role Dubai is playing in developing the Islamic finance sector as a whole.”

WAM/Rola Alghoul/Hatem Mohamed

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Kaieteur Falls, Guyana. Guyanese farmers have been reporting salt water intrusion for a number of years. This especially happens during periods of drought and in those regions where irrigation water is sourced from rivers and creeks which drain into the Atlantic Ocean. Courtesy: Dan Sloan/CC By 2.0

By Jewel Fraser
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Aug 14 2018 (IPS)

Mikesh Ram would watch his rice crops begin to rot during the dry season in Guyana, because salt water from the nearby Atlantic Ocean was displacing freshwater from the Mahaica River he and other farmers used to flood their rice paddies.

The intrusion of salt water into the rice paddies had been happening off and on for the past 10 years, and he, like many other rice farmers in Regions 4 and 5 of Mahaica, Guyana, had sustained periodic financial losses due to the ocean overtopping the 200-year-old sea walls erected as barricades to the sea. And while 2015 was an unusually good year for Guyana’s rice harvest, the following year, 2016, saw a 16 percent drop in production.

Though the fall-off in production that year could not entirely be attributed to the salt water intrusion, expert sources say this was part of the problem. The United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service’s Commodity Intelligence Report notes that reduced rice production “was due to myriad problems including drought, water rationing, salt water intrusion, lack of crop rotation, less fertiliser input, and slower and lower returns to farmers.” It added that for the first rice crop of 2016, “about 20 percent was affected by drought and another 15 percent had salt water intrusion on fields.”“The knowledge of the [agricultural] extension officers in mitigating and adapting to the salt water intrusion is questionable, however, but a real education and awareness campaign should start with these officers who interact with farmers more frequently.” -- Heetasmin Singh

The rice-growing regions of Demerara-Mahaica and Berbice-Mahaica are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, located as they are six feet below sea level on Guyana’s Atlantic north coast.

Heetasmin Singh, who completed a master’s degree at the University of Guyana, presented a paper on the subject at the just concluded Latin America and Caribbean Congress for Conservation Biology, held Jul. 25-27 at the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies, Trinidad. Following her presentation, she told IPS via e-mail of some of the concerns farmers in the region have.

She said, “Farmers have been reporting salt water intrusion for a number of years, maybe as much as 10 years (or more) in certain regions of the country. This especially happens during periods of drought and in those regions where irrigation water is sourced from rivers and creeks which drain into the Atlantic Ocean (as opposed to a water conservancy or catchment)… the salt water intrusion is not just a threat, it is a reality for many of them.”

Farmer Mikesh’s son, Mark Ram, is a colleague of Singh as well as a scientific officer at the Centre for the Study of Biological Diversity at the University of Guyana. He told IPS that salt water intrusion normally occurs during the dry season when there is less fresh water because the rains have not fallen. He said the salinity had one of two effects on growing rice plants: it could either kill them or slow down their rate of growth,

“Usually, [salt water] affects the plant when they have just been planted because…we are required to flood the fields. So what we would do, we usually wait until it rains a bit, then flood the fields and add fertiliser. Then we release the water and then try to flood it again. It is at this time [when] the water becomes saline because the rain has not fallen that it affects the crop, it kills out the rice fields.” On the other hand, he said, “it can delay harvesting time because the rice is not going to grow as fast as it should.”

Sometimes, he said, “there is actual rotting of the plant” due to the water’s salinity.

To counteract the problems caused by salt water intrusion, farmers in the Mahaica region rely on fresh water supplies from the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority. According to the USDA Commodity Intelligence Report, Guyana is “divided into water conservancy regions, [and] has developed an irrigation and dike infrastructure to help farmers use supplemental irrigation from reservoirs while protecting areas through levees from unseasonably heavy rains which could flood or erode land. To help the agricultural sector, starting in January 2016, Guyana’s National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) water authorities begin pumping available water into the drier conservancies.”

“Farmers ask the NDIA to release some of the fresh water from the major reservoirs,” Ram said.  “Once they receive this it reduces the salinity so that the water becomes usable.” However, no other adaptation or mitigation measures had so far been implemented by farmers, he said.

Singh noted via e-mail that “the knowledge of the [agricultural] extension officers in mitigating and adapting to the salt water intrusion is questionable, however, but a real education and awareness campaign should start with these officers who interact with farmers more frequently.”

She added, “Many farmers I interviewed saw the effects of the soil salinisation on their crops but many were not familiar with the term climate change or were not adapting best practices for ameliorating soil salinisation. They instead sought to solve their low crop yields issues with more fertilisers which would end up doing more harm than good for the crops.”

