Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

An opportunity to build resilient, inclusive Food Systems in Africa. Credit: Africa Renewal, United Nations

By Josefa Sacko and Ibrahim Mayaki
LUANDA, Angola, May 31 2022 (IPS)

While Africa is yet to fully recover from the socio-economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine conflict poses another major threat to the global economy with many African countries being directly affected.

Just within a few weeks, global wheat, sunflower, and oil crude prices have soared to unprecedented levels. Africa is heavily reliant on food imports from both countries, and the Continent is already experiencing price shocks and disruptions in the supply chain of these commodities.

The conflict will likely impact food security in Africa. Both through availability and pricing in some food crops, particularly wheat and sunflower, as well as socio-economic recovery and growth, triggered by rising uncertainties in global financial markets and supply chain systems.

Over the past decade, the Continent has seen growing demand for cereal crops, including wheat and sunflower, which has been mainly supported by imports than local production. Africa’s wheat imports increased by 68 per cent between 2007 to 2019, surging to 47 million tonnes.

Josefa Sacko is the AUC Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment (ARBE)

Russia and Ukraine, both often referred to as the world’s breadbasket, are major players in the export of wheat and sunflower to Africa. North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia), Nigeria in West Africa, Ethiopia and Sudan in East Africa, and South Africa account for 80 per cent of wheat imports.

Wheat consumption in Africa is projected to reach 76.5 million tonnes by 2025, of which 48.3 million tonnes or 63.4 per cent is projected to be imported outside of the Continent.

The sanctions imposed on Russia by Western countries will further exacerbate commercial flows between Russia and Africa due to the closure of vital port operations in the Black Sea. Russia is one of the world’s biggest exporters of fertilizers.

Concerns are growing that a worldwide shortage of fertilizer will lead to rising food prices, with knock-on effects for agricultural production and food security.

Russia is also the world’s third-largest oil producer behind the United States and Saudi Arabia. The disruption of oil prices on the world market is expected to lead to an increase in fuel prices and higher costs of food production.

Some regions, including the Horn of Africa and Sahel region, are at greater risk of food insecurity due to country-specific shocks, climate change, export restrictions, and stockpiling, especially if rising fertilizer and other energy-intensive input costs will negatively impact the next agricultural season as a result of the ongoing conflict.

Dr Ibrahim Mayaki is the Chief Executive Officer of AUDA-NEPAD

A silver lining to reduce reliance on food imports

While the socio-economic ramifications are already substantial and the situation remains highly unpredictable, Africa must also see the current geopolitical crisis as an opportunity to reduce its reliance on food imports from outside the Continent.

African countries need to take advantage of their 60 per cent global share of arable land to grow more food for domestic consumption and export to the global market. This would lower the number of people facing food and nutrition insecurity caused by external shocks.

Africa’s Common Position on Food Systems

In 2021, the African Union Commission (AUC) and African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) worked with African countries to create a common African position ahead of the Food Systems Summit in line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The African Common Position is a synthesis and unified view on how to transform Africa’s food systems over the next decade, primarily on resilience in the face of growing vulnerability and shocks. It is anchored in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth.

Rapid expansion in agricultural and food productivity and production has been identified as one of the game-changing solutions. To prevent future disruptions in the supply chain for wheat and sunflower across Africa, countries that produce these cereals need to increase their capacity to produce and supply to other countries through intra-African trade.

And those that do not should consider incorporating specific food crops into their agriculture value chain. This will reduce the reliance on wheat and grain imports from Russia and Ukraine and, most importantly, promote intra-African trade and grow Africa’s agribusiness sectors.

African Continental Free Trade Area a lever and driver for intra-regional agri-food markets

Another lever in transforming Africa’s food systems is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which came into effect on 1 January 2021. African countries must take advantage of the world’s largest free trade area.

The trade treaty is expected to offer US$2.5 trillion in combined GDP and agribusiness will significantly contribute to this growth. The AfCFTA will increase production and value addition as well as ensure adequate quality infrastructure and food safety standards to supply and grow local and regional agri-food markets.

The oil and gas factor

To avoid future food price shocks caused by rising oil and gas prices on the global market, African countries must improve their oil and gas production and exploration capability to fill any gaps that may occur as a result of supply chain disruption among the major global producers.

African countries that produce fuel and gas such as Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, and Tanzania should explore boosting production and filling the gas and oil gap within the continent and beyond to alleviate fuel price shocks, which could contribute to lower food costs.

In addition, African governments should invest in or attract greater international investment in oil and gas exploration, particularly in countries where subterranean oil reserves are believed to exist but have yet to be explored.

2022 African Union Year of Nutrition

The AU declared 2022 the Year of Nutrition with the main objective to strengthen resilience in food and nutrition security. The AU CAADP biennial review report of 2019 revealed that Africa is not on track to meet its goal of ending hunger by 2025, noting a deterioration in food and nutrition security on the continent since the inaugural report in 2017.

Increasing food production and expanding Africa’s food basket will serve both nutrition and resilience objectives. In this regard, there must be intentional investments toward increased productivity and production of traditional and indigenous crops. This also requires a systems approach by integrating nutrition into resilient and strong health systems and social protection systems.

Climate resilience in Africa’s food systems

African food systems continue to face several challenges, including extreme weather events and climate change; limited adoption of yield-increasing technologies; dependency on rain-fed agriculture and low levels of irrigation; and most recently, the spread of fall armyworm in parts of the continent.

More than 38 million more people are at risk of hunger and poverty in Africa due to climate change. Climate-resilient technologies present major opportunities for the Continent to increase African food production and productivity while building resilience and reducing poverty and hunger.

Digital and biotechnologies and the transformation of food systems

While the Continent has made significant progress in the adoption and use of information and communication technologies for large-scale food producers, the benefits of digital innovations have not been fully leapfrogged by small-scale producers, processors, and retailers to access extension services, markets, and financial services.

Increasing the competitiveness of African agriculture also includes the adoption of biotechnology, including improved seed varieties, and requires robust food production policy frameworks. Biotechnology is expected to accelerate growth, create wealth, and feed an African population expected to reach 2.2 billion people by 2050.

Regional solutions are a prerequisite to addressing structural weaknesses and vulnerabilities, including poverty and inequality

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has once more exposed the urgent need for policy and investment choices to sustain and build viable, resilient, and inclusive food systems on the Continent.

The African Common Position on Food Systems provides pathways for Africa to increase home-grown agri-food production and ensure inclusive access to sustainable and nutritious food sources, while addressing structural weaknesses and vulnerabilities, including poverty and inequality.

The successful transformation of African food systems will largely depend on the willingness of African countries to realise continental and regional solutions to build and sustain greater resilience in the face of external shocks. 2022 is Africa’s Year to action food and nutrition development goals.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Community organizing is a lynchpin in the lives of environmental defenders in Peru, as in the case of Mirtha Villanueva, pictured here with other activists from the Cajamarca region also involved in the defense of rivers and Mother Earth. CREDIT: Courtesy of Mirtha Villanueva

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, May 30 2022 (IPS)

“Water is part of our culture, it is intrinsic to the Amazon,” said José Manuyama, a member of a river defense committee in his native Requena, a town located in the department of Loreto, the largest in Peru, covering 28 percent of the national territory.

Despite the large size of this Amazon rainforest department or province located in the northeast of the country, data from 2020 indicated that it barely exceeded one million inhabitants, including some 220,000 indigenous people, in a country with a total population of 32.7 million.

A teacher by profession and a member of the Kukama indigenous people, one of the 51 officially recognized in Peru’s Amazon rainforest region, Manuyama reminisced about his childhood near a small river in a conversation with IPS during the Second Interregional Meeting of Defenders of Rivers and Territories, held in Lima on May 25.

“We would wait for the high water season and the floods, because that was our world. When the water comes, it’s used for bathing, for fishing, it’s a whole world adapted to water,” he said.

And he added: “We also waited for the floods to pass, which left us enormous areas of land where the forest would grow and where my mother would plant her cucumbers, her corn. Seeing the river, the transparent water, that beautiful, fertile world: that’s where I grew up.”

Today, approaching the age of 50, Manuyama is also an activist in defense of nature and rivers in the face of continuous aggressions from extractive economic activities that threaten the different forms of life in his home region.

Manuyama is a member of a collective in defense of the Nanay River that runs through the department of Loreto. It is one of the tributaries of the Amazon River that originates in the Andes highlands in southern Peru and which is considered the longest and the biggest in terms of volume in the world, running through eight South American countries.

“We started out as the Water Defense Committee in 2012 when the Nanay watershed was threatened by oil activity,” he said. “Together with other collectives and organizations we managed to block that initiative, but since 2018 there has been a second extractive industry wave, with mining that is damaging the basin and seems to be the latest brutal calamity in the Amazon.”

José Manuyama, a member of the Kukama indigenous people and a teacher committed to the protection of nature, stands in front of the Momón River, a tributary of the Nanay River, which environmental activists have been defending from extractive activities that threaten its very existence in the department of Loreto, in Peru’s Amazon jungle region. CREDIT: Courtesy of José Manuyama

Their struggle was weakened during the pandemic, when the “millionaire polluting illegal mining industry” – as he describes it – remained active. Their complaints have gone unheeded by the authorities despite the harmful impacts of the pollution, such as on people’s food, which depends to a large extent on the fish they catch.

However, he is hopeful about the new national network of defenders of rivers and territories, an effort that emerged in 2019 and that on May 25 organized its second national meeting in Lima, with the participation of 60 representatives from the Amazon, Andes and Pacific coast regions of the country.

“It is important because we strengthen ourselves in a common objective of defending territories and rights, confronting the various predatory extractive waves that exist in this dominant social economic system that uses different factors in a chain to achieve its purpose. The battle is not equal, but this is how resistance works,” Manuyama said.

Like the watersheds of a river

Ricardo Jiménez, director of the non-governmental Peru Solidarity Forum, an institution that works with the network of organizations for the protection and defense of rivers, said it emerged as a response to the demand of various sectors in the face of depredation and expanding illegal mining and logging activities detrimental to water sources.

The convergence process began in 2019, he recalled, with the participation, among others, of the Amazonian Wampis and Awajún indigenous peoples, “women defenders of life and the Pachamama” of the northeastern Andes highlands department of Cajamarca, and “rondas campesinas” (rural social organizations) in various regions of the country.

Mirtha Villanueva, defender of life and Pachamama in the Cajamarca region of northeastern Peru, is seen here participating in one of the sessions of the Second Interregional Meeting of Defenders of Rivers and Territories, which brought together 60 participants from different parts of the country. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The first important milestone of the initiative occurred in 2021, when they held their first national meeting, in which a National Promotional Committee of Defenders of Rivers and Territories was formed.

They approved an agenda that they sent to the then minister of culture, Gisela Ortiz, who remained in office for only four months and was unable to meet the request to form the Multisectoral Roundtable for dialogue to address issues such as environmental remediation of legal and illegal extractive activities.

The proposed roundtable also mentioned the development of criteria for the protection of the headwaters of river basins, and the protection of river defenders from the criminalization of their protests and initiatives.

At this second national meeting, the Promotional Committee updated its agenda and created synergies with the National River Protection Network, made up of non-governmental organizations.

It also joined the river action initiative of the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (Fospa), whose tenth edition will be held Jul. 28-31 in Belem do Pará, in Brazil’s Amazon region, and whose national chapter met on May 27.

Three days of activity were organized in the Peruvian capital by the defenders of the rivers and their riverside communities, who on May 26 participated in a march of indigenous peoples, organized by the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest.

“There is a coming together of the social collectives at the national level and also with their peers at the Pan-Amazonian level; we have a shared path with particularities but which coincides,” Jiménez told IPS.

A group of villagers participates in the monitoring and surveillance of the Chimín river in the Condebamba valley, in the Cajamarca region of northeastern Peru. The river is contaminated by illegal mining activity, which harms all the communities along its banks, as it irrigates 40 percent of the crops in the area. CREDIT: Courtesy of Mirtha Villanueva

Rivers have no borders

Mirtha Villanueva is an activist who defends life and Pachamama (Mother Earth, in the Quechua indigenous language) in Cajamarca, a northeastern department of Peru, where more than a decade ago the slogan “water yes, gold no!” was coined as part of the struggles of the local population in defense of their lakes and wetlands against the Conga mining project of the U.S.-owned Yanacocha gold mine.

The project was suspended, but only temporarily, after years of social protests against the open-pit gold mine, which in 2012 caused several deaths and led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the region for several months, in one of the most critical episodes in the communities’ struggle against the impact of extractivism on their environment and their lives.

A large part of Villanueva’s 66 years has been dedicated to the defense of nature’s assets, of rivers, to guarantee decent lives for people, in a struggle that she knows is extremely unequal in the face of the economic power of the mining companies.

“We, the defenders of the rivers, have to grow in strength and I hope that at the Fospa Peru meeting we will approve a plan of action agreed with our brothers and sisters in Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil, because our rivers are also connected, they have no borders,” she told IPS during an interview at the meeting in Lima.

