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By Lily Meyersohn
NEW YORK, Sep 9 2022 (IPS)

This week––nearly ten months after the emergence of the Omicron variant––the United States is rolling out Covid-19 booster vaccines that specifically target newer, now-dominant strains of the virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has estimated that 209 million Americans over the age of 12, or 74 percent of that population, will be eligible for the shots.

Unfortunately, the last year and a half are a stark reminder that it takes much more than even the miracle of “lightning speed” science to ensure widespread vaccination in this country.

In late July, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the share of people living in counties designated by the CDC’s guidelines as medium or high risk had grown significantly due to the spread of the BA.5 variant.

At that time, 87 percent of the entire population lived in a medium or high risk area. KFF estimated that the number of people living in those counties who were not up to date on their Covid-19 vaccinations had also jumped––to 198 million. This jump represented a 65 percent increase since the start of June alone.

Despite that data, many Americans have nonetheless accepted a faulty narrative that assumes that high-risk Americans are already safely vaccinated and boosted. Older Americans, in particular, have widely been considered “all set.”

But Benjy Renton, a researcher on Covid-19 vaccine delivery, notes that although older people were prioritized during the initial rollout, achieving nearly 91 percent coverage, by this summer there were already more than 15 million Americans over the age of 65 who had not received their first booster.

This spring, a nationwide survey by the COVID States Project found that a higher number of older Americans are unvaccinated and un-boosted compared to the widely reported CDC data used by most public health officials––calling the CDC data “clearly significantly flawed.”

Matthew Baum, a professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and an author on the study’s preprint, said that it has been difficult for the federal government to figure out exactly how many shots have been administered to each individual. “States are uneven in reporting data,” said Baum. Poor vaccination record linkage in the US has exacerbated the problem.

On Sept. 1, new research presented at the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting regarding booster doses showed that more than 30 percent of people over the age of 50 have received no booster. Many people in that cohort have not been boosted simply because they believe they are protected from severe outcomes from the virus since they were “fully vaccinated” back in the first round.

Vaccine uptake for the other Covid-19 boosters has been relatively low. That means millions of Americans currently have waning—no, waned—immunity to a virus that quickly learned to evade the protection offered by initial vaccines.

The new bivalent boosters are thus a way for our immune systems to “upgrade” their response to new forms of the virus, explains Rob Swanda, an mRNA biochemist and science communicator known for his popular online educational videos. The boosters allow our cells to “remember what both the ancestral strain” of the virus looks like and “what the Omicron variant looks like.”

Experts are clear on the fact that these updated boosters will be a “key tool for those at high risk of severe disease,” said Renton. Unfortunately, with every successive booster, uptake has decreased—even among the most vulnerable.

Megan Ranney, a practicing emergency physician, researcher, and public health advocate at the School of Public Health at Brown University, hopes that even “25 to 30 percent of the population, especially immunocompromised and older folks,” get these shots. “That could potentially be really impactful.”

Various studies have shown that increased boosting this round could save many thousands of lives. In late July, the Commonwealth Fund released an analysis estimating that an extensive fall booster vaccination campaign could save 160,000 lives and avert $109 billion in medical costs. Their researchers examined the impact of an early fall vaccination campaign––one that should be right around the corner but has yet to appear.

Even if the campaign’s coverage were slightly less widespread—similar in reach to that of the 2020–2021 influenza vaccination campaign—it would nonetheless prevent nearly 102,000 deaths and more than 1 million hospitalizations, and save $63 billion in direct medical costs by the end of next March. Either of these scenarios could prevent deaths from exceeding 1,000 per day.

Without such a campaign, the authors estimate that a surge could lead to more than 260,000 additional deaths by the end of March. That is, of course, in addition to the 1.04 million deaths the country has already experienced––a figure that has contributed to the nation’s staggering decline in life expectancy last year and the biggest two-year drop in almost 100 years, reported STAT.

What would an effective outreach campaign actually look like?

This week, Renton insisted on Twitter that we especially need to focus on “better outreach to the uninsured,” given that the uninsured represent the “least-vaccinated demographic group” in the US.

Others advocate for institutions to conduct more effective community outreach; Taison Bell, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Virginia, told me that we need a “multipronged campaign––on the bus, subway, radio––but also a targeted campaign in higher-risk communities” that allows for communication and coordination with local places of worship and community leaders.

I’m convinced. But I cannot say that I am optimistic.

In 2021, as a researcher for the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Virality Project––a team that collected data about online vaccine misinformation and disinformation––I heard from passionate, inspiring doctors, public health experts, and health care advocates who fiercely believed that when provided with the right tools––in the forms of access to the vaccine, accurate information, time off work, childcare, and/or supportive community members with whom they could talk through hesitations and concerns––the vast, vast majority of Americans were open to getting vaccinated and then boosted for Covid-19. I trusted those doctors and advocates.

I still do.

But those tools take time, and they all take a lot of money. As Bell and Renton and others have reminded me, Covid funding has continued to dry up from Congress this summer. In the last few months, Americans have witnessed the ending of a slew of supportive pandemic economic policies, from the Expanded Child Tax Credit to the Uninsured Program and paid pandemic sick leave.

And the Biden administration just announced it will discontinue its free at-home rapid test mailing program due to a lack of funding. The program was critical to detection and prevention last winter and spring during the height of the first two Omicron waves. Americans had until Sept. 2 to order their last batch. After that, Congress is saying––as it has for months, like a terrible rallying cry, or maybe a death chant––“you’re on your own now.”

Lily Meyersohn is a researcher at the Institute for Public Accuracy, where she covers pandemic policy and American health care issues. Prior to that, she was an associate researcher and writer for the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Virality Project, a coalition of research entities that investigated online Covid-19 vaccine misinformation. The group’s work supported information exchange between the research community, public health officials, government agencies, civil society organizations, and social media platforms. She can be reached for more information at lilymeyersohn@gmail.com or @LMeyersohn.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A waiter serves coffee in a glass to a customer outside a coffee shop in Havana's Vedado neighborhood. Drinking coffee on the street and in homes is a custom in Cuba that has become increasingly difficult to maintain, due to scarcity and cost. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Luis Brizuela
HAVANA, Sep 9 2022 (IPS)

While the Cuban government’s plans to increase production begin to bear fruit, Mireya Barrios confesses that she seeks every possible way to enjoy a cup of coffee every day, in the face of high prices and scarcity.

“If I don’t drink it I don’t feel good, I have a headache all day. For me drinking coffee is almost as important as eating,” said Barrios, who receives from family members quantities of coffee beans “brought from the east, where the best coffee in the country is produced,” which she mixes with chickpeas before roasting, to make it stretch farther.

After drinking her own cup, Barrios sells coffee as a street vendor in the early morning in the old town district of Centro Habana, one of the 15 municipalities that make up Havana.

“That sip of hot coffee is sometimes the entire breakfast of people who go to work and don’t have it at home because they leave in a hurry, or because they don’t have any coffee, which in addition to being scarce has become very expensive,” Barrios said in an interview with IPS.

Coffee is part of the basic food basket on the island. The government sells each month, per person and on a subsidized basis, a 115-gram package mixed with 50 percent chickpeas.

In recent months there have been delays in distribution due to the late arrival of raw materials, including packaging paper, given the financial problems faced by this Caribbean island country in the midst of the deepening structural crisis of its economy, which dates back three decades.

When consulted by IPS, residents in some of Cuba’s 168 municipalities admit that the coffee quota “is barely enough for seven to 10 days, if you’re thrifty.”

People often resort to the black market to acquire additional quantities. There, the same 115-gram package, often taken from stores or government establishments, is sold for the equivalent of half a dollar.

Better quality Cuban and foreign coffee brands are sold almost exclusively in stores in convertible currencies, unaffordable for many families who are paid wages in the devalued Cuban peso.

For example, a kilo of the national brand Cubita costs about 15 dollars in a country with an average monthly salary equivalent to 32 dollars, according to the official rate of 120 pesos to the dollar.

Roberto Martínez shows the nursery where he grows new coffee plants in the town of Palenque, Yateras municipality, in the eastern Cuban province of Guantánamo. A cooperation project with Vietnam created seed banks to renew and improve cuttings and thus boost the quality and yields of local coffee. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Boosting coffee production on the plains

Coffee arrived in Cuba in 1748 and production received a major boost after the Haitian revolution (1791-1804), with the immigration of French-Haitian farmers who settled in mountainous areas of the eastern part of the island where they set up coffee plantations, some of whose ruins were declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in the year 2000.

During part of the 19th century, this country was the main exporter of coffee to Europe, exporting 29,500 tons in 1833, for example.

Statistics show that the historical record was reached in the 1961-1962 harvest: 60,300 tons. But after that production declined and currently volumes do not exceed 10,000 tons per year.

With a demand of 24,000 tons per year, this once important exporter actually has to import coffee from other countries, but in quantities that do not meet its needs.

According to Elexis Legrá, director of coffee and cocoa of the Agroforestry Group (GAF), attached to the Ministry of Agriculture, Cuba exports the Arabica variety, the highest quality, produced by coffee growers in mountainous areas.

The prospect is to start exporting small quantities of the Robusta variety, in greatest demand on the international market.

This year, the goal is to export some 2,700 tons, a figure similar to that of 2020, according to industry executives.

Experts say the main factors behind the drop in production are pests, tropical cyclones that frequently hit the island, the effects of climate change, the depopulation of rural and mountainous areas and obsolescent technology.

About 90 percent of national coffee production comes from the mountains in the four easternmost provinces: Holguín, Granma, Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo, where the highest quality varieties are grown, due to tradition and favorable microclimates.

However, since 2014 the Cuban government began identifying soils with adequate conditions for planting coffee in lowland regions, and training courses and technical advice have been provided to new coffee growers.

Sun-dried coffee beans in Palenque, in the municipality of Yateras in the province of Guantanamo. The easternmost of Cuba’s provinces is one of the largest local producers of coffee, where the highest quality varieties are grown, due to tradition and the favorable mountainous microclimates. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“They used to say you couldn’t grow coffee here, and today we have some 2,000 bushes on just half a hectare,” Juan Miguel Fleitas told IPS. In addition to growing root vegetables, fresh produce and fruit and raising livestock, he also grows coffee on his family farm, Victoria 1, in the capital’s Guanabacoa municipality.

The 29-hectare farm, with six workers, belongs to the 26 de Julio Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs).

The UBPCs manage both private properties and state lands granted in usufruct in this socialist nation with a largely centralized economy.

“In the cooperative we have about eight hectares of coffee, dispersed. We are working on the introduction of Vietnamese coffee. It has a good yield, with a larger bean,” the farm’s head of agricultural production, Jorge Luis Gutiérrez, told IPS.

The beans came from seed banks from the east of the island, as part of the Cuba-Vietnam collaboration project, developed from 2015 to 2020.

In the 1970s, Cuban experts taught Vietnamese farmers and extension workers to plant this variety, in a nation then devastated by the war with the United States (1955-1975).

Vietnam is today the second largest exporter of the bean and shares its know-how with Cuba to achieve Robusta coffee cuttings that guarantee renewed plants with superior characteristics, in order to increase quality and yields.

Cuba’s “program to grow coffee in the lowlands” has set a goal of planting 7,163 hectares of coffee in production areas in several of the country’s 15 provinces.

So far, 1,200 hectares have been planted, another 700 hectares are in preparation, and the aim is to harvest more than 4,000 tons by 2030, according to official estimates.

By that date, Cuba’s “coffee production development program” aims to harvest 30,000 tons of coffee nationwide.

Bags of coffee are stacked on a handcart, to be sold at a state-run establishment in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood. The government provides 115 grams of coffee per month to Cuban families at subsidized prices, but in recent months it has been delivered with delays due to difficulties in obtaining supplies. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Organic coffee

Esperanza González is committed to growing coffee “without chemicals or herbicides, only using agroecological management techniques, earthworm humus, lots of organic matter and free-roaming chickens that help fertilize the soil with their excrement.”

González, who returned to Cuba after living for years in the Canadian province of Manitoba, was granted in 2017 in usufruct the eight-hectare Farm 878 that she renamed Doña Esperanza, located in the town of Santa Amelia, in the municipality of Cotorro, near the capital.

Since 2008, the Cuban government has granted unproductive and/or degraded land in usufruct to recuperate it and bolster food production.

This policy forms part of plans to strengthen food security in a country that is up to 70 percent dependent on food imports, whose rising prices lead to a domestic market with unsatisfied needs and shortages.

González, who through her own efforts imported “the equipment and the technology to be able to completely process our coffee,” told IPS that she hopes that with this year’s harvest they will “have a local quality product packaged under our own brand.”

However, she also highlighted “the exchange with coffee growers in the municipality of Segundo Frente (in the province of Santiago de Cuba), from whom we have received baskets to harvest coffee and give the final preparations to our crop.”

In 2021 “we harvested half a ton of good quality beans. We hope that little by little Doña Esperanza will become a lowlands coffee farm with higher volumes of export-quality and national-consumption production, which is so much needed,” she said.

Several initiatives with international support seek to strengthen the value chains associated with coffee production, restore the soils and ecosystems where coffee is grown, and identify markets for selling coffee grown with sustainable practices.

Prodecafé, an agroforestry cooperative development initiative that will run until 2027, was launched in February. With a budget of over 63 million dollars, it is expected to benefit 300 cooperatives in 27 municipalities in the four eastern provinces where coffee production is concentrated.

This joint project of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Ministry of Agriculture is aimed at strengthening the cocoa and coffee value chains and includes a gender approach by encouraging the inclusion of women in agroforestry activities.

