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Children and adolescents in a Yanomami community in Parima, on the southern border with Brazil, the area where four indigenous people were shot dead and others injured when they confronted military troops last March. CREDIT: Wataniba

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, May 12 2022 (IPS)

The voracious search for gold in southern Venezuela, practiced by thousands of illegal miners under the protection of various armed groups, represents the greatest threat today to the lives of indigenous peoples, their habitat and their cultures, according to their organizations and human rights defenders.

In this part of the Amazon jungle, “mining, violence, habitat destruction, death from disease and forced migration make up a context that indigenous people are calling a silent genocide,” researcher Aimé Tillet, who has worked in the area for many years, told IPS.

At the other end of the country, along the northwest border with Colombia, indigenous people are fighting for the delimitation of their territories, which has led to clashes and deaths in their attempts to recover ancestral lands, while they are often reduced to destitution.

There are common features of life in border regions that are home to indigenous peoples, such as neglect by the government, which fails to fulfill its duties in health, education, security, provision of food, fuel and transportation, supplies, communications and consultations with native peoples regarding the use of their land and resources.

The government foments mining activity and in 2016 decreed the “Orinoco Mining Arc” on the right bank of the Orinoco river – an area of 111,844 square kilometers, larger than Bulgaria, Cuba or Portugal.

In parallel, it established an armed forces company, Camimpeg, to spearhead the mining of gold, diamonds, coltan and other conventional and rare minerals, in which the country is rich.

Opacity is a stain on the management of military companies by the authorities, according to non-governmental organizations such as Citizen Control for Security and Defense.

The local press has reported on the involvement of military and police units in the region in incidents related to mining activity that have sparked protests by indigenous people and human rights activists, ranging from deaths of native people in altercations to massacres in which “unknown groups” have killed dozens of people.

Artisanal and illegal mining, in hundreds of deforested areas and along rivers contaminated with mercury used to extract gold from ore, are often controlled by criminal gangs that call themselves “syndicates” and that traffic in gold and supplies, as well as in people who work in the mines, who are often subjected to forced labor.

According to human rights groups, for some years now another danger has been Colombian guerrillas, particularly the National Liberation Army (ELN), which is involved in mining and other illegal activities in the southern state of Amazonas, as well as dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which laid down its arms under a 2016 peace deal.

In the Sierra de Perijá mountains, home to three native peoples and part of the northern border between Colombia and Venezuela, the ELN has made inroads into indigenous communities, setting up camps, collecting “vacunas” – taxes or protection payment – from cattle ranchers, overseeing cattle smuggling and recruiting young people as guerrilla fighters.

A map showing the areas that are home to the main indigenous peoples of Venezuela, according to the governmental Simón Bolívar Geographic Institute. The most numerous groups are in the extreme northwest, south and east of the country. CREDIT: IGVSB

Shots in the jungle

On Mar. 20, four Yanomami Indians were shot and killed in the Sierra de Parima mountains that mark the border with Brazil in the extreme south, by Venezuelan Air Force troops after an altercation over the internet signal and a router shared by the military and members of a native community.

The Yanomami, who have lived in the jungles of southern Venezuela and northern Brazil for thousands of years – considered a living testimony to the Neolithic era who only came into contact with the rest of the world a few decades ago – have found mobile telephones a useful means of communication in their widely dispersed communities.

What happened in Parima “cannot be taken as an isolated reaction, but must be seen as the result of an accumulation of tensions and abuses, of a lack of a differentiated treatment based on the right to positive discrimination,” declared Wataniba, an organization supporting the indigenous peoples of Venezuela’s Amazon region, at the time.

“All these tensions that are experienced daily on the borders are a consequence of extractivism, coupled with abuses of power by the military, transculturation and the lack of concrete actions by the State to meet the basic needs of indigenous peoples,” the organization added.

Hundreds of informal and illegal gold mines deforest land, damage the soil, pollute the water with mercury and exploit indigenous and other workers under forms of modern slavery in Venezuela’s Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: RAISG

Undeterrable garimpeiros

In 1989, a decree law by then President Carlos Andrés Pérez (1922-2010, who governed the country from 1974-1979 and 1989-1993) banned for 50 years all mining activity in the state of Amazonas in the extreme south of the country, an area of 178,000 square kilometers of jungle with fragile soils, home to 200,000 inhabitants, more than half of them members of 20 indigenous peoples.

For decades, however, thousands of garimpeiros – the Brazilian name for informal gold prospectors, who originally came from Brazil – have made incursions into Amazonas, and in recent years on a larger scale, using airstrips and a large number of motor pumps, and imposing relations, sometimes involving trade but above all exploitation, with indigenous communities and individuals.

On Jul. 28, 2021, the Kuyujani and Kuduno indigenous organizations, as well as the Tuduma Saka court of justice of the Sanemá ethnic group (Yanomami branch) and their Ye’kuana (Carib) neighbors, denounced the presence of garimpeiros in four communities, in documents delivered to the governmental Ombudsman’s Office.

More than 400 armed garimpeiros, according to the complaint, were working with 30 machines extracting precious minerals in the Upper Orinoco area, forcing men and boys to work in mining, and enslaving and forcing women into prostitution.

The report added that the destruction of the forests has also affected the vegetable gardens of local indigenous communities, which have become dependent on food supplies from the garimpeiros.

Tillet said the incursion of guerrillas and illegal miners in the south also creates hotbeds of inter-ethnic conflict, because some indigenous people and communities desperate to find a means of survival accept the miners, while others (such as the Uwottija or Piaroas of the middle Orinoco) strongly oppose such incursions.

A view of the damage caused by uncontrolled mining in an area of southern Venezuela. CREDIT: SOS Orinoco/RAISG

Modern-day slavery

In the “currutelas” or mining villages, young men and boys work extracting gold-rich sands, while women are employed to cook, sweep, wash and clean the camps, and are exploited sexually.

This situation, seen in the hundreds of mining camps in Amazonas and the southeastern state of Bolívar, which covers some 238,000 square kilometers, is aggravated in the case of indigenous peoples, lawyer Eduardo Trujillo, director of the Andrés Bello Catholic University’s Human Rights Center, which is conducting several studies in the area, told IPS.

“Under the control of armed groups, dynamics of violence are generated, with confrontations and deaths, and conditions of modern-day slavery, where omission translates into acquiescence on the part of the Venezuelan State,” Trujillo added.

In particular, indigenous women recruited to work in the camps “are caught up in a dynamic of violence: their work is not voluntary, sometimes they are not paid, and they are subjected to risks to their health and lives,” he said.

Mining in Venezuela contributes to the figures of the International Labor Organization (ILO), according to which more than 40 million people around the world are victims of modern-day slavery, 152 million are victims of child labor and 25 million are forced laborers.

Autana hill, seen from the banks of the Cuao River, a tributary of the middle Orinoco. The Uwottija people consider it sacred and reject the presence in the area of guerrilla groups from Colombia, associated with illegal mining. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

Adios habitat, culture and life

According to the 2011 census, at least 720,000 of Venezuela’s 28 million inhabitants are indigenous, belonging to some 40 native peoples, and close to half a million live in rural indigenous areas, mainly in border regions.

Although the largest indigenous group (60 percent) is the Wayúu, an Arawak-speaking people who live on the Colombian-Venezuelan Guajira peninsula in the north, most of the native peoples are in the south of the country. Some groups have thousands of members but others only a few hundred, and their languages and ancestral knowledge are at risk of dying out.

The environmental organization Provita reports that 380,000 hectares have been deforested south of the Orinoco in the last 20 years, while the area dedicated to mining increased from 18,500 to 55,000 hectares between 2000 and 2020.

Riverbanks and headwaters have been especially affected, many in areas theoretically protected as national parks. Tillet stressed that, in addition to the environmental damage they suffer, these are areas of limited resources for subsistence, for which indigenous communities and miners are now competing.

“Because they depend on mining for an income, indigenous people are forced to abandon their traditional activities of planting, fishing and hunting, their diet deteriorates, malnutrition and diseases such as malaria increase, and they are forced to say goodbye to their land, to move and migrate,” said Tillet.

The researcher said that health services, which are the responsibility of the State, have practically disappeared, and even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic, while education has collapsed as teachers move away and migrate, with the result that “children who should be in school now work in exploitative conditions in the mines.”

In the document they presented to the Ombudsman’s Office, the Yanomami and Ye’kuana organizations said they were victims of selective killings, contamination of water with mercury, contagion from diseases and, in short, “a silent cultural genocide.”

Children from a Uwottija (Piaroa) community in the middle Orinoco region, where organizations of this native people reject the presence of guerrilla groups from neighboring Colombia, associated with illegal mining. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez / IPS

Territory, an elusive right

The current constitution, adopted in 1999, recognized the right of indigenous peoples to conserve their cultures and possess their ancestral territories, and provided for the expeditious demarcation of these areas – which has only happened for a small part of their territories.

In the case of the state of Amazonas, which is almost entirely the habitat of indigenous people, the demarcation process has been ignored, preventing indigenous peoples from laying claim to their rights, demanding the required consultation processes and consent for the exploitation of their territory, and eventually obtaining benefits from their land.

Tillet said that “demarcation is still a pending issue, for which there is no political will, but the avalanche of mining has relativized its importance, because if protected areas such as national parks or natural monuments are violated by mining, you can imagine that the same thing is true for indigenous territories.”

Examples are the 30,000-square-kilometer Canaima National Park in the southeast, rich in tepuis – steep, flat-topped mountains – and large waterfalls, and the 3,200-square-kilometer Yapacana, in the middle of Amazonas state, where mining is practiced while the authorities turn a blind eye.

On the other hand, in the northwest, the struggle for land of the Yukpa people in the center of the Sierra de Perijá continues, with episodes of violence. Like their neighbors, the Barí of Chibcha origin, and the Wayúu, they are a bi-national people, although with more members of the community on the Venezuelan side than in Colombia.

The crux of the conflict is that throughout the 20th century the indigenous people were pushed into the most inhospitable lands in the mountains, while the plains, on the western shore of Lake Maracaibo, were occupied by cattle ranchers.

Some communities have accepted plots of land – the least fertile areas – granted by the government. But a resistant group of Yukpa, led by chief Sabino Romero until he was murdered in 2013, lays claim to land occupied by cattle ranches, while combating incursions by smugglers and guerrillas in the mountains.

Sabino Romero, a Yukpa chief from the Sierra de Perijá mountains bordering Colombia, was killed in 2013 in the context of his people’s struggle to recover lands occupied by cattle ranchers throughout the 20th century. CREDIT: Homo et Natura Society

“Other members of Sabino’s family and followers of his have been killed over the years and have endured attacks by hired killers and employees of cattle ranchers, and even by the National Guard (militarized police) or the ELN,” Lusbi Portillo, leader of the environmental Homo et Natura Society, told IPS.

