Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

A picture exhibited at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour is taken from the book ‘Through their eyes – Visions of forced labour’. This picture was created by Gargalo Vasco Portugal who won an award for his depiction of child labour. Credit: ILO and RHSF, 2021.

By Lyse Comins
DURBAN, May 18 2022 (IPS)

Technology used to trace the origin and price of consumer goods to ensure farmers earn fair profits could easily be adapted as a tool to fight child labour Fair Trade living wage and income lead Isa Miralles told delegates at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour.

Miralles told a panel discussion that brought together civil society organisations to highlight their crucial role in reaching SDG 8.7 to eliminate child labour and that the organisation’s technological tool could help to raise transparency and accountability regarding child labour practices. The six-day conference takes place in Durban, South Africa, until Friday, 20 May.

The conference aimed at putting the world back on track to meet the 2025 deadline for ending child labour was opened on Sunday by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Two Nobel laureates appealed for resources to end the scourge.

Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi said he “refused to believe that the world is so poor that we cannot protect the children”. During the week high-level delegations have been looking at research, finance and innovation to ensure that children are protected from the practice.

Willy Buloso, Regional Coordinator for Africa of ECPAT International, who leads the organisation’s advocacy work against the sexual exploitation of children in the tourism and travel sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, also highlighted how his organisation’s successes could be adopted to assist in the fight against child labour.

Miralles explained how Fairtrade’s tech-centric approach to using a software tool to trace products throughout the food supply chain, such as farm sources of cocoa and fresh produce in Africa as well as spices in Indonesia, to retail level in the Northern Hemisphere, could also be used to bring transparency to the source of labour used to produced goods. The organisation co-created the tool to guide businesses to support a living wage for food producers and change the way farm trading occurs.

Child labour in Africa is a major challenge as most of the world’s 160 million children entrapped in child labour live on the continent. About 80% of the 92,2 million children trapped in child labour in Africa work in the agricultural sector, usually with their families. The practice is rife in the cocoa sector in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

Fairtrade’s traceability tool could help to create transparency and accountability around this pressing problem, Miralles said.

“We are using the technology to unlock the value of the supply chain for the people at the start of it. We provide the software to trace every action in the supply chain, log in every buyer, trace products from producer to consumer, monitor quality, and whether goods are made by women and whether they are carbon neutral. We are creating a digital passport of our products,”  Miralles said.

“I can request proof a farmer was paid a certain price, and then the buyer can load up the information of the farmer and the price paid. This mechanism is relevant because it can also work to show whether a product is child labour free. We can pass this on through the whole supply chain and create intelligence,” she said.

She said consumers could log into a website, scan a product’s bar code, and find out more about its sourcing, and the tool’s intelligence could also be shared with courts in Europe, where necessary.

“We are bringing this to the consumer, and obviously, it is quite novel,” Miralles said.

She said consumers did not necessarily have to pay a higher price for Fairtrade products. There was leverage in the supply chain to ensure farmers obtained fair prices and that most profits were not made by wealthy Northern Hemisphere retailers.

Buloso, who is working to stamp out the child sex trade that accompanies tourism and travel on the continent, said it was “a great idea” for civil society organisations, not focused on fighting child labour to share insights.

He said the problem of child sexual exploitation did not involve mainly wealthy tourists from the North travelling to Cape Town and Zanzibar, as many assumed, but rather local people engaging in exploitation.

“The state of exploitation of children in prostitution is mostly by perpetrators who are based here in Africa in our countries. Perpetrators are among us,” he said.

Buloso added that 30% of child sex exploitation victims were boys.

“Something we can transfer from our work in (advocating against) sex exploitation of children, to the fight against child labour, is the code of conduct we developed to provide tourism businesses with tools to work together to fight sex exploitation,” Buloso said.

Buloso said the code of conduct, which included six criteria, could be used by organisations fighting against child labour.

The code of conduct criteria included:

• Establish an internal tourism and travel business policy against the sexual exploitation of children.
• Businesses must educate and train their employees on preventing and reporting cases of sexual exploitation of children.
• Businesses must include a zero-tolerance clause in contracts with stakeholders and clients.
• Businesses must provide tourists with information about the sexual exploitation of children.
• All tourism and travel industry stakeholders must be supported and provided with key information about the problem.
• Businesses must report annually on how they uphold the code of conduct.

Augustina Perez, Child Rights Senior Associate at the Bank Information Centre, which partners with civil society to spotlight risks and improve the transparency, accountability, and sustainability of development finance, said the World Bank had been proactive in addressing child labour.

“We have a project in the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). We know most child labour is in agriculture, and we know that together with Ghana, the country produces 60% of the cocoa in the world,” she said.

“The government (Ivory Coast) is a little resistant to putting child labour on the agenda, but the World Bank has been very proactive and has invited BIC to join a working group. We are trying to raise all the red flags and everything crucial to the Ivory Coast like taking (checking) IDs and addressing the root causes of child labour,” she said.

She said her organisation had presented the problem to the US government.

Ghana deputy minister of employment and labour relations, Bright Wireko-Brobby, speaking during an interview with IPS on the sidelines of the conference, said his government was committed to eradicating child labour. Ghana was the first country to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 and then adopted it into its national laws.

“In Ghana, mostly the child labour issue can be found in the cocoa-growing areas and also pockets in the fishing and mining industry and the area of trade and commerce,” Wireko-Brobby said.

However, he said his government disputed a report by NORC at the University of Chicago which claimed that there were almost 1,6 million children involved in child labour in the cocoa industry in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

NORC conducted surveys with children aged between 15 and 17 between 2008 and 2019 and revealed that cocoa production had increased by 62% in both countries. 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 and that school attendance of children from agricultural households rose from 58 to 80 percent in Côte d’Ivoire and 89 to 96 percent in Ghana.

Wireko-Brobby said his country had made gains in the fight against child labour.

“In recent times, we have ensured that every child should be in school. We have provided meals, lunch and breakfast for every child in Ghana. We challenged that commissioned study because we did not believe that despite our interventions, child labour would go higher. We are now domesticating some of the indicators,” he said.

He said his government would welcome an intervention like Fairtrade’s tool to ensure cocoa production is child labour free.

“There is a focus on private sector interventions in the cocoa industry where they are trying to make sure that there is not a point in the supply chain where they can trace child labour. The collaboration between the private sector and the government is strong, and we try to bring it into the mainstream. Every child must be able to enjoy their childhood,” Wireko-Brobby said.

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

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Global gas flaring increased to 144 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2021 from 142 bcm in 2020. It is estimated that each cubic metre of associated gas flared results in about 2.8 kilograms of CO2-equivalent emissions. Credit: public domain

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 18 2022 (IPS)

While the attention of mostly Western media and politicians is quasi exclusively hoarded up by the proxy war in Ukraine and its consequences on the energy sector, the world’s big oil business continues to burn Planet Earth with its underreported though highly polluting, wasteful practice of gas flaring.

This is anything but a minor issue: in fact, as much as 144 billion cubic metres of gas was flared at upstream oil and gas facilities in just one year-2021. Such an amount caused the emission of 400 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, according to the World Bank.

Ten countries account for three-quarters of gas flaring. Out of these ten, seven oil producing countries –Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Venezuela, Algeria, and Nigeria — have remained the top seven consistently over the last ten years, according to a World Bank report

Flaring is “a monumental waste of a valuable natural resource” that should either be used for productive purposes, such as generating power, or conserved.

 

Enough to power the whole sub-Saharan Africa…

For instance, the amount of gas that is currently flared each year – about 144 billion cubic metres – could power the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank explains.

 

… And to generate 65% of Europe’s domestic power

However, the world still flared enough gas to generate approximately 1,800 Terawatt hours (TWh) of energy, almost two-thirds of the European Union’s net domestic electricity generation.

 

But, what is gas flaring?

Gas flaring is the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction. The practice has persisted from the beginning of oil production over 160 years ago and takes place due to a range of issues, from market and economic constraints, to a lack of appropriate regulation and political will, explains the World Bank.

Its Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership (GGFR) report estimates that global gas flaring increased to 144 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2021 from 142 bcm in 2020.

“Gas flaring contributes to climate change and impacts the environment through emission of CO2, black carbon and other pollutants. It is estimated that each cubic metre of associated gas flared results in about 2.8 kilograms of CO2-equivalent emissions.”

 

Ten countries account for 75% of gas flaring

In its May 2022 report, the World Bank also specifies that just ten countries account for three-quarters of gas flaring.

Out of these ten, seven oil producing countries –Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Venezuela, Algeria, and Nigeria — have remained the top seven consistently over the last ten years.

Ending flaring and methane emissions is key to the energy transition, nevertheless the global progress to reduce it has stalled over the last decade, further underscoring the urgency to accelerate the decarbonisation of the world’s economies.

 

Subsidising climate disastres

In spite of the scientifically evidenced fact that oil, gas and carbon industry is one of the major contributors to global warming, politicians continue to subsidise the fossil fuels business with shocking amounts of taxpayers money.

In fact, in a 2021 study: Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right: A Global and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports that globally, fossil fuel subsidies were 5.9 trillion US dollars in 2020 or about 6.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And that such subsidies are expected to rise to 7.4 percent of GDP in 2025.

In the case of the United States, the government provides a heavy public subsidy to petroleum companies, with major tax breaks at virtually every stage of oil exploration and extraction, including the costs of oil field leases and drilling equipment.

 

The grim picture

The profit-making fossil fuels sector appears not to care about the real dangers of growing climate emergencies.

Such emergencies are already here. For instance, there is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

There is a 93% likelihood of at least one year between 2022-2026 becoming the warmest on record and dislodging 2016 from the top ranking.

The chance of the five-year average for 2022-2026 being higher than the last five years (2017-2021) is also 93%, according to the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, produced by the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the WMO lead centre for such predictions.

 

Not just a random statistic

The chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5°C has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero. For the years between 2017 and 2021, there was a 10% chance of exceedance. That probability has increased to nearly 50% for the 2022-2026 period, the WMO on 9 May 2022 reported.

“This study shows – with a high level of scientific skill – that we are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic.

“It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.

 

The looming dangers

“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise. And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and our weather will become more extreme. Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us.”

 

More bla, bla, bla?

The 2015 Paris Agreement sets long-term goals to guide all nations to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 °C while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 °C.

Meanwhile, under heavy pressures by big business, politicians continue to pour empty promises, fixing new never-to-be-met commitments, cackling in world sumits and international big gatherings. What for?

Dr Joni Musabayana, Director of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) says it will take strong commitments and political will to end child labour in Africa. Credit: Fawzia Moodley/IPS

By Fawzia Moodley
Durban, May 18 2022 (IPS)

With a strong commitment from governments, businesses, labour and consumers, the scourge of child labour can be eliminated, says Dr Joni Musabayana, Director of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Pretoria, South Africa.

Speaking to IPS in an exclusive interview at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban, Musabayana was upbeat despite an increase in child labour worldwide. International efforts to end the scourge are under pressure to reach the United Nations goal of ending child labour by 2025.

Musabayana also spoke of the Durban Call To Action – expected to be ratified at the end of the conference.

“It  is not so much about legally binding but to give impetus to accelerate the efforts to address a problem using good practice.”

Musabayana says the sizeable high-level contingent of African delegates is a good sign for the continent, which carries the biggest burden of child labour.

“It is agreed that of the 160 million children in labour, 92 million are on the African continent. The turnout of 60% to 70 % African delegates, just by coming, shows their commitment to redouble their efforts to address this scourge.”

The key drivers of child labour in Africa are agriculture, bonded labour on the farms, mining, fishing, sexual exploitation of young children and informal and domestic work.

“You need multiple stakeholders and an integrated approach. It is not only about the government, but it has to show leadership because the fundamental pillars of solving child labour are largely access to free education, food schemes for children, and child support grants.

“These are policy instruments that South Africa is showing leadership in. Other African countries are following, and they are pointing us in the direction of what needs to be done.”

Political will and partnerships are vital to ending child labour.

Musabayana says: “What we need is extra political will, which we hope this conference will generate, to ensure that these programmes are well resourced, implemented, well monitored.

“Partnerships must be established with civil society, the employers employing child labour, and the unions working with these children.”

He encourages the media to expose instances of child labour, “if I could say to ‘name and shame’ those who continue to perpetuate this abhorrent practice.”

On the issue of global supply chains, he says: “We are happy that the CEOs of Nestle and Cocoa Cola have been with us and other big businesses. (It’s) important to see that they do not find it acceptable to source products and services made and facilitated through child labour.

Talking is not enough, though.

“It is not enough to make this point but crucial to cut off access to goods and services associated in their value chain with child labour.”

Musabayana adds: “Most critical is the end consumer, whether in China or the US or indeed the African continent or in Europe. I think everybody abhors products and services got through child labour, and we need to highlight which products are on the market and why end consumers should disassociate themselves with them.”

It’s emerged that many child labourers are employed by their own families. Musabayana blames this on poverty, saying no parent “willingly says I will send my child to work in a farm using hazardous chemicals.”

Therefore, the ILO seeks social protection for vulnerable families “to ensure that no one falls below a certain level of human survival.”

It also supports social support grants and basic income grants.

“These are policy instruments to ensure that families are not in such want and hunger, and in such need that they feel it necessary to use children to augment the family income.”

But where will the money come from?

“Clearly, the affordability of social security packages is a necessary debate, but we will always start by saying if you think it’s expensive to have a social protection plan, try the alternative.

“What kind of a society would we have?  We already have a fairly unequal society, and then what happens if we don’t take clear measures to ensure that those at the bottom of the pyramid lead a decent life,” Musabayana asks.

Earlier this week Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi told the conference the estimated cost of a social protection package for all children was 53 billion US dollars per annum.

As for a decent living wage, Musabayana says: “The ILO has supported the concept of a national minimum wage and the principle of collective bargaining so that working people must negotiate with their employers an agreement on what is a fair remuneration.”

The ILO also supports a national living wage. But Musabayana says it must be done responsibly: “We must have a gradual approach so that it is affordable and businesses that are supposed to carry this cost are still able to make a profit because we must not kill the goose that lays the golden egg.”