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74% of people in G20 countries want economic systems to change, survey finds. Credit: Paul Virgo / IPS.

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Sep 8 2022 (IPS)

In 1972 the Club of Rome alerted the world to the harm human economic systems were doing to the health of our planet in its seminal, best-selling report, The Limits to Growth. With the devastating impacts of the climate crisis hitting home harder than ever, especially in the Global South, that warning about the dangers of exponential economic growth has been fully vindicated.

The club, an international network of scientists, economic experts and former heads of State and government, is marking the 50th anniversary of that landmark work with a new contribution that builds on ‘Limits’ and the dozens of other reports that it has released over the last half century to consolidate the case for an overhaul of the prevailing economic paradigm.

If humanity snaps out of its collective denial, it can move to a ‘Great Leap’ scenario in which global temperatures are stabilized at below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. To bring this about it is necessary to address the fundamental inequalities that are the root cause of the ecological crisis

‘Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity’, which is coming out late in September, warns that if the world continues with the economic policies of the last 40 years, the rich will get richer while the poor fall farther behind, creating extreme inequalities and growing social tensions within and between countries.

In this ‘Too Little, Too Late Scenario’, political division and lack of trust will make it increasingly difficult to address climate and ecological risks, with regional societal collapse, driven by rising social tensions, food insecurity and environmental degradation, increasingly likely.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be like this.

If humanity snaps out of its collective denial, it can move to a ‘Great Leap’ scenario in which global temperatures are stabilized at below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

To bring this about it is necessary to address the fundamental inequalities that are the root cause of the ecological crisis by: ending poverty through reform of the international financial system; addressing gross inequality by ensuring that the wealthiest 10% take less than 40% of national incomes; empowering women to achieve full gender equity by 2050; transforming the food system to provide healthy diets for people and planet; and transitioning to clean energy to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

“With bold action now a large population can thrive on a livable planet,” Owen Gaffney, one of the six authors of the new report, told IPS.

“We argue that we need five transformations in parallel at speed with the biggest effort this decade on poverty, inequality, food, energy and gender equity”.

“This is the minimum. This does not lead to some utopia, but this leads to societies that are functional enough to deal with the scale of the crises we know are coming.”

Gaffney, a sustainability analyst at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said that it is necessary to break away from “a system that will create the first trillionaire this decade” and distribute wealth more fairly to create a system that benefits the majority in the long run.

“High wealth inequality has a destabilizing influence in societies,” he said.

“It erodes social cohesion. Compare Sweden to the United States. In the US there has emerged an ‘elite versus the rest’ worldview. This, compounded by race and religious divisions, has contributed to an increasingly dysfunctional society.

“In more economically equal societies there is more trust in governments. We need trust in governments to allow societies to take large, long-term decisions”.

Earth for All, which is the result of a two-year research project, goes on to give 15 policy recommendations with the greatest potential to accelerate these turnarounds.

It also calls for the creation of a novel financial innovation, the Citizen’s Fund, which would distribute the wealth of the global commons to all people as a Universal Basic Dividend, in order to tackle inequality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and provide a safety net for the most vulnerable through economic shocks.

Furthermore, the book tackles the fierce debate between supporters of ‘degrowth’ and advocates of ‘green growth’.

It sides with the latter, saying the ‘Giant Leap’ would not spell the end of economic growth, but the end of the directionless economic growth that is destroying societies and the planet.

“Exponential economic growth comes hand in hand with exponential growth in material consumption, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the current economic system,” said Gaffney.

“This does not necessarily need to be the case. An energy transformation to clean energy will cause economic growth in the clean energy sector and a contraction of the fossil fuel sector.”

“So, it depends what is growing. If we have growth in circular economies and regenerative economies, this is good.”

“If we continue growing the linear ‘take, make, break, waste’ model then we don’t have a long future on Earth”.

Although the solutions proposed in the book are largely macro-economic ones that can only be implemented by governments, the book is also a statement against climate doomism and a call to action for everyone.

Gaffney points to the impact social movements like Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion are having and to a survey done for Earth4All with Ipsos MORI of G20 countries which suggests that 74% of people in G20 countries want economic systems to change.

He hopes that we are reaching a positive “social tipping point” in which these new ideas take hold and embed in the political sphere rapidly.

Remarkably, one of the authors of the report is Norwegian climate expert Jorgen Randers, who was also among the co-authors of The Limits to Growth.

“We are standing on a cliff edge,” Randers said. “In the next 50 years, the current economic system will drive up social tensions and drive down wellbeing.”

“We can already see how inequality is destabilising people and the planet.”

“Unless there is truly extraordinary action to redistribute wealth, things will get significantly worse. We are already sowing the seeds for regional collapse.”

“Societies are creating vicious cycles where rising social tensions, which are exacerbated by climate breakdown, will continue to lead to a decline in trust.”

“This risks an explosive combination of extreme political destabilisation and economic stagnation at a time when we must do everything we can to avoid climate catastrophes.”

A medical officer preparing to give a COVID-19 vaccine in Somalia in May 2021. Credit: Mokhtar Mohamed/AMISOM

By Juliet Morrison
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 2022 (IPS)

With the outbreak of Monkeypox in non-endemic countries leading to a scramble for vaccines, global health advocates are again calling for equity to be prioritized in the international response.

Equity was a top concern during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic emergency health response. The World Health Organization (WHO) helped spearhead several initiatives in an attempt to reduce disparities between nations, notably COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator.

Yet, despite these efforts, figures from Our World in Data show that only one in seven people are fully vaccinated in low-income countries. In contrast, almost three in four people have been fully vaccinated for a year in high-income countries.

Fatima Hassan, human rights lawyer and founder of South African-based civil society group Health Justice Initiative, sees the current disparity in Monkeypox vaccine access as the latest example of the Global South, and Africa especially, being disadvantaged in the global health space.

“We still as Africa don’t have any supplies of monkeypox vaccines, even though as a continent, we’ve been dealing with this disease for a number of years. So on one level, now that it’s become a Global North problem, the vaccines have been found for them, but not for us.”

Monkeypox can be combated with smallpox vaccines, which are 85 percent effective against the virus. Since the disease was eradicated in 1980, the WHO has had 31 million doses set aside for a rapid response in case smallpox should re-emerge. The organization is currently assessing the potency of this stockpile and whether it can be deployed against Monkeypox.

However, these doses have never been distributed in Africa, where Monkeypox has circulated since the 1970s. The continent is also facing a much higher death rate. When the WHO declared a global health emergency, the only deaths recorded were from West and Central Africa, where 4.7 percent of people who contracted the disease had died.

In the case of COVID-19, many saw the international rules that allow pharmaceutical companies to protect their intellectual property (IP) as simply reinforcing existing disparities between countries.

Several wealthy countries signed contracts with pharmaceutical companies, helping finance private sector research and development, in exchange for prioritized access to vaccine supply. When companies eventually developed successful vaccines, the technology they used was restricted from being shared with the global community. Nations that lacked both the technology and the resources to purchase on the open market resources had to rely on vaccine donations from rich countries that came several months later.

Over 100 organizations and networks joined a coalition called The People’s Vaccine to call for the suspension of intellectual property rules and mandatory pooling of COVID-19-related data and technologies. Those supporting the alliance’s call include the current leaders of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and former Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

For Hassan, intellectual property regulations were especially problematic given the participation of Africans in trial phases for Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines.

“We did all those trials; we’ve contributed to the knowledge generation and to the scientific knowledge that allowed [pharmaceutical companies] to get emergency use authorization. But we were not guaranteed supplies or access or preferential access. So the deeper inequity in this entire setup was also that the Global South was asked to participate in the research and the trials, but there was no regulated way of ensuring […] genuine benefit sharing agreements.”

For countries worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of increased self-sufficiency in coping with global health emergencies.

“I think that was the lesson of COVID. For the global South, it was like, oh, okay, we need to actually figure this out by ourselves,” Hassan said.

Several initiatives have been created to fulfill this goal, including a new mRNA vaccine technology hub in South Africa.

The hub was launched by the WHO and COVAX in Afrigen, Cape Town, on June 21, 2022. It aims to bolster low and middle-income countries’ capacity to produce COVID mRNA vaccines by training scientists in developing mRNA vaccines and pooling all knowledge acquired by partners. The site in Afrigen will be run by a consortium that includes Biovac, Afrigen Biologics, and Vaccines, a network of universities, and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

When the hub launched, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa commended the initiative and its implications for Africa’s role globally.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the full extent of the vaccine gap between developed and developing economies and how that gap can severely undermine global health security. This landmark initiative is a major advance in the international effort to build vaccine development and manufacturing capacity that will put Africa on a path to self-determination.”

African scientists are heading the technology transfer hub. It has already produced the first batches of an mRNA vaccine with technology that will be transferred to 15 countries.

Reflecting on Africa’s response to COVID-19, Public Health Professor Flavia Senkubuge told IPS that she’s proud of how well the continent dealt with the caseload, especially as many predicted COVID-19 would “literally obliterate” the region.

The WHO has cited Africa as “one of the least affected regions of the world” throughout the pandemic. The number of total deaths from the continent, 256 555, makes up 3 percent of the world’s total, 6.49 million. In contrast, deaths from the Americas and Europe accounted for 46 and 29 percent, respectively.

Senkubuge told IPS that predictions that Africa would be completely overwhelmed overlooked the expertise Africa has garnered in combating public health crises, notably HIV and AIDS.

“If you look at South Africa, for people like me who trained and practiced as physicians during the HIV and AIDS period, we are used to those large numbers of very sick patients. Additionally, in South Africa, you must remember that we are a country that has a quadruple burden of disease, therefore which means we have a high volume of patients coming into our health establishments. We are therefore used to working differently, having an optimum triage system, and working in under-resourced and high-pressure environments.”

Being underestimated also extends to the work of African scientists. Both Hassan and Senkubuge told IPS that the work of Africans is often neglected and overlooked in global settings.

Yet, the pandemic has also highlighted their contributions to global health, Senkubuge said. She pointed to South Africa’s discovery and swift response to the emergence of the Omicron variant. She believes this has led to a shift in how African scientists are considering their work on the global stage.

“As African [scientists], […] I think we have kind of shifted the paradigm to say we are here, we are not going anywhere. We’re not going to try and convince anyone regarding the excellence of our work, we’ll just do our work, continue to share it with our communities, publish in the top journals and be part of the global discourse on our own terms. You’re welcome to retake, amend, recheck, but actually, we stand resolute in our unapologetic knowledge that the work we do here in Africa is excellent and contributes significantly to global health.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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CHINA - Constructing an irrigation network in Qinghai Province. Workers were paid part of their wages in food supplied by the World Food Programme. Credit WFP/Sarah Errington

By Trevor Page
LETHBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 8 2022 (IPS)

As our planet continues to heat up, extreme weather has affected many of us. From the west coast of North America across Europe, the Middle East and Asia to Pakistan and New Zealand, wildfires and flash floods have destroyed homes and property and disrupted the daily lives of millions.

Supply chains, already badly affected by COVID, have been further complicated by drying rivers and waterways. In the more developed countries, insurance covers much of the short-term losses.

But it’s in the developing world where the effects of climate change cause the most acute form of human suffering: starvation. Somalia, in the Horn of Africa is once again in the grip of a devastating drought. Livestock have perished and children are beginning to die.

Parts South Sudan’s farmland have now been under water for the 4th consecutive year because of abnormal floods. Hapless farmers, marooned on islands of higher ground, are living off handouts from the international donor community. No insurance to cover their losses; they’re lucky just to hang on to their lives.

And if we needed a shriller wake-up call about the unfolding global food crisis, Russia’s war on Ukraine has certainly provided that: Much of grain and fertilizer that the world relies on was held hostage by the combatant’s mines and warships in the Black Sea.

Paralyzed by the outdated make-up and role of the Security Council, the political side of the UN System was once again unable to prevent war from breaking out.

Wars and armed conflict rage on in Syria, Libya, Myanmar, Afghanistan, South Sudan, the DRC and, of course, in Ukraine itself. But thanks to UN and Turkish mediation, grain and fertilizer shipments from Ukrainian and Russian ports have resumed under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

The Joint Coordination Centre (JCC), set up in Istanbul at the end of July, is ensuring that trade and aid in these most basic of commodities can flow out of Black Sea ports again. Amir Abdulla, the World Food Programme’s former Deputy Executive Director is the UN’s coordinator for the Black Sea Grain Initiative and heads up the UN Delegation to the JCC.

Abdulla told me earlier this week that operations are scaling up and grain exports from Ukraine went over 1 million tons in less than a month and to 2 million tons in just the last week. An average of 9 ships a day heading to or from Ukraine are being inspected jointly by UN, Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian inspectors. “While the conflict in Ukraine continues, it has been possible with the help of Turkey and the agreement of Russia and Ukraine, for the UN to get this initiative underway so that the much-needed flow of food and fertilizer moves out of Black Sea ports to the rest of the world”, he said.

“More grain needs to move through to make space in silos for the new harvest. This is critical for the world’s grain supply for next year. Equally important is the urgent export of fertilizer, including ammonia, so that farmers across the world can continue food production at an affordable cost”, he added.

But what about the wider food crisis that is developing and will be with us in the years to come?

The World Food Programme (WFP) warns that 345 million people are already affected by acute food insecurity in 82 countries. And with the global population set to hit at least 10 billion by 2050, the effect of climate change on agriculture will compound the growing problem. There is a desperate need for the developing world to grow more food.