Ana María Fernández, a Yukpa activist in the area, said that “we are not only fighting against large landowners, police forces and the National Guard, and the State, which does not allow the demarcation of our lands. We are also attacked by Colombian guerrillas and hired killers contracted by ranchers.”

On the other hand, some Yukpa indigenous people sometimes seize cattle as a way to collect on the damages inflicted on them. Others, less combative, “charge a right of way on what used to be their lands, to earn some money to eat and survive,” said Portillo.

The activist said that one alternative is for the State to fulfill its commitments to compensate cattle ranchers whose farms must be returned to the indigenous people, and to make good on its duty to provide transportation routes for the communities’ agricultural production and health care in the face of the increase in diseases.

Ana María Fernández is an activist from a Yukpa community that is demanding the demarcation of their ancestral territories in the western Sierra de Perijá, where the best lands were occupied by cattle ranches throughout the 20th century. CREDIT: OEPV

Time to migrate

The crisis of the second decade of this century in Venezuela has forced thousands of indigenous people to migrate, as part of the diaspora of six million Venezuelans who have left the country since 2014, overwhelmingly heading to neighboring Latin American and Caribbean countries, the United States and Spain.

The largest group is the Warao, a people living in the northeastern Orinoco delta, whose southern zone is affected by mining and logging activities, and who have gone mostly to Brazil, but also to Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

The Warao “number less than 50,000, and the migration of at least 6,000, more than 10 percent of them, is a decrease in numbers that speaks volumes about the human rights situation of this population. In northern Brazil there are some 5,000, and Brazil already considers them to be a distinct, nomadic indigenous people in its territory,” Tillet commented.

Pablo Tapo, a member of the Baré people and coordinator of the Amazon Indigenous Human Rights Movement, compiled a report according to which more than 4,500 indigenous people from nine ethnic groups in his region crossed the border into Colombia in three years.

In both cities and rural areas, “communities are left on their own because there is no attention or services, in outpatient hospitals there are no doctors, medicines or supplies, and there is no food security,” said Tapo.

In the southwestern plains state of Apure, the armed confrontation that months ago involved Colombian guerrillas and Venezuelan military forced the flight to Colombia of indigenous groups living on the Venezuelan side of the Meta River.

In the extreme southeast, next to Brazil, the Pemón people have suffered from the drop in tourism due to the insecurity associated with mining and the pandemic, which has created an incentive to migrate. And in the northwest, for peoples such as the Wayúu, continuously crossing the border is an ageold practice that has never changed.

At the center of the indigenous people’s plight is mining, particularly the insatiable craving for gold, of which, according to a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), this country can produce some 75 tons per year, although actual extraction, both legal and clandestine, is possibly half that.

Authorities in North Waziristan district in Pakistan, vaccinate children against polio. With one case reported, intensified efforts to eradicate the disease are underway. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 12 2022 (IPS)

Pakistan’s North Waziristan district authorities have launched an aggressive vaccination drive after a polio case surfaced after 15 polio-free months in the country.

The disease was detected in a 15-month-old toddler about 15 kilometers away from the Afghanistan border. This area was considered a Taliban militant’s hub until 2014.

The Taliban were against polio vaccinations, but immunization drives restarted after the militants were evicted in 2014.

The boy’s family says he had been vaccinated.

“The boy has been vaccinated in every door-to-door polio vaccination campaign, but even then, he developed the crippling disease. We aren’t opposed to polio drops,” says Naheedullah, the toddler’s uncle. “We are religious people but never defied vaccination.”

However, the authorities dispute the family’s version and say the newly infected child hadn’t received oral polio vaccines (OPV) because his family was among those they call “silent refusals”.

“Silent refusals are those whose families argue that their children below five years have been inoculated, but they remain unvaccinated,” Dr Shamsur Rehman, a health official in the region, told IPS. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 18,349 children remain unvaccinated due to refusal by their families during the March 2022 campaign. This is down from 19,874 recorded in December 2021.

Vaccinators also face threats from the defiant parents – and as a result, often record the children as vaccinated to stay safe from reprisals. More than 50 people have been killed, allegedly by militants, since 2012 in various anti-polio drives, mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which remained a hotspot of the virus for many years, Pakistan’s oldest newspaper Dawn reported.

Religious scholar Muhammad Sami says polio vaccines aren’t allowed in Islam, and therefore, there is polio vaccine hesitancy. He said his group had “information” that the vaccination was a plot to “render the recipients incapable of producing children and cut down the population of the Muslims.”

However, others in the same area have a different opinion.

“We have been persuading parents to administer OPV to their kids as it is their religious responsibility to protect their offspring from diseases,” says Maulana Sagheer, adding that it was false information that the vaccines caused sterility and infertility.

Zulfiqar Babakhel, spokesperson for Pakistan Polio Programme, told IPS that the detection of this latest case of wild poliovirus wasn’t unexpected.  The Pakistan programme had anticipated this risk and put in place contingency plans to enable a rapid response, he said.

It continues to intensify its efforts to eradicate all remaining residual transmission of any strain of poliovirus.

“The ‘last mile’ has always proven to be the toughest phase of national eradication efforts in all countries. Although challenges remain, the programme is capitalizing on the momentum of recent success and continues to strive for zero-polio. This is the most critical time for the programme,” Babakhel said.

It is important to emphasize that the number of polio cases has been significantly reduced this year due to health workers’ unwavering commitment and communities’ and various stakeholders’ support, he said.

It is the third case of wild polio to be reported globally in 2022. Others were reported from Afghanistan and Malawi.

Pakistan had reported one case last year with onset on January 27, 2021, in Killa Abdullah district, Balochistan province.

Health Secretary Dr Aamir Ashraf told IPS that this was a tragedy for the child and his family. It is also regrettable both for Pakistan and polio eradication efforts worldwide.

“We are disappointed but stay undeterred. The case appeared in Southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where the poliovirus was detected late last year and where an emergency action plan is already being implemented,” he says.

“The National and Provincial Polio Emergency Operations Centres have deployed teams to conduct a full investigation of the recent case, while emergency immunization campaigns are underway to prevent further spread of the wild poliovirus in Pakistan,” he says.

Repeated immunizations have protected millions of children from polio, allowing almost all countries to become polio-free, besides the two endemic countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The next sub-national Polio vaccination campaign, expected from 23 – 27 May 2022, will target over 24 million under-five children.

The polio programme had identified Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa as the area most at risk after wild poliovirus was detected in environmental samples in the last quarter of 2021.

“This validates the programme’s concerns about virus circulation in Southern KP and strengthens our resolve to reach every child with the polio vaccine,” said the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) coordinator for polio, Dr Shahzad Baig.

To address the challenges in Southern KP, the Government and global polio partners had already initiated an emergency action plan to address the challenges in this part of the province, he explained.

In 2020, the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa reported 22 cases, while no wild poliovirus cases were recorded in the area last year.

Substantial progress has been made recently, with most areas accessible to implement immunization campaigns, but deep-rooted problems and security concerns remain in a few places. Despite the challenges, the programme’s frontline workers continue to reach children with the life-saving vaccine.

The programme is capitalizing on the momentum gained last year and continues to strive for zero-polio. Parents must continue to vaccinate their children during every immunization round until they reach the age of five.

Pakistan remains one of only two countries globally with circulating wild poliovirus, together with Afghanistan. Polio is a highly infectious virus. Until this last epidemiological block wipes out polio, children worldwide remain at risk of life-long paralysis or fatality by the poliovirus.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, May 12 2022 (IPS)

An entirely unnecessary and all too tangible nightmare continues to scourge Ukraine. Without doubt, one catastrophe after another still awaits. Much of Ukraine’s harvest, of paramount importance to global food supply, is at risk of being lost due to Vladimir Putin’s and the Russian army’s belligerent actions. Last year, Ukraine harvested a record of 106 million tonnes of grain – 25, or even 50 percent of this amount is currently feared to be lost during this year while most experts add that “this is an optimistic forecast.”

This would not be the first time Ukraine, The World’s Breadbasket, suffers from grain shortages and the threat of famine. Considering the current war it might be reminded that famines are “man-made disasters”, equivalent to the Chinese term renhuo, which in January 1962 during a “cadre-meeting” was used by The Communist Party of China’s Vice Chairman, Liu Shaoqi, to describe the disastrous results of China’s Great Leap Forward, which planning and execution he had participated in. Between 1958 and 1962, in a misapplied effort to increase industrial and agricultural production, the Chinese Government became responsible for working, beating and above all starving forty-five million Chinese people to death.

Several years ago, a good friend of mine, Hussein Rahman, told me it is not accurate to blame mass starvation on poor harvests. Hussein is quite knowledgeable. He was awarded his Ph.D. from the Dijon University after researching a high yielding variety of rice. Afterwards he worked for 15 years for the World Food Programme (WFP) and was then posted in Lesotho, Angola, Comoro Islands, Ethiopia, and Yemen. During his last years with the UN, Hussein was during ongoing wars active in Somalia and Iraq, working for The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Hussein was convinced that famines are a political issue. There are no examples of mass starvation affecting democratic societies.

While studying at Dijon University, Hussein was inspired by Amartya Sen’s book Poverty and Famines, in which Sen analysed what he as a nine-year-old boy in 1943 had seen in Bengal – how people succumbing to acute starvation lay dead in the streets. More than three million individuals died from this devastating famine.

Amartya Sen proves that despite crop failures, there was in 1943 an adequate food supply in Bengal, though extensive rice export, panic purchase, hoarding, military food storage and an economic boom caused food prices to rise and it was mainly landless rural workers and the urban proletariat, whose wages had not followed the development, who were unable to obtain enough food. Bengali food production was admittedly lower than it had been the previous year, though more abundant than it had been in the years before that, when no famine had occurred.

Later studies of the Bengal famine have proven Sen right in his conclusion that famines are created by humans and accordingly can be prevented, or at least mitigated. Archival studies have evidenced that Winston Churchill’s war cabinet in remote London had been repeatedly warned that a famine was brewing in India. At an early stage, the British Government was well aware of the fact that an excessive export of rice was likely to lead to a lethal famine, but it nevertheless chose to continue exporting undiminished quantities of rice from its Indian colonies to other parts of the Empire.

London turned a deaf ear when Indians demanded a promised million tonnes of wheat in return for the exported rice. The warlords stood leaning over their maps and with a cigar in his mouth Churchill observed that the reason for the famine was actually that Indians bred like rabbits and jokingly wondered if the rice shortage was so immense – how come that Gandhi was still alive? The War was at the centre of these men’s concerns and in order to prevent the Japanese enemy, who was approaching Bengal from Burma, from obtaining necessary food supplies, huge quantities of rice were brought away from the border areas, while thousands of boats were confiscated.