“We need to strengthen ourselves from the local to the international level to have an impact with our actions. We receive 60 percent of our rainfall from the Amazon forest. How can we not take care of the Amazon?” she said.

José Manuyama stands to the right of the poster during one of his presentations at the Second Interregional Meeting of Defenders of Rivers and Territories, which brought together activists from different parts of Peru in Lima. His group analyzed power relations in the context of the risks surrounding the country’s rivers, especially those in the Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The work she carries out with the environmental committees is titanic. She recalled the image of poor rural families protesting the change in the rivers and how it has caused rashes on their children’s skin.

And when they went to the mine to complain, they were told: “When I came, your river was already like this. Why do you want to blame me? Prove it.”

“In this situation, the farmer remains silent, which is why it is important to work in the communities to promote oversight and monitoring of ecosystems and resources. We work with macroinvertebrates, beings present in the rivers that are indicators of clean or polluted waters, gradually training the population,” she explained.

This is an urgent task. She gave as an example the case of the district of Bambamarca, in Loreto, which has the highest number of mining environmental liabilities in the country: 1118. “Only one river is still alive, the Yaucán River,” Villanueva lamented.

She also mentioned the Condebamba valley, “with the second highest level of diversity in Peru,” and 40 percent of whose farmland is being irrigated by water from the Chimín river polluted by the mines.

“In Cajamarca we have 11 committees monitoring the state of the rivers, we all suffer reprisals, but we cannot stop doing what we do because people’s health and lives are at stake,” both present and future, she said.

"The world’s richest countries are providing healthier environments for children within their borders, yet are disproportionately contributing to the destruction of the global environment". Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 30 2022 (IPS)

The excesses committed by rich people can be deadly–and in fact they are. Be it about food, energy or overall waste, such excesses have been depleting the world’s natural resources and pushing both current and future generations towards the edge of a predictable abyss.

See how

If everybody in the world consumed resources at the rate people do in Economic Cooperation and Development OECD (38 countries), and the European Union (EU) States (27), the equivalent of 3.3 Earths would be needed to keep up with consumption levels. But if everyone were to consume resources at the rate at which people in Canada, Luxembourg and the United States do, at least five Earths would be needed

Over-consumption in the world’s richest countries is destroying children’s environments globally, explains UNICEF (the UN Children Fund) in its report Innocenti Report Card 17: Places and Spaces.

“The world’s richest countries are providing healthier environments for children within their borders, yet are disproportionately contributing to the destruction of the global environment.”

In fact, if everybody in the world consumed resources at the rate people do in Economic Cooperation and Development OECD (38 countries), and the European Union (EU) States (27), the equivalent of 3.3 Earths would be needed to keep up with consumption levels.

But if everyone were to consume resources at the rate at which people in Canada, Luxembourg and the United States do, at least five Earths would be needed

UNICEF compares how both OECD and the EU countries fare in providing healthy environments for children.

For this purpose, it features indicators such as exposure to harmful pollutants including toxic air, pesticides, damp and lead; access to light, green spaces and safe roads; and countries’ contributions to the climate crisis, consumption of resources, and the dumping of e-waste.

 

Destroying children’s environment.. And lives

“Not only are the majority of rich countries failing to provide healthy environments for children within their borders, they are also contributing to the destruction of children’s environments in other parts of the world,” said Gunilla Olsson, Director of UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti.

“Mounting waste, harmful pollutants and exhausted natural resources are taking a toll on our children’s physical and mental health and threatening our planet’s sustainability.

 

Learn more, please

The Innocenti Report includes other key findings. See some of them:

• Over 20 million children have elevated levels of lead in their blood. Lead is one of the most dangerous environmental toxic substances.
• Finland, Iceland and Norway rank in the top third for providing a healthy environment for their children yet rank in the bottom third for the world at large, with high rates of emissions, e-waste and consumption.
• In Iceland, Latvia, Portugal and the United Kingdom 1 in 5 children is exposed to damp and mould at home; while in Cyprus, Hungary and Turkey more than 1 in 4 children is exposed.
• Many children are breathing toxic air both outside and inside their homes. Mexico has among the highest number of years of healthy life lost due to air pollution at 3.7 years per thousand children, while Finland and Japan have the lowest at 0.2 years.
• In Belgium, Czech Republic, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland more than 1 in 12 children are exposed to high pesticide pollution.
• Pesticide pollution has been linked with cancer, including childhood leukaemia and can harm children’s nervous, cardiovascular, digestive, reproductive, endocrine, blood and immune systems.

 

But there is more, much more…

Sadly enough, all the above is not the sole cause that damages the present and future of children. See, for example:

• The shocking extent of exploitative baby formula milk marketing. The world’s leading health specialised body (WHO) revealed the “… 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.

• Severe wasting: UNICEF warns that the number of children with severe wasting is rising and getting worse. Its report Severe wasting: An overlooked child survival emergency shows that in spite of rising levels of severe wasting in children and rising costs for life-saving treatment, global financing to save the lives of children suffering from wasting is also under threat.

• Severe wasting – where children are too thin for their height resulting in weakened immune systems – is the most immediate, visible and life-threatening form of malnutrition. Worldwide, at least 13.6 million children under five suffer from severe wasting, resulting in 1 in 5 deaths among this age group.
• Migrant children: Around the world, migrant children are facing alarming levels of xenophobia, the socioeconomic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and limited access to essential services, according to UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

• Children in war: Nearly 90% of people in Syria live in poverty. More than 6.5 million children need urgent assistance – the greatest number of Syrian children in need since the conflict began. There, only one in four young children get the diets they need to grow healthy. The price of the average food basket has nearly doubled in 2021 alone.

In Yemen, 45% of children are stunted and over 86% have anaemia;

In other Middle East countries, like Lebanon, 94% of young children are not receiving the diets they need, while over 40% of women and children under the age of five have anaemia;

• Child soldiers: Thousands of children are recruited and used in armed conflicts across the world. Between 2005 and 2020, more than 93,000 children were verified as recruited and used by parties to conflict, although the actual number of cases is believed to be much higher.These boys and girls suffer extensive forms of exploitation and abuse that are not fully captured by that term. Warring parties use children not only as fighters, but as scouts, cooks, porters, guards, messengers and more. Many, especially girls, are also subjected to gender-based violence.

• Child forced labour: There are more than 160 million children forced in labour.

They are children washing clothes in rivers, begging on the streets, hawking, walking for kilometres in search of water and firewood, their tiny hands competing with older, experienced hands to pick coffee or tea, or as child soldiers are familiar sights in Africa and Asia, explains IPS journalist Joyce Chimbi.

 

Resources are scarce

There are too many other crimes being committed against the world’s children.

One of them is really staggering: the very organisation: UNICEF, which was created 75 years ago to cover the emergencies of European children who fell victims of the Europe-launched II World War, is now bady short of vitally needed funding to save the lives of millions of world’s children.

Not only, a good part of these scarce resources is justifiably devoted to saving children of yet another European war.

Market in New Delhi. Credit: The Oakland Institute

By Frederic Mousseau
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, May 30 2022 (IPS)

India is being asked by the US government and the IMF to reconsider its decision to suspend wheat exports. Their cited concern is that export restrictions will exacerbate food shortages amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the argument does not stand ground technically or morally.

There is no food shortage. According to a May 6, 2022 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world enjoys “a relatively comfortable supply level” of cereals. This is confirmed by the World Bank, which noted that global stocks of cereals are at historically high levels and that about three-quarters of Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports had already been delivered before the war started.

These numbers are consistent with data from the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture that reported on May 19 that the country exported 46.51 million tons of cereals in the 2021/22 season, versus 40.85 million the previous year.

In a repeat of 2007-2008 food crisis, it is speculation which is the key factor behind the current rise in food prices in international markets. As reported by the Lighthouse Reports, “speculators have flooded commodity markets in attempts to make a profit out of escalating prices.” A striking example are two top commodity-linked “exchange traded funds” (ETFs) which have received US$1.2 billion of investments – compared to just US$197 million for the whole of 2021 – a 600 percent increase.

According to the New York Times, “in April, speculators were responsible for 72 percent of the buying activity on the Paris wheat market, up from 25 percent before the pandemic.” Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, has rightly observed that “speculative activity by powerful institutional investors who are generally unconcerned with agricultural market fundamentals are indeed betting on hunger, and exacerbating it.”

Maize harvest, Gambella, Ethiopia. Credit: The Oakland Institute

Instead of food shortage, the reality is that the world produces far more food than we eat. Over 33 percent of the food produced globally is used for animal feed as well as for other non-food uses, mainly agro-fuels.

The US produces roughly 400 million tons of corn, but over 40 percent of this amount – 160 million tons – goes to ethanol production, while another 40 percent goes to animal feed, and only 10 percent is used as food whereas another 10 percent is exported. India was not expected to export more than 10 million tons of wheat in 2022-2023, which is insignificant in comparison to the US numbers.

The increasing amount of food diverted to the production of agro-fuels – again as in the 2007-2008 crisis – is another major factor fueling tension in the global cereal markets. As noted in a 2009 analysis, “although biofuels still account for only 1.5 percent of the global liquid fuels supply, they accounted for almost half the increase in the consumption of major food crops in 2006–07, mostly because of corn-based ethanol produced in the United States.”

In the US, ethanol production increased from 3.6 million barrels in 2001 to over 102 million in 2019. Despite the fact that ethanol is at least 24 percent more carbon-intensive than gasoline, under pressure from the Congress and the industry, the Biden administration has just taken steps to encourage further ethanol production while continuing to heavily subsidize it.

The US call against trade restrictions has been echoed by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Food Programme, and the World Trade Organization, who are urging “all countries to keep trade open and avoid restrictive measures such as export bans on food or fertilizer that further exacerbate the suffering of the most vulnerable people.”

But if governments and international institutions are serious about eliminating human suffering caused by high food prices, they should abstain from pressuring countries who are trying to maintain food supply at a level which will allow national food security. It is essential that they recognize and respect food sovereignty of all nations.

Immediate key measures that countries should be taking to relieve pressure on world markets are to reduce the amount of food used as fuel, curb speculation on food products – specifically restricting the so-called future commodity markets where speculators bet on future prices.

Both the US and the European Union have instruments and mechanisms in place that allow them to act, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). What is missing is the political will to act.

What is not missing is hypocrisy. The US government-funded ethanol industry uses the equivalent of 35 percent of the global world trade of cereals of 473 million tons. The Indian export ban set to prevent hunger will affect less than 2 percent of this amount.

Meanwhile, previous research on the 2007-2008 food crisis brings evidence that India and other countries were successful in preventing price transmission to domestic markets through trade regulation measures. For example, the price of rice actually decreased in Indonesia in 2008 while it was escalating in neighboring countries.

Public interventions to prevent this transmission were a mix of trade facilitation policies (for instance, cutting import tariffs or negotiating with importers) and trade restrictions or regulations (such as export bans, use of public stocks, price control, and anti-speculation measures).

The success of measures taken to limit domestic inflation depended primarily on governments’ ability to control domestic availability and regulate markets, often based on pre-existing public systems. Export restrictions possibly contributed to increased inflation in global food markets but they constituted a fast and effective way to protect consumers by mitigating the effect of global markets on domestic prices.

But regardless of the trade measures that some countries may adopt, even in the absence of a global food shortage, the food crisis is real. Droughts, conflicts, and now high food prices, are threatening to starve hundreds of millions of people.

Unfortunately, the massive human suffering and hunger that was affecting many countries even prior to the war in Ukraine was barely met with adequate response from rich nations. UN humanitarian appeals for acute crises are chronically underfunded. In 2021, only 45 percent of the UN appeal for Yemen and the Horn of Africa was fulfilled, only 29 percent for Syria.

The US Congress just approved an aid of US$40 billion for Ukraine, including over US$26 billion of military aid. This is US$12 billion more than the US$28 billion that the US will spend globally in 2022 on international assistance through USAID.

Amidst the war on Ukraine, given the chronic shortfalls of funding to international assistance, it is critical that all countries ensure their solidarity and adequate support is provided to all victims. But beyond aid, the only reasonable decision would be for them to act decisively on the broader causes of the high food prices and curb speculation on food commodities and diversion of food for the production of fuel.

Unfortunately, given measures were not taken following the 2007-2008 food crisis, how likely is it to happen now. High income countries and international institutions may rather repeat their motto of “keep trade open” and continue business as usual. It is therefore up to governments in the Global South, in particular food deficit countries, to recognize this harsh reality and act to reduce their dependency on food imports by supporting their own farmers and proactively regulating their food and agricultural markets.

The Oakland Institute is an independent policy think tank that conducts research and advocacy on issues such as international development, environment, land, food, and agriculture.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Policy Director at The Oakland Institute, San Francisco

Secretary-General António Guterres expressed concern, over the fall in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), at a meeting of the UN Chief Executives Board, which brought together the heads of 30 UN agencies, to discuss ways of alleviating the crises holding back economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and boost implementation of the SDGs. May 2022. Credit: UN News/Abdelmonem Makki

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 30 2022 (IPS)

The four-month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has triggered a hefty increase in military spending among Western nations and a rise in humanitarian and military assistance to the beleaguered country, is now threatening to undermine the flow of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to the world’s poorer nations.