Up to now, WFP has helped ward off mass starvation among the world’s most vulnerable. But to prevent this happening in the years ahead, there’s never been a greater need for it to address the “development” part of its dual mandate by getting back in the business of helping governments and communities grow more food.

In the early-60s when WFP started out, and for it’s first 20 years of operation, around 70% of its budget was spent on development projects, many of them designed to grow more food.

Work on India’s Indira Gandhi Canal, which takes water from the Himalaya mountains to irrigate 2 million hectares of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, started in 1964 with WFP assistance. Workers building the canal were able to buy WFP food at specially set up shops on the banks of the canal network at low, fixed rates.

After WFP assistance ended the World Bank and the EU helped complete the irrigation network. For the last 50 years, millions of tons of additional food grain has been produced every year as a result of this project. Wheat is now reaped annually in the far-flung desert district of Jaisalmer.

As WFP’s Representative in India, Bishow Parajuli says with pride, “This project has changed the lives of millions of ordinary people”, giving real meaning to WFP’s development slogan: changing lives.

In China’s far-western province of Qinghai, it’s much the same story. Here, back in the 80s, WFP helped the local government’s Water Conversancy Bureau construct an irrigation network that today irrigates what was 8,000 hectares of low-yielding land in Haidong Prefecture.

CHINA – Completed irrigation canal in Qinghai Province, a WFP- assisted project. Credit: WFP/Trevor Page

As with India’s Indira Gandhi Canal, the network was built manually, by hand. WFP food was supplied to pay part of the worker’s wages. With assured irrigation, wheat yields doubled within 5 years. Today, this same area of Qinghai is the province’s main wheat producing area with mechanical combines harvesting the crop instead of reaping it by hand.

CHINA – With irrigation, wheat yields doubled in 5 years at this WFP-assisted project in Qinghai Province. Credit: WFP/Paul Mitchell

Why is WFP no longer helping developing countries build major irrigation networks designed to grow more food? Because its focus changed in the early 90s to emergencies or saving lives as WFP calls it today.

That was when WFP took over the responsibility from the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR to feed the world’s 25 million refugees on its books as well as the 50-odd million who sort refuge elsewhere in their own country as internally displaced people, or IDPs.

But the pressure of climate change and population growth is causing the pendulum to swing again. At WFP’s last Executive Board (EB) meeting in June, WFP’s Changing Lives Transformation Fund (CLTF) was introduced.

While there was general agreement that WFP’s dual mandate – emergencies and development – must be respected and that humanitarian aid alone is not enough, cash-strapped main donor EB members insisted that saving lives must always take priority over changing lives.

Not surprisingly, most EB members from the developing world wanted WFP to help more with changing lives through stepped-up development assistance. After much debate, which went to closed night sessions, the compromise was a $55 million fund over 5 years, or upto $1.2 million for around 10-15 countries as seed money for projects aimed at supporting national food security.

While this is a start, the amounts earmarked seem like half-hearted steps for the organization that the world set up to help governments prevent mass hunger and starvation. Volli Carucci, Director of WFP’s Resilience and Food Systems Service disagrees, pointing to the many reliance measure that WFP is supporting in the drought-stricken Sahel. “ But more long-term support from donors is needed”, he said. Many countries in Africa need to be growing drought-resistant sorghum and millet rather than maize he told me. Maize is the staple for much of the continent.

Acknowledging “the present and future danger” of the global food crisis, Carucci emphasised that greater awareness of WFP’s current resilience initiatives and its development successes of the past is needed.

BANGLADESH – Unskilled labour re-excavating a silted-up irrigation canal. WFP food was used as part-payment of wages to workers rehabilitating irrigation and drainage canals and embankments in this flood-prone country. Credit: WFP/Trevor Page

Bangladesh, China, Egypt and India have all benefited from WFP assistance in building major irrigation networks. Every year since, millions of tons of food grain has been produced that helps feed their people.

EGYPT – Irrigation canal under construction. Credit: WFP

Ethiopia reversed some of its major soil erosion problems by planting millions of trees to protect agricultural land. Always short of cash to pay labour costs, these governments used WFP assistance to help pay the workers on these projects with food.

ETHIOPIA – Watering seedlings for a WFP-assisted forestry project. Credit: WFP/Franco Mattioli

South/South Cooperation provides a channel to transfer the organizational management and technical expertise of these countries to less developed countries with agricultural potential. Projects like these would also provide employment for the growing hordes of unskilled labour looking for work.

As WFP nears its 60th anniversary it has a full agenda of programming and internal management issues to address. Hopefully, helping the governments and community organizations in developing countries grow more food will figure more prominently than in past decades.

Irrigating and developing more farmland could also help with the integration IDPs into new communities to make them productive citizens instead of living off handouts year after year. It could also help stem the flow of migration to the more-developed countries.

Involving cooperating partners such as UNDP, FAO, World Bank, NGOs and other multilaterals like the EU will be crucial right from the planning stage.

Of course, saving lives will always be the priority of the day. But unless governments act now to ensure that future generations have enough food to eat, parts of the planet run the risk of becoming overwhelmed by the hungry poor.

WFP can and must do more to help countries along the path towards food security, as its mandate dictates. Only then will the world move significantly towards achieving its Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger.

Trevor Page is a former Country and HQ Director of the World Food Programme. He has also served with FAO, UNHCR and what is now the United Nations Department of Political and Peace Building Affairs.

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Delegates from the Zambia All Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development (ZAPPD) met in Lusaka to develop a strategic plan to tackle population and development issues. Credit: APDA

By Cecilia Russell
Johannesburg, Sep 8 2022 (IPS)

Parliamentarians play a decisive role in addressing population issues, as was demonstrated when the majority voted against a private member motion to end the teaching of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in Zambia in 2020.

However, a Zambia All Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development (ZAPPD) workshop held in Lusaka also heard that many challenges need addressing. The Zambia All Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development (ZAPPD) was founded in 1997 to provide capacity on population and development and to strengthen parliamentarians’ commitments. It is one of the first National Committees on population and development, established in the East and Southern African region.

The seminar, supported by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), was attended by several expert researchers who unpacked the outlook for the developing nation.

Lester Phiri from the Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia (PPAZ) noted that much work was needed for the country to achieve its Vision 2030 goal of becoming a prosperous middle-income country.

Delegates at a ZAPPD workshop heard that significantly high poverty levels, particularly in Zambian rural areas where 76.6 percent of people are considered poor, should be addressed. The workshop delegates contributed to a strategic plan to address population issues. Credit: APDA

Phiri noted that while the economy had grown, with more mothers surviving childbirth and children being healthier and more educated – this did not “automatically lead to overall national development and improved quality of life.”

To achieve Vision 2030, the significantly high poverty levels, particularly in the rural areas where 76.6 percent of people are considered poor, should be addressed.

Unemployment was high, Phiri said, and there was limited access to empowerment programs.

Another issue was the high fertility rates and maternal mortality rate of 252 for every 100 000 births.

Research indicated that at least one-fifth of married women had an unmet need for family planning.

Zambia’s development would benefit from an explained the benefit of a healthy and educated population by addressing family planning.

“Couples with smaller families are better able to provide for their children, save money, and escape poverty,” Phiri said. “In fact, studies show that shifting the age structure of the population can lead to a 47 percent increase in per capita income.”

Of concern was that gender-based violence was high, with nearly half (47 percent) of ever-married women reporting having experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence.

Answering why, if the economy was growing, there was still widespread poverty, Phiri noted that Zamia had one of the fastest-growing populations in the world. By 2030 the population, estimated at 19 million, will have swelled to 24 million and 41 million by 2050.

This meant that at a “community and household level, there are a large number of dependents, which impacts the working population’s ability to save money and escape poverty”.

Phiri advised parliamentarians to work toward improved child survival and reducing fertility by promoting voluntary family planning.

Another issue needing fixing was the high school dropout rate. The benefits to society would be significant if the country increased secondary school completion rates among youth, especially girls. Other programmes should include investment in comprehensive sexuality education and create an enabling policy environment for pre- and post-secondary, and tertiary education economic activity to counter unemployment and promote entrepreneurship.

“If we invest in the health and education of the population, especially women and girls, we may see a different Zambia in the years to come,” Phiri told the workshop.

Ifoma Mulewa, a sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) researcher at the National Assembly of Zambia, said these objectives could be achieved through energetic and committed parliamentarians.

She said MPs should take the initiative to bring motions on population matters; they should participate in population debates in the House and parliamentary committees and through oversight visits.

They could also undertake public hearings to get wider community and stakeholders’ views on population matters.

She called on them to keep the pressure on the Executive to adhere to international protocols on population and growth.

Phiri agreed and said there was inadequate commitment towards population and development in the allocation, disbursement, and utilization of national budgets. It was also crucial to balance legislation – for example, on child marriage, where the statutory versus customary laws were not harmonized.

He said Zambia had a legislative framework to ensure Zambia remains on the path to achieving its Vision 2030 goal, including the Population Policy Implementation Plan (2019-2030), the 8th National Development Plan (2022-2026), the Family Planning Costed Implementation Plan (2021-2026) and a National Strategy on Ending Child Marriage.

It also had polity for youth, including Education Act 2011, the Comprehensive Sexuality Education Framework, and National Youth Policy (2015).

The Gender Equity and Equality Act (2015) ends discrimination against women.

However, MPs should engage more with the community on population and development issues.

The workshop, attended by about 35 participants and 22 parliamentarians, made crucial inputs to a strategic plan on population by ZAPPD. The new members of ZAPPD, under the leadership of Hon Princess Kasune, MP, are aiming to address the Committee’s contribution to implementing ICPD25 commitments.

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An Afghan girl in the Nawabad District of Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: UNICEF/Mohammad Haya Burhan

By John Sifton
NEW YORK, Sep 8 2022 (IPS)

This week, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, released his first report. It is a catalog of abuses under Taliban rule since August 2021 and their devastating impact on Afghans.

The report also highlights the devastating humanitarian impact of the country’s economic crisis, caused in part by actions by foreign governments, noting that “all parties bear degrees of responsibility for failures to deliver economic and social rights.”

The report describes “staggering regression in women and girls’ enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.” It notes that “in no other country have women and girls so rapidly disappeared from all spheres of public life,” echoing a recent statement by UN experts describing “wide-spread, systematic and all-encompassing” attacks on the rights of women and girls.

The report also details Taliban abuses against officials from the former government, journalists, and religious minorities, among other rights concerns.

As someone who worked in Afghanistan before the first Taliban government fell in 2001, I have witnessed Taliban oppression firsthand. The report’s details are distressingly familiar.

Under the Taliban, the rule of law has no meaning. It isn’t even clear what “the law” is. Since last year, when the Taliban revoked the country’s constitution and stated that all laws needed to comply with Sharia, or Islamic law, it hasn’t been clear which laws and regulations are in force or how crimes are to be handled.

Instead, there are only “evolving and arbitrarily interpreted rules and decrees,” according to the UN report, and legal cases “are handled idiosyncratically across jurisdictions and venues,” while basic crimes are “often dealt with by security forces without involving prosecutors or judges.”

In short, “the law” is whatever a Taliban official might say it is. A situation more threatening to human rights is hard to imagine.

The Taliban authorities should take the report’s recommendations seriously. Most urgently, they should rescind abusive policies that violate the rights of women and girls, protect religious minorities, and engage with the special rapporteur and other UN offices to develop reforms.

The UN Human Rights Council is due to discuss the findings of the report later this month. States should take this opportunity to renew the mandate of the special rapporteur and to establish a new body that will investigate abuses and advance accountability.

Afghans are entitled to better than what the Taliban have given them: A life with few freedoms, no real justice, and where half the population is shut out of education and work.

John Sifton is the Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch. He has previously served as a researcher and as Acting Deputy Washington Director. He focuses on South and Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, and terrorism and counter-terrorism issues worldwide.

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There are 244 million children out of school. Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

More than two-thirds of 10-year-olds are unable to read and understand a simple text. This shocking finding should be enough to be alarmed about the horrifying fate of an entire generation. But there is much more.

In fact, there are 244 million children still out of school, while educational centres are victims of armed attacks.

And millions more are falling prey to recruitment, enslavement, vital organs extraction, obliged displacements, drowning in the sea in migration journeys, homelessness, sexual violence, maiming, and a too long etcetera.

The above is to be added to other shocking facts like that 800 million girls are forced to be mothers, and that more than 200 million girls have already fallen prey to a dangerous, abhorrent practice, which is carried out in the name of social and religious traditions.

Also that 160 million plus are victims of forced labour, the double of a big European country’s -Germany- total population.

Half of them -or 80 million– are just 5 to 11 years old, and their number has been rising due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Without mitigation measures, their number could rise to nearly 170 million by the year 2022.

The world’s children are also exposed to grave health problems as a consequence of the “shocking, insidious, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing tricks used by the baby formula milk business with the sole aim of increasing, even more, their already high profits, as revealed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

 

Schools closed

Moreover, school closures and disruptions caused by the pandemic have likely driven learning losses and drop-outs. In the aftermath of the pandemic, nearly 24 million learners might never return to formal education, out of which, 11 million are projected to be girls and young women.

Grave violations affect boys and girls differently. Whereas 85% of children recruited and used were boys, 83% of sexual violence was perpetrated against girls, adds the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to all the above.

The bell is ringing for the start of a new school year in many countries, but inequalities in access to education are keeping some 244 million children out of the classroom, according to data published on 1 September 2022 by UNESCO.

 

Where most?