At the thought of Churchill and his associates leaning over their maps predicting and planning how the War would unfold, Requiem, a poem by Anna Akhmatova comes to mind. Akhmatova, was born in Ukrainian Odessa and had during World War II survived the German siege and starvation of Leningrad, her two husbands had been executed by the Soviet regime and her only son spent more than ten years in Stalin’s Gulag camps. In her poem Akhmatova writes about the immense suffering behind figures, abstract data, figures and statistics. One of the Requiem’s stanzas reads:

I would like to call you all by name,
but the list has been removed
and there’s nowhere else to look.
I have woven you a shroud,
from poor words I overheard.
I will remember you, everywhere.
I will not forget you,
not even among new sorrows.

The chilly attention rulers show to maps and statistics, or during gatherings around computers, does seldom acknowledge the immense human suffering caused by their fateful decisions.

According to Amartya Sen it is the inability of those in power, or even worse – their reluctance to act in the public interest by guaranteeing freedom for food producers, which cause mass starvation. Amartya Sen writes about an urgent need for a ”new human psychology”, by taking into account how

“…politics and psychology affect each other. People can indeed be expected to resist political barbarism if they instinctively react against atrocities. We have to be able to react spontaneously and resist inhumanity whenever it occurs. If this is to happen, the individual and social opportunities for developing and exercising moral imagination have to be expanded.”

Fatal hunger is among the most degrading suffering affecting any human being. Paralysing starvation does not lead to rebellion. People plagued by an all-consuming hunger are forced into an animalistic, instinctive, all-encompassing quest for survival. During a famine, people experience months of indescribable suffering, weakened by hunger pangs that might lead to insanity, paralysis, and eventually death. Due to food shortage, entire social systems break down through a lack of morals, ”decency”, and compassion. Crime, violence, and emotional insensitivity spread throughout the social body, becoming replaced by a ruthless struggle of all against all. A desperate battle for your own survival.

Inside the Gulag and the killing fields of the Stalin era, as well as in the Nazi death camps and German occupied territories, starvation reigned, paired with freezing cold, mistreatment and general vulnerability. Even if not every hunger victim passed through the torment of famish and mistreatment, as if they had become animals, they all suffered from hopelessness, which in addition to physical pain forced them into shame and despair. It is not without reason that cynical rulers might consider hunger to be an effective means of crushing their enemies, bringing reluctant subordinates to their knees by pacifying and paralysing them through hunger and despair. Hunger is a weapon for the powerful and a bottomless shame for the destitute.

In 1928, the Stalinist regime introduced its first Five Year Plan, intended to force peasants to become workers mobilized for massive industrial production, or becoming engaged in a “more efficient, modern agriculture” in the form of kolkhozy (if they were cooperative-run collectives) or sovkhozy (if they were state-run), while people branded as “reactionaries, saboteurs and spies” were purged, exterminated and/or “rendered harmless.” The same thing which happened in China twenty years later.

The estimated figure for Ukrainian deaths during the Holodomor (1932-1933) is 3.3 million, while at the same time 67,297 individuals died of starvation in the labour camps and 241,355 in the settlements to which peoples reluctant to join collectives had been deported together with their families. Thousands died during travels to destinations in distant Siberia, or Kazakhstan.

When we hear about the famines and wars that continue to harass a great part of the world’s population, let us not forget that they are renhuo, man-made. Behind the statistics are suffering individuals – men, women and children – while the guilty ones, leaders watching computers and calculating gains and losses while replacing people with figures, are quite easy to identify and hold accountable for their pernicious actions.

Sources: Applebaum, Anne (2017) Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. London: Penguin Books. Dikötter, Frank (2011) Mao’s Great Famine. London: Bloomsbury.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The World Health Assembly (22-28 May) is expected to discuss the pandemic treaty.Credit: World Health Organization (WHO)

By Nicoletta Dentico
ROME, May 12 2022 (IPS)

In what has been defined a historic consensus decision aimed at protecting the world from future infectious diseases crises, on 1st December 2021, the special session of the World Health Assembly agreed to kickstart a global process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, the decision marked “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to strengthen the global health architecture to protect and promote the well-being of all people”.

The process officially started with the constitution of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), whose task is weaving the texture of the negotiation, based on a treaty working draft, by 1st August 2022. The INB is mandated to submit the outcome of its work for consideration by the 77th World Health Assembly in 2024.

The WHO does not have a consolidated experience in exercising its binding normative power, having used it only twice in seventy-four years. Well before the pandemic, the health agenda negotiated at the WHO had propelled experts and civil society organizations to call for hard rules to replace voluntary regimes, insufficient to address escalating challenges and expanding determinants, which now include trade rules, environment, digitalization.

On the other hand, as illustrated in the Geneva Global Health Hub (G2H2) report on the genesis of the pandemic treaty, there are piercing geopolitical issues that require scrupulous mapping of reality and a questioning attitude, now that the international community is projecting itself towards a pandemic future.

Does the world need a new pandemic treaty?

After months of debates in the WHO Working Group on Pandemic Preparedness and Response (WGPR), there remains a lack of deep contextual evidence on the problems that the new instrument could and should help solve.

There is not even an official definition of what a pandemic is in legal terms. COVID-19 has not been the only pandemic raging the world – global cancer figures are staggering and doomed to grow due to the effects of COVID and climate change.

Other existing pandemics (like antimicrobial resistance) are not exclusively triggered by zoonotic events – most of which are caused by wildlife trading, alongside nature loss, industrialized livestock production and habitat destruction. Shouldn’t binding measures to prevent and respond to such crises address the widespread destruction of ecosystems, instead?

Pandemics are neither a destiny nor a natural phenomenon. The WHO Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response report explains that they are the undesirable result of multiple governance failures, starting from lack of international cooperation.

This unfortunate conjuncture should be understood, yet to date, there is no comprehensive analysis of the reasons why governments did not comply with the existing WHO binding legal framework designed to face health emergencies: the International Health Regulations (IHR), last reviewed in 2005 (after SARS).

IHR obligations should have guided countries to engage in sharing information and cooperating for contrasting SARS-CoV-2 unknown and aggressive contagion. What went wrong? It may be that IHR are prominently skewed towards prevention and detection of pathogens, and limited on response steps to prevent transmissions.

But couldn’t they be seriously revised and updated, as in the past, to include the new contents deriving from COVID-19’s unprecedented lessons instead of a push for a new treaty?

The WHO Emergency Committee and alarm system must be reformed, along with the strengthening of the legal obligations and compliance of cooperation rules: this is the terrain where most IHR violations have occurred.

One Health approaches surely need integrating in the negotiated review, to build a better prevention and response capacity on the harsh lessons of COVID-19. A clear uncompromising priority assigned to sustainably financing universal public health systems and their workforce, as the reliable safeguard for societies when outbreak emerge, must supplant persisting policies skewed to health privatization and financialization, too uncritically promoted by the WHO. Existing IHR provisions need updating and strengthening to this end.

Ultimately, the critical tension between global health security requirements and the management of existing science must be resolved in the interest of public health rather than private profits – COVID-19 makes it very clear that it’s not an easy game.

Meanwhile, things are being made more complicated. Now that the pandemic treaty negotiations are being led by the INB, in parallel to the IHR review led by the US, new layers of diplomatic intricacies are surfacing in terms of content and process overlaps, ushering dwindling expectations.

The lack of a shared vision is matched by the accelerated pace of the INB negotiation, for which governments are not ready – uneasiness emerged in recent European consultations on the treaty elements that were to be provided by 29th April.

Both the WHO and the INB claim to be looking at the precedents of the WHO’s only other treaty as guidepost, the breakthrough Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), while civil society organizations have been instrumental in paving the way to the FCTC and challenging the playbook of the tobacco industry, they now sit at the very margins of the diplomatic process, advocating in the paucity of spaces and restrictions of time allowed in the first round of public hearings.

Thanks to the FCTC’s long negotiations involving broad and consistent civil society participation, the WHO first global health treaty has strict provisions and guidelines on conflicts of interest.

Twenty years later, the fact that macroeconomic forces have been allowed to shape a new political platform for global governance through multistakeholderism, it does not necessarily favor the best scenario for pandemic treaty-making.

The WHO is weakened and under-resourced, while the corporate sectors that have profited from the pandemic in terms of market dominance – pharma companies, big tech, etc. – seemingly support this new negotiation, deemed to institutionalize the super public and private partnerships assembled in 2020 by major philanthropic actors for COVID-19 response.

Governments for their part are still grappling with the pandemic and its turbulent socio-economic effects. Meanwhile, exactly like one century ago, the pandemic tsunami gets tangled with a war of international proportions doomed to transform the world and the international community.

The tang of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is starting to poison Geneva’s health circles. This is not a good foreboding.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is Director, Global Health Justice Program, Society for International Development (SID), and Co-chair Geneva Global Health Hub (G2H2).

By External Source
May 11 2022 (IPS-Partners)

 

 

In an election season, India’s ruling party has again resorted to the right-wing populist playbook, stirring up divisions for political gain. This time it is the turn of Muslim women, caught in the crossfire of a backlash against both the rights of religious minorities and women’s rights. The controversy over the wearing of the hijab in schools is just the latest chapter in the saga starring Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party in their quest to consolidate power. Their attempts will continue, as will civil society resistance and struggles for rights.

One day in late December 2021, Muslim students at an all-female college in the small town of Kundapur, in India’s southern state of Karnataka, were offered an impossible choice: either ditch their hijab, a headscarf they wear as a symbol of their faith, or renounce their right to education. But they refused to comply, and instead protested.

As protests spread and brought counterprotests by Hindu students, a piece of cloth soon became the centre of a storm, where struggles for the rights of women and religious minorities intersect. With both under attack by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing populist government, Muslim women must have seemed the perfect target.

The hijab row

Out of the blue, the authorities of a state-run school in Karnataka ruled that the hijab was in contravention of uniform rules and denied those wearing it entry into classrooms. Other government-run schools followed suit. The state government, in the hands of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), backed the ban and extended it to the whole state through a directive stating that ‘clothes which disturb equality, integrity, and public law and order should not be worn’.

Karnataka is often described as the ‘hotbed’ of the Hindutva ideology supported by many right-wing Hindu groups. Thirteen per cent of its population is Muslim, and although nominally secular, the state has increasingly turned religious mandates into law – the very definition of religious fundamentalism. Among other things, the sale and slaughter of cows have been banned in the state because cows are sacred for Hindus, and an anti-conversion bill has made it more difficult for people to convert to Islam or Christianity and for interfaith couples to marry.

On 31 December, six Muslim girls who were denied entry to their classrooms because they wore the hijab protested outside their school, marking the start of wider protests. The students also filed a writ in the Karnataka High Court and brought their complaint to the National Human Rights Commission.