However, she notes that some will flush their fields and allow water and the salts to percolate through and past the root zone of the crops. Others will ensure their soils are deep ploughed to ensure faster percolation of salts past their crop root zone. With sea level rises for Guyana projected to rise anywhere from 14 cm to 5.94 metres in 2031; from 21 cm to 6.02 metres in 2051; and from 25 cm to 6.19 metres in 2071, the need for proactive adaptation and mitigation measures becomes ever more urgent.

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• Urgent Action Needed to Safeguard Saint Lucia’s Biodiversity

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Students from the rural school of El Llanito de Punitaqui, in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, show the vegetables from the garden they irrigate with harvested rainwater. Credit: Courtesy of the Un Alto en el Desierto Foundation

By Orlando Milesi
OVALLE, Chile, Aug 14 2018 (IPS)

Eighteen national science prize-winners in Chile have called for a halt to the over-extraction of water in the four regions over which the Atacama Desert spreads in the north of the country, a problem that threatens the future of 1.5 million people.

In their Tarapacá Manifest, which takes its name from one of the affected regions, the scientists call for water in the area to be treated as a non-renewable resource because mining companies, agriculture and large cities consume underground reservoirs of water that date back more than 10,000 years and are not replenished with equal speed.

According to the experts, the current rate of water extraction for mining, agriculture, industry and cities “is not sustainable.”

Chile is the world’s leading exporter of copper and of fruit and vegetables, two water-intensive sectors."In the manifest we have proposed the possibility of improving our technology in the use of water harvested from fog. We also propose implementing a water recovery policy. For example, increasing the greywater system. It is not an expensive solution, but it requires a State policy.” -- Claudio Latorre

In the small rural school of El Llanito de Punitaqui, 400 km north of Santiago, teacher Marleny Rodríguez and her only four students installed gutters to collect rainwater in a 320-litre pond to irrigate a vegetable garden.

“The children are happy. They tell me that we were losing a vital resource that we had at hand and were not using. They replicated what they learned at school at home,” Rodríguez told IPS.

The two girls and two boys, between the ages of six and 10, including three siblings, attend the tiny school in an area of ancestral lands of the Atacama indigenous people.

“We have a year-round cycle. What we harvest we cook in the cooking workshop where we make healthy recipes. Then we eat them at school,” said the teacher of the school in Punitaqui, near Ovalle, the capital of the Coquimbo region, on the southern border of the desert.

“The children help to sow, clean the garden, harvest, and water the crops. We have a scientific workshop to harvest the greywater with which we irrigate a composter of organic waste and other materials such as leaves, branches and guano, used as fertiliser” she said.

Calogero Santoro, an archaeologist and promoter of the Tarapacá Manifest, which was delivered to the government of President Sebastián Piñera on Jun. 29, believes that citizens and large companies do not have the same awareness as these children about water scarcity.

“Private companies do not see this as a necessity, because they do not have any problem. On the contrary, the whole Chilean system is designed to make businesses operate as smoothly as possible, but the problem is just around the corner. It is the Chilean government that invests in scientific and technological research,” he told IPS.

The scientists’ manifest calls for raising awareness about the serious problem of the lack of water, in-depth research into the issue, and investment in technologies that offer new solutions rather than only aggravating the exploitation of groundwater.

“The first step is to generate cultural change. As awareness grows, other technological development processes are developed, new technologies are created and these are adapted to production processes,” explained Santoro, of the government’s Research Centre of Man in the Desert.

“Unfortunately, the private sector in this country does not invest in this kind of things,” he said.

The Atacama Desert is the driest desert on earth. It covers 105,000 sq km, distributed along six regions of northern Chile and covering the cities of Arica, Iquique (the capital of Tarapacá), Antofagasta and Calama.

Students from the rural school of El Llanito de Punitaqui, in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, show the vegetables from the garden they irrigate with harvested rainwater. Credit: Courtesy of the Un Alto en el Desierto Foundation

It is home to 9.5 percent of the population of this long, narrow South American country of 17.5 million people.

In a normal year, only between 1.6 to 2.5 mm of water fall on the regions of the so-called Norte Grande, which covers the Atacama Desert, and so far in 2018 the deficit is 100 percent in some of the cities and 50 percent in others, according to Chile’s Meteorological Agency.

Hugo Romero, winner of the national geography prize, and a professor at the University of Chile and president of the Chilean Society of Geographic Sciences, told IPS that “groundwater is today the most important source of water for both mining and urban development in the northern regions.”

That means the problem is very complex, he said, because “there is some evidence that much of the groundwater is the product of recharge probably thousands of years ago, and therefore is fossil water, which is non-renewable.

As an example, Romero cited damage already caused in the desert area, “such as those that have occurred with the drying up of Lagunillas, and of the Huasco and the Coposa Salt Flats, adding up to an enormous amount of ecological effects.”