“I don’t think we should give up now and throw out hands in the air. We must ensure that come 2025, we can say – we did accelerate, we did remove many children, but more importantly, we should make sure no more children are entering the child labour.”

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A man is tested for HIV at a health centre in Odienné, Côte d’Ivoire. Credit: UNICEF/Frank Dejongh

By Matthew Kavanagh and Eamonn Murphy
WASHINGTON DC, May 18 2022 (IPS)

Here’s the good news: there are a new set of breakthrough medicines to prevent and treat HIV, known as “long actings” because they can be taken every few months instead of every day, and they are coming on-stream. If, as they are rolled out, they are made available at scale, they could help save many lives and help end the AIDS pandemic.

But here’s the bad news: on the current trajectory, most people who need them will not be able to get them any time soon, because high prices and monopolies will keep people in low- and middle-income countries locked out. That’s where we are heading – again.

UNAIDS has been convening some of the world’s leading scientists and researchers. They have emphasised to us that long-acting drugs for prevention are available now – an injection every few months that very effectively protects against HIV transmission. It has been approved in the U.S. and the World Health Organization (WHO) is reviewing it now.

And in the near term, there are in addition exciting medicines in development for long-acting treatment – which could make it far easier for people to stay on life-long HIV treatment, even when their lives make getting pills every day difficult.

New HIV prevention tools like long-acting pre-exposure prophylactic (PrEP) are particularly needed to fight the ongoing pandemic. In 2020, a year for which the world had set a collective goal of reducing new infections below 500,000, there were, in fact, 1.5 million; and in too many communities new HIV infections are rising.

Long-acting injectable PrEP could help fill critical HIV prevention needs for those facing the worlds’ highest HIV risks – particularly those whose lives, logistics, and legal contexts make accessing and taking oral prep challenging.

This includes people facing discrimination, including gay men, transgender people, sex workers, and people who use drugs in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe. Young African women, facing far higher risks than young men of their age, also need new HIV prevention options.

Studies have shown many people want a long-acting option, and indeed an estimated 74 million people around the world use long-acting injections to prevent pregnancy. Carefully done studies presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) showed long-acting PrEP can prevent more new infections than taking a pill every day.

If and when WHO endorses its use, the world should move fast to make it available at scale. The best way to ensure this breakthrough science translates into a global game-changer it is to make it available free to all who choose it.

UN member states agreed a new Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS last year that sets an ambitious goal of getting access to PrEP for 11 million people by 2025. For this to be possible, the governments and institutions who will need to make large scale purchases will need to be able to do so at a price that they can afford.

Right now, in the U.S. long-acting PrEP costs tens of thousands of dollars. But members of UNAIDS’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) assess that long-acting prep can be manufactured affordably – tens of dollars instead of tens of thousands. It would be possible for prices to come down whilst ensuring continued profitability for producers.

For treatment, the science is also moving rapidly and promising technologies on the way could be transformative. As of last year, 28.2 million people were on HIV treatment – that’s over 10 billion times every year people living with HIV take a pill.

But 10 million more people still need access to HIV treatment. If people could choose a pill that lasted a week or an injection that lasted months it would make it easier for many to start and sustain treatment – saving lives and stopping HIV transmission.

One key structural barrier that jeopardizes widespread access is the fact that production of these medicines is so far monopolized by a tiny number of companies based in a tiny number of countries, keeping prices high and limiting (and concentrating) supply. We know from experience (on the first ARVs, on the second generation of ARVs, and with COVID-19 vaccines and medicines) that this barrier can only be overcome through intervention.

When treatment for HIV first became available in the late 1990s, ARV monopolies meant the price was over $10,000 per person per year, a price far out of reach for the millions of people living with HIV.

As a consequence,12 million Africans died. Mass use of antiretrovirals to stop AIDS came only when low- and middle-income countries defied pressure and triggered generic competition, and when global civil society pressured Western governments and companies to stop working to block them.

That experience led the world to say never again to allowing people in developing countries to be locked out access to life-saving medical technology. But the same exclusionary and deadly approach has denied Africa access to sufficient vaccines in the COVID-19 crisis.

And on the current trajectory we are on course to repeat the story with new HIV medicines. It could be years before new drugs becoming available in New York or London ever reach those who need them most in Manila, Freetown, Maputo, Sao Paolo and Port-au-Prince.

An alternative approach is available, that ensures the translation of science into impact. Manufacturers of HIV drugs can set prices at affordable levels for low- and middle-income countries. To secure this for the long term, generic production in low- and middle-income countries is essential.

To do that we have to overcome monopolies. Pooling patents and pro-actively transferring technology can make it possible for a wider set of manufacturers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to make long-acting ARVs at low costs. This must be standard practice – and the sharing of information can start even before regulatory approval for use.

Of course, price and local production are not the only barriers to ensuring effective use. Some public health systems may require global solidarity and support to purchase commodities, with logistics and storage, training for effective provision, and engaging communities to ensure demand and treatment literacy for retention. The joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, and our partners, are providing support on all of these.

Building from emergency action on COVID-19, we need to end inequalities in access right across health technologies, by spurring the best science and getting it to everyone, investing in all health innovations as global public goods.

To stop today’s pandemics and to prevent future pandemics, it is vital to move from monopolizing knowledge about lifesaving health technologies to sharing it worldwide. We need to reform rules on the protection of intellectual property that have failed us in these pandemics, so that access to life-saving science is no longer dependent on the passport you hold or the money in your pocket.

We need governments to use their powers to compel sharing of pandemic science and technology and ways to compel companies and countries to use WHO-led mechanisms. We need to separate incentives for innovation from monopolies on manufacturing. Monopolies constrain supply, perpetuate unaffordable prices, widen inequalities, and have proven an unreliable driver of innovation, especially for those health issues that disproportionately impact people living in poverty.

We need to invest now in building health production capacity all over the world. We need to prioritise investment in universities and other public research institutions to enhance our technical capacity to develop medical technologies for all.

We can end the AIDS pandemic. And the COVID-19 pandemic. And stop the pandemics of the future. But we are not on track – in part because biomedical breakthroughs are not getting to those who need them most. If we act on long-acting ARVs, many people who would otherwise have acquired HIV will not. People living with HIV who would otherwise have died of AIDS will not. And the well-being and dignity of people at risk of or living with HIV can be enhanced.

Equitable global access to pandemic-fighting technologies cannot be achieved through the default operation of the market alone. It is policy and practice dependent. Work on those policies cannot wait until all those technologies have been rolled out at scale in rich countries, but needs to be accelerated now.

Leaders from civil society networks, especially those led by people living with HIV and by key populations, are calling for us to act now to ensure global access to new HIV technologies. We can and we should.

Shared science will save lives and stop pandemics.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writers are Deputy Executive Directors of the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)

African Union Commission Department of Trade and Industry, head of industry Houssein Guedi highlighted how 92,2 million of the world's children entrapped in child labour live in Africa, at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban. Credit: Lyse Comins/IPS

By Lyse Comins
Durban, May 17 2022 (IPS)

Global goals to eradicate child labour will not be achieved without a breakthrough in Africa, where most of the world’s 160 million children entrapped in child labour work in rural regions, mostly in agriculture with their families.

This is why the “Durban Call to Action” to eradicate child labour, spearheaded by the African Union (AU), the International Labour Organization (ILO), civil society organisations and other world leaders, is crucial and must be implemented by the countries on the continent.

Assistant Director-General and Regional Director for Africa of ILO Cynthia Samuel-Olonjuwon told delegates that the draft “Durban Call to Action”, expected to be finalised and formally adopted in the city on Friday, recognised the need to drive change in the world. She was speaking during a high-level panel discussion at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban.

Samuel-Olonjuwon concentrated on continental-specific challenges, policy priorities and strategic partnerships to end child labour in Africa.

Samuel-Olonjuwon said the ILO had already supported the adoption and implementation of the African Union Ten Year Action Plan on Eradication of Child Labour, Forced Labour, Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery in Africa (2020-2030), which was the first plan of its kind in the world.

She said stakeholders engaged in the drive to eliminate child labour had developed the foundation of the draft “Durban Call to Action” when they met in Johannesburg to prepare for the conference in November 2021.

“The ILO will support the implementation of the Durban Call to Action in line with ILO conventions and the AU action plan on child labour,” Samuel-Olonjuwon said.

She said efforts needed to be coordinated across regions to be effective.

“Africa has shown that it is ready to drive the change to accelerate action to end child labour. We recognise there is still a long way to go, but we also know the commitment, understanding and the resolve to take action now, is widely shared. The need to act with urgency, especially for making progress on an annual basis, is also widely shared. We must coordinate our efforts, especially with those of us who are development partners, in close collaboration with the private sector, civil society and we as social partners and agencies,” she said.

African Union Commission Department of Trade and Industry, head of industry Houssein Guedi, highlighted the current status quo of child labour on the continent and the foundational points of the draft Durban Call to Action plan.

He said 92,2 million of the world’s 160 million children entrapped in child labour live in Africa. This equates to  21,6% of the continent’s 400 million child population. Most of the children in child labour live in Eastern Africa (29,8%), Western Africa (22,8%), Central Africa (19,3%), Southern Africa (16,7%) and Northern Africa (6,1%).

“Most child labourers are very young – almost 60% are less than 12 years of age. Child labour is more prevalent among boys than girls. Child labour is predominantly a rural and agricultural phenomenon (81% of children in child labour),” Guedi said.

Some 45% of children in child labour are engaged in hazardous work. About 72% of children were combining school with work, although 32,2 million children of primary school-going age are not in school, despite a substantial improvement in access to education between 1990 and 2019.

Guedi said child labour often occurred in correlation with broader development challenges, such as in countries with high levels of informal employment, where populations received at least one social benefit, and a large percentage of the population is living below the poverty line.

He said there was now “unprecedented awareness, commitment and political will”, shown by a high level of ratifications on the continent and the implementation of policies and legislation to end child labour in recent years.

“We’ve seen some good practices emerging which could inspire Africa and the rest of the world,” Guedi said.

However, he added that there were still gaps in legislation, a lack of data for planning and weak enforcement, particularly in the agricultural sector and informal economy where child labour prevails.

“In Johannesburg, we discussed the importance of taking into account the salient features of child labour on the continent – young, rural, agriculture, family work, hazardous work, out of school/combining school and work – and key development challenges underlying child labour,” Guedi said.

He said stakeholders had agreed to actions which would form the basis of the Durban Call to Action.

These included the need to:

• Focus on prevention and the root causes
• Achieve impact at scale through adequately financing public policies and programmes
• Focus on the most immediate major challenges and most actionable in terms of time frames for achieving results
• Accelerate action to ensure quality universal education for all boys and girls
• Expand social protection for workers in the informal economy and the agricultural sector
• Secure decent work for adults
• Focus on the school to work transition
• Fill gaps in legislation for effective action against child labour, especially the worst forms
• Take large scale action in agriculture and rural development
• Develop measures to deal with child labour in conflict and crises
• Increase financing for child labour activities
• Mobilise political and social support to build momentum for accelerated action
• Improve the availability of quality child labour data and research

Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) assistant director-general and Africa representative Abebe Haile Gabriel said the continent needed to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security, which had affected the most vulnerable families. He said the continent needed to promote mechanised agriculture to reduce reliance on children, expand social security to improve farmers’ resilience and provide free access to relevant education.

Ugandan Minister for Gender, Labour, and Social Development, Amongi Betty Ongom, said the pandemic had led to parents losing their jobs when economic sectors went into lockdown, many children had lost two years of schooling, and some had not returned due to a lack of affordability when schools eventually reopened.

African Union Commissioner for Economic Development, Trade, Industry and Mining, Albert Mudenda Muchangam, said child labour “destroyed the future of our children”.

“You find child labour in mining and in households – some are paid, but lowly paid, and others are completely unpaid, which is modern-day slavery. We have a test, each one of us, to ensure we end the scourge of child labour,”  Muchangam said.

“We have an obligation to eradicate child labour and to bring them up and give them the opportunity to learn and to play with their friends so they should grow up as decent human beings. The persistence of child labour undermines that, and it also contributes to destroying their lives. Let us join forces together to fight the scourge of child labour wherever we see it,” Muchangam said.

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

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Significant investments from the international community will be needed to get free quality education for every child. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Cecilia Russell
Durban, May 17 2022 (IPS)

“Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to eliminate child labour.” So said Dennis Sinyolo, Director of Education International’s African Regional Office in Accra, Ghana adapting liberation icon and late South African president Nelson Mandela’s famous quote about how education can change the world.

Sinyolo was participating in a themed discussion on education at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour.

The panellists agreed that the investment in teachers was also crucial to ending child labour.

Sinyolo noted that teachers are the ones who identify those out of school, raise awareness about schooling and mobilise to get them into school.

Cornelius Williams, Director Child Protection for UNICEF, noted that a worrying trend in increased child labour has developed in the two years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 1.5 million learners were affected by school closures.

“This has been a huge setback against education and also a setback in child labour,” said Williams.

He said that 16.8 m more children in the age group from 5 to 11 were working, which was expected to rise. One-third of these were out of school, and for every child out of school – another balances work and school.

The role of teachers was also highlighted by Malawi’s Education Minister, Agnes NyaLonje.

In her country, two million children are in child labour.

She called on the “global education community to mobilise serious resources” as developing countries, with a large population of school-going children, struggled to pay for infrastructure and provide free quality education for at least 12 years.

“Funding is inadequate,” NyaLonje said. “The situation of Malawi, I think is a case in point, population increases at 3% a year and the majority of the young population, which is over three-quarters of the population, in the country is (aged) zero to 15 which are the clients of education.”

She said for developing countries like Malawi, there was never enough money to adequately fund both infrastructure and education.

“No matter how much we try to put aside part of budgets, it is never enough.”

NyaLonje said teachers need support. She told a story about the saddest thing she experienced after the country was devastated by Cyclone Ana. She had told teachers that they needed to go back to work within days of the cyclone, despite the impact on infrastructure.

However, the impact of her instruction was brought home by the plight of a disabled teacher, who was saved during the cyclone by being carried out of the house by his daughters. Now homeless and disabled, he was expected to prepare to return to teaching.