While the ban was imposed only in Karnataka, rights groups feared it would pave the way for tighter nationwide restrictions. To resist this, protests spread throughout India, and by early February they had reached the capital, New Delhi, and were even echoing abroad, as Turkish rights groups held a demonstration outside the Indian consulate in Istanbul.

As protests spread, counterprotests followed: many right-wing Hindu students, mostly male, marched in saffron shawls, a colour considered a Hindu symbol. A civil society report has described in detail the tactics of Hindutva supremacists to push ‘saffronisation’ into schools and fuel communal violence.

In Karnataka the script was followed to the letter: as Hindutva activists turned up to disrupt protests against the hijab ban, heated arguments and physical harassment ensued. Some cities witnessed incidents of stone-throwing and arson. On 10 February, on the grounds of treating ‘both sides’ equally, the Karnataka high court issued an interim order banning anyone from wearing any covering or religious symbol within classrooms. Muslim students challenged the order in the Supreme Court.

On 15 February the Karnataka government ordered a three-day closure of all high schools and colleges. The next day, city authorities in the state’s capital, Bengaluru, banned protests outside schools for two weeks. On 21 February, the murder of a member of the right-wing Hindu group Bajrang Dal added fuel to the fire: the 23-year-old man, identified as Harsha, was killed while campaigning against the hijab. Schools were closed again.

On 15 March, the Karnataka high court upheld the ban on the basis of the argument that wearing the hijab was not an essential Islamic principle. With one stroke of the pen it swept away any pretence of secularism, under which no court should be able to decide what is essential to any religion.

Later in March, in another district of Karnataka, teachers were suspended for allowing Muslim students to attend exams wearing the hijab. A few days later, the state government excluded teachers wearing the hijab from exam duty, effectively expanding the ban to teachers.

Schools have been turned into yet another political arena. The backdrop and apparent driving force was a series of state-level elections, including in India’s biggest state, Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP was looking for a strong showing ahead of upcoming national-level elections. Religious divides are being intensified and instrumentalised for political gain.

Voices from the frontline: Aiman Khan and Agni Das

Aiman Khan and Agni Das are members of the Quill Foundation, an Indian civil society organisation (CSO) engaged in research and advocacy, focused on the human rights issues faced by underprivileged people.

There have been protests on two fronts. The girls who have been directly affected by this restriction are protesting outside their college gates and holding demonstrations in other public spaces. But they are facing intimidation and threats by Hindutva vigilante groups while also being warned that they will be criminally charged for protesting.

In bigger cities, protests are also being organised by human rights CSOs and Muslim groups, and particularly by Muslim women.

Following the Karnataka high court ruling, CSOs have played an important role in raising awareness about the implications of the verdict. Several CSOs rejected the court order while also producing analysis to help the public understand its intricate legal language.

Civil society has been able to respond in a tangible and timely manner, offering unconditional solidarity and support to the schoolgirls affected by the order and experiencing trauma resulting from violence, discrimination and harassment in the aftermath of the high court order. Some CSOs have offered mental health counselling and other services.

Other CSOs have offered litigation support, in two forms: first, by representing individual cases of religious discrimination and providing legal support to those who missed out on exams due to the ban; and second, by petitioning on larger issues before courts of law. There have been several petitions before the Supreme Court of India to challenge the Karnataka high court order.

In short, the civil society response has been key because of its capacity to play a full range of roles to drive change, from the micro to the macro level. An effective civil society is essential for advancing human rights in India, and the international community can play a vital role in reinforcing the work of local CSOs to amplify marginalised voices.

This is an edited extract of our conversation with Aiman Khan and Agni Das. Read the full interview here.

The surge of Hindu nationalism

The controversy around the hijab was nothing but an excuse – but an effective one. Straight out of the right-wing populist playbook, this crackdown on the Muslim minority formed part of a wider BJP strategy to consolidate its power. And it was only the most recent link in a long chain of affronts.

Modi’s resounding re-election victory in 2019 gave him the green light to take a decisively autocratic turn and seek to homogenise India as a Hindu state, undermining India’s foundational secular principles and violating the guarantees of religious freedoms enshrined in its constitution.

Although most of the world’s major religions are represented in huge numbers in India, the BJP and its allied paramilitary Hindu nationalist force, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have popularised a vision of Indian nationhood that excludes Muslims, who make up over 14 per cent of the population: a 172 million minority bigger than the population of most countries in the world.

Minority communities are subjected to vilification because they are framed as ‘the other’. The Muslim minority is a specific target of persecution.

AIMAN KHAN AND AGNI DAS

Soon after his re-election, Modi made a definitive move of aggression against Indian Muslims. On 5 August 2019 he unilaterally revoked the constitutional special status of Jammu and Kashmir state, which is around 70 per cent Muslim. The following day, the BJP-dominated parliament passed a law to divide the state into two union territories to be ruled by central government instead of their own state governments. Widespread protests were violently suppressed and a long communications clampdown was imposed.

The next step came in December 2019, when parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which modified the constitutional clause that prevented undocumented migrants from becoming citizens, granting this right to people coming from specific countries who were highly likely to be members of non-Muslim religious minorities.

This law was used in conjunction with the extension of the National Register of Citizens, which excluded from citizenship millions of people who lacked evidence of having been legally in India since at least 1971, but allowed them to apply for asylum under the CAA – unless they were Muslims.

At both national and state levels, BJP governments adopted countless discriminatory laws and policies targeting religious minorities, and specifically Muslims. This stoked hatred and division with increasingly bloody consequences, as seen in early 2020, when violence erupted between Hindu and Muslim communities in New Delhi, leaving dozens dead. The police mostly stood by as mosques and Muslim-owned businesses were targeted and journalists covering the unrest were attacked.

Voices from the frontline: Syeda Hameed

Syeda Hameed is co-founder and board member of the Muslim Women’s Forum, a civil society organisation working for the empowerment, inclusion and education of Muslim women in India.

The decision to ban Muslim students from wearing the hijab in colleges’ premises came as a surprise. Such a ban is strange to our society. Unlike in France, where it has long been under the spotlight, the hijab had until very recently never been prohibited in India.

Karnataka state is known for its diverse society and pluralistic culture, with the two major religious groups, Hindus and Muslims, historically coexisting, along with a wide spectrum of other religious groups.

However, the roots of the Karnataka hijab controversy are quite deep, and are linked to growing Islamophobia. Those in power have ignited a sectarian fuse all over India in every possible way. Right now, Karnataka state also has a right-wing government, which has created fertile ground for strain in Hindu-Muslim relationships.

To them, the hijab ban is just another tool to remain in power. It is tied to current political events, notably the upcoming election. Right-wing politicians fabricate issues that target Muslims, who are depicted as the ‘disruptive other’, to divert people’s attention from dire economic conditions. The hijab ban did the job well, as it captured media attention. Sensational media coverage only added fuel to the fire.

The hijab ban is a complete violation of women’s rights to express their own identities. It should be my choice alone whether to wear the hijab or not.

The hijab ban is very much part of Muslim marginalisation. Muslims are being driven to a corner and targeted by a right-wing government that demonises them to boost their support and remain in power.

This is an edited extract of our conversation with Syeda. Read the full interview here.

Why women?

This time, the target was not just Muslims, but specifically Muslim women. Indian Muslim women are members not only of a minority religious group that has increasingly come under attack but also of a gender that has perennially been subjugated by men both within and outside their religious group, forced to follow male dictates on what to wear and what not to wear – among many other things.

A source of controversy in some western countries, the hijab had never before been a big deal in India – until politicians saw in it an opportunity to stoke division for political gain. But many Indian Muslim women view the hijab as an integral part of their faith. For others, it is a token of negotiation with conservative families, and the very reason they are allowed to go to school in the first place. Either way, they have made a choice that is no longer being respected.

‘Whether it is a bikini, a ghoonghat, a pair of jeans or a hijab, it is a woman’s right to decide what she wants to wear,’ tweeted Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, general secretary of the Indian National Congress, one of India’s opposition political parties.

The hijab ban is a complete violation of women’s rights to express their own identities. It should be my choice alone whether to wear the hijab or not.
SYEDA HAMEED

This story was originally published by CIVICUS Lens

Excerpt:

Right-wing populist politicians target Muslim women to inflame divisions and win elections

Protecting plant health can help end hunger, reduce poverty, protect biodiversity and the environment, and boost economic development. Credit: Saleem Shaikh/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 11 2022 (IPS)

It is as simple –and as horrifying– as that: both human health and the health of Planet Earth depend on plants. However, plants that make up 80% of the food and 98% of the oxygen, are under growing dangerous threats.

As dangerous as the fact that up to 40% of food crops are lost due to plant pests and diseases every single year, according to the world top food and agriculture organisation.

This is affecting both food security and agriculture, the main source of income for vulnerable rural communities, FAO warns on the occasion of the International Day of Plant Health, marked 12 May 2022.

 

All those pests and diseases

Sustaining plant health promotes food security and nutrition while protecting the environment and biodiversity, and boosting livelihoods and economic growth, in the context of global challenges, particularly climate change

Two main factors, among several others, appear behind the increasing expansion of plant pests and diseases. One is that climate change and human activities are altering ecosystems and damaging biodiversity while creating new niches for pests to thrive.

The other one is that international travel and trade, which has tripled in volume in the last decade, is also spreading pests and diseases.

Such pests and diseases cause massive crop losses and leave millions without enough food.

Desert locust, fall armyworm, fruit flies, banana disease TR4, cassava diseases and wheat rusts are among the most destructive transboundary plant pests and diseases.

The International Day is a key legacy of the International Year of Plant Health, which was marked in 2020-2021.

“The International Day of Plant Health will be an opportunity to highlight the crucial importance of plant health, both in itself and as part of our One Health approach, encompassing human, animal and ecosystem health,” said FAO Deputy Director-General, Beth Bechdol.

“It could not be more vital to make sure that we do everything we can to maximise the food resources our planet can provide.”

 

Excerbertrating world hunger and threats to livelihoods

FAO estimates that the additional damage that plant pests and diseases cause to agriculture exacerbates the existing issue of growing world hunger and threatens rural livelihoods.

Protecting plants from pests and diseases is far more cost effective than dealing with plant health emergencies. “Once established, plant pests and diseases are often impossible to eradicate, and managing them is time consuming and expensive.”

“Sustaining plant health promotes food security and nutrition while protecting the environment and biodiversity, and boosting livelihoods and economic growth, in the context of global challenges, particularly climate change,” said Jingyuan Xia, Director of FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division.

“Making the general public more aware of the role of plant health and the ways we need to act urgently to curb the risks of plant pests and diseases, as well as understanding how to restrict the spread of invasive pests will make a significant contribution to global food security,” said Osama El-Lissy, Secretary of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC).