In an advance warning of the upcoming cuts, the UN’s Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told a recent meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC): “As Chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group, I am deeply troubled over recent decisions and proposals to markedly cut Official Development Assistance (ODA) to service the impacts of the war in Ukraine on refugees”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who was equally concerned about the impending reductions, has urged donor nations to reconsider making cuts that will affect the world’s most vulnerable.

The people who benefit from the work of the UN system need additional and more predictable funding, he added. “Contributions to key UN agencies, funds and programmes, working with people on the ground, are facing steep proposed reductions. Cuts to development and the United Nations mean scaling back support at a time when demand for support to meet the deepening development needs has reached an all-time high”.

He said ODA is more necessary than ever, and called upon all countries to demonstrate solidarity, invest in resilience, and prevent the current crisis from escalating further.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed at the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) meeting mid-May.

According to a UN report, titled 2022 Financing for Sustainable Development Report: Bridging the Finance Divide released last April, “the fallout from the crisis in Ukraine, with increased spending on refugees in Europe, may mean cuts to the aid provided to the poorest countries”

At a meeting in mid-May, the Group of Seven – comprising some of world’s biggest economies — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and the US, plus the European Union– agreed to provide nearly $20 billion to support Ukraine and bolster its war-ravaged economy.

Separately the US has pledged over $40 billion in economic, humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine since the Russian invasion last February.

The widespread fear is that the collective $60 billion assistance to Ukraine may result in corresponding reductions in ODA.

Bhumika Muchhala, senior advocate on global economic governance at the Third World Network, told IPS cuts to ODA at a time of a convergence of crises in the Global South is extremely concerning.

She said the pandemic is still ongoing, and health and economic recovery need immediate funds. Food security is being threatened by global supply disruptions, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, creating urgent crises of malnutrition, hunger and even famine.

She also pointed out that climate change is creating catastrophes every day, from fatal heat waves to floods and droughts, while both existing climate financing as well as ODA commitments still remain unfulfilled by rich countries.

“Underpinning these crises is the surge in gender inequality, as women absorb the shocks and costs of global inequalities”.

“Making matters worse, a large number of developing countries are in debt distress or experiencing debt crisis, leading to another era of austerity that is already arresting the achievement of SDGs, resulting in a retrogression of poverty reduction that has taken many decades of hard-won economic and social development to achieve”. said Muchhala.

In light of the fact that every crisis in the South will ripple through the world economy with adverse effects for all, “rich countries have a collective duty to fulfill existing ODA commitments, as well as climate financing commitments and efforts to create genuine fiscal space for developing countries through equitable debt restructuring, international tax cooperation to eradicate illicit financial flows, and needs-based issuances of Special Drawing Rights,” she declared.

The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), comprising some of the world’s richest nations, has been providing development assistance since the 1960s.

According to OECD, ODA is defined as “government aid that promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries”.

The DAC adopted ODA as the “gold standard” of foreign aid in 1969 and it remains the main source of financing for development aid.

The April UN report, 2022 Financing for Sustainable Development Report: Bridging the Finance Divide, said record growth of Official Development Assistance, increased to its highest level ever in 2020, rising to $161.2 billion.

“Yet, 13 countries cut ODA, and the sum remains insufficient for the vast needs of developing countries”.

But according to OECD, ODA rose to an all-time high of $178.9 billion in 2021, up 4.4% in real terms from 2020 as developed countries stepped up to help developing countries grappling with the COVID-19 crisis, according to the latest available figures.

This figure included $ 6.3 billion spent on providing COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries, equivalent to 3.5% of total ODA. Excluding ODA for donated COVID-19 vaccines, ODA was up 0.6% in real terms from 2020.

The 2021 ODA total is equivalent to 0.33% of DAC donors’ combined gross national income (GNI) and still below the UN target of 0.7% ODA to GNI.

The beneficiaries of ODA include the UN’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs), described as the poorest of the world’s poor. https://unctad.org/topic/least-developed-countries/list

Meanwhile, in a new report released May 24, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) warned of the direct and indirect impacts of the war in Ukraine on the African continent, which could further stall the continent’s development trajectory already significantly jeopardized by the COVID-19 crisis.

This report, entitled “The Impact of the War in Ukraine on Sustainable Development in Africa”, reinforces findings of the Global Crisis Response Group (GCRG) that the war in Ukraine is pushing the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the aspirations of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 further out of reach, and provides key recommendations for actions that need to be taken immediately, to avert further crises in Africa.

“Africa is facing a double crisis with the combined effects of the war in Ukraine and of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, with strategic partnerships, the crisis also presented the opportunity to rechart Africa’s development trajectory, breaking away from a dependency cycle” said Achim Steiner, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and UNDP Administrator.

“Now is a critical time for action. It is time to intensify efforts and reframe development finance, strengthen resilience in African economies, and foster economic transformation as a key driver for change in Africa.”

According to the report, some of the direct impacts of the crisis in Africa include trade disruption, food and fuel price spikes, macroeconomic instability, and security challenges. African countries are particularly affected due to their heavy reliance on imports from Russia and Ukraine.

The current hike in prices for food and fuel directly affects the entire continent, including the biggest economies, as food and fuel account for over one-third of the consumer price index in most African countries, (Nigeria 57 per cent, Egypt 60 per cent, Ghana 54 per cent, and Cameroon 42 per cent).

In 2020, African countries imported $4.0 billion worth of agricultural products from Russia, 90 per cent of which was wheat.

The full report is accessible [here]

Daniel D. Bradlow, SARCHI Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations at the University of Pretoria told IPS: “I think the UNDP statement gives a good summary of the situation”.

“The impact of the war in Ukraine is having a devastating impact on Africa. If it continues it is likely to lead to hunger, increased poverty and serious debt crises across the continent,” he added.

“If the Western countries really wanted African support for the war in Ukraine, they should have taken steps to shield Africa and other parts of the Global South from the impacts of a European war. Instead, they are redirecting aid that could have gone to Africa to Ukraine and are cutting their aid budgets”.

He pointed out that the support that is being offered through the IFIs and others are likely to be in the form of loans rather than grants.

“This means that at the end of the day, the Western states are making African states pay for a conflict in Europe that suits their political agendas.”

In a statement last April, Jeroen Kwakkenbos, EU aid expert at Oxfam said donors have thrown out the rule book by counting vaccine donations in aid budgets.

“Over 350 million vaccine doses came from hoarded stocks, some of which, were donated far too close to their expiry date. Many more were donated without essential equipment such as syringes making them almost useless. Including these ‘donations’ in aid budgets inflates aid. It is merely donors patting themselves on the back for a job that may have cost lives,” he noted

“The war in Ukraine poses a risk to future aid budgets. Aid is already being pulled from countries like Syria to fund the reception of Ukrainian refugees in Europe.”

“We are left with the bizarre situation where European countries could become the largest recipients of their own aid. Instead of cherry-picking humanitarian crises, donor governments need to boost aid budgets to meet the challenges of today.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Adequate maternal care during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period is essential to curbing the high maternal mortality rates in Latin America, which stopped falling due to women's health care problems during the COVID pandemic. CREDIT: Government of Tigre / Argentina

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 27 2022 (IPS)

Brazil had the dubious distinction of champion of maternal mortality in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a 77 percent increase in such deaths between 2019 and 2021.

A total of 1,575 women died in childbirth or in the following six weeks in the year prior to the pandemic in Latin America’s largest and most populous country, with a population of 214 million. Two years later the total had climbed to 2,787, according to preliminary data from the Health Ministry’s Mortality Information System.

In Mexico, the second-most populated country in the region, with 129 million inhabitants, the increase was 49 percent, to 1,036 maternal deaths in 2021. And in Peru, a country of 33 million people, the total rose by 63 percent to 493 maternal deaths.

In Colombia, recent data are not available. But authorities acknowledge that in 2021 COVID-19 became the leading cause of maternal deaths, as it was in Mexico.

Brazil is the extreme example of multiple mistakes and of stubborn denialism that led to many avoidable deaths, particularly of pregnant women, according to experts and women’s rights activists on the occasion of the International Day of Action for Women’s Health, celebrated May 28.

In Latin America maternal mortality remains a major problem.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional office of the World Health Organization (WHO), states that “maternal mortality is unacceptably high” and that they are “mostly preventable” deaths, which especially affect pregnant women in rural areas.

These levels, the agency adds, will delay reaching target 3.1 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030.

A woman takes part in a care program for pregnant women in a low-income area of the northern state of Pará, Brazil. PAHO warned that the disruption of health services caused by COVID drove up maternal mortality rates in Latin America and the Caribbean. CREDIT: UNFPA

Something smells rotten

“Inadequate prenatal and obstetric care,” largely due to inadequate medical training in these areas, is the cause of the tragedy in Brazil, said physician and epidemiologist Daphne Rattner, a professor at the University of Brasilia and president of the Network for the Humanization of Childbirth.

“Hypertensive syndrome is the main cause of death in Brazil, while in the world it is hemorrhage. In other words, there is some failure in a simple diagnosis like hypertension and in managing it during pregnancy and childbirth,” she said in an interview with IPS from Brasilia.

Of the 38,919 maternal deaths between 1996 and 2018 in Brazil, 8,186 were due to hypertension and 5,160 to hemorrhage, according to a Health Ministry report. These are direct obstetric causes, which accounted for just over two-thirds of the deaths. The rest had indirect causes, pre-existing conditions that complicate childbirth, such as diabetes, cancer or heart disease.

An excess of cesarean sections is another factor in mortality. It is “an epidemic” of 1.6 million operations per year, the Health Ministry acknowledges. This is equivalent to about 56 percent of the total number of deliveries. The proportion reaches 85 percent in private hospitals and stands at 40 percent in public services, well above the 10 percent rate recommended by the WHO.

“They don’t practice obstetrics, they practice surgery, they don’t know how to provide clinical care, and the result is more maternal deaths,” Rattner lamented.

And the pandemic made the situation more tragic.

Black women protest to demand respect for their rights in Brazil. Black women are the greatest victims of maternal mortality caused by COVID-19 in the country. They account for almost twice the number of deaths of white mothers, according to a study by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, the leading national health research institution. CREDIT: Fernando Frazão / Agência Brasil

The stork doesn’t come anymore

Brazil missed the target of reducing maternal mortality by 75 percent by 2015, from 1990 levels, but it was moving in that direction. The maternal mortality ratio (MMR) per 100,000 live births in the country fell from 143 to 60, a 58 percent drop.

The Stork Network, a government strategy adopted in 2011 to improve assistance to pregnant women and the infrastructure of maternity hospitals, humanize childbirth, ensure family planning and better care for children, helped bring the MMR down.

But COVID-19 and the government’s response to it caused a setback of at least two decades in Brazil’s maternal mortality rate.

Coronavirus killed more than 2,000 pregnant and postpartum women in the last two years and there are at least 383 other deaths from severe acute respiratory syndrome that may have been caused by COVID-19, according to the Feminist Health Network, an activist movement that has been fighting for sexual and reproductive rights since 1991.

The way the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro acted “was a maternal genocide, not just a disaster,” said Vania Nequer Soares, a nurse with a PhD in public health who is a member of the Feminist Health Network.

The government’s denialism and its response to the pandemic aggravated mortality in general, which already exceeds 666,000 deaths, as well as maternal mortality. Health authorities took more than a year to recognize that pregnant women were a high-risk group for COVID-19, made it difficult for them to receive intensive care and delayed their vaccination, Soares said.

To make matters worse, they decided to dismantle the Stork Network, whose public policies had promising results, and adopted new rules of “obstetric violence” included in the brand new Maternal and Child Care Network (Rami), which concentrates all power in doctors and hospitals, to the detriment of other actors and dialogue, she told IPS by telephone from Lisbon.

Miriam Toaquiza, a teenage mother, and her newborn daughter, Jennifer, are photographed at a hospital in Ecuador. Latin America is second in the world in teen pregnancy, one of the causes of the high maternal mortality rates in the region. CREDIT: Gonzalo Ortiz/IPS

Undernotification and negligence

But the numbers of maternal deaths are probably higher. Brazil was slow to begin using COVID-19 diagnostic tests and did not test widely. And because clinical identification of the new disease was doubtful, many mothers probably died without the correct diagnosis, especially in the first year of the pandemic, Rattner argued.

A study published this month in the scientific journal The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, with accounts from the families of 25 pregnant women who died of COVID-19, revealed three practices that condemned many women to death on the verge of childbirth.

First, doctors refused to hospitalize or better examine those who complained, for example, of difficulty breathing. They attributed it to late pregnancy and delayed a diagnosis that could have saved at least one life.

In other cases, health centers turned away pregnant women because they were dedicated to the COVID-19 emergency, arguing that they could not accept pregnant women because of the risk of infecting them. And in maternity wards, pregnant women were turned away because of the risk that they could bring in coronavirus and affect other women.