They also affect, he said, “the presence of communities in these places, given this close relationship between the availability of water resources and the ancestral occupation of the territories.”

“All of this is creating an extraordinarily complex system with respect to which there is a sensation that the country has not taken due note and decisions are often taken only with economic benefits in mind, which are otherwise concentrated in large companies,” he added.

Romero also warned that the level of research “has been minimal and, unfortunately, many of the academic resources that should be devoted to providing society and social actors with all the elements to reach decisions are committed to consulting firms that, in turn, are contracted by large companies.”

Claudio Latorre, an academic at the Catholic University of Chile and an associate researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, believes that “there is not just one single culprit” for the serious situation.

“It is simply the general economic activity of the country that is causing this problem. The more activity, the more the country grows and the more resources are required, and the more industrial activity, the more work. But urban needs are also increasing and that also puts pressure on water resources,” he said.

“In the manifest we have proposed the possibility of improving our technology in the use of water harvested from fog. We also propose implementing a water recovery policy. For example, increasing the greywater system. It is not an expensive solution, but it requires a State policy,” he explained.

According to Calogero, “in addition to cultural changes, there have to be technological changes to make better use of water. We cite the case of Israel where it is our understanding that water is recycled up to seven times before it is disposed of. Here, it is recycled once, if at all.”

Latorre stressed that “we are already experiencing the consequences of climate change and over-exploitation of water resources that lead to an unthinkable situation…but in the Norte Grande area we still have time to take concrete actions that can save cities in 20 or 30 years’ time.”

He called for improved access to scientific information “so that we can be on time to make important decisions that take a long time to implement.”

According to Romero, there is also “an atmosphere of uncertainty that has often led to decisions that have subsequently led to environmental damage” as in the case of many salt flats, bofedales (high Andean wetlands) and some lagoons and lakes.

“There is no transparent public knowledge available to society as needed, given the critical nature of the system,” he said.

In his opinion, “on the contrary, the greatest and best information is of a reserved nature or forms part of industrial secrecy, which gives rise to much speculation, ambiguity and different interpretations by users or communities affected by the extraction of water.”

Romero also warned that “there is not only very significant ecological damage, but also a steady rural exodus to the cities, as the people leave the area.”

There are Quechua, Aymara, Koyas and Atacama communities – the native peoples of northern Chile – in the cities of Arica, Iquique, Alto Hospicio and Antofagasta as a result of their migration from their Andes highlands territories, he said.

That’s why only four students are now attending the rural school in El Llanito de Punitaqui, the teacher said.

• Chile Has Medicine Against Desertification, But Does Not Take It

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By International Organization for Migration
Niger, Aug 13 2018 (IOM)

In 2015, the Boko Haram insurgency sweeping northern Nigeria reached the Diffa region of southern Niger, leading to the displacement of more than 250,000 people. However, even before 2015, Boko Haram had carried out some attacks in the region. In the wake of this crisis, people from across the border in Nigeria, and internally displaced people within Niger, sought refuge in Diffa town. What was, at first, an emergency slowly transitioned into a more permanent situation, and people have since made Diffa town their home.

Lumo doesn’t know how old she is, but she believes she was born during the ‘dark wind’ — a year sometime in the early 1960s famous for a dark wind that engulfed the region. When famine hit back in 2005, she left her native Niger to look for better life opportunities in neighbouring Nigeria. Ten years later, together with her brother Tambaia, she decided to come back to Niger and settle in Diffa town. Lumo and Tambaia are two of almost 15,000 returnees living in the Diffa region right now.

Read More

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By WAM
DUBAI, Aug 13 2018 (WAM)

Mariam Hareb Almheiri, Minister of State for Future Food Security, has discussed, with several Singaporean officials, cooperation in the area of food security between the UAE and Singapore, exchanging knowledge, best international practices, and how to benefit from their efforts.

Their discussion took place during Almheiri’s official visit to Singapore, as head of a delegation that included Mohammed Omar Abdulla Balfaqeeh, UAE Ambassador to Singapore, and representatives of the Food Security Centre in Abu Dhabi.

The visit is part of the preparations for the launch of the “National Strategy for Future Food Security.”

Son Axoling, First Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs and Representative of the Ministry of National Development and the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore, AVA, presented the latest food technologies used in Singapore to the delegation, such as closed vertical farming and home farms, which have made Singapore among the leading five countries in the world in terms of food security, according to the “World Food Security Index 2017.”

Almheiri and her delegation visited the “Applied Researches Laboratories,” where she met with a group of leaders of the private sector and marine and aquatic life facilities that have adopted modern technologies, such as organised dynamic environments. They also visited local farms that use the latest pasteurisation technologies and reviewed leading international programmes in food production, with the aim of identifying and adopting the most innovative practical and theoretical technologies.