“Globalisation, trade and climate change, as well as reduced resilience in production systems due to decades of agricultural intensification, have all played a part.”

 

“It could not be more vital to make sure that we do everything we can to maximise the food resources our planet can provide.” Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Chronic land degradation

As if the above were not enough, the risks to human, plants and environmental health are further exacerbated by the rising effects of land degradation.

On this, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), at the end of April 2022 reported that up to 40% of the planet’s land is degraded, which directly affects half of humanity, and threatens roughly half of global Gross Domestic Product (44 trillion US dollars).

If business as usual continues through 2050, the report projects additional degradation of an area almost the size of South America, reports the UNCCD’s Global Land Outlook 2.

On this, says Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD: “Modern agriculture has altered the face of the planet more than any other human activity.”

“We need to urgently rethink our global food systems, which are responsible for 80% of deforestation, 70% of freshwater use, and the single greatest cause of terrestrial biodiversity loss.”

 

Future scenarios

The report predicts the outcomes by 2050 and risks involved under three scenarios:

• Business as usual

Continuing current trends in land and natural resource degradation, while demands for food, feed, fibre, and bioenergy continue to rise. Land management practices and climate change continue to cause widespread soil erosion, declining fertility and growth in yields, and the further loss of natural areas due to expanding agriculture.

• By 2050

16 million square kilometres show continued land degradation (the size of South America)

A persistent, long-term decline in vegetative productivity is observed for 12-14% of agricultural, pasture and grazing land, and natural areas – with sub-Saharan Africa worst affected.

An additional 69 gigatonnes of carbon is emitted from 2015 to 2050 due to land use change and soil degradation. This represents 17% of current annual greenhouse gas emissions: soil organic carbon (32 gigatonnes), vegetation (27 gigatonnes), peatland degradation/conversion (10 gigatonnes).

• Restoration

Restoration assumes the restoration of around 5 billion hectares (50 million square kilometres or 35% of the global land area) using measures such as agroforestry, grazing management, and assisted natural regeneration. (Current international pledges: 10 million square kilometres).

 

One dollar to repair, four dollars to damage

Nations’ current pledge to restore 1 billion degraded hectares by 2030 requires 1.6 trillion US dollars this decade – a fraction of annual 700 billion US dollars in fossil fuel and agricultural subsidies, the Global Land Outlook 2 warns.

As food prices soar amid rapid climate and other planetary changes, “crisis footing” needed to conserve, restore and use land sustainably.

“The way land resources – soil, water and biodiversity – are currently mismanaged and misused threatens the health and continued survival of many species on Earth, including our own.”

“At no other point in modern history has humanity faced such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks and hazards, interacting in a hyper-connected and rapidly changing world. We cannot afford to underestimate the scale and impact of these existential threats.”

Women have been highly impacted by the Ukraine war, and have headed humanitarian efforts in their communities, but are still absent from leadership positions. UN Women and Care called for their meaningful inclusion in planning and decision-making processes. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

By Naureen Hossain
New York, May 11 2022 (IPS)

A joint UN Women and CARE report on the gender disparities in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis calls for donors and humanitarian partners to take greater care to promote the voices of women and marginalized communities in the humanitarian effort.

The Rapid Gender Analysis by UN Women and CARE, released on May 4, 2022, revealed the challenges and hardships women and minority groups face in Ukraine. UN Women and CARE officers conducted interviews with over 170 participants to determine how the war impacted their needs and concerns.

The war has affected multiple areas of life, from education and healthcare access to their livelihoods. In the last two months, women have emerged to take on more authority in households and the community, including community and civil society organizations.

Women have been at the forefront of humanitarian efforts, the report reveals. However, they have not been included in leadership or the decision-making process.

The risk is that current humanitarian efforts do not fully address the more complex needs of the affected civilians, such as the disabled, people who have already been displaced before the current crisis, and ethnic minorities, such as the Roma.

Among the report’s key findings, women, men, boys, and girls have different needs that must be considered in the humanitarian response.

However, the current frameworks of humanitarian aid need to improve to address their complex needs better.

Women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups face greater pressure with the compounded and intersectional impact of the crisis that can leave them more vulnerable in conflict or the loss of income.

Even though they are at the forefront of humanitarian efforts in their communities, they are not included in the decision-making process of how humanitarian aid is disseminated to even the most vulnerable groups.

Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, said: “It’s critical that the humanitarian response in Ukraine takes into account and addresses the different needs of women and girls, men and boys, including those that are furthest left behind…Women have been playing vital roles in their communities’ humanitarian response. They must also be meaningfully involved in the planning and decision-making processes to make sure that their specific needs are met, especially those related to health, safety, and access to livelihoods.”

A UN Women Media Compact event discussed the findings of the report and media experiences with reporting on the war in Ukraine through the lens of gender. Presenting the report at the event on Tuesday were Felicia Dahlquist, Programme Analyst from UN Women’s Ukraine office, and Siobhan Foran, CARE Gender in Emergencies Coordinator.

The speakers agreed that there was a need for gender-responsive and socially inclusive humanitarian efforts. This response could address the needs across different sectors, from providing shelter and non-food items (NFI) and education to lessening the care burden on mothers at home.

Dahlquist and Foran acknowledged that multiple areas need to be addressed all at once in a crisis. This runs the risk of other factors such as gender and diversity competing for attention.

Another recommendation was to increase communications to ensure accountability to the affected populations. This would mean implementing feedback and complaints mechanisms to ensure effective procedures and diverse communications channels to disseminate information on humanitarian aid to various groups.

A key topic of discussion was the role that media could play in reporting the stories of women, men, and minority groups on the humanitarian front.

The speakers said that the media has the ability, and thus a responsibility to address the ongoing issues that women and minorities deal with, to present the nuance and complexity of their experiences within the context of their intersectional experiences.

The media have the potential to reflect the voices of these communities to the general public but also get the attention of donors and humanitarian agencies to increase their efforts to support women-led organizations.

Even as donors and humanitarian agencies are expected to be pragmatic in their program planning and implementation approach, Dahlquist said it is essential to remember the humanity of the people who need this aid.

The media could play a key role in showcasing that human element, especially among those groups that receive less coverage in the news, such as ethnic minorities and the LGBQTIA+ community.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The risk of a woman dying from pregnancy-related complications is one in 5,400 in high-income countries, compared to one in 45 in low-income countries.. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By External Source
May 11 2022 (IPS)

The past 20 years have seen a significant decline in maternal mortality rates from 342 deaths to 211 per 100,000 globally . But every day, more than 800 women around the world die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, up to 42 days after delivery. Most of these deaths are preventable.

For every maternal death, another 20 women suffer serious injuries, infections and disabilities related to pregnancy. Professors Salome Maswime and Lawrence Chauke explain the state of maternal health in South Africa and how it can be improved.

 

How South Africa compares to other countries

In low-income countries the maternal mortality rate in 2017 was 462/100,000 compared to 11/100,000 in high-income countries. In Western Europe rates are as low as five deaths per 100,000 births. Sub-Saharan Africa has 533 deaths per 100,000 births.

The risk of a woman dying from pregnancy-related complications was one in 5,400 in high-income countries, compared to one in 45 in low-income countries. In West and Central Africa the maternal mortality rate is 674 per 100,000. In South Sudan it is 1,150 and 1,140 in Chad

The risk of a woman dying from pregnancy-related complications was one in 5,400 in high-income countries, compared to one in 45 in low-income countries.

In West and Central Africa the maternal mortality rate is 674 per 100,000. In South Sudan it is 1,150 and 1,140 in Chad.

South Africa has one of the lowest rates in Africa (113/100,000) but far higher than the UK (7/100,000). The rate in South Africa has declined from 150 deaths per 100,000 births in 1998 to 113 per 100,000 in 2019, according to the South African Demographic and Health Survey and the National Confidential Enquiries for Maternal Deaths.

 

Drivers of maternal mortality in South Africa

The three leading causes of maternal deaths in South Africa are HIV-related infections, obstetric haemorrhage and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

Pre-existing medical conditions also account for a high proportion of pregnancy related complications in South Africa. Most deaths are still deemed as preventable.

A significant number of South African women attend at least four antenatal clinics (76%) and deliver in healthcare facilities (96%) under the care of a skilled birth attendant (97%). Ideally these figures should translate into a much lower maternal mortality rate. This means that there are still gaps and more work still needs to be done.

The biggest challenge is still late booking. Only 47% of women booked during the first trimester in 2016. Between 2017-2019, 72% of the women who died had attended antenatal care. But only half had booked before 20 weeks.

Delays in seeking antenatal care have been associated with a higher likelihood of having adverse pregnancy outcomes.

A very high percentage (90%) of South Africans live within 7km of a health facility and 67% live within 2km of a healthcare facility. Despite this proximity women struggle to get timely transport to healthcare facilities. The situation is even worse for rural women due to poor road infrastructure and poor emergency referral systems.

Healthcare facilities offer different levels of care. Most deaths occur in district hospitals in South Africa, where specialist, critical care or efficient emergency medical services may not be readily available. Patients with complications don’t reach higher levels of care in good time.

Even when they have access to higher levels of care women face possible shortage of specialist, medical and nursing personnel in addition to overcrowding.

A report done covering 2017 to 2019 found that 80% of women who died, received substandard care at district hospitals. The figure was 60% for community healthcare centres and regional hospitals. Poor quality of care is therefore a major problem within the country’s healthcare system. The same report identified overcrowding, lack of resources, including shortage of nursing and medical personnel among the key drivers for the poor quality care.

Disrespectful maternal care is an issue too. The abuse in South African maternity services was described as “one of the world’s greatest disgraces” in 2015. It included verbal and physical abuse, non-consensual care, non-confidential care, neglect and abandonment. In some facilities women said they expect to be shouted at, beaten and neglected.

Maternal mortality is an indicator of access to care and quality of care. It is also indirectly linked to socioeconomic factors. Women who have access to education, proper housing and job opportunities are more likely to have good health outcomes compared to those who are not.

Socio-demographic variables such as “race” have also been linked to how women are treated.

The attitudes of the healthcare workers towards patients has an impact on women’s health-seeking behaviour and delivery of care by the healthcare workers (to the extent of delaying and withholding care).

 

What can be done to improve outcomes?

The first step is to meet the need for contraception to avoid unwanted and unplanned pregnancies. In 2012, 215 million women globally were estimated to have an unmet need for contraception.

Health education and promotion at community level would encourage women to attend antenatal clinics and give birth in a health facility in the care of a skilled attendant.

Maternal care should be respectful and dignified.

Efficient transport and emergency medical services are needed so that women receive timely and appropriate care.

Stronger health systems would improve access to high quality obstetric care. Women survive complications of pregnancy and childbirth in functional health systems, with efficient referral systems. There is an urgent need for a responsive healthcare system that takes into consideration population and disease trends.