Finally, pregnant women who managed to be accepted in hospitals were denied intensive care, under the argument of protecting the baby’s life. In other words, the choice was made to save the child, to the detriment of the mothers, without consulting the families.

This was confirmed by the fact that all 25 pregnant women died, but 19 babies survived. Four families told the health professionals that they wanted the mother to be saved, even arguing that she could have other children in the future, but this proved to be in vain.

The study by three researchers from the Anis Institute of Bioethics, Human Rights and Gender, based in Brasilia, corroborates the complaint of the Feminist Health Network that 20 percent of the pregnant and postpartum women did not have access to intensive care and 32.3 percent were not put on ventilators.

Women must be given protagonism, so that “they can take ownership of the process of motherhood, including childbirth,” said Ligia Cardieri, a sociologist who is executive coordinator of the Feminist Health Network.

Fewer mechanical interventions, a reduction of c-sections that increase risks, including anesthetics, and greater involvement of nurses and other maternal health actors are other recommendations to avoid so many maternal deaths, she told IPS from Curitiba, capital of the southern state of Paraná.

In other Latin American countries, pregnant women with COVID-19 suffered a similar lack of attention and problems.

Nearly a third of them were not given intensive care or respiratory support during the pandemic, revealed a study of 447 pregnant women from eight countries, including five from South America, two from Central America and one from the Caribbean, according to PAHO data.

The study, published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, is from PAHO’s Latin American Center for Perinatology/Women’s Health and Reproductive Health (CLAP/WR).

We must silence the guns. All countries must work together to curb rising food and energy prices that have been spurred on by the war in Ukraine, making sure that essential goods are delivered to those most in need first, not those most willing to pay the higher price. Credit: Bigstock

By Rebeca Grynspan
GENEVA, May 27 2022 (IPS)

Climate change, COVID-19, the war in Ukraine – these crises threaten to derail development for 1.7 billion of the world’s most vulnerable people. The international community must take swift, coordinated action now to put the SDGs back on track.

In just two short years, a double whammy of external shocks has knocked global development off track and mired the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda in uncertainty. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, developing countries were left exceptionally vulnerable and exposed – a situation which the war in Ukraine has now tuned into a “perfect storm” of cascading crises. The consequences are worrying, not just for developing countries themselves, but also for the success of sustainable development globally.

The intensity of the “one-two punch” that the war in Ukraine has inflicted on developing economies following the COVID-19 crisis is only dwarfed by the complexity of the transmission channels by which the shock is propagating through commodity and financial markets

Before any shots were fired in Ukraine, the pandemic had left deep scars across the developing world. Since 2019, the number of people experiencing hunger has increased by 46 million in Africa, by around 57 million in Asia, and by about 14 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.

An additional 77 million people are now living in extreme poverty. School closures have led to losses of up to USD 17 trillion in lifetime earnings for this generation of students. Meanwhile, more than six million lives have been lost to the COVID-19 disease.

Following a robust though unequal economic recovery in 2021, marked by disrupted supply chains and multi-decade rises in inflation, the war in Ukraine caught the world economy off guard, roiling global markets for food, fertilizers, and fuels in which both Russia and Ukraine play an oversized role. This led to historic rises in commodity prices, and a general tightening of global financial conditions.

The intensity of the “one-two punch” that the war in Ukraine has inflicted on developing economies following the COVID-19 crisis is only dwarfed by the complexity of the transmission channels by which the shock is propagating through commodity and financial markets.

Rising commodity prices in energy, food, and fertilizers are leading to higher inflation rates. These are squeezing household budgets, especially in the poorest families who spend larger parts of their income on food and energy. Higher energy costs and lower spending is destroying demand while halting production. Already congested supply chains are being disrupted by sudden trade relocations due to sanctions, and a general scramble for commodities, increasing trade costs.

Higher inflation is inducing interest rates hikes, increasing the cost of debt. And all of this is impacting the most vulnerable people – women dealing with economic insecurity, children forced to leave school to work, the poor who were already hungry before the war started.

Many channels of exposure mean that billions of people around the world are exposed. The United Nations Global Crisis Response Group estimates that 107 developing economies are severely exposed to at least one dimension of these three channels of transmissions – rising food prices, rising energy prices, and tightening financial conditions. Some 1.7 billion people live in these countries, 553 million of whom are already poor and 215 million of whom are already malnourished.

And yet, even if just one channel of transmission is enough to set off a crisis, multiple and overlapping exposure is the rule, not the exception. Indeed, of these 107 countries, 69 are significantly or severely exposed to all three channels of transmission at once, bringing huge challenges to the 1.2 billion residents of those nations.

The firepower of the global economy to respond to crises of such a massive scale exists, as the developed economies’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates. While the decline in GDP globally during COVID-19 was more than twice that of the Great Recession of the late 2000s, the effects of the pandemic on the major economies quickly dissipated thanks to unprecedented stimulus efforts by the richest nations.

But it’s important to keep in mind that the developing economies do not possess the same scale of firepower. They have seen their debt burdens collectively swell during the COVID-19 crisis and now fear being pushed over the edge by the crisis induced by the war in Ukraine – a crisis not of their own making. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) finds that more than 60% of low-income developing countries are either currently experiencing or at risk of debt distress.

 

Laying a foundation for reform

The challenge facing our international financing architecture today is that it was built primarily to protect the global economy from crises at the individual country level. But faced with the “perfect storm” of cascading crises – including climate change, pandemics, and war – hitting so many developing countries at the same time, the system is limited in how it can offer a systemic, global response that supports all countries along all dimensions.

We must harness the strengths of that system today to lay a foundation for further reform tomorrow, one in which progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals is put back on track. A roadmap for improving the system is implicit in the ambitions of the SDGs, but to meet that transformative goal over the medium term we must first avoid throwing away our steady progress towards that objective so far, as happened with the pandemic. We must therefore use all tools available today to avoid the same from occurring as result of this war.

We must silence the guns. All countries must work together to curb rising food and energy prices that have been spurred on by the war in Ukraine, making sure that essential goods are delivered to those most in need first, not those most willing to pay the higher price.

We must pledge to keep trade moving and avoid export bans on critical commodities. We must make sure this year’s harvest is able to ship from the Black Sea, and that next year’s harvest has enough fertilizers to grow as needed, especially in small-holding farms. And we must work, in partnership with the private sector and civil society, on extending much-needed support to the most vulnerable populations in our countries.

This means using all available facilities at the IMF and the World Bank, including the new IMF Resilience and Sustainability Trust, and the existing small island developing states IDA Facility, but also to seriously undertake a multilateral conversation around debt sustainability before it is too late.

The only way to weather the “perfect storm” is together. The international community has the means to cushion the blow and prevent great human suffering, unacceptable increases in inequalities and the world tipping into an era of social and political unrest. The solutions and the resources are there. We now need the political will to reach them. I know it is not easy. But the world is waiting. And time is running out.

First published by SDG Action, an initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Excerpt:

Rebeca Grynspan is Secretary-General of UNCTAD

Child labour survivor Selimatha Dziedzorm Salifu (right) and her rescuer Andrews Tagoe (left), deputy general secretary of the General Agricultural Workers’ Union of TUC, who met her on a fishing beach in Ghana. Credit: Lyse Comins/IPS

By Lyse Comins
DURBAN, May 27 2022 (IPS)

Selimatha Dziedzorm Salifu was just seven years old when she went to work for the first time to support her family.

Born in the fishing village, Kpando-Torkor, in Ghana, Salifu, was forced to go out and work in the local fishing industry when her father Seidu died, leaving her mother, Mary, with six children to feed, clothe and shelter. The industry is well documented for child slavery and trafficking.

“When my daddy passed, I was drawn into child labour because mommy did not have something to take care of my siblings. She started travelling to the islands (on lake Volta) in a canoe to buy fish, and sometimes I helped her do that, and I helped other fishmongers who were in the same business,” Salifu, now 25, told IPS in an exclusive interview. “I helped them get the fish ready for market, cutting and cleaning it, for a fee.” She spoke to us on the sidelines of the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

“I would wake up at 4 am and be there. We were a lot of children in the village so I had to get there early so I could get a customer. The boys would go out fishing, they didn’t go to school, and some were ill-treated on the lake. They would get pushed inside the water to rescue the nets (when they got tangled). I found that when I would go to school, I was so exhausted, I would sleep in class, and my teachers would ask me why,” Salifu said.

Her pay was just one or two Ghanaian cedis which could buy ‘kenke’ (similar to sourdough) and a little rice. Other children were often paid with just one small fish for their day’s labour handling Tilapia fish, mudfish and electric fish, Salifu said.

Despite her arduous plight of juggling work and school to survive, Salifu had a dream: One day, she would be a teacher and help children like herself.

“Sometimes getting food on the table was very difficult, and purchasing a school uniform was very difficult. I almost dropped out of school, but the God I serve saved me. I had a vision to want to be a childcare practitioner, to have my own institution to support children on the street just like myself,” Salifu said. “And then one day, I happened to meet this man at the river shore by my village, on the bank, going about my daily routine. I narrated my story to him, and he said he was going to talk to his team and they would help me.”

That man was Andrews Tagoe, deputy general secretary of the General Agricultural Workers’ Union of TUC. He is also a regional coordinator for Africa of the Global March Against Child Labour.

Tagoe had been working in the village, advocating against child labour, speaking to parents and educating them about the importance of sending their children to school rather than to work.

“I met the parents in the village and the fishermen and was talking about decent work and the fishing process and normal union issues,” Tagoe said.

He said most parents wanted their children to become lawyers and doctors, yet they were out on the beach working during school hours.

“So, I got up and went and looked at the beach during school time at around 10 am and found the beach full of children involved in activities, carrying fish, and I looked to the left, and there were classrooms and teachers without children,” Tagoe said.

Tagoe then made it his mission to reach out to the working children, like Salifu and began meeting with them and chatting about their lives, hopes and dreams.

“The parents also said that we didn’t know the unions work with child labour. So, let’s see what we can do to start a child labour free zone. There has been an enormous reduction in child labour, and more kids are now going to school,” he said.

“Since 2000 to date, the union has helped more than 4500 children in the whole of the agricultural sector, from rice, cocoa and palm oil to lake fishing,” Tagoe said.

A report by NORC at the University of Chicago has claimed that there are almost 1,6 million children involved in child labour in the cocoa industry alone in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

NORC conducted surveys with children aged between 15 and 17 between 2008 and 2019, showing cocoa production rose by 62%.

However, the report acknowledged that the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana had implemented education reforms, such as free education and compulsory attendance to fight child labour. This led to children’s school attendance from agricultural households increasing from 58 to 80 percent in Côte d’Ivoire and 89 to 96 percent in Ghana.

Salifu said Tagoe’s team – she fondly refers to him as “daddy’ – assisted her in remaining in school to follow her dream.

“I thought my prayers had been answered. They came to take responsibility for my school (work), purchasing my textbooks, and I was able to write basic education exams,” Salifu said.

She went to school in the mornings and continued working afternoons to support her family.

Salifu completed her Basic Education Certificate and then worked for six months buying fish and selling it in nearby towns to raise money for Senior High School.

“Again, GAWU supported me by paying for some of my fees. I finished senior high at the age of 19 in 2016. I’ve always dreamed of being the greatest teacher in the world and owning my own institution, and working with children,” Salifu said.

Her dream was partially realised when she got a job working at a local school before moving to Accra, where she studied at a Montessori teacher’s training institution. She obtained her National Diploma in Montessori Training and took up a position at Tender Sprout International School in Accra.

“Where I am working, the children come from good homes and are even dropped off at school. But I want to go back to my community and help my brothers and sisters in the village and nearby communities and islands to help liberate them from child labour,” Salifu said.

“I still want to build on my dream to help the orphans and get the children back home. My mom is very aged now too, so I need to support my other siblings and my mother at home. There is no money at home, so they look up to me. I need to go back to university to get a degree in early childhood education.”

“God has saved me now because some mates my age ended up dropping out, and some had teenage pregnancies and STDs. I am very, very lucky,” Salifu said.

Salifu hopes telling her story will be a voice to help those still trapped in child labour escape.

“I think our voices should be heard here so we can go back and launch a project with our brothers and sisters so we can help them. That is my motive for being here. The dream must be achieved,” Salifu said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

This is one of a series of stories IPS published about the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

 

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Women attend an event on solutions for implementing gender-responsive climate action at the United Nations in 2019. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown.

By Juliet Morrison
Toronto, May 27 2022 (IPS)

While the climate crisis affects virtually every aspect of life, its impacts are not felt equally.

A person’s vulnerability to climate change varies depending on their position in society, such as socioeconomic status, dependence on natural resources, and capacity to respond to natural hazards. Since different genders often experience different social standings, gender has emerged as a key element to consider for effective climate planning and adaptation.

Angie Dazé, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion lead at the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD), says social norms linked to gender in their communities and households influence people’s different roles.

“Gender influences how people experience the impacts of climate change, and it also influences their capacity to respond,” Dazé told IPS in an interview. “Because people play different roles, they’re differently impacted by the same effects of climate change.”