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the most children out of school, 98 million, and it is also the only region where this number is increasing.

The Central and Southern Asia region has the second highest out-of-school population, with 85 million.

In addition to being sold in refugee camps, up to 50% of refugee girls in secondary school may not return, when their classrooms reopen after COVID-19, whilst 222 million girls were not able to be reached by remote learning during the pandemic.

The data has been provided by Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, which also focuses on the staggering gender-based violations.

 

Girls

Girls impacted by the horrors of war and displacement in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen face even greater risks, such as gender-based violence, early child-marriage and unwanted pregnancies.

The banning of secondary girls’ education in Afghanistan is especially intolerable. In the past year, girls were estimated to be more than twice as likely to be out of school, and nearly twice as likely to be going to bed hungry compared to boys, adds Education Cannot Wait.

 

Education in emergencies

According to ECW’s recent Annual Results Report, conflict, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters and the compounding effect of the COVID-19 pandemic fueled increased education in emergencies’ needs with funding appeals reaching US$2.9 billion in 2021, compared with US$1.4 billion in 2020.

“While 2021 saw a record-high US$645 million in education appeal funding – the overall funding gap spiked by 17%, from 60% in 2020 to 77% in 2021.”

 

Under attack

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack has elaborated a global study of attacks on schools, universities, their students and staff, in 2020 and 2021.

Education is under attack around the world, warns the study. From Afghanistan to Colombia, Mali to Thailand, “students and teachers are killed, raped, and abducted, while schools and universities are bombed, burned down, and used for military purposes.”

According to the Education under Attack 2022:

• In 2020 and 2021, there were more than 5,000 reported attacks on education and incidents of military use of schools and universities, harming more than 9,000 students and educators in at least 85 countries. On average, six attacks on education or incidents of military use occurred each day.
• Six attacks on education or incidents of military use occurred each day.
• Explosive weapons were used in around one-fifth of all reported attacks on education during the reporting period.
• The highest incidences of attacks on education schools were in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Myanmar, and Palestine.

The United Nations has focussed on the tragedy facing world’s children on the occasion of both the International Literacy Day on 8 September, and the International Day to Protect Education from Attack, on 9 September, among several other international days.

Despite all the above, the world’s richest countries continue to be devoted to spending more than two trillion US dollars on weapons that kill tens of thousands of innocent children.

Just see this: Spending on Nuclear Weapons — US$105 Billion a Year; US$300 Million a Day, US$12 Million an Hour. A tiny portion of this amount would suffice to grant the basic human right to education to hundreds of millions of children, right?

By Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

A 2021 World Bank-financed project in Uganda was supposed to help communities to sustainably manage local areas and to cope with the impacts of Covid-19. But at one site, the Toro Semliki Wildlife Reserve, the funding emboldened the Uganda Wildlife Authority. A government body, and the project’s implementing agency, the UWA has long prevented indigenous communities from reclaiming their land near the wildlife reserve.

Since 2015, UWA rangers have been responsible for more than 86 attacks, including 34 people beaten, shot, or injured, 15 arrested, and at least 29 killed in the wildlife reserve. That’s according to a new report called Wearing Blinders. Reprisals against the local community accelerated during negotiations over the World Bank financing.

Unfortunately, such events are not rare. In 2021, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre recorded over 600 attacks against human rights defenders in the context of business activities. Many of them involved, either directly or indirectly, development banks. That’s according to one of today’s guests — Lorena Cotza of the Coalition for Human Rights in Development, an umbrella group of over 100 civil society groups and author of Wearing Blinders.

Our other guest is Ugandan human rights defender Gerald Kankya, director of the Twerwaneho Listeners Club. TLC  accompanies communities impacted by development projects, to denounce human rights violations and hold financiers accountable. Days before we spoke, Gerald and his colleagues filed requests for compensation for the families of the Toro Semliki Wildlife Reserve in the High Court of Uganda.

According to Lorena, development banks often shirk their responsibilities. They claim that there are no links between reprisals against community members and their financing of local projects. She believes that banks’ independent complaint bodies do produce insightful and credible investigations. However in the end, they can only make recommendations, not hold banks accountable.

 

Nesbit Gavanga, who mines sand illegally and sells it to builders, says he has few other economic options in Zimbabwe. Environmentalists, however, are concerned about land degradation. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
CHITUNGWIZA, Zimbabwe, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

In Chitungwiza, right next to the highway, 36-year-old Nesbit Gavanga and his five colleagues use shovels as they load trucks with sand.

The six apparently are in the business of sand-poaching and openly explain that every other day they engage in running battles with environmental officials who seek to curtail land degradation here. The group’s informal sand quarry lies 25 kilometers southeast of the Zimbabwean capital Harare.

For Gavanga and his colleagues, sand-poaching has been a source of income for years as the gang has never been formally employed.

Gavanga, with the others, invaded a patch of land in Chitungwiza to begin mining sand about eight years ago.

“This patch of land has given us money over the years, and we can’t afford to leave it. We are here to stay, and we are here to turn the sand into money,” Gavanga told IPS.

Gavanga is unfazed by the severity of damage he and his colleagues have unleashed on the giant swathes of land they have invaded in Chitungwiza.

What they care about is money, and Gavanga, with his colleagues, has managed to establish a huge customer base over the years.

“We just bring our picks and shovels here, and customers come with their trucks, and we fill the trucks with the sand we sell. Yes, this isn’t our land, but we have to survive from it even though (the authorities say) we are not allowed to mine,” 34-year-old Melford Mahamba, one of Gavanga’s colleagues, told IPS.

Gavanga claimed they make at least 30 to 40 US dollars daily from the enterprise.

But that is bad news for the environment.

Sand poachers have wrought huge scars on land across Zimbabwe as they harvest the river sand. These poachers leave uncovered pits.

Their customers are desperate individuals building urban homes.

According to the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), Zimbabwe’s statutory body responsible for ensuring the sustainable management of natural resources and protection of the environment, approximately 1694 hectares of land are affected by sand-poaching in the country, with Harare contributing to over 850 hectares of the statistics.

EMA has not been successful in stopping the sand poachers.

“Authorities chase us away from the places we mine for sand, but we always return in no time, even as they arrest us at times. We just bribe the officials and continue with the business,” Mahamba said.

Environmentalists like Happison Chikova, based in Harare, blamed Zimbabwe’s poor economy for the land degradation unleashed by sand poachers.

“These people have no jobs. They think by digging up sand soils for sale, believing they may break free from bankruptcy and poverty, but alas. They only make the environment suffer as they get very little money that hardly changes their lives,” Chikova told IPS.

But for the sand poachers like Mahamba, the profits are significant.

“The profits are huge since sand sells for 6 to 8 US dollars a cubic meter. We sell to clients using their own transport,” said Mahamba.

The sand poachers, in fact, incur very few costs, and the only costs they have to shoulder are the bribes given to council police.

Council authorities, for instance, in Chitungwiza, even though they conduct regular raids on sand poachers, are not fully capacitated.

“We conduct raids on sand poachers, but we don’t do that always due to insufficient resources, and so the sand poachers always go back to their illegal activities. It is like a cat-and-mouse game,” said Lovemore Meya, the Chitungwiza Municipality public relations officer.

For environmentalists like Chikova, sand poachers “damage vegetation while they dig out wide and deep pits which subsequently get flooded each rain season.”

Amid growing sand poaching in Zimbabwe, environmental lawyers insinuate that the practice contributes to climate change.

“Sand poaching increases Zimbabwe’s vulnerability to flooding in areas receiving high rainfall, with the practice of sand poaching also threatening wetlands, but sand poaching also affects water availability downstream, which then affects water use for climate adaptation purposes,” Ray Ncube, an environmental lawyer in private practice, told IPS.

EMA statistics have shown that as of December 2019, 9.5 million square meters of land across Zimbabwe had degraded due to illegal sand poaching.

As vast swathes of land fall to degradation, environmental activists like Kudakwashe Murisi in Masvingo, Zimbabwe’s oldest town, has blamed the country’s polarized politics for enabling sand poachers to do so as they please with the environment.

“Sand poachers are often youths with links to the ruling Zanu-PF party, obviously shielded by their political leadership, making it difficult for anyone to call them to order when they start digging up everywhere for sand soil,” Murisi told IPS.

In power for 42 years, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) is this Southern African nation’s governing political party.

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A student teacher at the National Teacher's College Kabale follows a lecture through his smartphone. Credit: Michael Wambi/IPS.

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA/KABALE, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, an education officer in the district neighbouring Uganda’s capital Kampala decreed that teachers could not take computers, mobile phones, or tablets into classrooms.

Frederick Kiyingi said phones and information and communications technology (ICT) tools distract learners and would compromise their learning and focus.

But William Musaazi, a teacher who had realised the importance of using ICTs in teaching, tried to reason otherwise. “With this smartphone, I’m able to get the whole world around me just at the click of a button… And at the same time, it makes my lessons interesting, like a very interesting movie,” he told IPS recently.

While the colleges had already been supplied with ICT tools, the lecturers had technology phobia. After training, they can now use ICTs - When the COVID-19 situation came, it forced them to think ‘OK we have these facilities but how can we use them to reach out to our learners'

In the end, Musaazi decided to keep the vital tools out of class for fear of contradicting the guidelines.

Then in March 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni announced a total lockdown, sending learning to a halt. Schools and universities remained closed for two years, leaving 15 million students with no education.

Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports (MoE) suggested delivering lessons through radio and television but that was not effective. The ministry turned to Enabel, the development agency of Belgium. It developed and implemented a distance learning strategy known as the TTE Sandbox to ensure that learning continued by training educators at the five national teachers colleges (NTCs).

 

Teaching using a sandbox

Teachers in training had to undertake a crash programme on how to use technology for teaching instead of the traditional methods. They were taught how to use digital tools such as screen-casting, podcasting, video conferencing and e-books or padlets.

Ironically, Enabel had suggested using technology in teaching at NTCs in 2019 but veteran lecturers were reluctant, remembers Virginie Hallet, a portfolio manager at the organisation.

“They said ‘we were born before computers, we don’t know anything about computers. Why do you want us to use ICTS in delivering lectures’?” she told IPS.

Andrew Tabura, a principal education officer in charge of post-secondary and secondary teacher education at the MoE, told IPS that while the colleges had already been supplied with ICT tools, the lecturers had technology phobia. After training, they can now use ICTs. “When the COVID-19 situation came, it forced them to think ‘OK we have these facilities but how can we use them to reach out to our learners,” he said.

According to Hallet, 62% of learners who were at home in different parts of Uganda were able to follow classes via the TTE Sandbox. “It meant that education was able to continue… So really to us, the sandbox was like a mind shift from resistance to total buy-in,” she said. “To us, this is a major success.”

At Kabale National Teacher’s College 400 km south of Kampala, IPS found lecturers still using the TTE Sandbox and other online tools to teach pre-service teachers close to a year after colleges were reopened.

 

Teaching teachers to use ICTs

It’s early morning. IPS has been granted access to one of the lectures at NTC Kabale. The punishing cold from the Rwenzori Mountains finds its way into the room but warm-hearted learners seem unbothered as Molly Nakimera delivers her lecture. The room has an overhead projector and a set of loudspeakers. A number of cables linked to a laptop computer are visible. Nakimera projects a role-play video about education management, then the class is invited to comment.

Afterwards, Nakimera tells IPS that previously it would take more than three weeks to complete such a course unit, but using ICTs like videos and podcasts means less time is consumed and outcomes are better.

“I teach a very big class. Yet I had failed to figure out a method that would help me to work with big numbers. I used to shout a lot as a teacher. Sometimes I could feel like I’m stretching myself. And sometimes I could not complete the syllabus the way I’m doing it with the sandbox,” she says.

Nakimera adds that while before she knew how to type Word documents, she didn’t know anything about podcasting and producing videos for teaching. To her, the smartphone was for placing calls and checking emails but she has realised that it is actually a small computer, and a key teaching and learning tool too. “These are new things that made me feel more interested, that made my work easy, made me feel that I should become more serious,” added the teacher.

Physics and mathematics lecturer Mujungu Herbert told IPS that before the pandemic every lecturer was using what he described as traditional methods of teaching, which included ‘chalk and talk’ lectures and, sometimes, laboratory equipment or materials from the environment. “With the TTE Sandbox, I have noticed that the learners are more active during the lessons. The teaching is more learner-centred than teacher-centred,” he explained.

Asked why he had not previously embraced ICTs, Herbert said he and other lecturers did not see the reasons for using them and that the pedagogy in place did not include how to teach using ICTs or how to apply for online learning or teaching.

 

The only option during lockdown

“I would only get to a computer at the time of preparing or setting an exam. I had not heard of Zoom before the pandemic. But while we were in lockdown, we realised that the learners were away from us. The only way to access them was to use ICT tools,” added Herbert.

With such tools, lecturers were able to enrol learners to attend virtually, run quizzes and assign tasks like assignments. Classes were interactive. Herbert did note that some students who lacked access to the Internet would miss classes, while those who had not invested in smartphones or tablets would find it hard to access online resources.

France Ruhuma, a student majoring in biology and chemistry at NTC Kabale, is one of the cohort of students who were introduced to the TTE Sandbox and have continued to use it after schools reopened.

“Now, most of my lifestyle has been shifted online. I don’t have to carry a lot of books. I just get to the sandbox, click on the links and get access to interactive videos,” Ruhuma told IPS. He added that videos packed with illustrations and diagrams are far better to learn from than the old chalkboard and teacher illustration methods.