The delegation also visited the National University of Singapore to review the “Black Soldier Fly” technology used to treat food waste without transferring diseases. The technology can process waste into either high-protein animal feed or plant fertilisers.

The delegation also discussed, with the university, its major areas of research related to food security, as well as the means of strengthening their joint efforts and potential cooperation.

They then discussed a series of plans, which aim to encourage the exchange of best practices and practical approaches related to food security between the UAE and Singapore.

WAM/Rola Alghoul/Hassan Bashir

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Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is a former foreign adviser to a caretaker government of Bangladesh and is currently Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.

By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
Aug 13 2018 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

The relationship between a smaller and a larger neighbourly state, as also between a weaker and stronger one, is often tricky on both sides. Though not always, it requires greater dexterity on the smaller protagonist. This is because more “power” tends to reside with the larger, which is also usually the stronger partner.

The French philosopher Raymond Aron has defined “power” in international relations as the “capacity of a political unit to impose its will upon others”. When one party enjoys such capability, it would be normal for the others to endeavour to erode it. Or at least tame it, in a way so as not to continuously have to play second fiddle to it.

With regard to smaller state options, political theorists have sought to delineate a pattern, to better understand, appreciate and predict it. Regionally, one is what the Scandinavian writer Erling Bjol called the “pilot-fish behaviour”. It implies tacking close to the shark to avoid being eaten. Finland’s relations with the Soviet Union to him was an example.

Bangladeshi policymakers need to be aware that the existing global “order”, which America had helped shape, is giving way to a new “disorder”, which ironically is also being emplaced at the initiatives of America. It is undermining multilateral institutions like the United Nations (UN) and the WTO.

A second option would be for the smaller power to go outside the region and enmesh itself in a web of international linkages, drawing strength from beyond the region to redress the regional imbalance. Just as Pakistan sought to do during the cold war by building alliances with the west to counter India. Third, over half a century ago, the British political author Martin Wight stated that weaker states prefer greater international order as a protective measure, a fact that remains valid to this day. Finally, small and weak states have a penchant for joining multilateral bodies in order to seek security in greater numbers, as also to build a stake for others in their sovereignties.

These elements were factored into Bangladesh’s behaviour pattern in the regional and international matrix from its very inception as an independent country in December 1971. This was done both wittingly, and at times, unwittingly. Quite often, foreign policies are not formulated by cool-headed rational thinking. More often, for smaller and weaker states in particular, it becomes a series of tactical reactions to global situations rather than a strategic response as a product of careful calculations. In other words, it tends to be reactive rather than pro-active. The challenge is to balance both in a way that the international environment is rendered into a supportive backdrop to facilitate domestic good governance, development and prosperity.

Bangladesh’s nascence came with some additional peculiarities. It was a rare case of secession, a recognised member of the United Nations breaking up into two. This was at variance with the existing global club rules. Secondly, Bangladesh was totally “India-locked”, just as some countries are “land-locked”, which made “Indo-centrism” an inescapable feature of its policies. When Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returned from Pakistani incarceration in January 1972, his government had two aspirations which formed ever since the core of foreign policy. One was the strengthening of the young nation’s security and sovereignty, and the other was the quest for resources for development.

The aspirations were co-terminus rather than mutually exclusive. Both cases demanded the building of extra-regional linkages. Foreign policy rested on four pillars: one, the (then) superpowers; two, the Islamic Middle East; three, China, and four, international organisations (the United Nations, and GATT, later turned into the World Trade Organization). Four and a half decades down the line, with Sheikh Hasina at the helm, the broad parameters of Bangladesh’s behaviour remain the same—with some variations to accommodate the changes in the ethos of both Bangladesh and India.

Bangladesh was born with massive support from India. That was nearly five decades ago. Both societies have changed enormously since then. Bangladesh is by no means the “basket case” that Henry Kissinger had once the temerity to describe it as. It is about to graduate into the list of middle-income countries and its social indices have surpassed in progress many of India’s.

Still, its infrastructures remain weak, its institutions inadequately developed, and its intellectual resources not optimally utilised. While the essence of national identity remains secular, external linkages have also fed tendencies that in some have led to the encouragement of fundamentalist thought-processes, though not alarmingly. India has, of course, progressed into a power to be reckoned with globally. Still, there are swathes of poverty that in some parts exceed that of Sub-Saharan Africa. But one significant change has been the ascendency of majoritarian sentiments, reflected in the concept of Hindutva espoused by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). According to Shashi Tharoor, an Indian scholar-politician, it could alter the nature of Indian nationhood, eroding its secular and even constitutional character. This could have an impact on the mind-set of Bangladeshis, who are overwhelmingly Muslims. We may like to believe that the largest country in the region should also have the largest heart. But then, we must also recognise realities of structural constraints and that policies are not necessarily a function of generosity.