While climate change experiences are context-specific and varied, a growing body of research suggests that women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The higher poverty level and lower socioeconomic power make recovery from natural disasters more difficult for women. UN figures also show that women and girls make up 80 percent of those displaced by climate change.

“Gender inequalities create barriers that can exacerbate people’s vulnerability to climate change. And this most often affects women and girls,” Dazé said.

Because social groups experience climate change differently, gender has become more central to the United Nations (UN) climate process and the international discourse around climate action.

Target 13.b of the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on climate action recognizes the gender-environment nexus. It states that focusing on women is key for increasing climate change planning and management capacity.

Key frameworks encouraging the integration of gender considerations for climate action, such as the enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender and its Gender Action Plan, have also been established at recent UN Climate Change Conferences. Agreed upon at COP 25 in 2019, these frameworks promote gender mainstreaming for the parties and the integration of gender considerations throughout the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) work and processes.

Still, gender representation remains limited in climate decision-making spaces, and considerations of gender in national policy are inconsistent.

Despite men being just over half of the registered government delegates at UNFCCC plenary meetings from May to June 2021, according to a UNFCCC analysis, they spoke for 74 percent of the time. Attendance at COP gender-related events is also low.

On the national level, only 15 percent of environmental ministries are headed by women, and only a third of national energy frameworks contain considerations of gender. A study from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) of 89 nationally determined contributions revealed that nearly a quarter have no references to gender.

Pointing to the harm of gender-blind approaches to climate policy, Christina Kwauk, a gender, education, and climate change specialist, told IPS, “the policies that we create could have unintended consequences that perpetuate structures of discrimination or inequality, or gender norms and harmful gender-based practices.

“Current policies or solutions or actions could exacerbate time poverty for women or exclude access to women. Maybe women might not have as much access to these different solutions because of existing gender norms.”

Kwauk credits the progress toward gender mainstreaming as significant but believes it has not reached the pace needed to see a significant impact.

Current gender-responsive climate policies, Kwauk explained, “are all pointing in the right direction. But the underlying systems of inequality and the underlying structures of inequality remain. And as long as those issues are still there, the policy, the discourse, these are good moves in the right direction, but they’re not enough. They’re not changing actual lived experiences […] the social norms, and the social barriers to participation.”

As an eco-feminist and climate change activist working on land access for women, Adenike Oladosu is familiar with the intersections of gender and the environment. In an interview with IPS, she stressed the need for countries to integrate gender throughout various sectors better and—pointing to her home country of Nigeria—the need for governments to legalize and implement their gender action plan throughout all sectors.

Oladosu believes that this action is paramount to improving the representation of women in global fora.

“When we see that gender is important in different sectors, it improves the representation of women in conferences because we are able to execute every action we take in a gender-sensitive manner,” Oladosu said. “It all has to start from individual countries, trying to improve gender sensitivity in their barriers, or trying to integrate gender-sensitive approaches in their various sectors.”

Empowering women can also help create new solutions to mitigate the climate crisis. Drawing upon her advocacy work, Oladosu emphasized that tapping into women’s indigenous knowledge as caretakers of the land and facilitating land access for women leads to new solutions for mitigating the climate crisis.

UN data shows that when women are provided with the same resources as men, they can increase agricultural yields by 20-30%, reducing hunger.

Overall, gender is key to consider—and women are paramount to involve—for a just and equitable fight against climate change.

“Women make up half of the population of the world,” Oladosu said. “So, if you take them away or leave them behind in solving the defining issue of our time, it definitely is going to affect the solutions that are brought up, or by now, we would have achieved climate justice.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Community members in Sowripalayam, outside Coimbatore, receive a meal from No Food Waste, a GFN-supported food bank in India. Credit: The Global Food Banking Network/Narayana Swamy Subbaraman

By Lisa Moon
CHICAGO, USA, May 27 2022 (IPS)

For months, the specter of a global hunger crisis has been looming. The war in Ukraine is a compounding factor, blocking key value chains for food and fertilizer just as the world reckons with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on global hunger.

Add the pervasive effects of climate change to the mix, and the result is what the United Nations is calling a “perfect storm” that risks one-fifth of the global population – as many as 1.7 billion people – falling into poverty and hunger.

This number feels so large that it is almost inconceivable, never mind possible to accept. And of course, the mounting global food crisis will not affect everyone equally.

Recent feedback from food bank leaders all over the world already echoes the reality ahead. Because food banks, especially across emerging and developing markets, are the first (or sometimes only) port-of-call for those facing hunger, they offer a window into understanding the full extent of the coming food crisis: an early warning system of the strains on our food systems.

Daily wage workers stand in line to receive a meal prepared by No Food Waste, a GFN-supported food bank in India. Credit: No Food Waste

The Global Food Banking Network works with member food banks in 44 countries, and many of them in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are already reporting that higher food prices are contributing to an increase in demand for emergency food assistance.

For example, a partner food bank in Ecuador, Banco de Alimentos Quito, has reported a 50 percent increase in demand for services, while another partner, India Food Banking Network, has warned the number of people requesting food has doubled recently.

If more is not done – and done quickly – these numbers will be just the tip of the iceberg. Tragically, as while demand at many food banks is increasing, supplies donated to food banks are often diminishing.

These food banks in Ecuador and India—and others across the Network—are reporting decreases in product donations of up to 50 percent. Banco de Alimentos Quito and Banco de Alimentos Honduras, both of which regularly recover fresh produce directly from farmers to distribute to people facing hunger, are flagging that planting schedules have been thrown off because farmers cannot get key inputs.

In short, less produce is available to donate because of the rise in need and smaller, less reliable yields.

A volunteer organizes food donations in Banco de Alimentos Quito’s warehouse in Ecuador. Credit: The Global Food Banking Network/Ana María Buitron

With the recent World Economic Forum in Davos and the G7 Summit, there are already calls on governments and business leaders to invest more in hunger relief and food aid. This is a crucial first step, but investment will only be as effective as the implementation mechanisms in place to deliver them.

This is also where food banks can step in effectively and immediately. Because food banks address community food needs even in less precarious times, they are already well positioned to respond to crises by scaling up in times of scarcity and distributing food when conventional supply chains are undermined.

The COVID-19 pandemic is already a case in point, with global food banks serving 40 million people in 2020, a 132 percent increase from the prior year. And because food banks are community-based and community-led, they can understand and adapt to local needs quite quickly, acting as frontline responders when a crisis hits.

Responses to the global hunger crisis must include recognition for the critical role food banks play. They will step up and play a crucial role in meeting the sharp increase in demand for food relief in the coming months.

However, if the global community steps forward and supports the value of these assets further, food banks’ impact can become outsized. And an outsized response is exactly what this coming crisis will require.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is President and CEO, The Global Food Banking Network

Around 4000 high school students walked out of school and marched to the Minnesota capitol to demand that legislators make changes to gun control laws. 2018-03-07 This is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution to: Fibonacci Blue

By External Source
May 26 2022 (IPS)

When the Columbine High School massacre took place in 1999 it was seen as a watershed moment in the United States – the worst mass shooting at a school in the country’s history. Now, it ranks fourth.

The three school shootings to surpass its death toll of 13 – 12 students, one teacher – have all taken place within the last decade: 2012’s Sandy Hook Elementary attack, in which a gunman killed 26 children and school staff; the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which claimed the lives of 17 people; and now the Robb Elementary School assault in Uvalde, Texas, where on May 24, 2022, at least 19 children and two adults were murdered.

We are criminologists who study the life histories of public mass shooters in the U.S. As part of that research, we built a comprehensive database of mass public shootings using public data, with the shooters coded on over 200 different variables, including location and racial profile. For the purposes of our database, mass public shootings are defined as incidents in which four or more victims are murdered with at least one of those homicides taking place in a public location and with no connection to underlying criminal activity, such as gangs or drugs.

 

Our database shows that since 1966, when our database timeline begins, there have been 13 such shootings at schools across the U.S – the first in Stockton, California, in 1989.

Four of those shootings – including the one at Robb Elementary School – involved a killing at another location, always a family member at a residence. The most recent perpetrator shot his grandmother prior to going to the school in Uvalde.

The majority of mass school shootings were carried out by a lone gunman, with just two – Columbine and the 1998 shooting at Westside School in Jonesboro, Arkansas – carried out by two gunmen. In all, some 146 people were killed in the attacks and at least 182 victims injured.

The choice of “gunmen” to describe the perpetrators is accurate – all of the mass school shootings in our database were carried out by men or boys. And the average age of those involved in carrying out the attacks was 18.

This fits with the picture that has emerged of the shooter in the Robb Elementary School attack. He turned 18 just days ago and reportedly purchased two military-style weapons. It is believed that the shooter used one miltary-style weapon in the attack, authorities said May 25, 2022.

Police have yet to release key information on the shooter, including what motivated him to kill the children and adults at Robb Elementary School. The picture of the shooter that has emerged conforms to the profile we have built up from past perpetrators in some ways, but diverges in others.

We know that most school shooters have a connection to the school they target. Twelve of the 14 school shooters in our database prior to the most recent attack in Texas were either current or former students of the school. Any prior connection between the latest shooter and Robb Elementary School has not been released to the public.

Our research and dozens of interviews with incarcerated perpetrators of mass shootings suggests that for most perpetrators, the mass shooting event is intended to be a final act. The majority of school mass shooters die in the attack. Of the 15 mass school shooters in our database, just seven were apprehended. The rest died on the scene, nearly all by suicide – the lone exception being the Robb Elementary shooter, who was shot dead by police.

And school shooters tend to preempt their attacks by leaving posts, messages or videos warning of their intent.

Inspired by past school shooters, some perpetrators are seeking fame and notoriety. However, most school shooters are motivated by a generalized anger. Their path to violence involves self-hate and despair turned outward at the world, and our research finds they often communicate their intent to do harm in advance as a final, desperate cry for help. The key to stopping these tragedies is for society to be alert to these warning signs and act on them immediately.

James Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University and Jillian Peterson, Professor of Criminal Justice, Hamline University

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

Samuel Sasu Adonteng’s voice was one of many young voices heard during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour. He believes the inclusion of the youth means there are better chances that the campaign to end the scourge will succeed. Credit: Fawzia Moodley/IPS

By Fawzia Moodley
Durban, May 26 2022 (IPS)

Samuel Sasu Adonteng, programme officer for the All-Africa Students Union (AASU), believes that the recent 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour has taken us closer to ending child labour for the first time because the voices of those affected were heard.

The week-long conference had a strong contingent of child labourers and former children in bondage who spoke out about their horrific experiences and made input on the actions that must be taken to end the practice.

The six-day conference held in Durban, South Africa, concluded with the Durban Call To Action On The Elimination of Child Labour, a blueprint for accelerating the fight at a time when, despite efforts by the ILO and its partners, the number of children in bondage has ballooned to 164 million.

Adonteng played a crucial role in galvanising the child labourers and survivors of child labour from Africa to attend the conference to raise their voices on the international platform.

The 26-year-old Ghanian says that he could easily have become a child labourer.

“I come from a small community in the Greater Accra region where quite a lot of children work and hawk on the streets. At some point in my life, I also had to sell water on the streets. I also had to sell car spare parts. I’d carry them about a kilometre to suppliers or people who wanted to buy them.”

Luckily for Adonteng, he came from a family that’s very invested in education.

“They believed in the power of education and how it can help children achieve the kind of future they want.

His mother passed away when Adonteng was very young, so he was brought up by his aunt, who, he says, “was so much bent on my education, even if it meant that at some point she had to beg from other people to pay for my school fees.

“So, I was able to go to senior high school and university to get my first degree. Currently, I am pursuing my Master’s degree in Total Quality Management. Hopefully, I’ll get a second Master’s degree in International Relations and Development.

He says many parents in Ghana understand the value of education and “are even willing to sell their belongings to ensure that their children go to school.”

“Parents and other family members play a critical role in ensuring that children have access to education. Some parents send their children out to fishing villages and even farms to work rather than send them to school.”

During the Children’s Forum at the conference, there was a strong call for an awareness campaign for parents to understand the importance of educating their children.

He echoed the call by the survivors of child labour on countries to provide “free, high-quality education and social security networks such as school feeding programmes.”

Adonteng attributes his detour into social activism to “seeing how education can be a powerful tool to turn around the lives of anybody, and how if we don’t take certain actions, we will lose an entire generation to child labour.

He says AASU, which works with the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations in Ghana, supports a dual approach of child support and institutional support to end child labour. This, he says, resonates with the call by the survivors of child labour at the conference.

“The AASU first partnered with the 100 million Campaign to end child labour in 2018. Our first initiative was an enrolment programme, and through that, our understanding was that we would ensure that every child of school-going age who is not in school is put back into school.”

In the lead up to the Durban child labour conference, the AASU organised the Africa regional virtual march to send a message to grassroots communities that child labour was not the road to success.

“Keeping children in school gives them a higher chance of becoming better people and contributes to national, continental and global development,” says Adonteng.