When he spoke to IPS, Ruhuma had just returned from a teaching practice at a school near Kabale. He said that he realised that veteran teachers were yet to adopt ICT, while not all learners had access to mobile phones. “So as an upcoming teacher, I’m leaving the college when I’m equipped with ICT skills. But the challenge is that in most of these schools, teachers are computer illiterate and the school environment is not prepared for ICTs in teaching,” he said.

MoE Officer Tabura told IPS that the ministry is developing a policy and guidelines to integrate ICTs into education. “It will give guidance to schools on how ICT facilities can be used because there is a fear that teachers or learners will misuse the ICT gadgets,” he said.

According to Tabura, the TTE Sandbox was a small innovation that was developed to reach learners during the lockdown, but it has opened many doors for lecturers. “ I know it requires Internet for example. And that can be a challenge. But if you have Internet, this is something that can be replicated all over the world,” he said.

By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Sep 7 2022 (IPS-Partners)

The American author Sue Monk Kidd’s award-winning novel The Book of Longings has a sensational beginning, despite the simplicity of the phraseology: It starts: “I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus bin Joseph of Nazareth”. It would be impossible for anyone not to swallow this bait with enormous curiosity, and follow through with reading what is well and truly a ‘page-turner’. The book is crafted to be breezy and exciting, necessary perhaps to better deliver its message. This historical work of fiction was the subject of discussion at a recent seminar organized by the Dhaka -based ‘The Reading Circle’. The event was held in a ‘hybrid’ format, an experiment of the Circle in consonance with the evolving practices of the Covid era. There was a core of participants in Dhaka, and other members joining in from London, Paris, and Singapore. Chaired by Professor Razia Khan, the list of speakers and commentators included Niaz Zaman, Nusrat Huq, Tanveerul Haque, Ameenah Ahmed, Shahruk Rahman, Asfa Husain, Nazmun Nahar, Sarazeen Ahana and myself. The following essay is based on my remarks made on the occasion.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

The novel is about Ana, a woman born in the first century in Galilee, Palestine, who in the book is the mythical wife of Jesus of Nazareth. It is about how she longs to shape her own destiny at a time when women were perceived as no more than mere silent chattels, or possessions. To have Jesus as a character in a literary work, and yet not as the main protagonist, would require huge skill on the part of any author, which in view of the discussants, Kidd was able to demonstrate. The challenge is compounded when he is to be shorn of his divinity and presented as a simple human being as he was in the book; as a husband, a brother, and a son, not of God, but of a woman. The writer picks up this intellectual gauntlet, and seems to be able to pull it off.

That is mainly because her work is not about faith, but about feminism. She has a theme, and despite the biblical backdrop, it is not theology. It is one that has been a center of aspiration of half of humanity through ages, of women in a world dominated by men. It is a simple one, but historically has been one of the most difficult goals of humanity to achieve. It is that women should have the equal rights and opportunities as men. Just as it should, in deference to its importance at this time and age,this topic had featured time and again in the Reading Circle’s discussions . It was reflected in the yearnings of Briseis when the Circle read Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls. Or in the passionate writings of Virginia Woolf when it discussed her A Room of One’s Own. And now in the longings of Ana in Sue Monk Kidd’s book. I would like to refer in this connection to a recent part-autobiographical tome by Glennon Doyle entitled “Untamed“. Having felt like a caged animal much of her life, Glennon Doyle has written about how she had learnt to break society’s rules, upend expectations, and rebuild her emotions and life. She was inspired by a Cheetah in a zoo!

Ana represents a prototype different from many others of her sex, though there is indeed a lot of Ana in a lot of women. She is wild, free spirited and untamed. She is intensely modern, a ‘woke’ person by contemporary standards, entertaining radical ideas about societal change. She even tries to shun motherhood, believed then, as now, to be a blessed state for every woman. She tries it by secretly using herbal contraceptives, which would be unthinkable in Nazareth, particularly in a household all Christendom was to worship as the ‘Holy Family’. She is extremely worldly, and not at all spiritual. Her prayer inscribed in an incantation bowl gifted to her by an aunt, is not about any kind of redemption from sin. Instead, she seeks blessings for the ‘largeness’ in her, a very individualistic longing, and seemingly Un-Christian. She is by no means a Mary Sue, the perfect woman in literature, one without failings or flaws. And yet the author shows Jesus as bestowing on her love, empathy, and understanding. And who can be more Christian in spirit than the Nazarene himself? So, is Sue Monk Kidd seeking to obtain for Ana’s behavior the highest possible social sanction?

Now for the character in the book of Jesus himself. The characterization of Jesus must have been the most difficult challenge to our writer. In Biblical terms, Jesus’ ministry to spread ‘the Word’ did not really begin till he was thirty. But in Christian belief emanating from the New Testament he was already divine when born, recognized by the three Magis who came to worship him with gifts at his birth! In the novel, Mary hardly behaves like the keeper of what would be the greatest secret on earth. She provides no clue as to Jesus’ divinity, remains totally mum about her experience at the Annunciation. This was (it’s not in the book but in the Bible) when the angel Gabriel appeared to her and announced the incarnation of baby-Christ in her womb, stating “Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with thee!” and a startled Mary, quickly regaining composure, responded ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord’!

Some Church-oriented critics of the book, who, while admiring the work of fiction, have opined that a Christian reader to better appreciate the book should be well-grounded in the Bible, otherwise he or she would be apt to misunderstand the essence of the contents. Be that as it may, Jesus here comes through, not as a leader of the Alpha- Male type like the mighty Achilles of the Trojan wars, but a Beta-male, compassionate and forgiving, who leads by kindness. He believes the kingdom of God will come by acts of love, rather than by the power of the sword.

This view is not at all shared by Judas, the betrayer of Christ, a complex personality in the book in which he is the adopted brother of Ana, apart from being a friend and later, disciple of Jesus. In the Biblical narration Judas gives Jesus away to his captors ‘for thirty pieces of silver’. In this book he is pictured as a political firebrand, a zealot who thinks for the Kingdom of God to come, the Romans must be driven away from Palestine, if need be, by the sword. He views Jesus’ mild ways as an impediment to his objective, and hence takes steps to remove him. There also have been interpretations of Judas, in some revisionist thinking, as someone who helps Christ fulfill his destiny by dying in the cross for the sins of man. Carl Trueman in his epochal work “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” has noted that radical thinkers and writers have driven the rapidly changing cultural mores in the Christian ethos with their ideas in recent times. Perhaps our writer can be seen as one such.

Sue Monk Kidd’s deference to tradition, however, is reflected in the way she depicts Mary, the mother of Jesus. Kidd shows Mary to be pious and pristine, truly without fault, as a woman, a mother, or even as a mother -in-law! Possibly the author uses a modicum of circumspection by not pushing the envelope too far. For me a tad surprising was that, perhaps being an American and not English, the author barely mentions a character, without developing it at all, who later emerges as a prime figure in English perceptions. It is Joseph of Arimathea who appears in this book only at Christ’s entombment. English literary tradition has it that Joseph of Arimathea had hosted the boychild Christ in the Mendip mountains in Somerset, which I had the occasion to visit.

This myth of the boy-Christ’s visit to England of course seeks to fill the void in our knowledge of Jesus’s life during his boyhood and youth, just as our author does in her book. The poet Blake highlights it in his New Jerusalem, England’s unofficial National Anthem when he rhetorically asks: “Did those feet in ancient times tread upon England’s mountains green?“. Since then, Jerusalem in English has become a metaphor for ‘heaven’, a blissful state in which many Britishers would like to see their country to be!

However, the message of our author lay, not in theology nor in history but in a somewhat fanciful response of our author to feminist intellectual and, at times, emotional urges. If Jesus had a wife, she would be the most silenced person on earth! Sue Monk Kidd only sought to give her a voice. This is indeed also the voice of everywoman, everywhere, and in every age!

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is the Honorary Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, NUS. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President and Distinguished Fellow of Cosmos Foundation. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac @nus.edu.sg

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.

An Afghan girl in the Nawabad District of Kabul, Afghanistan. Credit: UNICEF/Mohammad Haya Burhan
 
A year of Taliban rule in Afghanistan has led to a deterioration in the lives of women and girls, affecting all aspects of their human rights, according to a report from three UN agencies. August 2022

By Saber Azam
GENEVA, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

Afghanistan is where history has taken it! The Trump-Taliban “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan,” signed on 29 February 2020, is deemed by many as the submission of a superpower to a group that had perpetrated acts of extreme ferocity and terror.

The withdrawal of Western countries in August 2021 was the logical ramification of that “peace deal” and the dilapidation of the aspirations of Afghans who believed in democracy, respect for human rights, good governance, the rule of law, and many other attributes that had taken rightfully free societies to fame and gain.

The return of the Taliban to power reserves an unpredictable future for the Central and South Asia region and puts the entire world on alert. Western assertions during the past year that the religious clerics “had changed” or their regime “would improve with time” tallied the same dictions twenty years ago about the corrupt Karzai government.

Never fact-based, such postulations were not clear-sighted and cogent from various perspectives.

However, the Taliban articulate what the Western capitals desire to heed. In addition, falsity and negation of truth have become the daily practice of their leadership. A quick review of the situation since 15 August 2021 reveals drastic reversals in the country.

A – Human Rights and Humanitarian Situations

Human rights, particularly those of women and girls, are the prime prey of the Taliban. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Independent Human Rights Commission were instantly banned. Instead, the Ministry of Virtues is established to implement archaic dogmas that they attribute to Islamic Sharia.

While children are permitted to attend school, the prospects of secondary and higher education and job opportunity remain unattainable to the female population. In addition to the imposition of total body cover, women are restricted from traveling, visiting a doctor, or reaching a health clinic without a recognized male chaperone, who must be the father, brother, or husband.

In retaliation to the nascent resistance that grows in strength in Central and Northern provinces, reports of young women and girls sexually assaulted and raped by the Taliban militants surface daily. In addition, collective punishment, torture, assassination, and expulsion/forced displacement of civilians, replaced by Taliban sympathizers brought from elsewhere, have increased.

Civil society activists are forbidden, and their demonstrations are viciously suppressed. Many human dignity advocates left the country. Others are arrested, tortured, and in some cases, assassinated.

Despite the Taliban’s impressive repression machinery, dauntless women still express their demands for access to freedom, higher education, and job, either in closed premises or in public, at the cost of their lives. One woman recently mentioned that “their struggle is against submission, dishonor, or suicide!”

Freedom of expression and independent media also befell targets of the new regime. Journalists and bloggers are not free anymore as they have to obey strict guidelines imposed by the Taliban. Reporters, scholars, and artists who freely expressed their opinion exercise no more such privilege. Some were arrested, and others were tortured and even killed. Culture has not been spared.

The Ministry of Virtues prohibited listening to music or performing shows. They focus on the size of men’s beards, people’s sartorial, parting men and women, and preventing unaccompanied ladies from using public transportation.

Ethnic, religious, and linguistic discriminations are manifest. Decision makers around the country are Sunni Pashtuns. The Hazara are deliberately targeted, justifying calls for genocide against them.

At the same time, the Taliban “impose” Pashtu in Dari-speaking provinces. Subsequently, conversations with Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, and others appear quasi impossible, leading to systematic and senseless harassment.

The Taliban rebuffed recognition of the Shia Jaffary doctrine. Following the Jewish, the remaining Afghan Hindu and Sikh populations had no alternative but to depart the country. The few Christians face unbearable hardship.

The humanitarian situation is devastating. Most educated people lost their jobs and were replaced by religious clerics. Citizens depend on the alms of those residing outside Afghanistan.

In addition to repeated droughts, the recent destructive floods around the country have further deteriorated the conditions of ordinary people. The Taliban misappropriating international humanitarian aid has been reported in multiple instances, and sites.

B – Security Situation

The Taliban are a divided organization. Their leadership does not seem to have authority over the foot soldiers. Despite their spiritual leader’s amnesty to former security officers, hundreds of them have been brutally assassinated.

Resistance fronts in Panjshir, Baghlan, Takhar, Kapisa, Parwan, Badakhshan, Sari Pol, and many other provinces have gained strength. The Taliban suffer hefty losses in these mountainous areas.

Subsequently, they target civilians, including women and children, accusing them of helping the resistance and apply the “Discovery Doctrine.” Some already speak of war crimes.

In addition, over 100 incidents of explosive weapons have been recorded in the country. Recruitment by the Taliban of youngsters in the south to fight in the north will inevitably deepen the divide in Afghanistan. Reports of one million internally displaced and many more fleeing the country seem credible.

Fatal border clashes have occurred with neighboring Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Despite the Taliban’s denial, the presence of notorious regional and international terrorist organizations in Afghanistan cannot be refuted, transforming this country into a haven for evildoers.

The killing of Ayman Al-Zawahiri in Kabul supports the above assertion. Some foreign militants fight alongside the Taliban; others pursue their specific objectives. Confrontation with numerous resistance fronts would likely intensify in the near future.

C – Political Situation

Similar to communists, the Taliban are inspired by deleterious ideologies. They derive their philosophy, policies, and actions from “self-defined” doctrines that are often contradictory even to the fundamentals of Islam. International norms for human dignity are ignored. The regime’s effort for international legitimacy has so far dramatically failed.

The willingness of the world community to provide humanitarian aid has been presented to the Afghan people as “de facto recognition” of their regime. The West bears a heavy responsibility for the current situation.

Their capitals deliberately trusted the Taliban rhetoric to justify their failure and hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, the current contentious debate in the UN Security Council on the travel of the Taliban leaders may be a sign of change in the right direction.