The impact of natural disasters was also apparent in Durban, where the conference is being held. Apart from already being behind with schools and infrastructure development due to historical apartheid-driven lack of development, Kwazi Mshengu MEC Education, Kwa-Zulu Natal, told the conference that the recent floods, where about 500 people lost their lives, also had wrecked schooling infrastructure.

Mshengu said that because of historical injustices, the disadvantaged settled wherever they could find land close to economic opportunities. The floods affected 630 schools were affected with 101 schools completely inaccessible.

“We are also sitting with learners with no families and homes and sheltering in community halls … their parents were swept away in the floods. We need to join hands to ensure that they don’t have to turn to forced labour in order to feed themselves,” Mshengu said.

All the delegates had strong words to add to the Durban Call to Action, which will be released on Friday when the conference closes.

Dawit David Moges Alemu of the Ethiopian Federation of Employers said it was important for leaders to stick to their commitments.

Sinyolo advised that closing the gap between policy and practice was crucial.

“Education should be free and genuinely free,” he said at least for the first 12 years. He called for support and investments in teachers and ensured their remuneration was fair.

Mshengu called for a system that engenders a value system that “loves their kids” and puts the children at the centre of the system.

Nguyen Thi Ha, Vice Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, Viet Nam called for enhanced quality vocational training.

NyaLonje reiterated her call for serious resources to be found for education but crucially too called for an investment in teachers, because sustainable development begins with education.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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

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• It’s Time To Globalise Compassion, Says Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi
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Pollution from urban sewage is visible in the Onça (jaguar, in Portuguese) River, near its mouth, seen here from the entrance bridge in the Ribeiro de Abreu neighborhood that suffers frequent flooding when it rains heavily in Belo Horizonte, capital of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil, May 17 2022 (IPS)

“We do everything through parties, we don’t want power, we don’t want to take over the role of the State, but we don’t just protest and complain,” said Itamar de Paula Santos, a member of the United Community Council for Ribeiro de Abreu (Comupra), in this southeastern Brazilian city.

Ribeiro de Abreu is one of the neighborhoods most affected by recurrent flooding in Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, as it is located on the right bank of the Onça (jaguar, in Portuguese) River, on the lower stretch, into which the water drains from a 212 square kilometer basin made up of numerous streams.

Cleaning up the river and preventing its waters from continuing to flood homes requires actions that also produce social benefits.

“We have so far removed 736 families who were living in high-risk situations, on the riverbank,” Santos told IPS in the same place where precarious and frequently flooded shacks gave way to the Community Riverside Park (Parque Ciliar, in Portuguese), which has a garden, soccer field, children’s playground and fruit trees.

The project, begun by local residents together with Comupra and the local government in 2015 and gradually implemented since then, aims to extend the community park 5.5 kilometers upstream through several neighborhoods by 2025.

This includes doubling the number of families resettled, cleaning up the Onça basin and its nine beaches, three islands and three waterfalls, preserving nature and developing urban agriculture, and creating areas for sports and cultural activities. All with participatory management and execution.

Itamar de Paula Santos, an activist with the United Community Council for Ribeiro de Abreu, longs to go back to swimming and fishing in the Onça River, as he did in his childhood. But its waters, polluted by urban waste, often flood the riverside neighborhoods in the rainy season as the river flows through the city of Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Displaced within the same neighborhood

The families removed from the flood-prone riverbank now live mostly in safe housing in the same Ribeiro de Abreu neighborhood, which had 16,000 inhabitants at the 2010 census, but is now estimated to be home to 20,000 people.

The Belo Horizonte city government has a rule to resettle families from risky areas in places no more than three kilometers from where they used to live, Ricardo Aroeira, director of Water Management of the Municipal Secretariat of Works and Infrastructure, told IPS.

That is the case of Dirce Santana Soares, 55, who now lives with her son, her mother and four other family members in a five-bedroom house, with a yard where she grows a variety of fruit trees and vegetables.

“It’s the best thing that could have happened to us,” she said. Five years ago she lived next to the river, which flooded her shack, almost always in the wee hours of the morning, every year during the rainiest months in Belo Horizonte – December and January.

“We had bunk beds and we piled everything we wanted to save on top of them. Then we built a second floor on the house, leaving the first floor to the mud,” she told IPS. “But I didn’t want to leave the neighborhood where I had been living for 34 years.”

She was lucky. After receiving the compensation for leaving her riverside shack, an acquaintance sold her their current home, at a low price, with long-term interest-free installments.

View of a beach on the Onça River, which the movement for clean rivers wants to recuperate as a recreational area for the local population in the city of Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. At this spot, the Onça River receives the waters of the Isidoro stream. There are another eight beaches to be restored as well. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Bad luck

Soares, who is now a domestic worker, had a daycare center that started losing money in the face of the increased offer of free nursery schools by the local government, and the COVID-19 pandemic over the last two years.

Itamar Santos, a 64-year-old father of three, has also lived in the neighborhood for almost four decades. Before that, he worked as a mechanical lathe operator in other cities and for three years in Carajás, the large iron ore mine in the eastern Amazon, 1,600 km north of Belo Horizonte.

In 1983, in Carajás, he lost his right leg when he fell into a 12-meter well. “It was night-time, and there was no electricity, just dark jungle,” he explained. After the first painful impact, he learned to live with his disability and regained the joy of living, with a specially adapted car.

He became an activist and among his achievements were free bus tickets for paraplegics and a gymnasium for multiple sports. “Creating conditions that enable the disabled to leave their homes is therapeutic,” he told IPS.

View of a community garden that local residents in the Ribeiro de Abreu neighborhood cultivate on the banks of the Onça River. Some 140 families who suffered annual flooding were resettled and now live in safe housing in the same part of Belo Horizonte, a metropolis in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

But the cause that impassions him today is the river, which in January has a heavy flow due to the heavy rains that month, but dries up in September, in the dry season.

“Let the Onça drink clean water” is the slogan of a movement also promoted by Santos, to emphasize the protection and recovery of the thousands of springs that supply the river and its tributary streams.

Every year since 2008, this movement, driven by Comupra, organizes meetings for reflection and debate on the revitalization of the river in riverside venues in different neighborhoods in the basin.

The festivities are also repeated annually, or more often. Carnival brings joy to the local population on the beaches or squares along the banks of the Onça River, and giant Christmas trees are set up for the communities to come out and celebrate the holidays.

The basin, or more precisely sub-basin, of the Onça River comprises the northern half of the territory and the population of Belo Horizonte, which totals 2.5 million inhabitants. The south, which is richer, is where the Arrudas River is located.

Both emerge in the neighboring municipality to the west, Contagem, and flow east into the Das Velhas River, the main source of water for the six million inhabitants of Greater Belo Horizonte. As they cross heavily populated areas, they are the main polluters of the Velhas basin.

Major floods in the provincial capital occur mainly in the Onça sub-basin. The steep topography of Belo Horizonte makes the soil more impermeable, leading to more disasters.

Maria José Zeferino, a retired teacher from neighboring schools, at the Our Lady of Mercy Park, which was built to clean up a stream from urban pollution that was spreading diarrhea and parasites among the students of three nearby schools, in Belo Horizonte, a city in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Other riverbank parks

The Belo Horizonte city government has been working on drainage plans for years and has been implementing the Program for the Environmental Recovery of the Valley and Creek Bottoms since 2001.

In April it published the Technical Instruction for the Elaboration of Drainage Studies and Projects, under the general coordination of Aroeira.

Since the end of the last century there has been a “paradigm shift,” said Aroeira. Channeling watercourses used to be the norm, but this “merely shifted the site of the floods.” Now the aim is to contain the torrents and to give new value to rivers, integrating them into the urban landscape, cleaning them up and at the same time improving the quality of life of the riverside populations, he explained.

The construction of long, narrow linear parks, which combines the clean-up of rivers or streams with environmental preservation, riverside reforestation and services for the local population, is one of the “structural” measures that can be seen in Belo Horizonte.

The participation of students and teachers from three neighboring schools stood out in the implementation in 2008 of the Nossa Senhora da Piedad Park in the Aarão Reis neighborhood, home to 8,300 inhabitants in 2010, near the lower section of the Onça River.

Cleaning up the creek that gives the park its name was the major environmental and sanitary measure.

“Sewage from the entire neighborhood contaminated the stream and caused widespread illnesses among the children, such as diarrhea, verminosis (parasites in the bronchial tubes) and nausea,” Maria José Zeferino, a retired art teacher at one of the local schools, told IPS.

The medicinal herb garden in the Primer de Mayo Ecological Park was a demand of the local population in the southern Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte. Creation of the park included the clean-up of a polluted stream and provides a gathering and recreational area for local residents. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The park, which belongs to the municipality, has an area of 58,000 square meters, a pond, three courts for different sports, a skateboarding area and a paved walkway for the elderly. A total of 143 families and one farm received compensation to vacate the area, leaving many fruit trees behind.

“A clean river was our dream. And the goal of the next stage is to have swimming, fishing and boating in the city’s streams,” said Zeferino.

The Primer de Mayo Ecological Park, in the neighborhood of the same name with 2,421 inhabitants according to the 2010 census, was built during the revitalization of the stream of the same name, covering 33,700 square meters along a winding terrain. The novelty is a medicinal herb garden, a demand of the local population.

“We discovered 70 springs here that feed the stream that runs into the Onça River,” said Paulo Carvalho de Freitas, an active member of the Community Commission that supports the municipal management of the park and carries out educational activities there.

“My fight for the future is to remove much of the concrete with which the park was built, which waterproofs the soil and goes against one of the objectives of the project,” which was inaugurated in 2008, said Freitas.

Children working on tobacco farms in Chipangali District in Eastern Province of Zambia. Credit: Brenda Chitindi
 
       “Most major tobacco producing countries use child labour in tobacco growing. Almost no cigarette can be          guaranteed to be free from child labour.”
                                        British Medical Journal, 2015.

By Judith Mackay and Leonce Dieudonne Leonce
HONG KONG / LOME, May 17 2022 (IPS)

Despite World Day Against Child Labour launched in 2002 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), little has changed over the past two decades for the millions of children who remain trapped.

To rescue children and achieve sustainable human and health rights improvements, laws that make corporations accountable and change power relations between workers and companies are needed, rather than voluntary industry codes and corporate charity.

The global tobacco industry, valued at 850B USD (2021) with the 6 largest companies earning 55 B USD in profit (2015), is profiting off the backs of an estimated 1.3 million children involved in tobacco production worldwide.

For many farming households in low-income countries, growing tobacco offers only a precarious livelihood, overshadowed by debt and the threat of poverty, in stark contrast to the profits of the big tobacco companies. Many smallholder farmers – who produce much of the world’s tobacco leaf – feel they have little choice but to enlist their children to work.

According to the global tobacco industry watch, STOP, tobacco companies have the power and resources to determine the level of wages and price of agricultural inputs, and can control the salaries that suppliers or contractors pay. However, their practices worsen children’s plight. They use layers of contracts to avoid direct responsibility for growers and workers, keep leaf prices low, and provide loans that keep farmers dependent.

To obscure the real problem, they use agricultural front groups, and partnerships with renowned organizations to undertake token community activities. All these effectively suppress progress towards diversification of strategies that would remove children from tobacco farming.

According to STOP, the first step to eliminating child labor in tobacco is to expose and remove tobacco industry interference.

Child labor in tobacco falls under “worst forms of child labor” due to the hazardous nature of handling tobacco. This mainly occurs in the tobacco fields and bidi factories, but can also occur throughout the whole tobacco cycle, for example, children selling cigarettes.

Children working with tobacco are placed at high risk of injury and illness, for example ‘Green Tobacco Sickness’ caused by nicotine poisoning through the skin. The absorption of nicotine causes symptoms which include nausea, weakness, dizziness, headaches and breathing difficulties. They are also exposed to large and frequent applications of pesticides, herbicides and fumigants that leads to a range of risks.

Child tobacco workers often labor 50 or 60 hours a week in extreme heat, use sharp and dangerous tools, lift heavy loads, and climb into the rafters of barns, risking serious injuries and falls.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 28% of children working in agriculture in general do not attend school at all, a blow to their best chance of avoiding the generational poverty trap.

Children’s voices drowned

Tobacco leaf is grown in more than 120 countries, but the incidence of child labor is under reported. In 2020, the US Department of Labor listed 19 countries which use child and forced labour in tobacco production is present.

Among them is Malawi from which tobacco imports to US were temporarily disallowed when Malawi children sued British American Tobacco (BAT) and Imperial Brands, seeking compensation for damages arising from child labor.

Meanwhile, tobacco industry corporate social responsibility (CSR) obscures the plight of children in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs). Tobacco industry-backed publicity includes information of how 204,000 children were removed or kept away from child labor detracting from the legal and human rights of children exploited or the just compensation required to undo decades of harm.

Some governments have yet to resist so-called CSR of tobacco companies and realize that the tobacco industry is the problem and not partners in the elimination of child labor. The global treaty, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) recommends the adoption of farmer and worker-driven policies towards diversification that are sustainably financed and protected from tobacco industry interference.

Tobacco tax increases can potentially finance diversification programs, but advocates must struggle against the dilution of political will, brought on by token donations from the tobacco industry. According to the treaty, governments should ban and denormalize so-called CSR of the tobacco industry, as practiced in over 40 countries.

The Tobacco Industry’s Global Candy

The Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing (ECLT) Foundation, sponsored by big tobacco companies influence the anti-child labor narrative across the world. Through the ECLT, tobacco companies partnered with and funded the ILO and governments to position themselves as safeguarding the rights of child worker and “being part of the solution”.

While ECLT achieved little in reducing child labor, it added to the glossy sustainability reports of tobacco companies designed to attract more investors.

After coming to the conclusion that tobacco industry sponsorship has not led to much progress in eliminating child labor, in 2018 ILO announced it will not renew ECLT and tobacco industry funding. However, links between the ILO and the ECLT remains.

While the United Nations Global Compact delisted tobacco companies from its program, the ECLT remains in the program despite civil society protests that the UNGC participation is a violation of the compact’s policies, the Model Policy for Agencies of the UN System on Preventing Tobacco Industry Interference and WHO FCTC.