Governments alone cannot end child labour, he says, “it needs collective effort; if everybody has that one mindset that children should not be working, then we will succeed.”

Adonteng attributes his participation in the conference as a facilitator and speaker to his involvement in the 100 million Campaign and the Global March Against Child Labour through the AASU.

He says the inclusion of children at the conference, several of whom were rescued by the Kailash Satyarthi Foundation, is a significant breakthrough and will help accelerate the fight’s pace, which has failed to bring down the number of children in child labour.

Adonteng says that the conference organisers have taken on board the issues raised by the youth participants in formulating the Durban declaration.

“I think the thoughts of the children have been valued. So, what’s left is for those key stakeholders who have the power, the political will and funding to do what needs to be done. So, if they do care about children, now is the time to make the right funding and policies available.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

This is one of a series of stories that IPS published about the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

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It is estimated that more than one third of the European Union will be under “high water stress” by the 2070. Credit: Bigstock

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 26 2022 (IPS)

So busy as they are with strengthening military alliances and devoting billions of taxpayers’ money to double their war budgets and subsidise fossil fuels, European Governments seem not to care about the reiterated alerts that their continent faces a serious risk: the reduced availability -and more polluted– drinking water.

Two specialised bodies –the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and the European branch of the World Health Organization (WHO)– have warned that plans to make water access possible in the face of climate pressures “are absent” in the pan-European region.

And “in most cases” throughout the region there has also been a lack of coordination on drinking water, sanitation and health during the Thirteenth meeting of the Working Group on Water and Health held on 19-20 May 2022 in Geneva.

 

Water-related disease

From insufficient drinking water supply to contamination by sewage overflow and disease outbreaks from improper wastewater treatment, existing risks from climate change to water, sanitation and hygiene in the pan-European region are set to increase significantly, UNECE/WHO-Europe warned.

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) reports that other estimates are even more pessimistic, with up to four billion people – over half the population of the planet – already facing severe water stress for at least one month of the year while half a billion suffer from permanent water stress

On this, a previous report: Drugged Water: A New Global Pandemic Hiding in Plain Sight? informs that people around the world are unknowingly being exposed to water laced with antibiotics, which could spark the rise of drug-resistant pathogens and potentially fuel another global pandemic.

A study elaborated by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), found that, globally, not enough attention is being focused on the threat posed by antimicrobial resistance with most antibiotics being excreted into the environment via toilets or through open defecation.

While 80 percent of wastewater in the world is not treated, even in developed countries treatment facilities are often unable to filter out dangerous bugs.

Already in 2015, 34.8 billion daily doses of antibiotics were consumed, with up to 90 percent of them excreted into the environment as active substances. Since then the amount of daily consumed antibiotics has been increasing considerably.

 

Dangers are real

“Climate change is already posing serious challenges to water and sanitation systems in countries around the world,” said Thomas Croll-Knight, spokesperson for the UN Economic Commission for Europe.

“From reduced water availability and contamination of water supplies to damage to sewerage infrastructure, these risks are set to increase significantly unless countries step up measures to increase resilience now,” warned Thomas Croll-Knight.

It is estimated that more than one third of the European Union will be under “high water stress” by the 2070s, by which time the number of additional people affected (compared to 2007) is expected to surge to 16–44 million.

 

Bad news

Meanwhile, as governments prepare for the next UN climate conference (COP 27) in November 2022 in Egypt and the UN 2023 Water Conference, UNECE painted a potentially grim picture moving forward in parts of Europe.

“From water supply and sewerage infrastructure damage to water quality degradation and sewage spillage, impacts are already being felt.”

For example, increased energy demand and disruption to treatment plants in Hungary are threatening significant additional operational costs for wastewater treatment.

And challenges in ensuring adequate water supply in the Netherlands have increased, while Spain struggles to maintain a minimum drinking water supply during drought periods.

 

Huge risk of water shortage

But if the Governments of wealthy and industrially and technologically advanced Europe are not dedicating enough attention to the looming drinking water shortage, imagine the case of the overwhelming majority of developing regions.

In fact, it is estimated that, globally, over two billion people live in countries that experience high water stress.

 

Four billion people facing severe water stress

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) reports that other estimates are even more pessimistic, with up to four billion people – over half the population of the planet – already facing severe water stress for at least one month of the year while half a billion suffer from permanent water stress.”

The situation has been worsening as more than half the global population will be at risk by 2050, due to stress on the world’s water resources.

 

700 million of people displaced…

“Desertification alone threatens the livelihoods of nearly one billion people in 100 countries. Intense water scarcity may displace as many as 700 million people by 2030,” said Munir Akram, president of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) during a UN meeting held already over a year ago.

On that occasion, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, told the meeting the current rate of progress would have to quadruple to meet the 2030 deadline.

“Moreover, the planetary crisis, including the interlinked threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, will increase water scarcity”, she added.

 

… and 600 million children impacted

“By 2040, one in four of the world’s children under 18 – some 600 million – will be living in areas of extremely high-water stress.”

The UN estimates more than two billion people worldwide still do not have access to safely managed drinking water, while 4.2 billion lack safely managed sanitation.

Meanwhile, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) during the same meeting reported that one in five children worldwide do not have enough water to meet their daily needs.

“The world’s water crisis is not simply coming, it is here, and climate change will only make it worse”, said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

“Children are the biggest victims. When wells dry up, children are the ones missing school to fetch water. When droughts diminish food supplies, children suffer from malnutrition and stunting. When floods hit, children fall ill from waterborne illnesses…”

 

Africa, Asia, Middle East…

A UNICEF report found that Eastern and Southern Africa have the highest incidence of children living in “water poverty”, with nearly 60 percent facing difficulty in accessing water every day.

Meanwhile, humanitarian organisations continue to call for scaling up assistance in the Horn of Africa, where the worst drought in 40 years is affecting some 15 million people across Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

The drought follows four consecutive failed rainy seasons, and the fear is the number could jump to 20 million if the current below-average rains fail.

UNICEF informes that South Asia is home to the largest number of children living in areas of high or extremely high vulnerability, or more than 155 million.

Meanwhile, the Middle East and North Africa is reported to be the most water-scarce region in the world, as it is home to 15 out of the 20 of the world’s most water-scarce countries.

What’s wrong with the world’s Governments?

The flag of the Republic of Angola (centre) flying at United Nations Headquarters in New York. Credit: Africa Renewal, United Nations

By Kingsley Ighobor
UNITED NATIONS, May 26 2022 (IPS)

Ambassador Maria de Jesus dos Reis Ferreira was appointed in February 2018 as the Permanent Representative of Angola to the UN, the first woman to hold the position.

Among other issues, she has focused on peace and security in Africa and has echoed her country’s strong support for universal vaccination of the global population.

In this interview with Africa Renewal’s Kingsley Ighobor, Ambassador Ferreira discusses women’s empowerment, free trade and what the continent can expect from the UN conference on climate (COP 27) that will be held in Egypt later this year.

Excerpts from the interview:

Q: What has been your journey to this role as the Permanent Representative of Angola to the UN?

My journey has been a long one, I can take hours talking about it. I started in the army and years later I shifted to diplomacy, which has been quite an interesting and challenging journey.

I have worked as a diplomat since 1980. Before my current role, I worked as an Ambassador in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Slovakia with residence in Vienna, where I was the Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

I am the first woman to serve in this post since Angola became a UN Member State 46 years ago.

Q: Congratulations! What are your top three achievements so far?

Talking about achievements, with regards to peace and security, it is important to note that as part of Angola´s leadership of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) for the second time, our President João Lourenço, in his capacity as Chair, briefed the UN Security Council in June 2021 at a meeting dedicated to the situation in the Central Africa Republic. He called for an end to the arms embargo imposed on the country.

Ambassador Maria de Jesus dos Reis Ferreira

In addition, Angola continues to contribute and support a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Also in 2021, Angola presented for the first time its National Voluntary Review at the High-Level Political Forum on the implementation of the 2030 Development Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Another great achievement was that the UN General Assembly, through a resolution in February 2021, granted Angola three additional years [until 2024] to prepare for a smooth transition from the Least Developed Country category to a Middle-Income Country. That was after intense negotiations.

I must mention that Angola is, for the second time, a member of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) for the triennium 2022-2024. The Committee is tasked primarily with examining the programme budget of the United Nations.

Q: What are your priorities for 2022?

Our main priority for this year is to continue to focus on peace and security with particular emphasis on Africa, specifically our sub-region.

We will also continue to pay attention to programmes that foster humanitarian assistance to vulnerable groups, including women and children, environmental protection and sustainable development.

Q: “The role of women in diplomacy is key to reforming the male-dominated nature of international relations,” Ambassador Ferreira

There are only a few African women Permanent Representatives to the UN in New York. What needs to be done to increase that number?

The role of women in diplomacy is key to reforming the male-dominated nature of international relations. Women’s participation in peace and security mechanisms is necessary to deviate from the patriarchal norm of men being decision-makers while women remain in the background.

However, each country has its own national strategy. It is not just a matter of increasing the number of women PRs in New York or in any other position, it is also that women merit it.

In Angola, slowly but surely, positive steps have been taken toward the inclusion of more women in all sectors, including diplomacy. Since President João Lourenço assumed office in 2017, there has been a steady increase in the number of women Heads of Missions. Currently, 14 women lead Diplomatic Missions and three are Permanent Representatives. I am in New York and one each in the UN office in Geneva and at UNESCO in Paris. There is still a gap in terms of gender balance because we have 40 men in the Missions, but we are moving in the right direction.

Q: Why is women’s empowerment important in Africa?

Empowering women in Africa will promote their sense of self-worth, ability to determine their own choices and their right to influence social change in society. Gender equality is achieved when men and women enjoy the same socio-economic rights and opportunities and have equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes.

Women account for about 50 per cent of Africa’s population, but they remain underrepresented in decision-making.

Latest statistics show that women occupy about 24 per cent of parliamentary seats in Africa, significantly close to the global average of 25 per cent. Unfortunately, the sub-regions of Southern Africa with 31 per cent and East Africa with 32.4 per cent largely account for women’s representation in parliament in Africa. The other three sub-regions are way behind.

Of course, the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action has a target of at least 30 per cent while the African Union Agenda 2063 sets a goal of 50 per cent women’s representation.

Q: “Climate change poses systemic risks to our economies, infrastructure investments, water and food systems, public health, agriculture, and livelihoods, which collectively threaten to undo Africa’s development gains,” Ambassador Ferreira

Angola has been at the forefront of the call for universal COVID-19 vaccination. What more needs to be done to achieve success in this area?

Angola, like many developing countries, has been calling for universal vaccination against COVID-19 so that no one is left behind.

In his speech at the at the UN General Assembly in September 2021, President Lourenço called for the waiving of Intellectual Property rights to make it possible for many countries to manufacture vaccines so that they become available to everyone.

Last February, at the High-Level Meeting on Universal Access to COVID-19 Vaccines, our President again urged the richest nations to donate $5 billion through COVAX for urgent purchase of about 600 million vaccines, and to supportthe implementation of national vaccination campaigns.

The pandemic has a global dimension and therefore requires a global response. Its impact has accentuated the interdependence among nations. For this reason, we continue to advocate for the waiver of IP rights to enhance production, distribution and equitable access.

I am happy that Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia have been selected to receive the technology required to produce mRNA vaccines on the continent, as part of WHO’s effort to replicate what are believed to be the most effective licensed shots against COVID-19.

The world must come together in this fight against COVID-19. Access to vaccines, tests and treatments for everyone who needs them is the only way out.

Q: We’re now in the second year of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). What are your views regarding how African women can benefit from free trade?

There is no doubt that women are key stakeholders in the development of the African economy. First and foremost, women constitute 70 per cent of informal traders, which is why the AfCFTA recognizes the importance of gender in intra-African trade.

But we must take further steps. For example, we must promote policies that close the gender gap. In considering the potential impact of AfCFTA on Africans, let’s consider the question of whether such an impact will help address gender inequality.

The good news is that, according to the World Bank, AfCFTA could potentially lift 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty and increase the incomes of 68 million others who live on less than $5.50 a day. And we have a combined market of 1.3 billion people from which women traders can benefit immensely.

In addition, the AfCFTA can boost women’s roles in jobs across different sectors, for example the agricultural sector.Expanded export markets present huge opportunities for women.

Remember also that increased industrialization and diversification can benefit women in manufacturing industries because it will make higher-skilled and better-paying jobs more available and accessible to them. Significantly, women entrepreneurs, including those in SMEs, will reap rewards from regional value chains.

Q: “A better deal for Africa will mean climate justice for a continent that accounts for only three per cent of cumulative global CO2 emissions but bears the brunt of its effects,” Ambassador Ferreira

Egypt will host COP27 later this year. What does Angola at large want to see come out of it?

First, I would like to congratulate Egypt for being the host of COP27.

Angola considers climate change to be one of the greatest challenges facing humanity due to its direct and indirect effects on the economic and social life of nations. Climate change poses systemic risks to our economies, infrastructure investments, water and food systems, public health, agriculture, and livelihoods, which collectively threaten to undo Africa’s development gains.

Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change impacts under all climate scenarios above 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Currently, Angola’s national energy matrix incorporates 62 per cent of non-polluting sources of energy, and we are aiming to reach 70 per cent in 2025. We have clearly defined our concrete contribution to a reduction of carbon in electricity production until 2025. We are also taking complementary actions in the sustainable management of forests, transport and agriculture.

A better deal for Africa will mean climate justice for a continent that accounts for only three per cent of cumulative global CO2 emissions but bears the brunt of its effects. Yet, less developed countries are under increasing pressure to adopt low-carbon development and transition their economies to net-zero by 2050.

In my view, COP27 presents a unique opportunity for Africa to lead the climate conversation and negotiate better climate deals for the continent.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Wars and conflicts have pushed more than 139 million people in 24 countries into acute food insecurity. Credit: FAO

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, May 25 2022 (IPS)

If the war in Ukraine, that was initiated three months ago, does not end, and without a reduction in the growing number of conflicts in other parts of the world, hunger will only continue to increase.

As rarely seen in recent history, issues related to agrifood systems and world food security are at the centre of global and regional debates and actions in the search of possible solutions to prevent the rapid worsening of world hunger as a result of war and other conflicts.

It also seeks to accelerate efforts to transform agrifood systems, to ensure inclusive and environmentally sound development and better nutrition.

Wars and conflicts have pushed more than 139 million people in 24 countries into acute food insecurity; extreme weather events have been responsible for extreme hunger for another 23 million people in eight countries, while economic shocks have enormously affected 30 million people in 21 countries

“Peace is essential to protect people from hunger,” FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu has repeatedly said at major world forums.

Ukraine is obviously the country most affected by the war because of the human suffering and the destruction of food supply and value chains.

However, the consequences of this conflict are also being felt by low-income and food-importing countries that depend on Russia and Ukraine for food, grain, fuel and fertilizer supplies, especially in Africa and Asia, as they face an unprecedented rise in food prices.

At the end of March, just over a month after the start of the war, on 24 February, food products increased by 12.6%, the highest increase since 1990, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

At the end of April, prices fell slightly; however, the prospects for the coming months are far from encouraging.

According to a recent study by FAO, World Food Programme (WFP), and other institutions, around 193 million people in 53 countries were already suffering from acute food insecurity and in need of very urgent assistance in 2021, almost 40 million more than in 2020.

It is expected that the figures will continue to increase in 2022 if wars and conflicts continue.

Afghanistan alone represents approximately 20 million people in this situation, half of its population, with very high figures also in Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

Wars and conflicts have pushed more than 139 million people in 24 countries into acute food insecurity; extreme weather events have been responsible for extreme hunger for another 23 million people in eight countries, while economic shocks have enormously affected 30 million people in 21 countries.

These data demonstrate the increasingly close relationship between conflicts, climate change, economic and financial crises, as well as energy and health problems, with the fight against hunger.

All this in a context already worsened by the effects of COVID-19 in recent years, which further aggravated the situation of people who numbered more than 800 million at the beginning of the pandemic. The effects of COVID-19 increased that figure by an additional 100 million, not to mention the problems of malnutrition that affect more than 3 billion people.

The war increased prices, especially of wheat, corn and oilseeds as well as fertilizers. These increases come on top of already high increases in the worst period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wheat export forecasts for Russia and Ukraine have been revised downwards, and while other players such as India and the European Union have increased their offers, solutions remain very limited, and prices are expected to remain high.

Countries likely to be most affected by their dependence on wheat imports from European countries at war include Egypt and Turkey, as well as several African countries such as Congo, Eritrea, Madagascar, Namibia, Somalia and Tanzania.

In addition, some countries that rely heavily on imported fertilizers from Russia are exporters of grains and high-value commodities such as Argentina, Bangladesh and Brazil.

To face this difficult reality for a group close to 60 countries, FAO is proposing at major international forums, such as the Group of Seven (G7) meeting in Stuttgart, Germany, this month, the creation of a global Food Financing Fund.

This Fund would be designed to help the most affected countries cope with rising food prices and thus contribute to alleviating the situation of 1.8 billion people.

To guarantee greater market transparency, this specialized agency of the United Nations, together with the countries of the Group of 20 (G20), is promoting the strengthening and expansion of the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS).

It is an inter-agency platform designed to improve the transparency of food markets, established in 2011 by the world’s most powerful countries following the global food price increases of 2007-2008 and 2010.

At the same time, the aim is to support Ukrainian rural families with rapid action to enable them to cultivate crops in time for the harvest that begins in the coming months, which represents an essential source of income for the country’s 12 million rural inhabitants, almost a third of its population.

This involves, for example, distributing potato-planting inputs for to thousands of Ukrainian producers in at least 10 provinces and making targeted economic transfers.

Addressing these dramatically growing emergencies, investing in the healthier, more nutritious and equitable agrifood systems, applying science and innovation more intensely to these processes, and reducing food losses can solve the food situation of hundreds of millions of people.

“Time is short and the situation is dire,” warned Qu at the United Nations Security Council on 19 May.

Excerpt:

This is an op-ed by Mario Lubetkin, Assistant Director-General at FAO

An ultraconservative group in Poland has begun checking with hospitals to find out if Ukrainian refugees are being offered terminations in line with the country’s strict abortion laws amid warnings refugee victims of rape are struggling to access local help and clinical services. Increasing evidence of sexual violence by Russian troops in Ukraine has emerged […]

A man photographs an apartment building that was heavily damaged during escalating conflict, in Kyiv, Ukraine. March 2022. Credit: UNICEF/Anton Skyba for The Globe and Mail

By George Pagoulatos
ATHENS, Greece, May 25 2022 (IPS)

Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has sparked a new introspection in the West. A number of commentators, most of them writing from the US and the UK, have come up with their latest scapegoat: Germany’s to blame, they say, with its decades-long policy of appeasing Russia. Really?

People love to dislike Germany. Often for good reasons. Successive Merkel administrations were hard-hearted in their management of the eurozone crisis, imposing crippling austerity on the South. They prioritised Germany’s narrow economic interests when dealing with illiberal regimes, including an aggressive Turkey.

Germany pursued a similar policy with Russia, too, weaving a tight web of economic relations. Since the turning point of 24 February, it is clear that this policy has outlived its usefulness. But the vitriol hurled at Germany has been excessive in the extreme: ‘Putin’s useful idiots’ was the verdict of a recent Politico Europe article on Germany’s leaders. The German president was prevented from visiting Kyiv after being declared persona non grata. It’s all getting rather out of hand.

Understanding the German perspective

Extreme criticism of this sort is not only about Germany and how to deal with brutal leaders like Putin. It is also about Europe’s role in the international system. And it has gone too far, for at least four reasons:

First, history.

Having acknowledged the crimes of Nazism, Germany was re-established on new foundations after 1945. No other country has made historical guilt such an integral part of its national self-consciousness.

George Pagoulatos

This led to the drawing up of a pacifist constitution, the consignment of German nationalism to the fringes, and seven-plus decades of commitment to European integration. When the Germans justify Nord Stream by citing the destruction wrought by Hitler’s Germany on Russia, or when they say they don’t want German tanks rolling into Ukraine killing Russian soldiers, there is deep historical content in it.

One could dismiss it as a thing of the past, but vacuous it isn’t, nor is it just pretext.

Second, Ostpolitik.

The Social Democrats in Germany today inherited Willy Brandt’s post-1960s doctrine of cooperation, dialogue and detente with the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. This policy, which has been adhered to by every administration since, contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and to the peaceful reunification of the two Germanies.

As a member of NATO, Germany did not cease to play an active role in the containment of the Soviet bloc. But it complemented this role with a farsighted policy of opening up to the Soviet Union. A wise policy which was vindicated.

Third, Realpolitik.

There is no doubt that its nexus of commercial transactions with Putin’s Russia has been commercially beneficial for Germany. Should anyone be surprised if a state chooses to act according to its economic interests? And indeed, the mercantilism of an export-led German economy that grows on the back of foreign trade often leads German foreign policy to forge relations with authoritarian regimes.

Nord Stream 2 did leave Germany fully dependent on Russian gas. However, the Scholz administration shut the pipeline down immediately after the invasion of Ukraine and moved forward to support all the heavy sanctions imposed, accepting the resulting economic damage.

But the key point here is this: If Europe’s main weapon for responding to Putin’s aggression is economic sanctions, it is precisely the density of the commercial relations with Russia that makes sanctions an effective lever capable of delivering real pressure.

Without these transactions, Putin would have nothing to lose – sanctions would be utterly meaningless! Economic interdependence gives Europe the power to exercise a deterrent by escalating sanctions. Even if it stands to bear a good part of the cost of them itself.

Building bridges not walls

There is nothing black and white about dealing in the long term with a militaristic authoritarian rival, one that holds nuclear weapons. It requires an ever-evolving mix of incentives and sanctions to encourage positive behaviour, discourage negative actions, and respond directly to aggression; a toolkit containing both engagement and containment to be applied in alternating doses.

The German logic of dealing with Russia is helping to maintain a balanced European foreign policy mix, which would otherwise be heavily skewed toward atavistic Cold War hawkishness.

Fourth, Europe.

Peace in post-war Europe owes much to the pragmatic restraint of its leaderships, the taming of nationalisms, the forging of mutually beneficial cooperation. The EU owes its historical success to building bridges, not walls. Of course, when things change, Europe (and Germany) change their mind, to paraphrase Keynes.

The EU cannot and must not abandon its doctrine of soft power; rather, it must complement it with hard power and defensive deterrence. But holding the European leaders who sought to engage Russia as a partner responsible for Putin’s war is worse than revisionism. It is a plain distortion of logic.

This article was originally published on ekathimerini-com

George Pagoulatos is a professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business, visiting professor at the College of Europe, and director general of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP)

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Nigerians should not be pushing against global COVID-19 vaccine inequity amid widespread looting of the national treasury. Credit: UNICEF/Nahom Tesfaye

By Ifeanyi Nsofor
ABUJA, May 24 2022 (IPS)

Nigeria’s accountant-general, the administrative head of the country’s treasury, has been arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for allegedly stealing 80 billion naira ($134 million). This is a staggering theft in a country that has an estimated poverty rate of 95 million (48% of the population) and some of the worst health indices in the world.

As a universal health coverage and global health equity advocate, I know that Nigeria’s health system would be stronger and work better by blocking these leakages and channeling the funds to provide universal health coverage for every Nigerian.

Indeed, the stealing of public funds denies millions of people healthcare, which comes with severe health consequences. These include citizens living with chronic debilitating illnesses, loss of productivity, worsening poverty and even death. In our country, about 58,000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth yearly; and 1 in 8 children do not live to witness their 5th birthday. Simply put, corruption is a matter of life and death.

These are five examples of how the missing 80 billion naira could improve the health of Nigerians if rechanneled.

First, 80 billion naira would fund President Muhammadu Buhari’s plan to provide health insurance for 83 million poor Nigerians, as part of his implementation of the new National Health Insurance Authority Act that he recently signed into law.

Further, the missing 80 billion naira is 114 times the 701 million naira budgeted for the defunct National Health Insurance Scheme in 2022. It is unsurprising that the Scheme did not achieve a national health insurance coverage of up to 5% for the past 18 years.

A mandatory health insurance program is a way to achieve universal health coverage for Nigerians because out-of-pocket spending at the point of healthcare pushes people into poverty. Isn’t it ironic that millions of Nigerians are pushed into poverty when they access healthcare and the accountant-general is alleged to have stolen 80 billion naira? This is a classic case of suffering in the midst of plenty.

Second, the stolen 80 billion naira can fund tertiary healthcare for millions of Nigerians who access care at teaching hospitals. Lagos University Teaching Hospital, University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital and Jos University teaching Hospital collectively have a budget of 78 billion naira for 2022.

Teaching hospitals do not just provide tertiary healthcare. They also provide primary and secondary healthcare services. In addition, they train medical students and other health professionals. They are also training institutions for doctors specialising to become consultants.

Third, the stolen 80 billion naira is 13 times the 6 billion naira collectively budgeted for National Obstetric Fistula Centres at Abakaliki, Bauchi and Katsina states in 2022. The World Health Organization describes obstetric fistula as an abnormal opening between a woman’s genital tract and her urinary tract or rectum.

It is caused by long obstructed labor and affects more than 2 million young women globally. The abnormal opening leads to leakage of urine and/or faeces from the vagina. Obstetric fistulas destroy the dignity of women. Victims are ostracized, stigmatized and lose economic power. It said that you smell victims before you see them.

That is the huge burden that victims carry. In Nigeria, prevalence of obstetric fistula is 3.2 per 1000 births. There are 13,000 new cases yearly. A review of obstetric fistula in Nigeria showed that the backlog of cases could take 83 years to clear.