There is also an urgent need to address the imbalance between demand and supply of healthcare services; improve the social and economic status of women in society as well as the quality of maternal and reproductive healthcare services, to win the battle against maternal deaths.

Salome Maswime, Professor of Global Surgery, University of Cape Town and Lawrence Chauke, Adjunct Professor, University of the Witwatersrand

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

World Bank, Washington DC.
The multilateral Asian Development Bank and the World Bank owns 13% and 9% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively.

By Asoka Bandarage
WASHINGTON DC, May 11 2022 (IPS)

Sri Lanka is in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis. Faced with a shortage of foreign exchange and defaulting on its foreign debt repayment, the country is unable to pay for its food, fuel, medicine, and other basic necessities. Notwithstanding the austerities that would be entailed, a bail out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been accepted as the only way out of the dire economic situation.

Opposition political parties and citizens across the country blame the Rajapaksa government’s widespread corruption and mismanagement for the crisis, and demand that the President and the Parliament resign.

The Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa did so on May 9th, 2022. However, the protesters at Galle Face Green and elsewhere have not been able to put forward an alternative leadership or a viable road map for the future. The country remains mired in confusion, chaos and a highly volatile political impasse.

To understand the complexity of the current crisis, and to prevent us falling back into the same paralyzing debt-cycle, it is necessary to move beyond domestic politics and the relentless news cycles of corporate media and explore some of the commonly overlooked yet basic global economic and geopolitical dimensions.

Debt Crises and Global Inequality

The transfer of financial and resource wealth from poor countries in the global South to the rich countries in the North is not a new phenomenon. It has been an enduring feature throughout centuries of both classical and neo-colonialism.

At the start of 1989, developing nations owed foreign creditors $1.3 trillion US dollars. That is, “just over half their combined gross national products and two thirds more than their export earnings.”

Recently, the effects of the war in the Ukraine and the Covid-19 crisis have worsened the high debt burdens of developing countries. These countries were already struggling to pay accumulated debts stemming from the expansion of capital flows from the high-income countries to lower income countries after the 2008 global financial crisis. Financial liberalization was fostered by powerful global interests, including the IMF, when interest rates dropped in the richer countries.

This facilitated borrowing by developing countries from private international capital markets through International Sovergein Bonds (ISBs), which come with high interest rates and short maturation periods.

Financial liberalization facilitated by the IMF and the developed countries working with the domestic elites of poor countries has created a “hierarchical and asymmetrical international financial architecture.”

As a December 2021 Report published by the Bretton Woods Project points out, this unequal framework creates “macroeconomic imbalances, financial fragilities, and exchange rate instability that can trigger debt and/or currency crises and curb the economic policy autonomy of affected countries to pursue domestic goals.”

The international NGO Debt Jubilee Campaign (soon to be called Debt Justice) has pointed out that 54 countries are now experiencing a debt crisis. According to the World Bank, Sri Lanka owes $15 billion in bonds, mostly dollar-denominated, out of a total of $45 to 50 billion in long-term debt.

The country needs $7 to 8.6 billion to service its debt load in 2022, whereas it had just $1.6 billion in reserves at the end of March 2022. The downgrading of Sri Lanka by rating agencies such as Moody’s added to the difficulty of further borrowing to pay off the debt.

The devaluation of the Sri Lankan rupee by 32% since the beginning of the year has made it the ‘world’s worst performing currency,’ exacerbating the plight of the Sri Lankan people.

The multilateral Asian Development Bank and the World Bank owns 13% and 9% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively. Currently, China is Sri Lanka’s largest bilateral lender, owning about 10% of its total foreign debt, followed by Japan which also owns 10%.

Approximately half of Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt (55% according to some estimates) is market borrowings through US- and EU-based ISBs. Asset managers BlackRock, Inc. and Ashmore Group Plc., along with Fidelity, T Rowe Price and TIAA are among Sri Lanka’s main ISB creditors. However, the information on the ownership of ISBs – including one worth $1 billion that is maturing on July 25, 2022 – is not publicly revealed.

Sri Lanka is in negotiations with the IMF to restructure and repay its massive debt. IMF structural adjustment will include the familiar privatization, cutbacks of social safety nets and alignment of local economic policy with U.S. and western interests, to the further detriment of local working people’s standard of living and inevitably leading to more wealth disparity and repeat debt crises.

Debt Crisis and Geopolitical Rivalry

Economic crises create opportunities for external powers to expand economic exploitation and geopolitical control. In Sri Lanka’s context, this means India, the US and China.

Sri Lanka’s big neighbor India has extended a $1 billion credit line to provide essential food and medicine. The Sri Lankan government has stated that there are no conditions attached to the Indian loans. However, Sri Lankan analysts believe that agreements have been made giving Indian companies exclusive access to investments on the island.

Sri Lanka is strategically located in the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean. Over 80% of the global seaborne oil trade is estimated to pass through the choke points of the Indian Ocean. Although bizarrely overlooked by the global media, a Cold War is already in place between China and the Quadrilateral Alliance (United States, Japan, Australia and India) over the control of Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka is part of China’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, which includes the island’s Hambantota Port and Port City. The United States, on the other hand, signed an open-ended Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement (ACSA) with Sri Lanka on August 4, 2017, facilitating military logistic support.

The US is also seeking to sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which would effectively turn Sri Lanka into a US military base. While the proposed United States Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact has not been signed due to local protests, the pact’s objective – US control over the land, transportation and communication infrastructure in Sri Lanka – continues unabated.

In this context of Sri Lanka as a tense theater of geopolitical rivalry, the Sri Lankan debt crisis cannot be understood simply as an economic crisis. Could it, in fact, be a ‘staged default’ designed to push Sri Lanka into an IMF bailout which would complete the island’s subservience to the US dominated economic and political agenda?

Alternative Sustainable Approaches

The young ‘Gotta Go Home!’ protesters who demand President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation seem to be unaware of the global dynamics of the Sri Lankan crisis. Perhaps local and foreign interests guiding the protests may want to keep it that way.

They are certainly not encouraging the protestors to join global calls for much-needed debt cancellation, debt swaps and regulation of capital market borrowing to prevent debt crises occurring in the first place.

However, at least a few Sri Lankan professionals concerned about the implications of an IMF bailout have put forward alternative short and long-term solutions. They recognize that while exploitative colonial and neocolonial policies have turned Sri Lanka into a poor and desperate country, the island is rich with abundant natural resources and human capital.

If the land and ocean and the graphite, ilmenite and the other mineral resources are sustainably utilized, Sri Lanka can be economically self-sufficient and prosperous. There is also much to be learned from Sri Lanka’s pre-colonial history in this regard, not least its hydraulic civilization.

The Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) has revealed that there are enough fuel and natural gas deposits in the Mannar Basin to meet the entire country’s needs for 60 years. If the abundant sustainable solar and wind power are also utilized, Sri Lanka can become not only energy self-sufficient, but an exporter of energy as well.

Bioregionalism, economic democracy, and food and energy sovereignty are the only route to a sustainable future for Sri Lanka and other debt-trapped countries, and indeed the world at large. To overcome the dominant forces seeking to monopolize control over the natural environment and humanity, people – especially the young – need to awaken and work in partnership with each other to fight the destructive greed that ensnares and threatens to destroy us.

Asoka Bandarage is Distinguished (Adjunct) Professor at the California, Institute for Integral Studies. She is the author of Colonialism in Sri Lanka (Mouton), The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka (Routledge), Women, Population and Global Crisis (Zed), Sustainability and Well-Being (Palgrave McMilllan) and many other publications on global political-economy and South Asia.

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By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, May 11 2022 (IPS)

When it comes to gender equality and development, the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) and the Arab States region continues to be in a paradoxical situation. While within the region, several laws, policies and programming focused on gender equality are growing, women’s representation in government jobs, corporate roles, and national programming seem to be dismissed. Healthcare, education have seen improvement, most countries have become tech inclusive as well, but access to hospitals and educational institutions –at times due to social programming or gender-related policies continues to prevent women from accessing them and using them.

Gender-based human rights assault and violence dominates and devastates the lives of women across the region. Whether it is arbitrary arrests by governments, abductions, assassinations, so called “honour” killings, online trolling, abuse, being denied right to safe abortion, lack of engagement and inclusivity of women in politics, peace and security in the country, women continue to face entrenched discrimination.

Staunch patriarchal character of governments continues to impact the movement towards gender equality, slowing the already slow progress of women’s rights across multiple indicators and indices. The region is yet to see progress towards its commitments made to the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development goals.

Mozn Hassan, Founder, Doria Feminist Fund for Women

Mozn Hassan, one of Egypt’s most outspoken voices on human rights, founder and Executive Director of Nazra for Feminist Studies has been working on building an Egyptian feminist movement for years, by supporting women human rights defenders.
In this interview given to IPS News, Hassan said, feminist movements continue to battle culture of impunity in Egypt. “We are losing everyday, but the feminist movement in Egypt is not a failed movement.” At that time, Mozn and her non-government organizations assets were frozen, a travel ban was imposed in 2016, followed by regular incidents of judicial harassment.

None of the harrassment and cases against her stopped Mozn from pursuing “a bigger dream of creating a feminist fund for the region” called Doria Feminist Fund. “Being a local feminist activist in Egypt within a changeable time, running Doria Feminist Fund allowed me to set local feminist agendas and narratives. I figured out that this work needs not only funding, but also resources and accessibility, which is rare in the MENA region and for feminists in MENA. Doria was a dream for me on multiple levels, I named it after Doria Shafik to recognize her resilience,” Hassan said.

In a series of conversations on The Sania Farooqui Show which recently partnered with Doria Feminist Fund and IPS News to bring out powerful voices of women in the MENA region, the CO-CEO of the organization, Zeina Abdul Khalek said, “Doria Feminist Fund seeks to create a feminist ecosystem where the new generation of feminist movement in the MENA region has access to more and better funding and resources which enables the development and sustainability of its activism to advance the rights, wellbeing and security of all women & LGBTQ+ individuals and groups.”

Right to Abortion in MENA
Cultural sensitivity and taboos surrounding sexuality are particularly pronounced in the MENA region, it has taken women activists and even medical professionals years to break the culture of silence that surrounds sexual and reproductive health, as silence often prevents people from seeking information and care and prevents governments from putting the health issues on their development agenda.

Nearly 80% of women in the Middle East and North Africa live in countries where abortion laws are restricted. Among those, 55% live in countries where abortion is prohibited except to save the mother’s life and 24% live in countries where abortion is permitted only to preserve the woman’s physical or mental health.

Turkey and Tunisia allow elective abortions, and like many catholic/christian countries, abortion appears to be a highly controversial topic for the Muslim-majority countries as well as for the Islamic jurisprudence.