The ILO Decent Work Agenda and various Conventions are instruments to facilitate prohibition of forced or compulsory labor. But if these are not implemented, our children are betrayed and remain entrapped.

Footnote: The ILO’s 5th Global Child Labour Conference is taking place in Durban, South Africa, May 15-20.

Prof Judith Mackay is Asian is the Director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control, Hong Kong, and Leonce Dieudonné Sessou is Executive Secretary of the African Tobacco Control Alliance, Togo

IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 17 2022 (IPS)

Central bank policies have often worsened economic crises instead of resolving them. By raising interest rates in response to inflation, they often exacerbate, rather than mitigate business cycles and inflation.

Neither gods nor maestros
US Federal Reserve Bank chair Jerome Powell has admitted: “Whether we can execute a soft landing or not, it may actually depend on factors that we don’t control.” He conceded, “What we can control is demand, we can’t really affect supply with our policies. And supply is a big part of the story here”.

Anis Chowdhury

Hence, decisionmakers must consider more appropriate policy tools. Rejecting ‘one size fits all’ formulas, including simply raising interest rates, anti-inflationary measures should be designed as appropriate. Instead of squelching demand by raising interest rates, supply could be enhanced.

Thus, Milton Friedman – whom many central bankers still worship – blamed the 1930s’ Great Depression on the US Fed. Instead of providing liquidity support to businesses struggling with short-term cash-flow problems, it squeezed credit, crushing economic activity.

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

Adverse impacts of the 1970s’ oil price shocks were worsened by the reactions of monetary policymakers, which caused stagflation. That is, US Fed and other central bank interventions caused economic stagnation without mitigating inflation.

Likewise, the longest US recession after the Great Depression, during the 1980s, was due to interest rate hikes by Fed chair Paul Volcker. A recent New York Times op-ed warned, “The Powell pivot to tighter money in 2021 is the equivalent of Mr. Volcker’s 1981 move” and “the 2020s economy could resemble the 1980s”.

Monetary policy for supply shocks?
Food prices surged in 2011 due to weather-related events ruining harvests in major food producing nations, such as Australia and Russia. Meanwhile, fuel prices soared with political turmoil in the Middle East.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

However, Boston Fed head Eric Rosengren argued, “tightening monetary policy solely in response to contractionary supply shocks would likely make the impact of the shocks worse for households and businesses”.

Referring to Boston Fed research, he noted commodity price changes did not affect the long-run inflation rate. Other research has also concluded that commodity price shocks are less likely to be inflationary.

This reduced inflationary impact has been attributed to ‘structural changes’ such as workers’ diminished bargaining power due to labour market deregulation, technological innovation and globalization.

Hence, central banks are no longer expected to respond strongly to food and fuel price increases. Policymakers should not respond aggressively to supply shocks – often symptomatic of broader macroeconomic developments.

Instead, central banks should identify the deeper causes of food and fuel price rises, only responding appropriately to them. Wrong policy responses can compound, rather than mitigate problems.

Appropriate innovations
A former Philippines central bank Governor Amando M. Tetangco, Jr noted it had not responded strongly to higher food and fuel prices in 2004. He stressed, “authorities should ignore changes in the price of things that they cannot control”.

Tetangco warned, “the required policy response is not… straightforward… Thus policy makers will need to make a choice between bringing down inflation and raising output growth”. He emphasized, “a real sector supply side response may be more appropriate in addressing the pressure on prices”.

Thus, instead of restricting credit indiscriminately, financing constraints on desired industries (e.g., renewable energy) should be eased. Enterprises deemed inefficient or undesirable – e.g., polluters or those engaged in speculation – should have less access to the limited financing available.

This requires designing macroeconomic policies to enable dynamic new investments, technologies and economic diversification. Instead of reacting with blunt interest rate policy tools, policymakers should know how fiscal and monetary policy tools interact and impact various economic activities.

Used well, these can unlock supply bottlenecks, promote desired investments and enhance productivity. As no one size fits all, each policy objective will need appropriate, customized, often innovative tools.

Lessons from China
China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), developed “structural monetary policy” tools and new lending programmes to help victims of COVID-19. These ensured ample interbank liquidity, supported credit growth, and strengthened domestic supply chains.

Outstanding loans to small and micro businesses rose 25% to 20.8 trillion renminbi by March 2022 from a year before. By January, the interest rate for loans to over 48 million small and medium enterprises had dropped to 4.5%, the lowest level since 1978.

The PBOC has also provided banks with loan funds for promising, innovative and creditworthy companies, e.g., involved in renewable energy and digital technologies. It thus achieves three goals: fostering growth, maintaining debt at sustainable levels, and ‘green transformation’.

Defying global trends, China’s ‘factory-gate’ (or producer price) inflation fell to a one-year low in April 2022 as the PBOC eased supply chains and stabilized commodity prices. Although consumer prices have risen with COVID-19 lockdowns, the increases have remained relatively benign so far.

In short, the PBOC has coordinated monetary policy with both fiscal and industrial policies to boost confidence, promote desired investments and achieve stable growth. It maintains financial stability and policy independence by regulating capital flows, thus avoiding sudden outflows, and interest rate hikes in response.

Improving policy coordination
Central bankers monitor aggregate indicators, such as wages growth. However, before reacting to upward wage movements, the context needs to be considered. For example, wages may have stagnated, or the labour share of income may have declined over the long-term.

Moreover, wage increases may be needed for critical sectors facing shortages to attract workers with relevant skills. Wage growth itself may not be the problem. The issue may be weak long-term productivity growth due to deficient investments.

Input-output tables can provide information about sectoral bottlenecks and productivity, while flow-of-funds information reveals what sectors are financially constrained, and which are net savers or debtors.

Such information can helpfully guide design of appropriate, complementary fiscal and monetary policy tools. Undoubtedly, pursuing heterodox policies is challenging in the face of policy fetters imposed by current orthodoxies.

Central bank independence – with dogmatic mandates for inflation targeting and capital account liberalization – precludes better coordination, e.g., between fiscal and monetary authorities. It also undercuts the policy space needed to address both demand- and supply-side inflation.

Monetary authorities are under tremendous pressure to be seen to be responding to rising prices. But experience reminds us they can easily make things worse by acting inappropriately. The answer is not greater central bank independence, but rather, improved economic policy coordination.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi addresses the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour. Despite setbacks, he is optimistic that child labour can be abolished. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Fawzia Moodley
Durban, May 16 2022 (IPS)

A mere 35 billion US dollars per annum – equivalent to 10 days of military spending – would ensure all children in all countries benefit from social protection, Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi told the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour.

He said this was a small price to pay considering the catastrophic consequences of the increase in child labour since 2016, after several years of decline in child labour numbers.

An estimated 160 000 million kids are child labourers, and unless there is a drastic reversal, another 9 million are expected to join their ranks.

Satyarthi was among a distinguished group of panellists on setting global priorities for eliminating child labour. The panel included International Labour Organisation(ILO) DG Guy Ryder, South African Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi, James Quincey, CEO of Coca Cola,  Alliance 8.7 chairperson Anousheh Karver and European Union Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen.

The panel discussed child labour in the context of decent work deficits and youth employment. It identified pressing global challenges and priorities for the international community.

Satyarthi said the 35 million US dollars was far from a big ask. Nor was the 22 billion US dollars needed to ensure education for all children. He said this was the equivalent of what people in the US spent on tobacco over six days.

Satyarthi said it was a travesty that the G7, the world’s wealthiest countries, had never debated child labour – something he intends to change.

The panellists attributed the increase in child labour to several factors, including lack of political will, lack of interest from rich countries and embedded cultural and economic factors.

Asked how he remained optimistic in light of the dismal picture of growing child labour rates. Satyarthi told IPS that having been in the trenches for 40 years, he had seen and been happy to see a decline in child labour until 2016 – when the problem began escalating again.

“I strongly believe in freedom of human beings. The world will slowly move towards a more compassionate society, sometimes faster, sometimes slower,” he said.

Satyarthi, together with organisations like the ILO, succeeded in putting the issue of child labour on the international agenda. Through his foundation in collaboration with other NGOs, he got the world to take note of this hidden scourge.

He is convinced that child labour will be eliminated despite the recent setbacks.

“I am hopeful because there was no ILO programme when I started 40 years ago. Child labour was not recognised as a problem, but slowly, it is being realised that it’s wrong and evil – even a crime. So, 40 years isn’t a big tenure in the history of human beings. This scourge has been there for centuries.”

Yet he recognises the need for urgency to roll back the escalation of child labour.

“The next ten years are even more important because now we have the means, we have power, technology, and we know the solution. The only thing we need is a strong political will but also social will,” Satyarthi said. “We have to speed it up and bring back the hope. Bring back the optimism. The issue is a priority, and that’s why we are calling on markets to globalise compassion. There are many things to divide us, but there’s one thing we all agree on: the well-being of our children.”

Satyarthi said to meet the SDG deadline of 2025, he and other Nobel laureates and world leaders are pushing hard to ensure that child labour starts declining again.

“We as a group of Nobel laureates and world leaders are working on two fronts. One is a fair share for children on budgetary allocations and policies,” he said.

The group engaged with governments to ensure that children received a fair share of the budget and resources.

Then they are pushing governments on social protection, which he believes in demystifying.

“We have seen in different countries, social protection – helping through school feeding schemes, employment programmes and conditional grant programmes to ensure that children can go to school, with proven success in bringing down child labour.”

The Nobel laureate knocked on the doors of the leaders of wealthy nations.

“I have been talking to leaders of rich countries to address the problem of post-pandemic economic meltdown. We have to work for social protection for marginalised people in low-income countries and focus on children, education, health, and protection. That is not a big investment compared to what we are going to lose – a whole generation.”

Satyarthi said he was heartened by the response to their efforts to motivate governments and the private sector to join the fight against child labour.

“I have been optimistic to say many of the governments and EU leaders are not only listening – they are talking about it. Yesterday only, I was so happy that President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke very explicitly on this issue, and almost everyone was talking about this issue. But it took several months, several years to get there.”

And Satyarthi is not going to stop soon. With the Laureates and Leaders For Children project, he and fellow laureates are determined the world sits up and finds the will to ensure every child can experience a childhood.

IPS UN Bureau Report

This is part of a series of stories published by IPS during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Durban. 

 

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• Ivorian Cocoa Farmers Are Beating a System To Reduce Child Labour: Here’s How

Excerpt:

"I have been talking to leaders of rich countries to address the problem of post-pandemic economic meltdown. We have to work for social protection for marginalised people in low-income countries and focus on children, education, health, and protection. That is not a big investment compared to what we are going to lose – a whole generation.” - Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi

Lacombe (right), from Haiti, and Ricaela, a Dominican who recently arrived in Chile, pose at the stall where they work for a Chilean entrepreneur at a popular outdoor Sunday market in Arrieta, in Peñalolén, in eastern Santiago. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, May 16 2022 (IPS)

The pressure of the influx of migrants, especially Venezuelans, has reached a critical level in northern Chile, and is felt as far as the capital itself, forcing the government that took office in March to create a special interministerial group this month to propose solutions that respect their human rights.

The first problem is that the number of undocumented migrants is unknown, since in recent years thousands have entered the country unregistered, especially through Colchane, a small town in the Andes highlands in the northeast bordering Bolivia.

Jorgelis, a 23-year-old Venezuelan woman, crossed the border into Chile there last December.

“It was the longest 11 days of my entire life,” she told IPS, her face darkening as she remembered the journey from Caracas to Colchane.

Today she sells fruit at a stand on Santiago’s main avenue, Alameda, on the corner of Santa Lucía street outside the subway station, just five blocks from La Moneda palace, seat of the presidency, where leftist President Gabriel Boric, 36, has been governing since Mar. 11.

Jorgelis’ 33-year-old cousin Engelin arrived two months ago “after a 10-day journey that at one point took us though the middle of the desert.

“I left behind two daughters in Venezuela, 15 and five years old,” she said. “That is a very strong pain in my heart.” And she complained about the cold, pointing out that in tropical Caracas the temperature only drops – and much less than in Chile – in December and January.

Engelin lives in a Haitian camp in the municipality of Maipú, on the west side of Santiago, and sells fruit at a stand outside the Metro República subway stop, also on Alameda avenue.

Dubarly Lorvandal, 23, arrived from Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, when he was 18 years old, after studying in high school. He does not have a visa and works at a vegetable stand in an open-air market in Arrieta, in eastern Santiago.

Relaxed entrance policies that were introduced in 2010 and later eliminated turned Chile into a popular destination for Haitians fleeing a cocktail of natural and economic tragedies.

“I worked at the beginning for a month laying cables, but now I’m a papero (potato seller). Everyone loves me at this market,” he says with a smile.

Lacombe also came from Haiti six years ago and works alongside Ricaela, who arrived six months ago from the Dominican Republic. The two undocumented migrants sell vegetables at a stand in the Arrieta market. Lacombe says he is happy.

Jorgelis, Engelin, Dubarly, Lacombe and Ricaela are all part of the long line of at least half a million people waiting to regularize their legal status in Chile, a long narrow country of 19.4 million inhabitants that stretches between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

According to the latest official figures on migration in Chile, from 2020, there were 1,462,103 foreign nationals in the country, including 448,138 migrants from Venezuela, which since 2013 has experienced a massive exodus of more than six million people, a good part of whom are scattered throughout neighboring Latin American countries.

But these statistics do not include migrants who remain undocumented and whose real number the organizations working with immigrants prefer not to divulge.

Venezuelan immigrants Edgar. Engelin and Jorgelis sell fruit at a street stall on Alameda Avenue, near the La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

A shaky ship

“Over the last three years, 90 percent of people entering have come through unauthorized crossings,” said Macarena Rodríguez, chair of the board of directors of the Catholic Jesuit Migrant Service.

“Since 2020 the border has been closed, and before that the government required a visa (acquired in their countries of origin) for Haitians and Venezuelans. When you restrict regular entry, irregular entry increases,” Rodríguez, the head of one of the country’s main immigrant-serving organizations, told IPS.

“There is a huge number of people who are not counted, who have no papers and cannot work (legally). And their children have irregular migratory status. And they pay five times more in rent (on average) for precarious housing,” she said, listing some of the problems faced by undocumented migrants.