In contrast, the stolen 80 billion naira would shorten the time it takes to clear this backlog. I know from my experience as a grantmaker. In 2012, I led the community health initiatives at the TY Danjuma Foundation. A one-year grant of 11 million naira awarded to a grantee in Kano state, northwest Nigeria provided surgical repairs of obstetric fistulas; training of health workers on repair and care of patients; economic empowerment of patients; and advocacy to communities to discourage early marriage and encourage health-facility-based deliveries.

Fourth, the missing 80 billion naira if allocated to the National Primary health Care Development Agency would improve COVID-19 vaccines procurement, distribution and administration in Nigeria. Indeed, that amount is more than 3 times the 24 billion naira budgeted for the NPHCDA in 2022.

So far, Nigeria is mostly depending on the generosity of vaccines donated by rich countries such as the U.S. through the COVAX facility. This is not sustainable. Recent news out of South Africa reveals that Aspen Pharmacare could shut down production of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine because African countries are not placing orders as expected.

At a cost of $7.50 per dose of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, $134 million would buy 18 million doses to vaccinate Nigerians and help the country achieve herd immunity as quickly as possible. Nigerians should not be pushing against global COVID-19 vaccine inequity amid widespread looting of the national treasury.

Lastly, the stolen 80 billion naira is 1.5 times the amount budgeted for the 54-billion-naira Basic Health Care Provision Fund. According to the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, the fund is to improve access to primary health care by making provision for routine costs of running primary health centres, and ensure access to health care for all, particularly the poor, by contributing to national productivity. Eighty billion naira increases the number of poor and vulnerable Nigerians who could access healthcare through the Basic Health Care Provision Fund.

Sadly, while still trying to come to terms with the allegation against the accountant-general, there is more news of fraud in Nigeria. A former Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission was arrested for allegedly stealing 47 billion naira. Also, the only female to have served as the speaker of Nigeria’s federal House of Representatives was also arrested for 130 million naira fraud.

These thefts must stop, and the funds should be put where they are most needed: funding healthcare. Without health, we have nothing.

Lucky Agbavor survived child labour in Ghana and put himself through school by selling ice cream. The Pentecostal Church pays for his tuition during his nursing studies, but he still sells juice to put food on the table. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Fawzia Moodley
Durban, May 24 2022 (IPS)

Lucky Agbavor sleeps on a mattress in a church in Accra, Ghana sells juice to earn an income, and has been a child labourer since he was four. Now he has made an impact on the international stage when he participated in the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child labour.

Agbavor’s life’s trajectory lays bare the horrors of child labour and how poverty and lack of education rob people of their childhood and the prospect of a decent future.

The link between the lack of education primarily driven by poverty as a root cause of child labour underpinned virtually every discussion at the Conference which was held in Durban, South Africa in May 2022.

Now a second-year nursing student at the Pentecost University, Agbavor never enjoyed a childhood. At four, his mother sent him off to her uncle in a remote village because she could not provide for her son. He had to help his ‘grandpa’ in his fishing enterprise.

His mother took him back home four months later, fearful for Agbavor’s life after he fell off her uncle’s canoe and almost drowned.

Two years later, he was sent to another relative, a cash crop farmer. So here was this six-year-old who had to wake up at 3 am every day to start work: “I had to collect the fresh ‘wine’ drained from the palm trees to be sent to be distilled for alcoholic extraction. I was doing this alongside household chores every morning.”

By the time Agbavor got to school, he was already exhausted. “Sometimes I was very stressed and dozed off, and often I didn’t grasp anything taught in class”.

After school, he tried to make money to pay for his fees by fetching cocoa from the farm and packing it for processing.

“Sometimes, we went to the forest to cut and load wood. We used chain saws and then carried the beams to a vehicle for transportation.”

The chopping of the trees was illegal.

“Forest guards would intercept us because it was illegal. So, they would arrest the operator, and you would not get paid even the paltry money we worked so hard for,” he says.

Agbavor often went to school in torn uniform and used one book for all his subjects.

This continued for ten years, but at least he managed to get a rudimentary education.

“Glory to God I passed my basic education in 2012 where I could continue high school, but unfortunately my ‘grandfather’ said he had no money even though I had worked for him for the past ten years,” he says.

Agbavor returned to live with his mother, whose financial situation was still dire, and he had to fend for himself.

“I started selling ice cream, coconuts, bread. I even ventured into photography with my uncle, who had a studio where he promised to give me a job and take me to high school, but after working for him for a year, he failed to keep his promise.”

Agbavor says he then went into full time ‘business’ selling ice cream on the streets to raise funds for high school. He worked long hours and had to sell lots of ice cream to earn enough money.

Lucky Agbavor addresses the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child labour. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

Unfortunately, Agbavor, who wanted to be a doctor, did not achieve the results needed to go to medical school, so he decided to do a nursing degree as a way to eventually study medicine.

The Pentecostal Church agreed to pay his fees, but he still had to find the money for food and other necessities. He now sells juice to earn an income and says he is grateful to some local benefactors who help him from time to time. But life is still far from rosy. He has no home and sleeps on a mattress in the church.

Agbavor’s presence at the conference is thanks to the National Union of Ghana Students, who felt Agbavor’s story would be an eye-opener. He was one of several child labour survivors including several saved by the Kailash Satyarthi Foundation who shared their stories..

It’s Agbavor’s first trip outside his country. Yet, his self-confidence and charisma have allowed him to hold his own at a conference attended by politicians, business people, trade unionists, and NGOs worldwide.

He attributes his ability to stand his ground to his tough upbringing.

“I have seen the worst of life. It made me strong. I am like a seed. I sprouted out of the soil. It is the same potential millions of other children (in bondage) have.”

Agbavor’s message to the conference is that while access to free education is key to liberating children in bondage, the quality of that education is equally important.

“I want to tell people that the schools that educate the children of ministers, politicians, doctors, those same schools can absorb and educate child labourers,” he says.

IPS UN Bureau Report

This is one of a series of stories that IPS published around the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, South Africa.

 

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A group of Farmacoop workers stand in the courtyard of their plant in Buenos Aires. Members of the Argentine cooperative proudly say that theirs is the first laboratory in the world to be recovered by its workers. CREDIT: Courtesy of Pedro Pérez/Tiempo Argentino.

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 24 2022 (IPS)

“All we ever wanted was to keep working. And although we have not gotten to where we would like to be, we know that we can,” says Edith Pereira, a short energetic woman, as she walks through the corridors of Farmacoop, in the south of the Argentine capital. She proudly says it is “the first pharmaceutical laboratory in the world recovered by its workers.”

Pereira began to work in what used to be the Roux Ocefa laboratory in Buenos Aires in 1983. At its height it had more than 400 employees working two nine-hour shifts, as she recalls in a conversation with IPS.

But in 2016 the laboratory fell into a crisis that first manifested itself in delays in the payment of wages and a short time later led to the owners removing the machinery, and emptying and abandoning the company.

The workers faced up to the disaster with a struggle that included taking over the plant for several months and culminated in 2019 with the creation of Farmacoop, a cooperative of more than 100 members, which today is getting the laboratory back on its feet.

In fact, during the worst period of the pandemic, Farmacoop developed rapid antigen tests to detect COVID-19, in partnership with scientists from the government’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet), the leading organization in the sector.

Farmacoop is part of a powerful movement in Argentina, as recognized by the government, which earlier this month launched the first National Registry of Recovered Companies (ReNacER), with the aim of gaining detailed knowledge of a sector that, according to official estimates, comprises more than 400 companies and some 18,000 jobs.

The presentation of the new Registry took place at an oil cooperative that processes soybeans and sunflower seeds on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, built on what was left of a company that filed for bankruptcy in 2016 and laid off its 126 workers without severance pay.

Edith Pereira (seated) and Blácida Benitez, two of the members of Farmacoop, a laboratory recovered by its workers in Buenos Aires, are seen here in the production area. This is the former Roux Ocefa laboratory, which went bankrupt in the capital of Argentina and was left owing a large amount of back wages to its workers. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The event was led by President Alberto Fernández, who said that he intends to “convince Argentina that the popular economy exists, that it is here to stay, that it is valuable and that it must be given the tools to continue growing.”

Fernández said on that occasion that the movement of worker-recuperated companies was born in the country in 2001, as a result of the brutal economic and social crisis that toppled the presidency of Fernando de la Rúa.

“One out of four Argentines was out of work, poverty had reached 60 percent and one of the difficulties was that companies were collapsing, the owners disappeared and the people working in those companies wanted to continue producing,” he said.

“That’s when the cooperatives began to emerge, so that those who were becoming unemployed could get together and continue working, sometimes in the companies abandoned by their owners, sometimes on the street,” the president added.

Two technicians package products at the Farmacoop laboratory, a cooperative with which some of the workers of the former bankrupt company undertook its recovery through self-management, a formula that is growing in Argentina in the face of company closures during successive economic crises. CREDIT: Courtesy of Farmacoop

A complex social reality

More than 20 years later, this South American country of 45 million people finds itself once again in a social situation as severe or even more so than back then.

The new century began with a decade of growth, but today Argentines have experienced more than 10 years of economic stagnation, which has left its mark.

Poverty, according to official data, stands at 37 percent of the population, in a context of 60 percent annual inflation, which is steadily undermining people’s incomes and hitting the most vulnerable especially hard.

The latest statistics from the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security indicate that 12.43 million people are formally employed, which in real terms – due to the increase of the population – is less than the 12.37 million jobs that were formally registered in January 2018.

“I would say that in Argentina we have been seeing the destruction of employment and industry for 40 years, regardless of the orientation of the governments. That is why we understand that worker-recovered companies, as a mechanism for defending jobs, will continue to exist,” says Bruno Di Mauro, the president of the Farmacoop cooperative.

“It is a form of resistance in the face of the condemnation of exclusion from the labor system that we workers suffer,” he adds to IPS.

“He who abandons gets no prize” reads the banner with which part of the members of the Farmacoop cooperative were demonstrating in the Plaza de Mayo in downtown Buenos Aires, during the long labor dispute with the former owners who drove the pharmaceutical company into bankruptcy. The workers managed to recover it in 2019. CREDIT: Courtesy of Bruno Di Mauro/Farmacoop.

Today Farmacoop has three active production lines, including Aqualane brand moisturizing cream, used for decades by Argentines for sunburn. The cooperative is currently in the cumbersome process of seeking authorizations from the health authority for other products.

“When I look back, I think that we decided to form the cooperative and recover the company without really understanding what we were getting into. It was a very difficult process, in which we had colleagues who fell into depression, who saw pre-existing illnesses worsen and who died,” Di Mauro says.

“But we learned that we workers can take charge of any company, no matter how difficult the challenge. We are not incapable just because we are part of the working class,” he adds.

Farmacoop’s workers currently receive a “social wage” paid by the State, which also provided subsidies for the purchase of machinery.

The plant, now under self-management, is a gigantic old 8,000-square-meter building with meeting rooms, laboratories and warehouse areas where about 40 people work today, but which was the workplace of several hundred workers in its heyday.

It is located between the neighborhoods of Villa Lugano and Mataderos, in an area of factories and low-income housing mixed with old housing projects, where the rigors of the successive economic crises can be felt on almost every street, with waste pickers trying to eke out a living.

Edith Pereira shows the Aqualane brand moisturizing cream, well known in Argentina, that today is produced by the workers of the Farmacoop cooperative, which has two industrial plants in Buenos Aires, recovered and managed by the workers. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“When we entered the plant in 2019, everything was destroyed. There were only cardboard and paper that we sold to earn our first pesos,” says Blácida Martínez.

She used to work in the reception and security section of the company and has found a spot in the cooperative for her 24-year-old son, who is about to graduate as a laboratory technician and works in product quality control.

A new law is needed

Silvia Ayala is the president of the Mielcitas Argentinas cooperative, which brings together 88 workers, mostly women, who run a candy and sweets factory on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, where they lost their jobs in mid-2019.

“Today we are grateful that thanks to the cooperative we can put food on our families’ tables,” she says. “There was no other option but to resist, because reinserting ourselves in the labor market is very difficult. Every time a job is offered in Argentina, you see lines of hundreds of people.”

Ayala is also one of the leaders of the National Movement of Recovered Companies, active throughout the country, which is promoting a bill in Congress to regulate employee-run companies, presented in April by the governing Frente de Todos.

“A law would be very important, because when owners abandon their companies we need the recovery to be fast, and we need the collaboration of the State; this is a reality that is here to stay,” says Ayala.

Argentine President Alberto Fernández stands with workers of the Cooperativa Aceitera La Matanza on May 5, when the government presented the Registry of Recovered Companies, which aims to formalize worker-run companies. CREDIT: Casa Rosada

The Ministry of Social Development states that the creation of the Registry is aimed at designing specific public policies and tools to strengthen the production and commercialization of the sector, as well as to formalize workers.

The government defines “recovered” companies as those economic, productive or service units that were originally privately managed and are currently run collectively by their former employees.

Although the presentation was made this month, the Registry began operating in March and has already listed 103 recovered companies, of which 64 belong to the production sector and 35 to the services sector.

The first data provide an indication of the diversity of the companies in terms of size, with the smallest having six workers and the largest 177.