Dr. Selma Hajri, Rights & Access of Women to Safe Abortion, MENA Region

Dr. Selma Hajri, medical professional, MD specializing in endocrinology and reproductive health at Right and Access of Women to Safe Abortion (RAWSA) in the MENA region, in an interview given to IPS News said, “ It is always a shame to talk about sex in the MENA region. Women cannot have a loud voice, talk about their body, their sexual rights, their right to premarital sex and contraception. It’s challenging as a medical health care professional to help women, as so many are just afraid to come forward and seek basic healthcare, which is their right.

According to RAWSA Network that has been working on changing mentalities, behaviours and legislations related to sexual and reproductive rights, as well as advocating for legal abortion in most MENA countries. This report states, “Women resort to clandestine abortions that have a rate higher than in the rest of the world and are responsible for around 9700 deaths each year. Only 47% of women in the MENA region have access to a contraceptive method, while this percentage is 57% worldwide.”

“MENA region is a very conservative region where religion and culture are very restrictive concerning women’s access to reproductive health. They are very conservative and restrict sexual relationships of women who are not married, even for married women it is not easy to talk about it openly.

“We realized the situation of women in this region is very difficult, not because of access to healthcare, but the problem is access to reproductive healthcare and her right to control her body,” says Hajri.

More than 40 million women between the ages of 13 and 44 live in states with restrictive abortion rights, costing those economies $105 billion, according to Women’s Policy Research. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic only made the situation worse. According to RAWSA, unsafe abortions have increased by about 10%, as access to contraception and safe abortion – which most often takes place abroad, have been restricted since the beginning of the pandemic.

United Nations Office of Human Rights High COmmissionar (OHCHR) states that “women’s sexual and reproductive health is related to multiple human rights, including the right to life, the right to be free from torture, the right to health, the right to privacy, the right to education, and the prohibition of discrimination. The committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR) and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimnation against Women (CEDAW) have both clearly indicated that women’s right to health includes their sexual and reporductive health. This means that states have obligations to respect, protect and fulfil rights related to women’s sexual and reproductive health”.

While one watches states, governments, societies across the MENA region fail women by not supporting them, it is a few women like Mozn Hassan and Dr Hajri who dare to do so.

Sania Farooqui is a New Delhi based journalist, filmmaker and host of The Sania Farooqui Show where she regularly speaks to women who have made significant contributions to bring about socio economic changes globally. She writes and reports regularly for IPS news wire.

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South India has a higher rate of diabetes compared to North India, possibly due to its partiality towards white rice, which has a high glycaemic index. | Picture courtesy: Total Health

By Sweta Akundi
May 10 2022 (IPS)

At a healthcare clinic in Thodathara, a village in the Thavanampalle mandal near Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, Dr Vijay Kumar calls in his next patient. “He is the most disciplined man I know,” Dr Kumar says with a hint of pride.

Reddyappa Reddy walks in and takes the seat opposite Dr Kumar. “Ten years ago I found out I have diabetes. I took Dr Kumar’s advice. Today, I walk up and down the lengths of a mango farm every day after dinner,” says Reddyappa, who is in his sixties. Dr Kumar adds that Reddy is an inspiration to the other patients at the clinic.

 

The numbers game

In 2013, Apollo Foundation’s Total Health initiative conducted a household survey of 195 villages and 32 gram panchayats in the Thavanampalle mandal. We screened 31,453 people for health data and found that 6.2 percent had diabetes. In addition, 16.7 percent of men and 12.2 percent of women were obese, a risk factor for diabetes.

At 74.7 million people living with the disease, India is home to the second largest population of people with diabetes, after China. The prevalence of diabetes is twice as high in urban India as compared to rural areas

Today, the numbers in the mandal have shot up, with 10.1 percent of the people suffering from diabetes. This is still less than the national average; diabetes in rural and urban India grew from 2.4 percent and 3.3 percent respectively in 1972 to 15 percent and 19 percent in 2015, according to a 2021 meta-analysis published in Annals of Epidemiology.

At 74.7 million people living with the disease, India is home to the second largest population of people with diabetes (after China). While the prevalence of diabetes is twice as high in urban India as compared to rural areas, Total Health has chalked it out to be one of the biggest causes of concern in Thavanampalle mandal, where its work primarily lies.

“I saw 600 people last month, of whom 200 had diabetes,” says Dr V Bhargav, who heads a mobile clinic unit. Most people who get diabetes are above the age of 50. Compare this to the national numbers:

A 2009 study found that of the people living with diabetes, 54 percent develop it before reaching 50 years of age. The same study says that the onset of diabetes among Indians is about a decade earlier than their Western counterparts.

 

Change in rural diet

“The environment in rural India is changing, starting from what we eat,” says Dr T Swarna, who heads a satellite clinic in Thavanampalle.

In 2016, the authors of a study conducted in Krishnagiri in Northwest Tamil Nadu identified the primary factors that “have catalysed dietary changes leading to rising prevalence of diabetes”. Of course, there is the increased availability of ‘city foods’ such as sugar-laden sodas and sweets, as well as trans-fat-laced chips and bakery goods.

But, more significantly, the availability of free polished rice at ration shops through the public distribution system (PDS) makes it the staple food of the region.

Less than 150 km from Krishnagiri, in Thavanampalle, doctors have observed a similar shift to rice as the staple. South India has a higher rate of diabetes compared to North India, possibly due to its partiality towards white rice, which has a high glycaemic index. When eaten as kanji (rice porridge) with the water it is cooked in, the starchy rice meal spikes blood sugar levels.

“The local feeling is that you are not full until you have had a rice meal,” says Dr M Gayathri, who heads our AYUSH clinic in Aragonda. The main aim is to keep hunger at bay, because not many people have the luxury of eating meat and fruit. Seasonal vegetables are affordable, but most plates are filled with rice and just a small portion of vegetables.

A rice meal is filling and cheap. “Farm labourers who leave for work at eight in the morning want a heavy meal that lasts through the day,” says Dr Bhargav. Wheat is not locally grown, so rotis are not commonly eaten. Dr Swarna adds, “People believe chapatis cause heat in the body when had in the morning.”

Rice is replacing millets such as ragi, which used to be popular in Thavanampalle. “We still make ragi balls, but the ratio of ragi to rice flour (2:1) has reversed because of changing tastes,” says Dr Bhargav.

Reddy is conscious of this. He says, “I include as many green, leafy vegetables in my meals as possible and have completely cut down on tea (most villages sweeten tea heavily).” However, he still depends on the PDS and can’t afford brown rice or red rice that were once regular traditional foods but have now become trendy ‘urban foods’, which has pushed up their prices.

“Before the Green Revolution in India, there were a hundred different varieties of rice in our diet,” says Jayanthi Somasundaram, head of Spirit of the Earth in Chennai (which promotes heritage rice), pointing to varieties such as thooyamalli, kaatuyanam, and mapillai champa.

“Until the 1950s to ‘60s, there was a conception that white rice, consumed by the elite, was superior. For the middle class, who would have millets, white rice became aspirational,” she says. Krishna Prasad, founder of the Karnataka-based Sahaja Samrudha, adds that as milling technology improved, the more polished rice became, and the more aromatic and of higher quality it seemed to people.

He recalls the Rayalaseema area of Andhra Pradesh in the 1960s: “Before it became popular for cash crops such as cotton and groundnut, the area, with its saline soil, used to grow many varieties of red rice.”

Over the years, diet isn’t the only thing that has changed, says R Indrani, another Thodathara resident living with diabetes. “I think the change in the crops we grow has also affected our lifestyle,” she says. Thavanampalle has traditionally been famous for its sugarcane fields and the jaggery it produced. She adds, “We used to have a sugarcane field as well. But now there are very few of them left. Like most farmers here, we shifted to cultivating 10 acres of mango.

Unlike sugarcane, which requires constant water and labour, the work in mango fields is seasonal and less intensive.” The doctors at Total Health suspect that this reduction in physical activity combined with changing diets could be one of the contributing factors to diabetes. “I can’t eat the mangoes I grow,” Indrani says with an ironic laugh.

 

Screening for diabetes

Indrani found out she has diabetes only a year ago when she attended an eye screening camp. “People here are not that keen on regular testing. Unless they can physically see that there is a problem, such as frequent urination, they won’t come. Their attitude is not preventative,” says Dr Gayathri.

“Often, when they first come to us, their blood glucose level is already at 11 percent (the normal level is 6.5 percent). They could have had diabetes for many years but they may have just not known it,” says Dr Swarna.

In fact, about one in every two Indians in the 15–49 age group living with diabetes is unaware of their condition, according to a study conducted by the Public Health Foundation of India in 2019. Of those aware, only a quarter have it under control. The study also found that rural men are more susceptible to diabetes.

“One fear we see among people is the idea that once they start medication, they will have to continue taking it for a lifetime. People here don’t like becoming dependent on medicines,” says Dr Gayathri.

Doctors are unanimous in their view that the focus must be on pre-diabetes—its prevention and control. On the preventive health front, a traditional kitchen revival, where a more diverse diet is practised, and rice does not form the centrepiece, may help.

The more difficult challenge is the attitudinal shift towards movement. In Thavanampalle, as in many rural and urban areas in India, physical work is linked with class hierarchy. The more prosperous a family gets, the more help they can afford and the less functional their movements become.

Additionally, it is important to manage low- to moderate-risk diabetes in people to prevent it from turning into something more serious. As seen in the results of the national NCD survey conducted this year, adequate screening, conducting regular health camps, and increasing awareness about diabetes as a lifestyle disease is how people who have not yet got the disease can prevent it.

Sweta Akundi is a content writer for Apollo Foundation, where she brings out stories from the villages of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana

 

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

Caught in a web of deceit, a human trafficking survivor from Ghana tells her story. Credit: Getty Images

By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri
Accra, May 10 2022 (IPS)

“It feels like yesterday when I was deceived by one man who claimed to be a travelling agent. He promised me a work opportunity and a good salary,” says 25-year-old Cissy, as she prefers to be called. “As a young lady coming from an average family who really needed help, I fell for his lies.”

Cissy says although she was a bit sceptical about the offer and afraid of her destination country, the so-called travel agent convinced her that she had nothing to worry about.

“He said I had a host mom who would receive me at the airport. In fact, she was the one sponsoring my trip, and I am supposed to work for her, and he claimed the work was legitimate,” Cissy adds.

However, the story changed when she arrived at the airport of her destination country.

“A man came to pick me up and collected my passport. I was taken to a house where I saw other young African women kept in the room, some having price tags. It was at that time I realised what I had gotten myself into,” she narrates.

She and the other women were later smuggled illegally into Iraq to work as domestic workers.