Luis Eduardo Thayer, who took office in March as director of the National Migration Service, is part of the new Interministerial Commission expanded to include civil organizations, created on May 6 by the government to seek solutions to a growing social problem that has given rise to expressions of xenophobia.

President Boric stated that the solution must include other countries of origin or transit of migrants, although there are no details yet as to what this eventual participation would look like.

The commission seeks to “address with a sense of urgency and responsibility the challenges and opportunities posed by migration in different territories,” said Minister of the Interior and Public Security Izkia Siches.

The new authorities do not want a repeat of the measures taken by the government of Boric’s right-wing predecessor Sebastián Piñera, which loaded dozens of migrants dressed head-to-toe in white sanitary protective gear onto airplanes and deported them. The widely published photos were aimed at dissuading migrants from coming to Chile and at reassuring worried Chileans.

Thayer said the National Migration Service “is a ship that is now in the process of stabilization and we are taking the necessary internal measures so that we can fulfill our mandate.”

“Today we have almost 500,000 pending applications for visas, renewals, definitive stays, refugee applications and naturalizations,” he said.

The head of migration proposed moving towards “a rational migration policy.”

Workers at the Chevery Bakan, a Venezuelan restaurant in the La Reina district in Santiago, Chile that employs nine Venezuelan immigrants, six of whom have visas. “We all do everything, working in the kitchen or serving customers. And I work hard, I haven’t had a vacation for three years,” says Yulkidiz Pernia, the Venezuelan owner. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Pressure cooker

According to Rodríguez, in Chile “today we have a pressure cooker with many people having to take informal jobs or even to rent an identity to sign up for an application and be able to work.

“This situation must be urgently addressed,” she said. “That means recognizing them, identifying them, documenting them, issuing visas, prioritizing the situation of children and pregnant women and thus try to put things in order.”

She also cited “the impact on the communities where these people arrive, where the impression is socially complex. They are described as criminals, generating among the local population the sensation that migration is bad.”

Yulkidiz Pernia, 38, a publicist from Caracas, comes from a different generation of migrants, as she arrived six years ago with her son and got a visa without any problems, “although it took seven months.”

Today she has a restaurant that serves Venezuelan food, Chevery Bakan, which employs nine other Venezuelans, six of whom have legal documents.

“I have not done badly. I miss the rest of my family, uncles and aunts. Several of them have died and we couldn’t be there,” Yulkidiz said. “In Chile I have found a warm welcome. The cases of xenophobia are isolated.”

But the study “Immigrants and Work in Chile”, by the National Center for Migration Studies at the University of Talca, found that 51.1 percent of the migrants surveyed said that being a foreigner has had a negative influence on their labor integration in Chile and 51.4 percent said that at work many people have stereotypes about them and treat them accordingly.

Dubarly, a Haitian immigrant, lives alone, but he gets together with cousins and other Haitian friends to eat because “it’s hard to get home and have to do everything yourself.” At the food market in Santiago, Chile where he works, he is happy because he feels loved and enjoys working as a vendor. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Colchane is no longer Colchane

Colchane, a town with only 1,500 permanent residents, is the gateway for irregular migration from Bolivia, a preferred transit route after arrival through the airports was closed. The town’s mayor, Javier García Choque, fears that the culture of the Aymara indigenous people, the main native group in the area, will disappear due to the exodus of local inhabitants after the massive influx of foreigners.

“Migrants provide data on their identity, but there is no mechanism for verifying whether they are who they say they are,” the mayor said on a visit to Santiago.

According to García Choque “many migrants come with family members, with terminally ill people. They come in search of opportunities. But some people are violent and destroy public spaces or occupy private homes, which has led many to build fences around their yards, which are not typical of Aymara culture.”

“The Aymara people are disappearing, they are vulnerable and we cling to our cultural identity to preserve it. This migratory phenomenon has been disproportionate in quantity and violence,” he said, demanding greater security in his municipality.

“The government’s effort to respect the human rights of migrants is necessary, but it is also important to respect the rights of indigenous peoples,” said the mayor.

Patricia Rojas, of the Venezuelan Association in Chile, admits that migration management under the restrictive law imposed by Piñera “has had a negative impact on peaceful coexistence, especially in the cities and northern regions.

“We all have to make an effort to reverse this, so that the public perception of migration is not the negative one we are currently experiencing, because this will not benefit Chilean society in any way,” she said.

Jaime Tocornal, vicar of the Catholic Social Pastoral in Santiago, told IPS that in Colchane “these poor people arrive hungry and cold, completely disoriented. At an altitude of 3,600 meters they arrive with altitude sickness and hope to cross the border and get to Santiago, only to realize that they still have 1,500 kilometers to go.”

“The situation is dramatic. The landscape is wonderful, like in the rest of the highlands, full of volcanoes and running water up in the mountains. But the water, which might be very beautiful, creates mud that sticks to the shoes of people crossing the streams and they slip and fall when they try to drink the water,” he said.

Twenty-seven people died this year, seven of them between January and March 2022, in their attempt to enter Chile, according to figures from the Chilean office of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Archbishopric of Santiago.

The documentary “Hope Without Borders” says the dead could number in the hundreds in recent years, and “many bodies have been abandoned in different desert or wooded areas crossed by migrants coming from Venezuela to Chile,” often at least partially on foot.

García Choque said that despite the state of emergency decreed by Piñera to bring in the military to control the northern border zone, “the flow of migrants did not cease.”

“It changed the way they came in, but it forced the migrants into situations where it was more complex to rescue them: the coyotes (human traffickers) moved them to remote areas, which put their lives and health at risk,” he said.

The 15th session of the Conference of Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), is taking place in Abidjan Côte d’Ivoire, from 9 to 20 May 2022. The theme: “Land, Life. Legacy: From scarcity to prosperity.” “We are faced with a crucial choice,” Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told participants: “We can either reap the benefits of land restoration now or continue on the disastrous path that has led us to the triple planetary crisis of climate, biodiversity and pollution”

By Alexander Müller and Jes Weigelt
BERLIN, May 16 2022 (IPS)

The landmark land tenure decision by parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in 2019 offers a blueprint for upcoming climate negotiations in Sharm El Sheikh in November.

The ongoing UNCCD COP15 conference in Abidjan (May 9-20) is taking necessary next steps to guide countries on how to embed land rights within national implementation processes.

As the first of the three Rio Conventions (addressing climate, biodiversity and desertification respectively) to explicitly refer to land tenure as a critical enabler for the transition to more sustainable pathways, this meeting could advance the landmark land tenure decision by proposing guidelines to safeguard legitimate land rights, argues Berlin-based think tank TMG Research.

According to the UNCCD’s recently published Global Land Outlook, roughly $44 trillion of economic output (more than half of global GDP) is moderately or highly reliant on natural capital.

Yet this natural resource base is under intense pressure from changing land use patterns and the accelerated impacts of climate change. This already has huge consequences for the poorest and most vulnerable communities, who depend on natural resources for their survival, and even more people will be affected as natural capital dwindles.

Current land restoration efforts, such as the global goal of restoring 1 billion hectares of degraded land or achieving ‘land degradation neutrality’ by 2030, are seen as offering new opportunities to tackle the impacts of climate change while addressing food security needs, creating livelihood opportunities, especially in rural areas, and countering growing land-based conflicts and migration.

But such initiatives need to account for all existing legitimate tenure rights for Indigenous Peoples, smallholder farmers and pastoralists, women and youth, and other vulnerable groups.

Otherwise, restoration efforts and especially large-scale investments will lead to new conflicts, violating the rights of people and risking the success of the planned measure.

The UNCCD is the first of the three ‘Rio Conventions’ to explicitly recognize the importance of safeguarding all forms of legitimate land tenure – especially for women, youth, Indigenous communities, and smallholder farmers and pastoralists – as a prerequisite for the sustainable management of land and other natural resources.

But with land governance enacted at the national and sub-national levels, how can this progressive decision at the global level translate into a governance environment that promotes good land stewardship by strengthening the land rights of vulnerable groups at the local level?

As noted by the Global Land Outlook, “land is the operative link between biodiversity loss and climate change,” but to deliver on global aspirations, restoration must take place “in the right places and at the right scales.”

We therefore welcome the decision to devote a ministerial roundtable at COP15 to the theme of “Rights, Rewards and Responsibilities – the future of land stewardship” and invite TMG to deliver the keynote address.

The relationship between a decision on principles of good governance at global level and action on the ground must acknowledge that “all land stewardship is local.” This means that “localizing” the global land tenure decision requires analyzing the concrete situation on the ground, respecting people’s rights and strengthening the ability of local communities to protect their rights and become actively involved in restoration processes.

This approach is particularly critical for the implementation of global efforts to achieve carbon neutrality and afforestation for carbon offsetting purposes.

Our work with national partners in four African countries points to how the link between legitimate tenure rights and restoration can be made. National governments must incorporate land rights as a starting point in developing restoration agendas, including their UNCCD targets to achieve land degradation neutrality.

We welcome the strong statements made by many countries at the session and the commitment of multilateral agencies to support countries in more explicitly linking land governance and policies to reverse land degradation, desertification and drought. At its heart, this calls for “changing mindsets towards land tenure,” as FAO’s Maria Helena Semedo noted.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT) were designed to do exactly this. Adopted exactly 10 years ago by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the VGGT are “true connectors” of work across the three Rio Conventions, in the words of CFS Vice Chair Gabriel Ferrero de Loma-Osorio.

The UNCCD/FAO Technical Guide on implementing the land tenure decision in the context of the VGGT, which TMG helped develop, explains how to reinforce actions at the sub-national and local levels by building on efforts by communities and civil society organizations.

Our ongoing partnership with four African governments shows how responsible land governance can be meaningfully realized from the ground up.

Explore the Human Rights & Land Navigator, launched at UNCCD’s COP15, on May 12th in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. This tool was developed by TMG Research, the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Malawi Human Rights Commission, with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Alexander Müller is Founder & Managing Director, TMG Think Tank for Sustainability, based in Berlin, with a regional office in Nairobi; Jes Weigelt is Head of Programmes, TMG Think Tank for Sustainability

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Lucky Agbavor, a former child labourer from Ghana, shared personal testimony of his life at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour as a former child labourer. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS Children forced into child labour are robbed of their childhoods with dire consequences the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Fawzia Moodley
Durban, May 15 2022 (IPS)

Children’s voices took centre stage at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour, which kicked off in Durban, South Africa, on May 15, 2022. Their voices resonated with the saying: “Nothing about us without us.”

The conference takes place at a time when child labour has increased worldwide since 2016 and amid a looming deadline to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development goal of eliminating child labour by 2025.

An estimated 160 million kids are held in labour bondage, with the prediction of a further nine million more joining their ranks due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis in many parts of the world.

Lucky Agbavor, a former child labourer from Ghana, caused a stir with his testimony of being roped into child labour at the tender age of four when his poverty-stricken mother sent him to live with a relative in a fishing village. While his mother thought he was being educated and cared for, the little boy was forced to work on a boat and almost died. Later he was sent to another relative.

“He took me to carry beams, load it in the forest,” the youth recalled. He managed to go to school, but working and studying were tough. He returned home after failing his basic education certificate in 2012.

“I came back home, and things were very rough,” he said.

But Lucky managed to get through high school by earning money selling ice cream, and today he is proof that anything is possible.

“In between, I put in all the efforts,” he said. Thanks to a Pentecostal Church scholarship, Lucky was able to study BSc in nursing.

“I hope to become one of the renowned nurses in Ghana,” he told the awestruck audience.

Thatho Mhlongo, a Nelson Mandela Parliament ambassador, was unequivocal.

“Child labour is not a rumour; it’s real as it’s happening worldwide. I have personal experience. I have witnessed a very close friend of mine having to work and fend for his family.”

She praised the conference organisers for inviting children and hearing their voices.

Thatho also acknowledged the South African government’s efforts to support children who were affected by the recent floods in KwaZulu Natal, which claimed hundreds of lives and left many people homeless

“Transparency, respect and inclusiveness and children understand the implications of their choices,” she reminded the audience, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, two Nobel Peace Laureates and high-profile delegates from the labour movement.

While the children’s narratives were moving, government, labour, business, and NGOs dealt with the challenges of fighting the scourge of child labour and finding ways to meet the 2025 deadline to end the practice in a world hit by wars, displacement, and the pandemic.

Vice President of Workers Federation and Cosatu leader Bheki Ntshalintshali questioned how when the “world Is three times richer, 74% are denied a social grant.”

“Poverty leaves children vulnerable,” he said.

Ntshalintshali called for a “new social contract” to end child labour, noting that four out of five children were forced to work in the agricultural sector in sub-Saharan Africa.

Jacqueline Mugo, of the Federation of Kenya Employers, acknowledged that it was crucial, though not easy, to reverse the increased child labour trends.

“No doubt it is even more crucial than the previous conferences to succeed and galvanise to end child labour … If we fail to address the root causes, we won’t surely succeed,” she said.

Children forced into child labour are robbed of their childhoods with dire consequences the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour heard. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi, who has been fighting child labour in India and elsewhere for 40 years, remained upbeat despite the setbacks.

He noted that while the wealth of the world had increased, yet the plight of the children had worsened.

“I am angry because of the discriminatory world order, and the still age-old racial mindset. We cannot eradicate child labour without eliminating it in Africa. We know what the problem is and what is the solution. What we need is, as Madiba said, (for) concerted action is courage,” Satyarthi said, referring to South Africa’s first democratic president Nelson Mandela.

He said it was time to rise above partisan politics, adding that it was possible to reduce child labour once again.

Nosipho Tshabalala facilitated a discussion on child labour where Stefan Löfven, former Prime Minister of Sweden, spoke about the challenges of the labour market and supply chains and how we could use climate transition to create jobs.

Leymah Gbowee, another Nobel laureate, did not pull any punches when it came to Africa’s dismal record of child labour.

She slammed African governments who paid lip service to the goal of eradicating the abuse of children.

“When the cameras are off, suddenly politics come into effect … Africa is responsible; our governments are not blameless,” she said, reminding politicians that “our children are key to any policy, not the politics.”