There seems to be no place for democratic institutions in the Islamic Emirate. The “Supreme Leader,” assisted by a selected group of “religious scholars,” defines and decides everything. Under such circumstances, it would be challenging for the International Community to recognize the Taliban regime.

D- Economic Situation

Prior to the arrival of the Taliban, there was no viable economy in Afghanistan. Lack of proper vision and planning, rampant corruption, mismanagement, nepotism of the rulers, politicians, and senior managers, and many other misdeeds had gangrened public and private sectors. Since August 2021, the situation has worsened.

The Taliban appointed religious clerics to run each sector of the government (security, political, social, economic, financial, humanitarian, public relations, etc.) Those who could assist have either been sidelined or left the country. Afghanistan is in a terrible economic situation.

Despite numerous hydroelectric dams, Central Asian countries provide electricity to Afghans. Kazakhstan and India have provided significant quantities of wheat. And the International Community continues providing humanitarian assistance to delay or avert a looming calamity.

Conclusions

A new corrupt “Taliban elite” is being formed. They desperately lobby the Western countries for the sustention of their regime. Afghans have lost trust in bilateral or multilateral foreign security, humanitarian, and development actions.

World superpowers seem to compete to assert their supremacy in Central and South Asia. It can lead to another prolonged phase of instability! Though it is difficult to predict the corollaries of the current situation, the following would constitute the basis of sound assertions:

1 – Afghanistan is central to peace, stability, and security in Central and South Asia.

2 – The Taliban cannot govern Afghanistan alone. Their zealous effort to convince the Afghan people and the International Community that they are the right choice to govern the country failed. However, they would not share power. Therefore, insecurity will increase, and soon they will lose territory to the resistance. Lawlessness will intensify, and Afghanistan could face a “fractured country-like” situation. Human rights and humanitarian situations would severely worsen.

3 – Superpowers may destabilize each other’s interests through diverse internal and foreign groups rooted in Afghanistan. Neighboring countries would try to safeguard their interests using ethnic and/or religious affinities. The country could face the serious challenge of disintegration and the region the possibility of lengthy conflicts.

4 – To ensure that Afghanistan poses no threat, its entire political, social, and economic structures must alter with the sincere assistance of the International Community. The Afghan society has dramatically changed; previous government formulas and leaders proved futile.

For nearly three centuries, the centralized government has not served the population equitably. The so-called “peace agreements” and “all-inclusive governments” never proved efficient as they did not address the root causes of the repeated conflicts.

There is an urgent need to invest in a new generation of leaders from within the country and support them to identify the main grounds of dispute, disparity, injustice, and unhappiness. New good-governance formulas must be agreed upon. A unique Afghan-led peace process in which national, regional, and international dimensions of the puzzle are addressed must be sponsored and backed unequivocally. Any foreign interference would cause disruption and further deteriorate the situation.

The link to Afghanistan: What Went Wrong https://www.ipsnews.net/2022/08/afghanistan-went-wrong/.

Saber Azam is a former official of the United Nations and author of Soraya: The Other Princess, Hell’s Mouth: A Journey to the Heart of West African jungles, and numerous political and scientific articles [https://www.saberazam.com].

IPS UN Bureau

 

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María del Carmen Aguirre, 52, stands outside her home and pizza business in El Zonte, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador. Her daughters send her remittances from the United States, but they use traditional systems and not the bitcoin electronic wallet, after this country became the first to make bitcoins legal tender on Sept. 7, 2021. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

A year after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele decided to make El Salvador the first country where bitcoin is legal tender, the experiment has so far failed, as few of the original plan’s objectives have been achieved.

This result was foreseeable since Sept. 7, 2021, when Bukele’s government decided, out of the blue and without any precedent, to make bitcoin legal tender through a law approved by the legislature, controlled by members of the ruling party, Nuevas Ideas.

The aims of that decision were never explained in detail in an official plan, but were basically set out by Bukele, in power since 2019, through his tweets, as well as by officials who merely repeated what the president, given to governing with an authoritarian style, in which he is the only authorized voice for almost everything, has said."In the end, the majority of the population is not using either the government e-wallet or bitcoins in general.” -- Tatiana Marroquín

“Unfortunately there is no formal document or official information from the government in which the specific objectives of the measure have been laid out,” economist Tatiana Marroquín told IPS.

But judging by the president’s announcements, and by communications between the government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which requested in January 2022 that the measure be annulled, several aims can be highlighted, such as boosting financial inclusion and tourism and improving the country’s “brand”, said Marroquín.

Disenchantment with the Chivo Wallet

The government claimed that bitcoin as legal tender would reduce the gap of unbanked people, which is around 70 percent of the population.

That segment would begin to carry out digital financial transactions with several clicks from their cell phones, according to the government.

However, because much of the information on bitcoin transactions has been classified by the authorities, it is unknown, for example, what percentage of the population is still actively using the Chivo Wallet, the digital wallet created by the government, and in what amounts.

Chivo is basically slang for “cool” in El Salvador.

It is known that at the beginning of the cryptocurrency’s implementation, around four million people downloaded the application, but basically they did so in order to collect a 30 dollar bonus granted by the government to promote the use of bitcoins.

But by this point it is clear that very few people are still using the application, judging by what you hear and see in the towns and cities of this Central American country of 6.7 million people.

“In the end, the majority of the population is not using either the government e-wallet or bitcoins in general,” Marroquin said.

Some businesses use them to receive payments, but there are very few transactions, analyst Ricardo Chavarría, director of Renta Asset Management, a company that manages investment funds in the international market, told IPS.

Nor has the government managed to convince Salvadorans living abroad to use the app to send family remittances to El Salvador, one of its main aims when it dove headfirst into bitcoins.

Each year, the country receives around seven billion dollars in remittances, representing 26 percent of GDP.

In August 2021, a month before the approval of the so-called Bitcoin Law, Bukele said in a tweet that Salvadorans pay around 400 million dollars in commissions to send money to their families in El Salvador.

That amount of money would be saved by sending it through the Chivo Wallet.

One of the Chivo ATMs scattered throughout El Salvador, in an attempt by the government to make it easier for the public to make transactions in bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that is legal tender in El Salvador, but which very few are using a year after its implementation. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Not even the diaspora trusts the cryptocurrency

However, according to official figures, only 1.5 percent of remittances were sent through e-wallets in the first quarter of 2022, a percentage far below what the government expected.

This was probably influenced by the high volatility of cryptoassets such as bitcoin, which is currently going through a crisis in its value, dubbed as a crypto winter.

Bitcoin’s price plunged to 19,813 dollars at the close on Sept. 5, well below last year’s peak, when it surpassed the 60,000 dollar mark.

And the Salvadoran population abroad, especially in the United States, where more than three million live, is reluctant to bet on something so volatile and, therefore, risky.

“People are extremely careful, despite the political capital of the president (Bukele), the same people over there (Salvadorans in the United States) do not risk their money,” said Chavarría.

That is the case of María del Carmen Aguirre, a 52-year-old entrepreneur who runs a small pizza business in El Zonte, a coastal community on El Salvador’s Pacific coast, some 50 kilometers southeast of San Salvador, part of the municipality of Chiltiupán, in the central department of La Libertad.

Aguirre told IPS that she regularly receives remittances from her two daughters who live in the United States, in San Francisco, California, but neither of them send the money through Chivo Wallet or any other similar platform.

“They send it only through the bank. It seems that they are quite afraid. ‘What happens if we send 200 dollars and at that moment the price of bitcoin goes down?’ they say to me,” said Aguirre, in her pizzeria.

El Zonte is a beach area known for its surfing and because an unusual community effort to use the cryptocurrency was launched there, about two years before the government decided to try bitcoins.

This initiative was promoted thanks to a donor, who remains anonymous, who gave money to carry out works in the town, but on the condition that those who worked on them would be paid in bitcoins and not in dollars, the legal tender in El Salvador since 2001.

That still raises suspicions: why would anyone be interested in promoting the crypto-asset in a poor coastal town, with dirt roads and modest shacks, although there are also some luxury hotels, hostels and restaurants.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, families in El Zonte received, on several occasions, 30-dollar vouchers from the mystery donor to use for bitcoin transactions.

“They gave us the bonus three or four times so we could go to the stores that already handled bitcoin,” Aguirre said.

Chavarría said the cryptocurrency is probably at the end of the so-called crypto winter, and he expects it to rise again in the future.

“For me, in a medium to long term horizon it is going to recover and it is going to win out,” he argued.

A street corner in the town of El Zonte, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador, which became the place where a project to promote the use of bitcoins in the country started, before the government of Nayib Bukele gave the cryptocurrency legal status in September 2021. Most businesses in this town accept them as a form of payment, but in the rest of the country the use of bitcoins is marginal. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Not just gangs

One thing that Marroquín the economist and financial analyst Chavarría agreed on is that, with the passage of the Bitcoin Law, El Salvador made the global headlines about something other than the recurring issue of gang violence, which used to be the only issue of interest to the international press.

In this sense, it could be argued that the country’s image improved somewhat on the world news agenda.

“The fact that El Salvador is on the news map and that it appears in Bloomberg, in The New York Times, in Spain’s El País, when the only topic before was the gangs, is good news for me as a Salvadoran,” said Chavarría.

Marroquín concurred that “El Salvador is undoubtedly no longer known as it used to be solely for violence.”

She added that the adoption of the bitcoin has also bolstered tourism in the country by attracting a segment of visitors interested in the cryptocurrency, although it remains to be seen whether this improvement will have an impact on poor communities near tourist spots.

The bitcoin symbol can be seen everywhere in El Zonte, a coastal community in southern El Salvador, such as on this 1970s Volkswagen van or ‘furgoneta’, called the Bitcoineta. The implementation of the cryptocurrency in this country has not gone well and so far has been a setback for President Nayib Bukele, although the outlook could change if the price of the cryptoasset rallies. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

A cloak of secrecy

The government has been harshly criticized for the secrecy with which it has handled not only the adoption of the bitcoin but also other important issues about which the public has demanded information, since they have involved the use of public funds for which the Bukele administration has not been held accountable.

When it has been made available, Information has arrived in dribs and drabs.

It is known that the government has purchased 2,381 bitcoins, on which it has spent 106.04 million dollars. But when related investments are factored in, such as the ATMs placed at various points around the country, the total investment exceeds 300 million dollars.

“There is a big black cloak surrounding the government’s use of public funds,” Marroquín said.

Over one year after the Taliban takeover, an estimated 24.4 million people – 59 per cent of the population in Afghanistan – are dependent on international aid and emergency relief in their day-to-day lives. Credit: UNAMA/Fraidoon Poya

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

Both mainstream media, international bodies and human rights defenders continue to rightly denounce the Taliban’s inhuman abuses against the Afghan people’s basic rights, in particular those of women and girls.

In doing so, they use a similar vocabulary, saying that since the Taliban “seized the power” on 15 August 2021 everything has collapsed. Shouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the power was “knowingly” “delivered” to them by the United States of America following negotiations between the two parties under Donald Trump’s administration?

How come the Taliban managed, in just weeks, to push Afghanistan’s economy into “free fall” as defined by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, already in December 2021 - that's only four months since the power was handed to them?

Other statements talk about how the Taliban’s regime has in just a few months erased with a stroke of a pen all the “great achievements” made over 20 years of US and allies’ massive military attacks on Afghanistan’s unarmed population.

 

Has all this happened in just 12 months?

How come the Taliban managed in just weeks to push Afghanistan’s economy into “free fall” as defined by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, already in December 2021 –that’s only four months since the power was handed to them?

How come that in such a relatively short time the Taliban have hurled into hunger as many as 23 million people – around 60% of the total population?

Have they in one year pushed over 6 million Afghans away to neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Iran?

Then, how come that “Over one year after the Taliban takeover, an estimated 24.4 million people – 59 per cent of the population in Afghanistan – are dependent on international aid and emergency relief in their day-to-day lives,” as stated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM)?

“Since August 2021, nearly all Afghans have plunged into poverty and the country has been facing the risk of systemic collapse,” states IOM.

Add to this the reiterated UN disparate appeals for funding to provide “lifesaving” assistance to 21 million Afghans or 50% of the whole population.

By the way: weren’t the United States who helped, funded –and armed– the Taliban “moderate” predecessors, over the 70s and 80s, to expel the Soviet Union’s troops from Afghanistan?

Weren’t the US and allies aware that the “narco lords” in Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, have also been providing money and weapons to the Taliban in exchange for protection?

 

Operation “Enduring Freedom”

Whatever the case is, the Afghan war narrative should also remind us of other “great achievements” made during the two-decade-long “Enduring Freedom” operation launched against this country by the then US president George W. Bush and allies.

Has this Operation Enduring Freedom really brought food, health, education, safety, democracy, stability… and freedom?

Regardless of the arguments used to “justify” them, wars are also a “good” business.

Indeed new weapons have been tested; killing-drones perfected, troops casualties lessened; fully-equipped private armies made big profits as did the giant weapons industry. And the strategic concept of “war on terror” has definitely been settled.

 

Another under-reported war trophy

Anyway, there seem to be other under-reported “great achievements.” One of them appears to be Afghanistan’s treasure of precious mineral resources that the technology and war business needs.