All this render very complex the manner in which Bangladesh authorities should organise themselves to deal with India. First, India cannot be seen as a single entity. There is the New Delhi government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the BJP, but at times for Dhaka, Delhi is hanooz dur ast, “much too far”.

Modi is powerful, but is also constrained by the domestic political compulsions. These limitations are often exacerbated by interests of the Indian states that surround Bangladesh, like West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and the like. Also, there are pressure groups like the right-wing Rashtriya Sevak Sangha (RSS), the champions of Hindutva, the intellectuals and culture-gurus, the regional parties, the oftentimes shrill Indian media, and so forth. Graham Allison, describing American foreign policy-making, has broadly extrapolated that policy outcomes are often the result of competition between pressure-groups, which by logical definition would make policies “irrational”.

So, for Bangladeshi policymakers, India should be seen as an amalgam of many elements, often with conflicting views. Secondly, Bangladeshi policymakers need to be aware that the existing global “order”, which America had helped shape, is giving way to a new “disorder”, which ironically is also being emplaced at the initiatives of America. It is undermining multilateral institutions like the United Nations (UN) and the WTO.

To be specific, we cannot bring our multilateral linkages into determining our relations with India. The “decline” of America is being accompanied by the “rise” of what Fareed Zakaria has called “the rest”. Changes in international norms, as at times in economics, are often cyclical. So, as before, we are seeing the burgeoning importance of individual nation-states like China. It would also be in consonance with the ideas of my intellectual mentor, Professor Hedley Bull, often seen as the father of Anglo-Saxon school of international relations, who had held that state-systems have come to stay. This would propel into play theories like “balance of power” of the classical nineteenth century, whereby we may need to create a set of bilateral linkages to enhance our negotiating capabilities in league with those with whom we share commonalities of interests.

It may seem like a tall order. But Bangladesh is blessed with high diplomatic thought-leadership skills. This is a part of Bangladesh’s non-technological or intellectual resources. In the past during the Bangabandhu- era, against many odds, Bangladesh was able to establish itself firmly in the comity of nations. At present, during his daughter’s stewardship, we have a new genre of diplomats who have the requisite potentials. Of course there is a need to further sharpen and hone such capabilities with a view to greater capacity-building. For instance, apart from key diplomatic agents appropriately located in the field abroad, there should be adequate “back-stopping” in the line-Ministry itself to adopt requisite pro-active initiatives and adequately respond to evolving situations in the neighbourhood. This should be resourced as necessary. Think-tanks and the vast available thought-capacity existing in the community must be adequately tapped, as one sees done in Singapore and elsewhere. For as is the case with Singapore, how Bangladesh relates to the world is critical to its destiny, its consolidation as a strong nation-state, and its progress and prosperity.

The post Balancing Bangladesh’s foreign policy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is a former foreign adviser to a caretaker government of Bangladesh and is currently Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.

The post Balancing Bangladesh’s foreign policy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Voters queuing ahead of Zimbabwe's Jul. 30 general elections. The election saw Emmerson Mnangagwa win the presidential race but the opposition has lodge a formal petition challenging the results. Courtesy: The Commonwealth/CC By 2.0

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Aug 13 2018 (IPS)

Many in Zimbabwe are questioning whether the country can break with its horrid past or embrace a new future after a watershed election that saw Emmerson Mnangagwa win the presidential race by a narrow margin and the opposition lodge a formal petition challenging the results in the Constitutional Court.

Mnangagwa–a trusted and past enforcer of former president Robert Mugabe–won the vote by 50.8 percent against the 44.9 percent garnered by Nelson Chamisa of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-Alliance).

Mnangagwa’s 2.46 million votes, against Chamisa’s 2.15 million, gave him the mandatory 50+1 percent required to be declared winner.

But the MDC-Alliance on Friday afternoon, Aug. 10, lodged a petition with the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe challenging the results, halting the inauguration of Mnangagwa that had been slated for Sunday, Aug. 12.

The Constitutional Court will consider the matter over 14 days but political watchers say that what the ruling will be, remains unclear. The court could reject the MDC-Alliance petition and confirm Mnangagwa’s win, or it could confirm Chamisa’s presented evidence and rule in the opposition’s favour. The court could also order another election, which could be held within the next 60 days.“The future of Zimbabwe lies in a negotiated settlement now because of what the country stands to lose [rather] than gain if a political resolution is not found soon.” -- Political analyst and human rights activist, Effie Ncube.

Political analyst and human rights activist, Effie Ncube, says that should the court rule in favour of Chamisa and order a rerun, this could stoke tensions. He says that a preferred solution would be inclusive discussions out of court between Mnangagwa and Chamisa.