Minister of Employment and Labour Thulas Nxesi was also critical, saying: “We pass resolutions, grand plans but no implementation.”

But he also defended SA, saying the country provided safety nets for vulnerable children through grants and free meals a day

ILO DG, Guy Ryder, called for a human-centred approach to end child labour.

“Child labour occurs in middle-income countries … always linked to poverty and inequality. More than two-thirds of the work of children happens alongside their families,” Ryder said.

These children were then excluded from education.

Representative of the UN in the African continent Amina Mohammed, and chair of the UN SDGs, said via a hologram: “Child labour is quite simply wrong. The ILO has a critical role in this work.

She noted that a “lack of education opportunity fuels child labour”.

Saulos Klaus Chilima, Vice President of Malawi, called for urgent action, saying: “We will we get there. We will achieve what we desire to achieve. I believe we can overcome.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his address, commended the ILO for being at the forefront of global efforts to eradicate the practice of child labour.”

“Child labour is an enemy of our children’s development and an enemy of progress. No civilisation, no country and no economy can consider itself to be at the forefront of progress if its success and riches have been built on the backs of children,” he said.

Ramaphosa said South Africa was a signatory to the Convention of Children because “such practices rob children of their childhood”.

He noted that while for many people, child labour “conjures sweatshops … there is a hidden face it is the children in domestic servitude to relatives and families.”

“We call on all social partners to adopt the Durban Call to action to take practical action to end child labour. We must ensure by all countries ILO convention against child labour; universal action to universal social support,” Ramaphosa said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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

Related Articles

• Call to Freedom for Millions of Children Trapped in Child Labour as Global Conference Comes to Africa
• Alarm Bells for Africa, Child Labour in Agriculture Requires Urgent Action
• Ivorian Cocoa Farmers Are Beating a System To Reduce Child Labour: Here’s How

Child Rights Advocate and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kailash Satyarthi urged participants at the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour, organised by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Durban, South Africa, to put their efforts to eliminate child labour back on track. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Sania Farooqui
Durban, May 15 2022 (IPS)

The Global Estimate on Child Labour estimates 160 million children are in child labour worldwide – an increase of 8.4 million children in the last four years – with millions more at risk due to the impacts of COVID-19.

The report, jointly released by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF in 2021, warned that in sub-Saharan Africa, population growth, recurrent crises, extreme poverty and inadequate social protection measures have led to an additional 16.6 million children in child labour over the past four years. 

One of the key findings in the report included the state of the agriculture sector, which accounts for 70 percent of children in child labour (112 million), followed by 20 percent in services (31.4 million) and 10 percent in industry (16.5 million). The prevalence of child labour in rural areas (14 percent) is close to three times higher than in urban areas (5 percent).

Andrews Tagoe

In an exclusive interview given to IPS News, Andrews Tagoe, Board Member of the Global March Against Child Labour and the Deputy Secretary-General of the General Agricultural Workers Union, says child labour in Africa alone is more than the rest of the world combined. While the majority are in agriculture, other areas are equally very important.

“We have a big challenge at hand and Africa needs a lot of strategies to tackle it right away.

“Addressing child labour is not a benevolent issue, it is the right of the people in rural communities to have their children in school. Child labour free zones have proven and provided solutions. For example, the government of Ghana has adopted this method – a child labour free zone and child labour free community and friendly villages. However, this concept needs more investment to continue making improved participation of communities and structures to address the issue of child labour in the country,” Tagoe says.

The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRI) report shows that the fifteen South African Development Community (SADC) member states lost about $80 billion in 2020 due to lower-than-expected growth, which is equivalent to around $220 for every SADC citizen.

“The analysis estimates that this economic crisis could take more than a decade to reverse, erasing all hope of countries meeting their national development plan targets to reduce poverty and inequality by 2030. The report says that many SADC member governments are still showing considerable commitment to fighting inequality – but still, nowhere near enough to offset the huge inequality produced by the market and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Among the key messages in the African Economic Outlook 2021 report, is that an estimated 51 million people on the continent could fall into poverty. “Today’s non-poor households, maybe tomorrow’s poor households, 50.2 percent of the people in Africa most vulnerable to staying in poverty live in East Africa.”

There is something that we are not doing well, if the number of child labour is so high, we must change our ways, says Tagoe.

“By working together, we have begun to see some way forward, but what we have seen is that in the allocation of resources, either not being sent to the right places or when they are not enough, that still remains a big challenge.”

“We are calling for huge, massive investments in the national plans of the country, we are also calling for a community-based approach – by working with Global March, agricultural unions and their grassroots organizations. It is important to note that it’s not just about the investment, but also about the allocation of the resources, enough money has been invested into fighting child labour, but where does that money go? How is it spent? These are important questions. More money needs to go into strategies that are working and looking into community development. We have been able to develop systems and strategies. We have been able to chart and map friendly villages and labour free zone, which shows what happens when proper investment is done, it creates the potential for child labour free communities and living.

“We want to address child labour in a way that it empowers the parents to take care of their own children, we want to address child labour in a way that it promotes improvement of community leaders, so they can pronounce their communities to be child labour free zones,” says Tagoe.

The ongoing 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour organised by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Durban, South Africa brings together experts from around the world who are leading the way in tackling child labour to reinvigorate international cooperation and to call for commitments that will genuinely realize freedom for every child.

Speaking during the conference’s opening plenary, Child Rights Advocate and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kailash Satyarthi urged rich nations to play their role in fighting the increasing global dilemma.

“You cannot blame Africa. It is happening because of the discriminatory world order. It is still the age-old racial discriminatory issue. We cannot end child labour without ending child labour in Africa. I refuse to accept that the world is so poor that it cannot eradicate the problem (of child labour),” Satyarthi said.

Child labour continues to be one of the worst end results of extreme poverty and inequality, children who are trapped in child labour deserve their right to education, health, clean water and sanitation.

“All of us must work together so that the prediction of these harrowing numbers doesn’t come true. We are very ashamed that the numbers are so high in Africa, and we must work hard to bring them down. All promises made to the children must be made to come true,” says Tagoe.

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

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

“We want to address child labour in a way that it empowers the parents to take care of their own children, we want to address child labour in a way that it promotes improvement of community leaders, so they can pronounce their communities to be child labour free zones." - Andrew Tagoe, Board Member of the Global March Against Child Labour and the Deputy Secretary-General of the General Agricultural Workers Union

During one of the hearings in Buenos Aires, the court trying a 1924 indigenous massacre in the Chaco heard the testimony of historian Nicolás Iñigo Carrera, from the University of Buenos Aires, who has been studying indigenous history in Argentina for decades. The expert witness described in detail the conditions in the Napalpí indigenous “reducción” or camp where the massacre took place. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 13 2022 (IPS)

It’s a strange trial, with no defendants. The purpose is not to hand down a conviction, but to bring visibility to an atrocious event that occurred almost a hundred years ago in northern Argentina and was concealed by the State for decades with singular success: the massacre by security forces of hundreds of indigenous people who were protesting labor mistreatment and discrimination.

“We are seeking to heal the wounds and vindicate the memory of the (indigenous) peoples,” explained federal judge Zunilda Niremperger, as she opened the first hearing in Buenos Aires on May 10 in the trial for the truth of the so-called Napalpí Massacre, in which an undetermined number of indigenous people were shot to death on the morning of Jul. 19, 1924.

The trial began on Apr. 19 in the northern province of Chaco, one of the country’s poorest, near the border with Paraguay. But it was moved momentarily to the capital, home to approximately one third of the 45 million inhabitants of this South American country, to give it greater visibility.

In a highly symbolic decision, the venue chosen in Buenos Aires was the Space for Memory and Human Rights, created in the former Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), where the most notorious clandestine torture and extermination center operated during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, which kidnapped and murdered as many as 30,000 people for political reasons."What we hope is that the sentence will bring out the truth about an event that needs to be understood so that racism and xenophobia do not take hold in Argentina. People need to know about all the blood that has flowed because of contempt for indigenous people." -- Duilio Ramírez

The hearings in Buenos Aires ended Thursday May 12, and the court will reconvene in Resistencia, the capital of Chaco, on May 19, when the prosecutor’s office and the plaintiffs are to present their arguments before the sentence is handed down at an unspecified date.

“This trial is aimed at bringing out the truth that we need, and that I come to support, in the place where they brought my daughter when they kidnapped her. This shows that genocides are repeated in history,” Vera Vigevani de Jarach, seated in the front row of the courtroom, her head covered by the white scarf that identifies the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights group, told IPS.

Vera, 94, is Jewish and emigrated with her family to Argentina when she was 11 years old from Italy, due to the racial persecution unleashed by fascist leader Benito Mussolini in 1939. In 1976 her only daughter, Franca Jarach, then 18 years old, was forcibly disappeared.

“Truth trials” are not a novelty in Argentina. The term was used to refer to investigations of the crimes committed by the dictatorship, carried out after 1999, when amnesty laws passed after the conviction of the military regime’s top leaders blocked the prosecution of the rest of the perpetrators.

A petition filed by a member of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (made up of mothers of victims of forced disappearance) before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) led later to an agreement with the Argentine State, which recognized the woman’s right to have the judiciary investigate the fate of her disappeared daughter, even though the amnesty laws made it impossible to punish those responsible.

Eventually, the amnesty laws were repealed, the trials resumed, and defendants were convicted and sent to prison.

Indigenous communities and human rights organizations held an Apr. 19, 2022 demonstration in Resistencia, capital of the Argentine province of Chaco, at the beginning of the trial for the truth about the Napalpí massacre. CREDIT: Chaco Secretariat of Human Rights and Gender

Historic reparations

“My grandmother was a survivor of the massacre and I grew up listening to the stories of labor exploitation in Napalpí and about what happened that day. For us this trial is a historic reparation,” Miguel Iya Gómez, a bilingual multicultural teacher who today presides over the Chaco Aboriginal Institute, a provincial agency whose mission is to improve the living conditions of native communities, told IPS.

The trial is built on the basis of official documents and journalistic coverage of the time and the videotaped testimonies of survivors of the massacre and their descendants, and of researchers of indigenous history in the Chaco.

The Argentine province of Chaco forms part of the ecoregion from which it takes its name: a vast, hot, dry, sparsely forested plain that was largely unsettled during the Spanish Conquest. Only at the end of the 19th century did the modern Argentine State launch military campaigns to subdue the indigenous people in the Chaco and impose its authority there.

Once the Chaco was conquered, many indigenous families were forced to settle in camps called “reducciones”, where they had to carry out agricultural work.

“The ‘reducciones’ operated in the Chaco between 1911 and 1956 and were concentration camps for indigenous people, who were disciplined through work,” said sociologist Marcelo Musante, a member of the Network of Researchers on Genocide and Indigenous Policies in Argentina, which brings together academics from different disciplines, at the hearing.

“When indigenous people entered the ‘reducción’, they were given clothes and farming tools, and this generated a debt that put them under great pressure. And they were not allowed to make purchases outside the stores of the ‘reducción’,” he explained.

David García, a member of the Napalpí Foundation, created in 2006 to gather information about and bring visibility to the 1924 massacre, took part in the trial in Buenos Aires. His organization was one of the driving forces behind the historic trial in Argentina. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Invaded by cotton

Historian Nicolás Iñigo Carrera said it was common for indigenous people in the Chaco to go to work temporarily in sugar mills in the neighboring provinces of Salta and Jujuy, but the scenario changed in the 1920s, when the Argentine government introduced cotton in the Chaco, to tap into the textile industry’s growing global demand.

“Then the criollo (white) settlers, who often had no laborers, demanded the guaranteed availability of indigenous labor to harvest the cotton crop, and in 1924 the government prohibited indigenous people, who refused to work on the cotton plantations, from leaving the Chaco, declaring any who left subversives,” Carrera said.

Anthropologist Lena Dávila Da Rosa said the Jul. 19, 1924 protest involved between 800 and 1000 indigenous people from Napalpí, and some 130 police officers who opened fired on them, with the support of an airplane that dropped candy so the children would go out to look for it and thus reveal the location of the protesters they were tracking down.

“It’s impossible to know exactly how many indigenous people were killed, but there were several hundred victims,” Alejandro Jasinski, a researcher with the Truth and Justice Program of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, told IPS.

“The official report mentioned four people killed in confrontations among themselves, and there was a judicial investigation that was quickly closed. All that was left were the buried memories of the communities,” he added.

The memories were revived and made public in recent years thanks in large part to the efforts of Juan Chico, an indigenous writer and researcher from the Chaco who died of COVID-19 in 2021.

“Juan started collecting oral accounts almost 20 years ago,” David García, a translator and interpreter of the language of the Qom, one of the main indigenous nations of the Chaco, told IPS. “I worked alongside him to bring the indigenous genocide to light, and in 2006 we founded an NGO that today is the Napalpí Foundation. It was a long struggle to reach this trial.”

Vera Vigevani de Jarach, a member of the human rights group Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, attended the hearing in Buenos Aires for the Napalpí indigenous massacre, held in the most notorious clandestine detention and torture center used by the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina. CREDIT: National Secretariat of Human Rights

Indigenous people in the Chaco today

Of the population of Chaco province, 3.9 percent, or 41,304 people, identified as indigenous in the last national census conducted in Argentina in 2010, which is higher than the national average of 2.4 percent.

Census data reflects the harsh living conditions of indigenous people in the Chaco and the disadvantages they face in relation to the rest of the population. More than 80 percent live in deficient housing while more than 25 percent live in critically overcrowded conditions, with more than three people per room. In addition, more than half of the households cook with firewood or charcoal.

Today, the site of the Napalpí massacre is called Colonia Aborigen Chaco and is a 20,000-hectare plot of land owned by the indigenous community where, according to official data, some 1,300 indigenous people live, from the Qom and Moqoit communities, the most numerous native groups in the Chaco along with the Wichi.

In 2019, mass graves were found there by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, a prestigious organization that emerged in 1984 to identify remains of victims of the military dictatorship and that has worked all over the world.

“What we hope is that the sentence will bring out the truth about an event that needs to be understood so that racism and xenophobia do not take hold in Argentina,” Duilio Ramírez, a lawyer with the Chaco government’s Human Rights Secretariat, which is acting as plaintiff, told IPS. “People need to know about all the blood that has flowed because of contempt for indigenous people.”