Just see this: the 2019 official report: Mining Sector Roadmap, published by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum [PDF], and introduced by the then Afghan president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, states the following, among other facts:

– Afghanistan has “extensive” mineral resources, located in every province of the country;

– Afghanistan has world-class deposits of iron, ore, copper, gold, rare-earth minerals, and a host of other natural resources… And oil and gas;

– Other minerals include aluminium, gemstones; lead, zinc, mercury; chromite; sulphur; hydrocarbons; asbestos; marble, lapis lazuli, emeralds and rubies; …

– Afghanistan holds more than a trillion dollars worth of mineral resources;

– Afghanistan “must’‘ leverage the expertise of the “private sector“ to harness the potential of its mineral sector, the official report highlights.

This Afghan government official report was published in 2019, i.e., while the United States and allies were still ruling the country.

 

Too many questions left unanswered

Just take a look at what a brilliant analyst and Nobel Peace Laureate, John Scales Avery, wrote in his recent must-read article: Making Money from War.

“If the aim of the “War on Terror” had been to rid the world of the threat of terrorism, acts like illegal assassination using drones would have been counterproductive, since they create many more terrorists than they destroy,” said Scales Avery, chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy.

“But since the real aim is to produce a state of perpetual war, thus increasing the profits of the military-industrial complex, such methods are the best imaginable. Urinating on Afghan corpses or burning the Koran or murderous night-time raids on civilian homes also help to promote the real goal, perpetual war,” said Scales Avery.

Now back to the more than a trillion dollars worth of Afghanistan’s mineral resources –those that are much required by the giant technology and other business: would it be too naive to connect the dots?

Ukrainian artist Mykola Zhuravel has used art to communicate the horrors of war since Russian’s occupation of Crimea in 2014.

By Sania Farooqui
New Delhi, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

“I must say that I had a premonition of a war with Russia in 2014 when Russian troops had started to occupy Crimea,” said Mykola Zhuravel, a contemporary painter and sculptor, in an interview with IPS. Zhuravel, with his partner, Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel, have used art to communicate and express the horrors of the war since 2014.

Their work has been presented at the Viennese Biennale, and they have exhibited a multimedia project titled Invasion Redux, which is poignantly used to transform their memories of the 2014 uprising and its aftermath into vivid abstract portrayals – artworks, sculpture, photography and films.

Artists Mykola Zhuravel and Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel

For many, war and displacement in Ukraine began almost eight years ago, when Russia first started to invade Crimea, warning of a full-scale war and vast troop buildup near the Ukrainian border. They use their art as a mirror of Ukrainian resistance, “the invasion project is my reflection, as an artist on the tragic events associated with Russian aggression, where I showed the true image of the occupier through an artistic lens,” said Zhuravel.

Invasion Redux was first presented in 2016 in New York at the Ukrainian Institute of America, showcasing surreal images of “an invader and an occupier”, their aim to show a mass audience “the truth and warn them of the imminent dangers not only to Ukraine but the entire western world with a nuclear strike,” said Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

“Until this terrible war that began in 2022, I lived with my family in Kyiv, we had a studio in the city centre, and as a photographer, I regularly held photo shoots and worked on art projects. But in just one moment, our whole life seems to have turned upside down. The war took away our dream, everything that we built,” Tishchenko-Zhuravel said.

On February 24, 2022, the world watched as Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, attacking the country from the north, south and east and surging troops towards the capital Kyiv making it Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. Almost 193 days later, the magnitude of the ongoing conflict has “wrought death on a mass scale, displaced hundreds and thousands of Ukrainians and forced millions to leave the country.”

Zhuravel said the morning of February 24 was a day when he and his family went into a state of shock, something they are yet to recover from. They had little time pack their bags and move to a safer spot.

Artwork by Mykola Zhuravel and Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

“It was a horror. That morning there were cannon shots being hit on Kyiv, sirens echoed through the city, and people were rushing to hide in bomb shelters,” Zhuravel says. “We had less than an hour to pack our lives in one suitcase and leave. We started by heading to the west of Ukraine, and from there on, it has been quite a journey till we found our way to Canada.

“We didn’t know how to react, but the instinct of self-preservation worked, and we then left for the west of Ukraine, crossed the border with Poland and then flew to Canada. All I took was a small suitcase, a camera, years of experience and faith that everything would be fine,” added Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

From the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainians have found ways to respond to the war, as reported here by TIME. The opposition included mass protest rallies with blue and yellow flags in the cities where Russian forces had already entered; unarmed civilians blocked roads and lay on the ground in front of Russian tanks, and girls threw Molotov cocktails at Russian military vehicles from car windows. Women hit enemy drones with jars of pickled tomatoes, and civilians united to help Ukrainian soldiers and their fellow citizens affected by the war. The steadfastness of Ukrainians in defence of their country surprised many, and their resistance continued even when they had to leave the country.

In April 2022, the Zhuravels held their first exhibition in Canada to continue telling the Ukraine story. The Canadian National Exhibition Association presented Invasion Redux at the CNE’S Withrow Common Gallery in Canada, through which Zhuravel says he will “continue telling the world truth about the military conflict through his artistic images and means as well as continue to glorify Ukrainian culture in Canada and rest of the world.”

Dasha Smovzh, designer and founder of Virna.

The war also threatened another artist’s life, a fashion designer working with her team in Kherson, a port city in the south of Ukraine. Dasha Smovzh, the founder of Virna, a clothing brand that employed many local Ukrainians and designers, had to flee when Russian troops bombed her city.

“We lost everything, Kherson, which is now almost occupied by the Russian army. We simply had to leave. We just packed our bags, kept our work documents, took cash and ran away as far as we could from the war,” Dasha Smovzh said.

According to this report, until the war in Ukraine began, a generation of Ukrainian brands flourished in recent years as trade with Europe had eased. However, The World Bank has now estimated the Russian invasion to shrink Ukraine’s economy by 45 percent this year.

Like many others, Smovzh had to pause production as many factories were destroyed and shipments were delayed.

Dasha Smovzh with her team at Virna production house.

“All our family, relatives, and employees are still in Kherson. They have no work. They are struggling due to the ongoing bombings and attacks; sometimes, they have to turn off water and electricity. We did move a few of our clothes to storage and are trying to resume selling again now. None of it is easy or done in the usual way.

“My husband and two-year-old son are safe here in Canada, and we are grateful to the country for their support and opportunity. I can only hope that I can bring Ukrainian culture and beauty here in Canada. Kherson is our home, and I hope we can go back someday.

The uncertainty and fear brought by the war have threatened and impacted lives in ways one can imagine – splitting families and stranding many in Ukrainian war zones. At the same time, others escaped to other countries across or across Europe to seek safety. Human Rights Watch has documented cases of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in occupied areas of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions of Ukraine, including repeated rapes, unlawful violence and threats against civilians.

The large-scale displacements being seen could have lasting consequences for generations to come. By early August 2022, more than 6.6 million refugees from Ukraine had been recorded across Europe, and 10.3 million people, mostly women and children, had crossed borders from Ukraine to the neighbouring countries in the European Union. More than 5 million children need humanitarian assistance. This requires an immediate and steep rise in humanitarian needs. The United Nations estimates that 12 million people inside Ukraine will need relief and protection. At the same time, more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees may continue needing protection and assistance in neighbouring countries in the coming months.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A flooded village in Matiari, in the Sindh province of Pakistan. Credit: UNICEF/Asad Zaidi
 
The scale of the humanitarian crisis in Pakistan is unprecedented, with a third of the country under water, the UN warned on September 22. With more than 33 million people impacted, that represents 15 per cent of the total Pakistani population, said Dr. Palitha Mahipala, World Health Organization (WHO) Representative in the country.

By Robert Sandford
HAMILTON, Canada, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

Monsoon flooding has occurred often in Pakistan but never to the catastrophic extent presently happening.

A distinguishing feature of this disaster is that no one blames the flooding’s unprecedented intensity and destructiveness on anything but climate heating. The clear link between the warming atmosphere and the frequency and duration of extreme weather events of this scale should not be lost on the rest of the world.

Pakistan’s monsoon-related flooding in 2010 and 2011 was blamed by several observers on land-use changes that had altered natural drainage patterns, with some commenting that Pakistan and other countries most at risk from climate disruption were also the most dysfunctional.

Five years later, however, researchers discerned the fingerprints of climate change all over those floods, which killed 2,500 people, displaced 27 million and caused economic losses estimated at USD 7.4 billion, setting back Pakistan’s development severely.

Climate science confirmed that global warming was accelerating the global hydrological cycle and causing the loss of its relative stability and natural variability — “hydrological stationarity” — on which we had come to depend.

Simple atmospheric science tells us that warmer air holds more water, about 7% more per degree Celsius or about 4% per degree Fahrenheit.

In addition, satellite sensing has enabled us to recognize the existence and dynamics of atmospheric rivers — corridors of intense winds and moist air measured at 400-500 kilometres across and thousands of kilometres long.

These atmospheric rivers can carry the equivalent of 10 times the average daily discharge of North America’s massive St. Lawrence River.

Climate heating is causing these atmospheric rivers to become more powerful, more devastating, and more unpredictable.

And when they touch down, they can cause rainfall of never-before-imagined intensity and duration, as experienced not just by Pakistan, but in highly developed countries including Australia, Canada and elsewhere.

As this is written, a third of Pakistan is under water, at least 1,000 people are known to be dead, at least a million homes have been destroyed and 33 million people have become climate refugees.

So just how much more intense was this year’s supercharged monsoon in Pakistan? In July, 2010, a record 257 millimetres of rain was recorded in one day. This year, Karachi recorded more than 400 millimetres in under 24 hours.

Some 680 millimetres fell in Sindh Province, more than five times the average, with similar records set elsewhere. And it is not over.

It doesn’t take much imagination to know what a flood disaster would look like if 400 or 500 or 600 millimetres fell on any part of the world in just 24 hours.

And it is not just the behaviour of the monsoon that is changing. Weather patterns in Pakistan are increasingly unpredictable. This year, for example, the country essentially went from winter conditions directly into the intense heat of summer, which in much of Pakistan can mean temperatures of up to 50°C, more often now for weeks at a time.

The cumulative and compound effects of this year’s whipsawing heat waves and hitherto unimaginable monsoon flooding have left the country on its heels.

Government officials argue that Pakistan is unfairly bearing the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices elsewhere. Yes, they admit that corruption, unenforced building codes and rebuilding in known floodplains have had an impact on the country’s vulnerability, as they have in earlier floods.

But Pakistan, they note, is responsible for barely 1% of the global greenhouse emissions causing the climate change that is so clearly responsible for ferociously more powerful monsoons. In Pakistan’s view, the world should pay to restore the country.

In developing countries, climate disruption has devastating national effects: fiscal crises, unemployment, profound social instability, governance failure, interstate conflict, and terrorist and cyber attacks.

Several observers now hold that accelerated warming will weaken several developing world states until they are incapable of effective action.

What we learn from Pakistan is that in a warmer climate, mega-storms are not just possible but inevitable, and they could happen as frequently as every 10 years. We simply cannot afford the infrastructure damage, economic disruption and human suffering that will surely accompany disasters of such greater magnitude. We have to see that, unless we act, that is what is coming.

And yet developed countries are effectively getting nowhere in terms of climate action. That failure could cost us the world.

Even just 1.1°C of warming is already causing a cascade of impacts which together are beginning to take a big economic toll. The cost of inaction is now clearly greater than the cost of climate action. And climate change is just starting to kick in.

To prevent even greater disasters from happening, to save nations like Pakistan, we have to slow and halt climate change, developed countries must lead the way, and we need to do it now.

Robert Sandford holds the Global Water Futures Chair in Water and Climate Security at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, based at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Foreign Secretary Liz Truss chairs the Commonwealth Foreign Affairs Ministers Meeting from her office at the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office in London. Credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

By Melissa Leach
BRIGHTON, UK, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

The UK’s new Prime Minister (and former Foreign Secretary), Liz Truss, enters Downing Street with a full and urgent in-tray, dominated by the highest inflation rate for 40 years and concerns across the country about the cost-of-living crisis.

Whilst urgent domestic policy is required, these national issues are symptomatic of a broader set of global crises, including the ongoing impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Therefore, the Prime Minister also has an urgent foreign policy agenda to address, within which international development has a vital role to play.

The FCDO’s long-awaited International Development Strategy was published in May, but the vision it set out broadly failed to meet the scale of the global challenges we face. These are the eight international development priorities we believe the new PM should be addressing:

1. Climate justice

Climate and environmental change are creating pervasive threats to the UK and all other countries, highlighted most recently by the UK’s record-breaking summer temperatures and the devastating floods in Pakistan. Ahead of the COP27 climate summit, where the UK hands over the COP Presidency to Egypt, the new PM should take the opportunity to show global leadership in the pursuit of climate and environmental justice.

This means prioritising support for those most disadvantaged and already experiencing the worst impacts and ensuring that their voices and knowledge count in decision making. It also means investing in effective mitigation and adaptation initiatives, which are purposefully connected to interconnected issues, such as access to water, food, healthcare, gender justice, education and land rights.

2. Health security

The UK’s expertise and investment in tackling epidemics has been world leading. The production and roll-out of technologies such as Covid-19 vaccines, and in health systems strengthening and universal health coverage (UHC), are valued by low-income countries and have been a critical part of the UK’s soft power.

As the Covid-19 pandemic proved how globally interconnected our health is, investment in future pandemic preparedness, that embraces institutional, knowledge and system questions (not just pharmaceutical interventions), and is guided by inclusive, localised and context-specific evidence, is critical for the UK, as well as globally.

3. Multilateral Cooperation and the SDGs

Universal challenges such as climate change and global health require co-ordinated international responses, which link local and national action with global level commitments and solidarities. Multilateral agencies such as the UN are best placed to lead these. Whilst there is room for reform, it’s short-sighted for the FCDO to have cut support for multilateral agencies without a clear assessment of the impact this will have.