“Keeping away from a re-run is the best solution for Zimbabwe because the tension on the ground now is not ideal for an election without triggering violence,” Ncube tells IPS. “The future of Zimbabwe lies in a negotiated settlement now because of what the country stands to lose [rather] than gain if a political resolution is not found soon.”

Mugabe may have been ousted, but his brutal legacy lingers over a country desperate for a fresh start. Zimbabwe’s Jul. 30 elections–the first since Mugabe was toppled last November–did not disappoint on the dearth of harmony. Violence, in all its forms, has been emblematic of Mugabe’s rule and is something that president-elect Mnangagwa sought a clean break from.

But violence, intimidation, killings and disputed results soiled the elections.

Two weeks ago police clashed with opposition supporters who staged a demonstration outside the offices of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) over the delayed announcement of the presidential election results. The army fired on protesting supporters, killing six people and injuring scores more. The tragedy stained the polls despite pleas from both the ruling Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu PF) and the opposition MDC for a violence-free election.

“Mugabe’s legacy of brutality has returned to haunt us again but at least it was clear who was in charge,” Dumisani Nkomo, director of Habakkuk Trust, a civil rights advocacy organisation, notes. “Right now it is not clear who is charge and many centres of power seem to have emerged and even within the army there appears to be many centres of command as evidenced by the mystery of who deployed soldiers in Harare.”

Nkomo says the credibility of the electoral process has been severely eroded by issues around the voters roll, postal voting and election results.

“This is a really complex situation because contested election outcomes have been an issue since 1980 and more visibly in 2000, 2002 and 2013 and we seem to be moving in circles,” Nkomo tells IPS. “The election result cannot in all honesty be termed free and fair because of the uneven playing field and the clampdown on civil liberties after the announcement of the results.”

The elections had a semblance of being free on many fronts; the polls were relatively peaceful, there was a new biometric voters’ system, a well-organised and resourceful ZEC, and a plethora of candidates and parties vying for power.

While observers from the Southern African Development Community and African Union have endorsed the elections as free and fair, the European Union has pointed to irregularities.

Economist and lawmaker, Eddie Cross, says he expects the presidential ballot to stand up to the court challenge.

“Any legal challenge should therefore be short lived,” Cross said in post-election commentary on his website. “The big challenge facing Emmerson Mnangagwa is now to unite the country under his leadership and heal the wounds of past battles–the struggle for independence… the struggle against the MDC since 2000 with 5,000 abductees, tens of thousands beaten and tortured, hundreds of deaths and the near total destruction of the economy, all in the name of fighting the restoration of real democracy.”

Time to build bridges

Mnangagwa has scoffed at the idea of a government of national unity, an arrangement his predecessor, was forced to enter into in 2008 with the opposition MDC, which had been led at the time by the late Morgan Tsvangirai.

“I have two-thirds majority and you are talking about me abandoning my two-thirds majority to set a government of national unity?” Mnangagwa commented on Skye News television during an interview last week.

“Not that it’s a bad idea, but it doesn’t show that there is any need. I am saying politics should now take the back seat because the elections are behind us. We should now put our shoulders to the wheel for purposes of modernising our economy, growing our economy together. Those who have voted against me, those who voted for me, we say Zimbabwe is ours together.”

In spite of the violence that has marred the election outcomes, Zimbabwe was banking on a smooth assumption of power as a ticket into the fold of the international community.

However, in a move set to pile pressure on the new government to double its effort to reengage the international community and institute a raft of political and economic reforms, the United States last week renewed sanctions on Zimbabwe, which have been in place since 2001.

The economy remains a key challenge Mnangagwa has to address swiftly.

Mnangagwa has been on an international investment charm offensive, promoting Zimbabwe’s new open business approach.

The country needs an economic vision to ensure growth, unlock business opportunities, jobs, restore trust in the banking sector and hopefully bring back a local currency.

“Mnangagwa has the opportunity to turn the country round, he has made the right pronouncements on the economy that he needs to follow up with action. I think he wants to play a [Nelson] Mandela come in as a person who transforms the country and moves it to democracy and move away from the dictatorship,” says Ncube.

“Should the court confirm Mnangagwa as the winner, there could be less tension. But the credibility and legitimacy of the regime will be questioned and that will challenge its ability to organise international investment and undermine political stability.”

• Zimbabwe’s Election of Great Expectations
• After Elections, Hard Work Starts for Zimbabwe’s Civil Society
• Zimbabweans Wary of Another Stolen Election

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Women with disabilities in Afghanistan protest for their rights. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

By Carmen Arroyo and Emily Thampoe
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 13 2018 (IPS)

Children with disabilities are up to four times more likely to experience violence, with girls being the most at risk, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

“Children with disabilities are among the most marginalised groups in society. If society continues to see the disability before it sees the child, the risk of exclusion and discrimination remains,” Georgina Thompson, a media consultant for UNICEF, told IPS.