“We hope that with the ruling, the Argentine State will take responsibility for what happened and that this will translate into public policies of reparations for the indigenous communities,” he said.

Sylvie Djacbou, Exchanging with indigenous communities and somes civil societies around the Impact of Cameroon growth and employment strategy through structural projects like Agro-industries on Indigenous communities. @inside their sacred forest, Assok/Mintom, South Region Cameroon

By Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue
YAOUNDÉ, May 13 2022 (IPS)

Growing up amid under the leafy canopy of the Congo Basin rainforest, the woodland was more than our home. It was our playground, our medicine cabinet, our teacher, our therapist. And it was a source of livelihood with its rich biodiversity and helped shield us from the effects of climate change.

The mounting tension between economic growth and healthy forest life over years has led to the destruction of some of the world’s oldest forests and the resulting poverty of its communities. This massive deforestation has led to the expropriation of indigenous and local communities from their ancestral land without their consent, increased carbon emissions, migration and the disappearance of Indigenous communities’ culture and languages.

The current economic development model in Congo Basin is rooted in massive deforestation: more and more concessions are being granted with large scale land set aside for industrial agriculture such as palm oil and rubber.

The loss of the forest ecosystem - and therefore the spiritual and cultural heritage of the  community - is irreversible. The tropical rainforests of the Congo Basin are being eliminated.

Rather than developing our country, the changes are impoverishing forest communities and leaving the entire region more vulnerable to climate change and diseases.

The Congo Basin rainforest, larger than the US state of Alaska, refers to six Central African countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Central African Republic) and is the world’s second largest tropical rainforest after the Amazon.

Recently, just weeks after International Forest Day on 21st of March, the third part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was released showing us that there is still a lot to do on the ground to limit the effect of climate change. And the Congo Basin forest is one of the frontlines in the fight.

This report once again rang the alarm that, if nothing is done, then the world may find itself on a pathway to climate breakdown and extreme poverty.

Later this year, the annual UN climate conferences (COP 27) will take place in Egypt where the world’s leaders will meet to agree on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including its SDG 15 which aims to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”.

We are expecting more action and fewer false promises from Africa’s leaders and for its youth to take the lead scene in holding their leaders accountable.

As we prepare for this event, it is important to think through how we can use that international platform to drive national governments, especially those from Congo Basin, to act with the same speed they took their pledges to address the climate change crisis.

The current economic development model in Congo Basin is rooted in massive deforestation: more and more concessions are being granted with large scale land set aside for industrial agriculture such as palm oil and rubber.

The loss of the forest ecosystem – and therefore the spiritual and cultural heritage of the  community – is irreversible. The tropical rainforests of the Congo Basin are being eliminated.

The impact is not just economic: When forests are cleared, the carbon they store is released back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. According to the recent Global Forest Watch data, in 2021, 3.75 million hectares of pristine rainforest (an area critical to carbon storage and biodiversity) was lost at a rate of 10 football fields per minute.

Cameroon, for instance, has lost more than 80 thousand hectares of its primary forests in 2021, almost twice area of the primary forest destroyed in 2019. The Democratic Republic of Congo has lost nearly half a million hectares of primary forest in 2021 (Increase of almost 29% compared to 2020). Only to enrich a small portion of selfish elites.

At this rate, there is no way to reverse forest loss by 2030, as pledged by leaders from 141 countries at last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Despite that, Cameroon is still granting a company, like Camvert SA, tax exemptions to implement an almost 60,000 hectares palm plantation project. This will result not only in deforestation but also in biodiversity destruction alongside the loss of communities’ livelihoods but also lead communities in the areas in extreme poverty.

One forest community member told me: “Before this company, I was able to collect non timber forest products and sell them. I was also able to find my treatment there when I was ill. Now, there will be no more forest and we are left to ourselves.”

Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue

The benefits of these deals, however, do not reach local residents. They are seldom hired when these concessions are developed. My research shows experienced workers in these concessions tend to come from other areas of the country and –  even when local community members are hired – they are paid a pittance.

While companies often brag that they are promoting development by opening up roads, it’s important to note that these roads are used mainly to deliver timber to the market and are not open for communities.

The Congo Basin countries are not immune: The 2022 World Bank report show the country is a long way away from achieving substantial poverty reduction, with the COVID-19 pandemic keeping people below the poverty line and remaining stubbornly constant.

In DRC, a recent IGF report showed that more than USD 10 million in forest royalties were not paid to the public treasury between 2014 and 2020.

What’s worse, the climate change that this deforestation is making worse will only deepen poverty. The latest IPCC report  estimates that in the next decade alone, climate change will drive 32-132 million more people into extreme poverty.

Yes, we need development. But at what cost? And who should that development benefit? Protecting forests is a matter of preserving the livelihoods of the local community and reducing poverty. Granting more forest concessions will not make us richer than we are now.

We need alternative development models that embrace indigenous communities’ wellbeing and promote healthy forests. By taking advantage of the indigenous people’s wisdom and knowledge, in forest management there is a possibility to develop while securing communities’ land and contribute in bringing back global warming below the critical level (2°C ).

Achieving sustainable development and eradicating poverty in the Congo Basin would involve effectively stopping deforestation and implementing climate policies which ensure social justice and meaningful participation of communities in decision-making.

It is time for the various policy working groups on forest issues in Congo Basin to consider more than their personal economic interests but to take more into consideration the long term need to have healthy forests for healthy life.

 

Excerpt:

Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue is Forest Campaigner with Greenpeace Africa and a 2022 Aspen New Voices Fellow.

Every year, 570 million tons of food are wasted at the household level people. Global food waste accounts for 8–10% of greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 13 2022 (IPS)

Please do not say you were not aware that the world produces enough food to feed all human beings on Earth, while nearly double the combined European Union’s population go to bed hungry… every single night.

And please don’t pretend you did not know that 20% of all humans –those who live in the wealthiest countries– waste about 35% of the food they buy, throwing it in the garbage.

Poverty, armed conflicts and corruption are also to be blamed in poor countries for wasting food –although in a much lesser volume–, due to the lack of adequate stocking infrastructure.

Africa as a whole contributes to about two to three per cent of global emissions that cause global warming and climate change. However, the continent suffers the heaviest impacts of the climate crisis, including increased heat waves, severe droughts and catastrophic cyclones, like the ones that hit Mozambique and Madagascar in recent years

In short, every year, 570 million tons of food are wasted at the household level, according to the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP)’s Food Waste Index Report 2021 report.

This amount of wasted food is sufficient to feed the millions of hungry people.

Moreover, global food waste accounts for 8–10% of greenhouse gas emissions, UNEP warns.

Meanwhile, the intensive agriculture industries dump in lands and seas huge amounts of food either because they are “ugly” –therefore not nice enough to be marketable–, or to keep their prices the most highly profitable possible.

 

The triple planetary crisis

Food waste accelerates the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution, according to the world’s environmental body.

Just take the case of a vast continent like Africa –55 countries home to 1.4 billion humans– causes a negligible 2% to 3% of all global greenhouse emissions, however it falls victim to more than 80% of the world’s climate catastrophes.

All the above, and other innumerable consequences, have a common name: inequality.

Inequality is not just about a morality issue: inequality kills one person … every four seconds.

 

From billionaires to trillionaires

Add to all the above the fact that as the COVID-19 pandemic devastates the poor, the world’s 10 richest have multiplied their wealth into trillions.

The numbers are unbelievably staggering: the world’s 10 richest men more than doubled their fortunes from 700 US billion to 1.5 trillion US dollars—at a rate of 15,000 per second or 1.3 billion a day, according to a new study from Oxfam International, IPS journalist Thalif Deen reported.

“These phenomenal changes in fortunes took place during the first two years of a Covid-19 pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall, and over 160 million more people forced into poverty—60 million more than the figures released by the World Bank in 2020.”

 

Grabbed

As this happens, conservative estimates indicate that 811 million human beings are extremely hungry, close to the abyss of famine and death.

These millions live in the poorest regions of the world, those which have enormous natural resources –oil, indispensable minerals for giant technologies, private corporations, fertile soils grabbed by big business, etc– just do not eat.

 

Playing with fire

But there is much more evidence showing how the most vulnerable are left behind in one of the worst health crises in decades: COVID-19 vaccines.

See what the World Health Organization’s chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on 4 May 2022: the best way to save lives, protect health systems and minimise cases of “long COVID” is by vaccinating at least 70% of every country’s population – and 100% of most at-risk groups.

Although more jabs have become available, a lack of political commitment, operational capacity problems, financial constraints, misinformation and disinformation, are limiting vaccine demand, he added while warning that COVID treatment is still often ‘out of reach’ for the poor.

 

Manufacturers’ record profits

While “we’re playing with a fire that continues to burn us”, he said that “manufacturers are posting record profits”.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed that “we cannot accept prices that make life-saving treatments available to the rich and out of reach for the poor”.

 

Acute food and water shortages

Back to the staggering impacts of the climate crisis on those who contributed the least to cause it.

In East Africa only, 25 million humans now face acute food and water shortages due to the climate crisis, as already projected a few months ago by the scientific community.

 

The driest conditions

The East African region, and in particular, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya, are experiencing the driest conditions and hottest temperatures since satellite record-keeping began, the world’s environmental body reported.

“As a result, as many as 13 million people are currently experiencing acute food and water shortages and a projected 25 million will face a similar fate by mid-2022.”

Scientists are blaming climate change for the current crisis in a part of the world that is least able to cope with.

“Africa as a whole contributes to about two to three per cent of global emissions that cause global warming and climate change.”

“However, the continent suffers the heaviest impacts of the climate crisis, including increased heat waves, severe droughts and catastrophic cyclones, like the ones that hit Mozambique and Madagascar in recent years.”

 

Things will only get worse

Furthermore, scientists and experts project that things will only get worse for Africa if current trends continue.

According to the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, “key development sectors have already experienced widespread loss and damage attributable to anthropogenic climate change, including biodiversity loss, water shortages, reduced food production, loss of lives and reduced economic growth.”

“The current drought hitting East Africa has been particularly devastating to small-scale farmers and herders across the Horn who are already vulnerable to climate related shocks.”

“At the moment in the Horn of Africa we are witnessing vulnerable communities being disproportionately affected by climate change who are least able to buffer against its impact,” said Susan Gardner, the Director of UNEP’s Ecosystems Division.

 

Famine

In the case of one East African country: Somalia, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reported that the drought emergency has deteriorated to a point where the country is facing the risk of famine.

And that about 4.5 million people are affected, of whom nearly 700,000 people have been displaced from their homes in search of water, food, pasture and livelihoods.

The UN relief web also informs that:

• About 3.5 million people are in acute need of water assistance, including 1.4 million internally displaced people. Water trucking activities are ongoing but are insufficient to meet increasing needs.

• Schools are closing as children are displaced with their families. At least 420,000 (45% girls) out of 1.4 million children whose education has been disrupted are at risk of dropping out of school because of the drought.

• At least 1.8 million people were reached with various forms of assistance in February, but the escalating emergency calls for sustained scaling up of response and flexibility in reprogramming.

 

Unprecedented impacts

Confirming these facts, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for its part reported that The Horn of Africa is in the grip of the worst drought in decades – parching landscapes, heightening food insecurity and causing increasingly widespread displacement.

An estimated 15 million people are severely affected by the drought in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia – approximately 3,5 and 7 million people in each country, respectively.

The unprecedented impacts of multiple failed rainy seasons are threatening to create a humanitarian crisis in a region “already negatively impacted by cumulative shocks, including conflict and insecurity, extreme weather conditions, climate change, desert locusts and the negative socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Now that you have been reminded about some of the multiple, severe impacts of inequality, which, even at different levels, takes place in the rich, industrialised countries… will you take them into account when it comes to voting politicians?

 

A child beneficiary holding a drawing portraying domestic violence, at the Centre for Youth Empowerment and Civic Education, Lilongwe, Malawi which partnered with the ILO/IPEC to support the national action plan aimed at combating child labour. Credit: Marcel Crozet/ILO

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, May 13 2022 (IPS)

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.

Child rights experts at Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation reiterate that tolerance and normalisation of working children, many of whom work in hazardous conditions and circumstances, and apathy has stalled progress towards the elimination of child labour.

Further warnings include more children in labour across the sub-Saharan Africa region than the rest of the world combined. The continent now falls far behind the collective commitment to end all forms of child labour by 2025.

The International Labour Organization estimates more than 160 million children are in child labour globally.

How to achieve the Sustainable Development Target 8.7 and the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour that focuses on its elimination by 2025 will be the subject of the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour to be held in Durban, South Africa, from May 15 to 20, 2022.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to open the conference. He will share the stage with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) chairperson and President of the Republic of Malawi Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder, and Argentina President Alberto Ángel Fernández Pérez (virtual).

“There are multiple drivers of child labour in Africa, and many of them are interconnected,” Minoru Ogasawara, Chief Technical Advisor for the Accelerating action for the elimination of child labour in supply chains in Africa (ACCEL Africa) at the International Labour Organization (ILO) tells IPS.

He speaks of the high prevalence of children working in agriculture, closely linked to poverty and family survival strategies.

Rapid population growth, Ogasawara says, has placed significant pressure on public budgets to maintain or increase the level of services required to fight child labour, such as education and social protection.

“Hence the call to substantially increase funding through official development assistance (ODA), national budgets and contributions from the private sector targeting child labour and its root causes,” he observes.

UNICEF says approximately 12 percent of children aged 5 to 14 years are involved in child labour – at the cost of their childhood, education, and future.

Of the 160 million child labourers worldwide, more than half are in sub-Saharan Africa, and 53 million are not in school – amounting to 28 % aged five to 11 and another 35 % aged 12 to 14, according to the most recent child labour global estimates by UNICEF and ILO.

Against this grim backdrop, keynote speakers Nobel Peace Laureates Kailash Satyarthi and Leymah Gbowee and former Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Löfven will address the conference, which is expected to put into perspective how and why children still suffer some of the worst, most severe forms of child labour such as bonded labour, domestic servitude, child soldiers, drug trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.