IDS research shows that today’s crises – conflict in Ukraine and Ethiopia, climate change induced floods and heatwaves, pandemics, and rising inequalities – are all interconnected and require a rounded response, not a strategy that handpicks a few priorities in isolation. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide the framework for addressing development challenges as a whole and should be at the core of the Government’s strategic planning.

4. Food equity

Whilst exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine, rising global food insecurity is the result of a vastly unequal global food system, where power is held by vested interests and low crop yields are aggravated by drought or flood, conflict, and economic instability.

In the short-term, the UK needs to help stabilise global food supplies, but longer-term reforms are also needed, such as supporting more regenerative methods of food production and agro-ecological approaches that enhance agricultural biodiversity and resilience.

By investing in ‘bottom up’ research working with smallholder farmers and pastoralists in low-income countries, the FCDO can help identify what works best where, preventing the ‘one-size-fits-all’ technological solutions that often cause more problems than they solve.

5. China

Development has a great role to play in support of UK diplomacy. For the UK-China relationship where official channels of communications and diplomacy may deteriorate, strong relationships fostered by development and knowledge exchanges provide alternative channels for constructive dialogue.

There is particular potential around issues such as the vast Belt and Road Initiative, climate change, global health and the SDGs. Liz Truss is reported to be planning to take a more robust stance on the UK’s approach to China but we believe constructive dialogue with China around approaches to development co-operation should continue.

6. Transparency

In July, the department was downgraded in the Aid Transparency Index and the FCDO has been repeatedly criticised for its poor record on transparency since the DFID/FCO merger, including from the cross-party International Development Committee, Bond, the UK network of International Development NGOs and from the National Audit Office.

At a minimum the FCDO must be transparent about forward-looking budgeting and provide public data on planned ODA spending. To ‘stand up for freedom around the world’ as set out in the International Development Strategy, the FCDO must lead by example and have a clear framework for transparency, monitoring and evaluation, by which it can be held accountable.

7. Restoring 0.7

Reducing the UK’s ODA budget from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5% in 2021 resulted in a real terms reduction of £4.6bn. This dramatically reduced the UK’s ability to deliver the high-quality aid and interdisciplinary research essential to improving the lives of people around the world. It also dismantled international science partnerships and damaged the UK’s global reputation.

Other countries such as the US, Japan, Canada and Australia increased international aid budgets in light of Covid-19 and other global crises, yet the UK Government downgraded its contribution.

Re-instating the Conservative manifesto commitment to 0.7, along with appointing an International Development Minister at FCDO would demonstrate to the rest of the world the UK’s commitment to international development, and tackling the challenges that affect us all – poverty and inequalities, disease and climate change.

8. Investing in international research

There is a vital role that the knowledge generated from UK-led international development research can play, with a threefold benefit to the UK as well as to global communities – contributing to the Government’s goal for the UK to be a science superpower, benefiting the UK directly through lessons learnt and new discoveries that can apply to challenges at home, and finding effective and value for money support for lower and middle-income countries.

Whilst we welcomed the commitment to evidence and expertise in the International Development Strategy, this should go further. It is important to ensure that social science contributions are valued as much as technical science ‘solutions’. It is important to champion the importance of working with and from the perspectives of people living in poverty and marginalisation, and not overlooking the capabilities of low-income countries in generating knowledge for vital transformations.

The commitments to UK science must be complemented by investing in the equitable, interdisciplinary and international research partnerships needed to find contextual solutions that will benefit marginalised people around the world, and in many cases, here in the UK as well.

In conclusion, through UK-led international development, the new Prime Minister has the opportunity to help tackle the significant crises we all face. As new disasters around the world unfold with increasing frequency and severity, we are constantly reminded that the cost of delay or denial is far too high.

Melissa Leach is Director, Institute of Development Studies, UK.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

As rich countries raise interest rates in double-edged efforts to address inflation, developing countries are struggling to cope with slowdowns, inflation, higher interest rates and other costs, plus growing debt distress.

Rich countries’ interest rate hikes have triggered capital outflows, currency depreciations and higher debt servicing costs. Developing country woes have been worsened by commodity price volatility, trade disruptions and less foreign exchange earnings.

Anis Chowdhury

Rising debt risks
Almost 60% of the poorest countries were already in, or at high risk of debt distress, even before the Ukraine crisis. Debt service burdens in middle-income countries have reached 30-year highs, as interest rates rise with food, fertilizer and fuel prices.

Developing countries’ external debt has risen since the 2008-09 global financial crisis (GFC) – from $2 trillion (tn) in 2000 to $3.4tn in 2007 and $9.6tn in 2019! External debt’s share of GDP fell from 33.1% in 2000 to 22.8% in 2008. But with sluggish growth since the GFC, it rose to 30% in 2019, before the pandemic.

The pandemic pushed up developing countries’ external debt to $10.6tn, or 33% of GDP in 2020, the highest level on record. The external debt/GDP ratio of developing countries other than China was 44% in 2020.

Borrowing from international capital markets accelerated after the GFC as interest rates fell. But commercial debt is generally of shorter duration, typically less than ten years. Private lenders also rarely offer restructuring or refinancing options.

Lenders in international capital markets charge developing countries much higher interest rates, ostensibly for greater risk. But changes in public-private debt composition and associated costs have made such debt riskier.

Private short-term debt’s share rose from 16% of total external debt in 2000 to 26% in 2020. Meanwhile, international capital markets’ share of public external debt rose from 43% to 62%. Also, much corporate debt, especially of state-owned enterprises, is government-guaranteed.

Meanwhile, unguaranteed private debt now exceeds public debt. Although private debt may not be government-guaranteed, states often have to take them on in case of default. Hence, such debt needs to be seen as potential contingent government liabilities.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Sri Lankan international capital market borrowings grew from 2.5% of foreign debt in 2004 to 56.8% in 2019! Its dollar denominated debt share rose from 36% in 2012 to 65% in 2019, while China accounted for 10% of its external borrowings.

Private borrowings for less than ten years were 60% of Lankan debt in April 2021. The average interest rate on commercial loans in January 2022 was 6.6% – more than double the Chinese rate. In 2021, Lankan interest payments alone came to 95.4% of its declining government revenue!

Commercial debt – mostly Eurobonds – made up 30% of all African external borrowings with debt to China at 17%. Zambian commercial debt rose from 1.6% of foreign borrowings in 2010 to 30% in 2018; 57% of Ghana’s foreign debt payments went to private lenders, with Eurobonds getting 60% of Nigeria’s and over 40% of Kenya’s.

More commercial borrowing
Thus, external debt increasingly involved more speculative risk. Public bond finance, foreign debt’s most volatile component, rose relative to commercial bank loans and other private credit. Meanwhile, more stable and less onerous official credit has declined in significance.

Various factors have made things worse. First, most rich countries have failed to make their promised annual aid disbursements of 0.7% of their gross national income, made more than half a century ago.

Worse, actual disbursements have actually declined from 0.54% in 1961 to 0.33% in recent years. Only five nations have consistently met their 0.7% promise. In the five decades since promising, rich economies have failed to deliver $5.7tn in aid!

Second, the World Bank and donors have promoted private finance, urging ‘public-private partnerships’ and ‘blended finance’ in “From billions to trillions: converting billions of official assistance to trillions in total financing”.

Sustainable development outcomes of such private financing – especially in promoting poverty reduction, equity and health – have been mixed at best. But private finance has nonetheless imposed heavy burdens on government budgets.

Third, since the GFC, developed economies have resorted to unconventional monetary policies – ‘quantitative easing’, with very low or even negative real interest rates. With access to cheap funds, managers seeking higher returns invested lucratively in emerging markets before the recent turnaround.

Large investment funds and their collaborators, e.g., credit rating agencies, have profitably created new means to get developing countries to float more bonds to raise funds in international capital markets.

Making things worse
Policy advice from donors and multilateral development banks (MDBs), rating agencies’ biases and the lack of an orderly and fair sovereign debt restructuring mechanism have shaped commercial lending practices.

Favouring private market solutions, donors, MDBs and the IMF have discouraged pro-active development initiatives for over four decades. Hence, many developing countries remain primary producers with narrow export bases and volatile earnings.

They have urged debilitating reforms, e.g., arguing tax cuts are necessary to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). Meanwhile, corporate tax evasion and avoidance have worsened developing countries’ revenue losses. Thus, net revenue has fallen as such reforms fail to generate enough growth and revenue.

Credit rating agencies often assess developing countries unfavourably, raising their borrowing costs. Quick to downgrade emerging markets, they make it costlier to get financing, even if economic fundamentals are sound.

The absence of orderly and fair debt restructuring mechanisms has not helped. Commercial lenders charge higher interest rates, ostensibly for default risks. But then, they refuse to refinance, restructure or provide relief, regardless of the cause of default.

When will we learn?
Following the 1970s’ oil price hikes, western, especially US banks were swimming in liquidity as oil exporters’ dollar reserves swelled. These banks pushed debt, getting developing country governments to borrow at low real interest rates.

After the US Fed began raising interest rates from 1977 to fight inflation, other major central banks followed, raising countries’ debt service burdens. Ensuing economic slowdowns cut commodity exporters’ earnings.

In the past, the IMF and World Bank imposed ‘one-size-fits-all’ ‘stabilization’ and ‘structural adjustment’ measures, impairing development. Developing countries had to implement severe austerity measures, liberalization and privatization. As real incomes declined, progress was set back.

With the pandemic, developing countries have seen massive capital outflows, more than in 2008. Meanwhile, surging food, fertilizer and fuel prices are draining developing countries’ foreign exchange earnings and reserves.

As the US Fed raises interest rates, capital flight to Wall Street is depreciating other currencies, raising import costs and debt burdens. Thus, many countries need financial help.

Debt-distressed countries once again seek support from the Washington-based lenders of last resort. But without enough debt relief, a temporary liquidity crisis threatens to become a debt sustainability, and hence, a solvency crisis, as in the 1980s.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Sep 5 2022 (IPS)

Most of the 2.1 billion strong workforce in Asia and the Pacific are denied access to decent jobs, health care and social protection but there is an array polices and tools that governments can use to remedy these deficiencies and ensure that the rights and aspirations of these workers and their families are upheld and that they remain the engine of economic growth for the region.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

A new report released today, the Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific: The Workforce We Need, offers tangible solutions to immediately address alarming trends that both preceded the new coronavirus and were exacerbated by the pandemic.

While 243 million new people were pushed into poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic, half of all people in our region already had been surviving without cash, a third without necessary medicine or treatment and a quarter had gone without enough food to eat. This can lower productivity, which has fallen below the global average, but also tax revenues and future economic output.

With two-thirds of all workers in the region being employed informally, often with low wages, in hazardous working conditions and without a contract, half of our workforce are at the brink of poverty. People in our region are also at a higher risk of being pushed into poverty by health spending than anywhere else in the world, causing inequalities to further widen. With more than half of all people being excluded from social protection, pandemics, disasters economic downturns, or normal life events, such as falling ill, becoming pregnant or getting old often have detrimental impacts on households’ wellbeing and life prospects.

The reality is harsh: our workers are generally ill-equipped to unlock new opportunities, fulfill life aspirations for themselves and their families but also to face ongoing challenges emanating from megatrends of climate change, ageing societies and digitalization.

Climate-induced natural disasters cause businesses to relocate and jobs to disappear, disproportionately affecting rural communities. Digital technologies are bringing disruptive change to the world of work and the digital gap is intensifying inequalities in opportunities, income and wealth. Population ageing means that the number of older people will double by 2050, making policies to support active and healthy ageing ever more urgent.

None of these vulnerabilities are inevitable. With the right policies, our region’s workforce can become more productive, healthier and protected.

First, active labour market policies, through life-long learning and skill development, can support a green and just transition into decent employment and improve access to basic opportunities and adequate standards of living. Harnessing synergies between active labor market policies and social protection can help workers upgrade their skills and transition into decent employment while smoothing consumption and avoiding negative coping strategies during spells of unemployment or other shocks.

Second, extending social health protection to all can significantly improve workers’ health, income security and productivity. COVID-19 demonstrated the weakness of a status quo in which 60 per cent of our workers finance their own health care and receive no sickness benefits. A focus on primary health care as well as curative health protection is needed, also to support healthy and active ageing. People who are chronically ill or live with a disability must be included in health care strategies. Given the large informal economy across the region, extending social health protection is the key policy instrument for achieving universal health coverage in our region.

Third, building on the ESCAP Social Protection Simulator, a basic package of universal child, old age and disability social protection schemes, set at global average benefit levels, would slash poverty in our region by half. Our analysis also shows that social protection helps increase access to opportunities particularly for furthest behind groups. This income security would improve the workforce’s resilience. Extending social protection to all means increasing public spending by between 2 and 6 per cent of GDP, an investment well-worth its cost. The Action Plan to Strengthen Regional Cooperation on Social Protection in Asia and the Pacific can guide action towards broadening social protection coverage.

With this information at hand, there is a long overdue need for action. The policy recommendations set out in the Social Outlook are a priority for most countries in the region. These require bold but necessary reforms. For most countries these reforms are affordable but may require a reprioritization of existing expenditures and tax, supported by tax reform. Decent employment for all and an expansion of social protection and health care should form the foundations of a strong social contract between the State and its citizens. One where mutual roles and responsibilities are clear and where our workforce is given the security to fulfil their potential and be the force for achieving the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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