According to the World Health Organisation, 15 percent of the global population lives with disabilities, making it the largest minority in the world—with children and women numbering higher among those disabled.

Last month, more than 700 representatives of non-governmental organisations, private companies and governments got together to address the systemic discrimination that exists against people with disabilities at the Global Disability Summit in London.

“Creating a more equal world where children with disabilities have access to the same opportunities as all children is everyone’s responsibility,” Thompson said.

More than 300 organisations and governments signed an action plan to implement the U.N. International Convention on Disability, which included 170 commitments from multiple stakeholders to ensure disability inclusion. The summit was organised by the governments of Kenya and the United Kingdom, along with the International Disability Alliance. The most important topics discussed during the meetings included passing laws to protect disabled citizens and promoting access to technology for people with disabilities.

Women and children face the most discrimination within the disabled community. A report presented to the U.N. Secretary-General on the situation of women and girls with disabilities stated that while 12 percent of men present a disability, a slightly higher amount of women—19 percent—have a disability.

In addition, girls are much less likely to finish primary school than boys, if both present disabilities. And girls are more vulnerable to sexual violence.

According to the U.K.’s Department for International Development, mortality for children with disabilities can be as high as 80 percent in states where child mortality has significantly decreased.

There is a strong consensus regarding the risk that both children and women face. “Women with disabilities are especially vulnerable to discrimination and violence (three to five times more likely to suffer from violence and abuse that the average [female] population),” André Félix, external communications officer at the European Disability Forum, told IPS.

When asked what to do to address this issue, A.H. Monjurul Jabir, co-lead of the U.N. Women’s Global Task Team on Disability and Inclusion, explained his viewpoint on establishing a targeted gender agenda: “The implementation of strategy requires a bottom-up approach by offices, colleagues, and partners on the ground.”

According to Jabir, U.N. Women’s strategy is “to support U.N. Women personnel and key stakeholders to facilitate the full inclusion and meaningful participation of women and girls with disabilities.”

“This would be done across all U.N. Women’s priority areas through our operational responses and internal accessibility to achieve gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls with disabilities,” he said.

Thompson suggested the following strategy for UNICEF: “We must increase investment in the development and production of assistive technologies. Assistive technologies, such as hearing aids, wheelchairs, prosthetics, and glasses, give children with disabilities the chance to see themselves as able from an early age.”

The aforementioned strategy was one of the goals of the Global Partnership for Assistive Technology, a collaboration launched during the summit to accomplish the sustainable development goals and offer technology to those who with disabilities. “And yet, in low-income countries, only five to 15 percent of those who need assistive technology can obtain it,” Thomson added.

And, as 80 percent of the population with disabilities live in developing countries, emergency situations and lack of education are also crucial issues to be addressed when launching policies for disability inclusion.

“We must make humanitarian response inclusive. In emergency situations, children with disabilities face a double disadvantage. They face the same dangers as all children in conflicts or natural disasters do, including threats to their health and safety, malnutrition, displacement, loss of education and risk of abuse.

“But they also face unique challenges, including lack of mobility because of damaged infrastructure, difficulty fleeing harm and the prejudices that keep them from accessing the urgent assistance they need,” Thompson said.

According to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, 90 percent of children who live in developing countries that have educational opportunities available do not attend school.

“We must make education inclusive. Around half of all children with disabilities do not go to school because of prejudice, stigma or lack of accessible learning. Of those who do go to school, about half do not receive quality education because of a lack of trained teachers, accessible facilities, or specialised learning tools,” Thompson urged. “Excluding children with disabilities from education can cost a country up to five percent of its GDP due to lost potential income.”

But, who is responsible?

As was seen during the summit, member states are not the only stakeholders taking responsibility for disability inclusion. U.N. agencies, NGOs, and private firms are constantly launching programmes to reduce the gap and erase discrimination.

However, Félix explained what each stakeholder would be responsible for: “Member States are the policymakers. They need to guarantee that all the population is included and benefits from international development and inclusive policies. They also need to make sure that they consult civil society in the process.”

As for civil society, he said: “Civil society’s role is to monitor and advise the project and while they need to be included and part of international development (especially local civil society), the resources should come from member states.”

Thus, their work is intrinsically linked: “Structures of support for persons with disability must be community-based, which means no support for institutions that segregate persons with disabilities.”

Thompson added that those actors must work so closely that it would be hard to separate roles.