Satyarthi has been at the forefront of mobilising global support to this effect.

“I am working in collaboration with a number of other Nobel Laureates and world leaders. We are demanding the setting up of an international social protection mechanism. During the pandemic, we calculated that $53 billion annually could ensure social protection for all children in all low-income countries, as well as pregnant women too,” Satyarthi emphasises.

“Increased social protection, access to free quality education, health care, decent job opportunities for adults, and basic services together create an enabling environment that reduces household vulnerability to child labour,” Ogasawara stresses.

He points to an urgent need to introduce and or rapidly expand social security and other social protection measures suitable for the informal economy, such as cash transfers, school feeding, subsidies for direct education costs, and health care coverage.

The need for a school-to-work transition and to “target children from poor households, increase access to education while reducing the need to combine school with work among children below the minimum working age” should be highlighted.

In the absence of these social protection safety nets, the  International Labour Organization says it is estimated that an additional 9 million children are at risk of child labour by the end of this year and a possible further increase of 46 million child labourers.

In this context, the fifth global conference presents an opportunity to assess progress made towards achieving the goals of SDG Target 8.7, discuss good practices implemented by different actors around the world and identify gaps and urgent measures needed to accelerate the elimination of both child labour and forced labour.

The timing is crucial, says the ILO, as there are only three years left to achieve the goal of the elimination of all child labour by 2025 and only eight years towards the elimination of forced labour by 2030, as established by the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 8.7.

The conference will also see the active participation of young survivor-advocates from India and Africa. They will share their first-person accounts and lived experiences in sync with the core theme of the discussion.

The conference will also take place within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, amid fears and concerns that ending child labour became less significant on the international agenda as the world coped with the impact of the pandemic. This could reverse the many gains accrued in the fight against child labour, forced labour and child trafficking.

This is the first of a series of stories which IPS will be publishing during the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour from May 15 to 20, 2022.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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General Assembly Holds Emergency Special Session on Ukraine. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
 
The abstentions of some developing and emerging countries in the vote on the Ukraine resolution in the UN General Assembly in early March is a warning signal. Among the more than 140 countries that voted for the resolution were primarily those in the Global South where Europe is particularly engaged and which tend to be democracies.

By Martin Schulz
BERLIN, May 13 2022 (IPS)

While the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is shaking up the European security order, other parts of the world are being particularly affected by the war’s ‘side effects’.

The struggle against the economic consequences of the pandemic and the effects of the climate crisis were already posing major challenges for many developing countries. The war in Ukraine is now making the situation even more difficult to manage, and adding new crisis dynamics as well.

As a result of the Russian invasion, for example, the prices of bread, petrol, and fertiliser are rapidly increasing in the countries of the Global South. At the same time, many exporting countries have restricted food exports, so that in many places, food shortages are looming. In view of these developments, the risk of famine is growing, as is the risk of protests that lead to unrest.

In addition, there is concern that donor countries could become less willing and less resourced to support the Global South, due to new commitments related to the war in Ukraine. Yet these are now needed more urgently than ever. We, Europeans, must counter these fears. Support for Ukraine and a strong commitment to the Global South must not be mutually exclusive.

International solidarity and the adherence to a global commitment

Two examples from Africa show why our commitment to the Global South remains important.

First, the Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Up to 20 million people are acutely threatened by hunger. At the same time, due to the war in Europe, the prices for food and fertiliser are spiking.

Until now, over one third of east Africa’s grain imports have come from Russia or Ukraine; but since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, deliveries have plummeted. The region’s national budgets are massively indebted after two years of pandemic and economic restrictions, and cannot absorb the price increases.

Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP), which sources more than half of its grain from Ukraine and Russia, lacks the resources to combat impending famines. The appeals to the international community are becoming more and more desperate.

Martin Schulz

Secondly, in West Africa it is becoming increasingly difficult to protect the civilian population. The climate crisis has already led to increased risks of conflict in the Sahel region, among other places, because pastureland and water sources are shrinking.

The lack of economic prospects, non-existent public services and a lack of security are giving people greater incentives to join violent groups. The region’s military forces often fight against such groups, without regard for the civilian population. Increasingly, Russian weapons and military advisors are also being used.

Locally coordinated support for human security, which is also promoted by German and European development cooperation, and international peacekeeping missions, such as the one in Mali, can make an important contribution to protecting the local civilian population.

The continuation of the MINUSMA mission and Germany’s participation in it have been a subject of debate, especially since the withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer. The war in Ukraine now raises the question more strongly as to whether a commitment is still viable when the current threat is so close to home.

However, Germany’s withdrawal from the Sahel region would deprive the civilian population of necessary protection and make it more difficult to provide humanitarian aid. That would be a fatal signal to the local population. It would also hardly constitute convincing evidence of Europe’s willingness to assume more global responsibility in the future.

These two examples illustrate that we should intensify rather than scale back cooperation with the Global South now. Our international solidarity requires that we adhere to our global commitment to comprehensive human security both within and outside Europe.

As the Global North, we have benefited from colonialism and globalisation for centuries while we live at the expense of the countries of the Global South, who are not only suffering the most from the climate crisis, but have also contributed to it the least. It is part of our global responsibility to continue to support these countries right now – especially when they are being acutely affected by the effects of war in Europe.

Being a reliable European partner

Europe’s commitment to this is more broadly based than that of other partners of the Global South. Russia, China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates work almost exclusively with governments – regardless of whether or not they are democratic.

Europe, on the other hand, also cooperates with legislative bodies, the judiciary and civil society. Whether combatting hunger, protecting the civilian population, enforcing human and employee rights in global supply chains, or strengthening democratic scope, civil actors in the Global South count on European support.

This is not to be expected from Russia and China. In most countries in the Global South, a majority of the population wish to realise opportunities that only democracies guarantee. Continuing the common commitment to social and political rights worldwide – without being naive in terms of foreign policy – must therefore be part of the Zeitenwende.

Continuing a strong global engagement is also essential for Europe in geostrategic terms. No other region of the world benefits from the rules-based multilateral order as much as the EU, which has built its prosperity and supply chains on its reliability.

Therefore, the hitherto underestimated deglobalisation that currently poses a threat along exclusive zones of influence constitutes a particular risk, given the special integration of European prosperity into a global division of labour. This is all the more reason for Europe to commit itself to preserving this rules-based order beyond its borders.

To do this, we need partners. However, in order to find them, we will need to make more intensive efforts than in the past. The circle of the EU, the G7, NATO, and the OECD is too small.

We need to make concrete and fair offers to the Global South that will make the EU a more attractive partner than it has been thus far. This is not out of altruism, but a rational approach in mutual interest.

After all, if we want to secure majorities for a rules-based multilateral order in your own interest, we have to be the partner of first choice for the developing countries and for common political projects.

The need for critical assessment

The abstentions of some developing and emerging countries in the vote on the Ukraine resolution in the UN General Assembly in early March is therefore a warning signal. Among the more than 140 countries that voted for the resolution were primarily those in the Global South where Europe is particularly engaged and which tend to be democracies.

However, we should also look to the reasons that led certain countries to abstain, and derive constructive policy approaches from this. For many countries in the Global South, an increasingly multipolar world is also one in which they can reduce dependencies on Europe and the US and diversify partnerships.

For such countries, Russia is increasingly one of these partners – for example as the largest arms exporter to Africa, but also in the area of grain export. A clear positioning vis-à-vis Russia is therefore more difficult in the case of some countries.

Europe should respond to this in a constructive way. Future cooperation should not be based on categories of ‘reward’ or ‘punishment’ for voting behaviour. Instead, the opportunities to jointly shape global challenges should be emphasised.

Countries such as India and South Africa abstained from the vote in the General Assembly, among other reasons, because they assume that we have double standards, for example in the case of fighting the pandemic.

However, these two countries are not the only ones that remain decisive partners for rules-based multilateralism. Therefore, we need to be making more competitive offers to the Global South. For this we need a new framework of cooperation and a better understanding of the other parties’ interests.

Our cooperation must be more strategically positioned than in the past. This will require greater coherence between the various political areas in Europe. Approaches in foreign, development, climate and economic policy must mesh with each other.

Despite the increased demand for defence funding, the extensive humanitarian and development policy commitment must be maintained. In the end, every euro spent on crisis prevention saves many times the expenditure than dealing with the consequences of the crisis would entail. Every euro spent on protecting democracy creates a foundation for political stability.

A critical assessment of one’s own actions is always a prerequisite for a change in policy. In the past we have too often confused short-term security with long-term stability. For example, Europe’s cooperation with African autocrats to control migration to Europe and, supposedly, strengthen regional security was a mistake.

This cost us trust among those who – with growing success – protest against these autocrats and may soon assume government responsibilities. Establishing commercial interests that protect the interests of individual European industries but limit the creation of added value in the Global South makes it easier for other actors to make more attractive offers – for example in the establishment of economic infrastructure.

In a world in which many developing countries are being courted by various potential partners, a fairer EU trade policy takes on geopolitical importance. Through it, we can win the partners we need.

Europe’s advantage remains its capacity for multi-dimensional cooperation with the Global South. There it experiences a high degree of recognition – our partners from politics, civil society and trade unions from São Paulo to Bamako to Dhaka agree on this point.

An increasingly multipolar world needs more international commitment rather than less. This also amounts to one way in which our political approach to the new era must be measured.

Martin Schulz has been Chairman of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung since 14 December 2020. He is a former member of the German Bundestag and the European Parliament, of which he was President from 2012 to 2017. He was party leader of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 2017 to 2018.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS), published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A cargo of high energy biscuits for Ukrainian refugees is offloaded at an airport in Poland. Amid reports of dwindling food supplies in embattled areas in Ukraine, the World Food Programme (WFP) has begun ramping up operations, warning that the conflict could have consequences beyond the country. Ukraine has long been the “breadbasket” of Europe, but the fighting could disrupt global wheat trade, with knock-on impacts on food prices and overall food security. Credit: WFP/Marco Frattini

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2022 (IPS)

The Russian invasion of Ukraine last February has triggered multiple crises in several fronts: the deaths of thousands of civilians, the destruction of heavily populated cities, the rise in military spending in Europe, a projected decline in development assistance to the world’s poorer nations; the demolition of schools and health-care facilities — and now the threat of hunger and starvation.

David Beasley, executive director of the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP), said last week: “Right now, Ukraine’s grain silos are full,” while “44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation.”

“The bullets and bombs in Ukraine could take the global hunger crisis to levels beyond anything we’ve seen before,” Beasley warned during a visit to the Polish-Ukrainian border.

“The world demands it because hundreds of millions of people globally depend on these supplies. We’re running out of time and the cost of inaction will be higher than anyone can imagine. I urge all parties involved to allow this food to get out of Ukraine to where it’s desperately needed so we can avert the looming threat of famine”.

Beasley warned that unless the ports are reopened, Ukrainian farmers will have nowhere to store the next harvest in July/August. The result will be mountains of grain going to waste while WFP and the world struggle to deal with an already catastrophic global hunger crisis.

A leading producer of grain, Ukraine had about 14 million tons in storage and available for export. But Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea ports has brought shipments to a standstill. More grain is stranded on ships unable to move because of the conflict.

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters May 3 the United States chaired a Security Council meeting last March focusing on the link between armed conflict and food security.

“Once again, we will bring a spotlight to the conflict as a driver of food insecurity.”

The US, which is holding the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month, has scheduled an open debate on May 19 to examine “the nexus between conflict and food security.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to preside over the meeting in-person.

Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank, told IPS Russia’s war against Ukraine and their war crimes will have consequences that will last for decades. Yields of staple crops were already down in many parts of the world because of the impacts of the climate crisis and other conflicts.

“The war will only exacerbate the many crises the world is now facing—the biodiversity loss crisis, the health crisis, and the climate crisis”.

“And because Ukraine and Russia provided so much food—and cooking oils and fertilizer—to other parts of the world, including the Global South, there will be a massive hunger crisis,” she warned.

There is a chance that the war will accelerate a transition to more regenerative and local and regional food systems which was needed before the war. But in the meantime, there will be a a lot of suffering. Governments, NGOs, businesses, and other stakeholders will need to take action now to prevent a food crisis, Nierenberg said.

At a press conference in Vienna May 11, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: ” I have been in intense contact with the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Turkey, and several other key countries, in order to try to address seriously the problems of food security”.

“But once again, I do not intend to make public any of the initiatives I am having until they produce a result, because if this becomes something to be discussed, globally, I am sure that we will not be able to achieve anything,” he said.

WFP’s analysis has found that 276 million people worldwide were already facing acute hunger at the start of 2022. That number is expected to rise by 44 million people if the conflict in Ukraine continues, with the steepest rises in sub-Saharan Africa.

Daniel Bradlow, Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations in the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, told IPS the war in Ukraine will have a devastating impact in Africa because many African countries import food and fertilizer from Russia and Ukraine.

Therefore, the war will lead to increase in food and fertilizer prices as well as shortages of food and fertilizer. The impact of the war will come on top of extreme weather events– droughts, floods– in various parts of the continent that will also have adverse impacts on food prices and supplies.

“Thus. it is likely that there will be increases in the number of people going hungry across the continent which will have tragic impacts on the development and wellbeing of children”.

The only silver lining in this terrible situation is that it might lead to people across the continent increasing their reliance on more indigenous crops such as cassava, he noted.

Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam’s Policy Advisor on Food, Agriculture and Land, told IPS global hunger is soaring with the war in Ukraine seeing food prices skyrocket.

“This is catastrophic for people living in countries highly dependent on wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine. Countries like Yemen and Syria in the Middle East and Somalia and South Sudan in Africa where we are seeing people pushed beyond the brink of hunger,” she said.

The reason is a broken global food system, one that is unable to withstand crises and one that is built on inequality. Many poorer countries are unable – and are too often made unable – to produce enough food to feed their people. They must rely on food imports. This dependency is dangerous, she added.

“Countries should refrain from using food export bans. They just do more harm. Countries should ensure that food can move quickly from one country to another”.

“We need a food system that works for everybody. One that can stand against shocks such as rapid food inflation and one that is built on local small-scale family farming” she declared.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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