Agreeing with her, Jabir concluded: “It is the responsibility of everyone, all actors and stakeholders, we must work together, cohesively, not separately. The days of only standalone approach, or silo mentality is over.”

• Inspiring Dutch Woman Lives for Bangladeshi Children with Disabilities
• Funding Inclusive Education for Children with Disabilities in Developing Countries
• Closing the Gaps in Sexual Education for People with Disabilities
• Mixed Progress at UN on Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The post Children and Women with Disabilities, More Likely to Face Discrimination appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

This article is part of a series of stories on Disability inclusion.

The post Children and Women with Disabilities, More Likely to Face Discrimination appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By WAM
DUBAI, Aug 11 2018 (WAM)

A high-profile UAE delegation, led by Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al-Zeyoudi, Minister of Climate Change and Environment, will visit Australia and New Zealand from August 12th to 17th, to explore new areas of collaboration and learn about best practices in agriculture, livestock breeding, water resources utilization and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

In addition to Dr. Thani Al-Zeyoudi, the delegates include officials from MOCCAE, the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi, and Mawarid Holding, an investment company operating within different industries, including forest management, landscaping, research and development, animal feed production, health, and tourism.

During the visits to the two countries, Dr. Al-Zeyoudi will attend multiple bilateral meetings with leading ministers and officials. In Australia, he will meet with Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Minister for International Development and the Pacific, David Littleproud, Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, Julie Bishop, Foreign Minister, Steven Ciobo, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, and Josh Frydenberg, Minister for Environment and Energy.

In New Zealand, the UAE Minister for Climate Change and Environment will meet with his counterparts – David Parker, Environment Minister, and James Shaw, Minister for Climate Change.

Furthermore, the delegates will tour several agricultural and environmental facilities, such as the quarantine facility at Sydney Airport, Australian National Botanic Gardens, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in the Australian capital, Canberra, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, and the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

WAM/Tariq alfaham

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A migrant mother and child get ready to board IOM's first VHR charter from Zintan, Libya. Credit: IOM 2018

By International Organization for Migration
GENEVA, Aug 10 2018 (IOM)

Between January and July 2018, IOM, the UN Migration Agency, safely returned 10,950 stranded migrants from Libya through its Voluntary Humanitarian Return (VHR) Programme as the number of detainees in the country rose alarmingly. The majority of the migrants, 9,636, returned home to countries in Central and West Africa on IOM charter flights. A group of 325 people returned to East Africa and the Horn of Africa, and the remainder to North Africa and Asia.

IOM charter flights are coordinated in cooperation with the Libyan authorities, embassies and consulates in countries of return along with IOM country offices and other international organizations. In addition, IOM has assisted a total of 1,314 migrants to return home from Libya on commercial flights in 2018 so far.

Many migrants from Libya often opt to return home after arriving in Niger by land, from where IOM organizes their onward transportation to their countries of origin. In 2018 (January–July), IOM returned 2,175 migrants from Niger to their homes (1,443 by charters and 732 by commercial airlines).

The VHR programme was launched in 2016 as part of the EU-IOM Joint Initiative on Migrant Protection and Reintegration with funding from the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) in Libya and other countries in Africa. With a high demand among migrants to return home, IOM scaled up its efforts to assist migrants including the expansion of reception centres, reintegration activities and community-based support to returnees and victims of trafficking.

In October 2017, the number of migrants in official detention centres dropped five-fold largely due to IOM’s efforts to accelerate the repatriation of migrants and the closure of detention centres. However, in recent months there has been an alarming rise in the number of refugees and migrants intercepted at sea and returned to Libya, with the figure nearly doubling from 5,500 to 9,300 between 2017 and 2018. There are no figures available for the number of migrants detained in informal detention centres run by militias or smugglers.

In April 2018, IOM identified 179,400 internally displaced persons (IDPs) along with 690,351 migrants within the country. Despite the current circumstances, Libya continues to be the main transit and destination point for migrants looking to a better life in Europe. Access the latest IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) figures for Libya here.

IOM reports that the total number of migrants and refugees that entered Europe by the Mediterranean Sea is 60,309 since the start of 2018 through (8 August). This figure is about half of the 117,988 arrivals in 2017 at this time last year. The cause of the number of arrivals decreasing is largely due to a series of measures that have been adopted by EU Member States since late 2016, including the closure of the migratory route across the Mediterranean.

In 2018, the coordination of rescue operations was handed over to the Libyan Coast Guard from the Italian Coast Guard.

For latest arrivals and fatalities in the Mediterranean, please visit: http://migration.iom.int/europe

For more information please contact IOM Libya:
Maya Abu Ata, Tel: +216 29 240 448, Email: mabuata@iom.int
Christine Petre, Tel: +216 29 240 448, Email: chpetre@iom.int

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