“I saw how my own African sisters were physically and mentally abused. Some were sexually harassed and subjected to forced labour on an empty stomach,” Cissy says.

She wanted to return to Ghana but was unable to until several months later.

After countless failed escape attempts, which left her fighting for her life, she finally had a breakthrough and was able to return home with the help of a good Samaritan and the authorities.

Since she returned last November, Cissy has devoted her time to irregular migration advocacy activities.

“I am happy to be alive today to tell you my story but not all the young ladies who travel out get the chance I got to return home to their families,” she says.

Assistant Superintendent of Police William Ayaregah says human trafficking is multifaceted and covers several situations from debt bondage, exploitation, and organised crimes.

Issues of human trafficking continue to be a human rights violation and cancer in Ghanaian society because it is a country of origin, transit, and destination for victims of human trafficking, Ayaregah, who is the Deputy Director of the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit in the Criminal Investigation Department, says.

Likewise, the Gulf of Guinea is characterised by cross-border and irregular migration, human trafficking, and child exploitation.

Ayaregah says recently, the unit, with a non-governmental organisation, End Modern Slavery (EMS), and the Social Welfare Department, rescued four children, two boys and two girls, from a trafficker and reunited them with their families.

He reveals that the two boys, aged 10 and 13, were trafficked by a family friend identified as Rose, a trader from Berekum-Senase in the Bono East Region of Ghana. She said the children would attend school while staying with her in Accra.

Instead of sending the children to school, as she promised, she sent the boys onto the streets to hawk.

Ayaregah says the suspect, upon her arrest and investigation, claimed that she has been sending Ghc30 (about 4 US dollars) to the boys’ parents in Berekum every month.

In the other case, two girls, aged 13 and 17, were brought from Akim-Aboabo in the Birim Central Municipality and Adeiso to engage in ‘gari’, a dried cassava business at Amanase in the Ayensuano District in the Eastern part of the country.

The Director of Operations of End Modern Slavery, Afasi Komla, explains that “many victims of human trafficking have had traumatic post-rescue experiences during interviews and legal proceedings.

“In their attempts to get help, they have experienced ignorance, misunderstanding, victimisation, and punishment from offences their traffickers had them commit,” he says.

He adds that through the foundation, they have been able to help in identifying and saving hundreds of victims and supporting their rehabilitation.

Deputy Minister For Gender, Children and Social Protection, Hajia Lariba Abudu, says the country has responded to the issues of human trafficking in diverse ways. It passed the Human Trafficking Act, 2005 Act 694 to prevent, reduce and punish human trafficking offences and for the rehabilitation and reintegration of trafficked persons and related matters.

“The Ministry, together with our partners, we embark on community advocacy and engagements to educate the public on the dangers of human trafficking,” she says.

Abudu further indicates that together with the law enforcement officers, Social Workers and NGOs, the country in 2021 rescued 842 victims of human trafficking, gave comprehensive trauma-informed care, and reintegrated 812 of them.

“On the 1st of February 2019, the adults’ shelter was opened, and 178 adult female victims of trafficking have been cared for, and we are still receiving and caring for victims at the shelter now,” she says. “The Children’s Shelter was also fully operationalised in August 2020 and has cared for 98 child victims.”

She adds that the department received and investigated 108 cases, 42 being sex trafficking, 60 labour trafficking and six related cases that started as human trafficking offences.

“Thirty–four cases were sent to court for prosecution. Out of those, 22 cases were prosecuted involving 37 defendants, and we have gained 17 convictions for the country,” she adds.

Abudu says that even though a lot has been achieved, it is still not enough and calls for stronger partnerships to reduce human trafficking incidences, strengthen government institutions, and increase public knowledge.

This article is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7, which “takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such as exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking”.

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• Women, Children Fleeing Ukraine Vulnerable to Human Trafficking
• Breaking Vicious Cycle of Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation
• Road to European Dream Paved by Extortion and Exploitation

UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited Irpin in Ukraine last month. He also visited sites of suspected war crimes in Ukraine, where he condemned the “evil” acts committed against civilians and urged criminal accountability. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Purnaka L. de Silva
NEW YORK, May 10 2022 (IPS)

Mr. Vladimir Putin’s illegal War of Aggression in Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022, brought into stark relief the fractured state of Global Peace and Security. Militarized conflicts, civilian deaths and forced migration in the tens of millions have been ongoing for decades, with little or no relief to the beleaguered victims.

The war in Ukraine appears to have displaced other ongoing major wars in Yemen, Ethiopia, and Myanmar in the global public imagination thanks to the 24/7 news cycle. The primary mandate of the United Nations is to ensure the maintenance of Global Peace and Security, sadly we seem to have neither, apart from a lot of talk by eminent personages with little or no action to redress the dystopian realities and carnage on the ground.

The Latin motto res, non verba comes to mind – meaning “deeds, and not words” – as quite an appropriate model for the United Nations to adopt rather than sticking to ‘business as usual’ – which is quite lame and pathetic to say the least in these trying times.

Secretary-General António Guterres must not leave diplomacy, mediation, and negotiation to half-baked UN diplomats out in the field and even within his own Executive Office – UN-EOSG.

In the context of current world affairs and international relations, it is imperative that the Secretary-General plays a more pivotal and far-greater active role to uphold the primary mandate of the United Nations and ensure the maintenance of Global Peace and Security.

The time for protecting the image and status of the UN Secretary-General is over, as well as being held hostage by the P-5 Permanent Member States of the UN Security Council who have run roughshod over all current and previous UN Secretaries-General.

Rather than being risk averse, Secretary-General Guterres must play a much more active and visible role on the global stage and behind-the-scenes – traveling incessantly to war-torn UN member states to meet the protagonists regularly and personally mediating, using his high office and moral standing to good effect – to boost UN mediation efforts.

Reminiscent of the active and energetic interventions of one of his predecessors, the late Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, who sadly paid the ultimate price along with 15 other UN advisors, bodyguards, and aircrew when their plane was shot down on September 18, 1961, in Northern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

In today’s geopolitical environment, Secretary-General Guterres cannot be seen as one of the last of a long line of diplomats and politicians to visit a war-torn region, as was the case of his recent visit in late April 2022 to Moscow and Kyiv – to put it bluntly this is bad optics.

Secretary-General Guterres must use his Executive Office to better effect and the global public needs to be aware and supportive. Given the very high stakes involved he must be much more proactive regarding Ukraine, and all ongoing wars and armed conflicts in evenhanded fashion – without fear nor favor.

On the plus side Secretary-General Guterres did call the war in Ukraine “evil and unacceptable” and called for justice. However, Guterres’ call fell on deaf ears in Moscow, demonstrated by the fact that Russia launched five missiles striking central Kyiv less than one hour after he held a news conference with Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelenskyy.

So, what is to be done when a P-5 Permanent Member State of the UN Security Council goes “rogue” – i.e., beyond the bounds of civilized, rules-based behavior of a nation-state in the 21st Century adhering to tenets of Global Peace and Security enshrined in the UN Charter, the Laws of War, the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – as in the case of Mr. Putin and his government?

Notwithstanding the fact that Secretary-General Guterres is a former Prime Minister of Portugal, he must demonstrate his independence from the Western powers, and immediately follow-up on his Moscow and Kyiv visit by visiting Beijing to enlist President Xi Jingping’s not-so-inconsequential support to put pressure on Moscow to end the aggression in Ukraine and call off the dogs of war.

And while he is negotiating in Beijing, he must also secure the support of China to pressure the Tatmadaw Kyi military junta to standdown and restore democracy without delay in Myanmar to provide relief to its beleaguered peoples. Non-confrontational diplomacy is the key to success in Beijing something that Secretary-General Guterres is adept at doing, which he should use to good effect considering that the Chinese are not belligerents.

Beijing is more inclined towards global trade and commerce and promoting their ambitious “Belt and Road Initiative” global megaproject, which is undoubtedly being hampered by war in Ukraine.

After two bloody world wars where tens of millions of human beings died, nobody wants another largescale inter-European war, which has potential ramifications for militaries and civilians well beyond Europe.

In fact, Mr. Putin’s War of Aggression in Ukraine is already deepening world hunger given that global wheat production, storage and supply is severely hampered by fighting. The power of the United Nations is a reflected power – i.e., that of its leading member states adhering to a rules-based system of global governance – and that power is what all UN Secretaries-General must harness for the greater good through the arts of diplomacy, mediation, and negotiation to maintain Global Peace and Security.

Secretary-General Guterres is urgently called upon to demonstrate his leadership and political acumen in these dystopian and troubled times, using his moral courage as a beacon to rally global publics to support the mandate and mission of the United Nations. The UN Secretary-General cannot and must not be relegated to the role of bystander while belligerents run amok, he/she must lead, irrespective of the personal cost, without fear nor favor.

As for Secretary-General Guterres a devout Catholic (close to His Holiness Pope Francis an outspoken critic of war), he cannot accomplish this mammoth task alone – to enhance his moral authority he needs to harness the power and voice of civil society together with that of the world’s multiple religions – all working together at manifold levels to maintain Global Peace and Security.

Dr Purnaka L. de Silva is Professor UN Studies (M.A. Program) at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University, and Director, Institute of Strategic Studies and Democracy (ISSD) Malta. In March 2022 he received Seton Hall University’s College Adjunct Faculty Teacher of the Year Award, and in December 2021 was nominated Diplomacy Professor of the Year by the School of Diplomacy and International Relations.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

“Whatever the circle of hell in which we live,
I think we are free to break out of it.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre, Preface to the Deutsche Gramaphon recording of No Exit
 

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 10 2022 (IPS)

The world is being pressed by financial interests to raise interest rates, ostensibly to check inflation. After the US Federal Reserve started raising interest rates, more central banks have been doing likewise.

Considering inflation’s contemporary causes, such ‘follow the leader’ central bank mimicry cannot check it except by slowing economies. Worse, this has meant taking on huge new risks, seriously damaging world economic prospects in the medium and long-term.

Anis Chowdhury

Inflation bogey dangerous
Much earlier, World Bank supported research had shown moderate inflation – in the range of 15–30% – was not harmful to growth, and could “be reduced only at a substantial cost to … growth”.

Nonetheless, “The ratio of fervent beliefs to tangible evidence seems unusually high on this topic”. Unsurprisingly, central banks are still trying to keep inflation below 2% – an arbitrary target “plucked out of the air”, due to a “chance remark” by New Zealand’s finance minister then.

Raising interest rates will derail recovery and worsen supply disruptions and shortages due to the pandemic, war and sanctions. European Central Bank (ECB) Executive Board member Fabio Panetta has noted the euro zone is “de facto stagnating” as economic growth has almost stopped.

As policymakers struggle with inflation, growth and wellbeing are being subjected to huge risks. As Panetta warns, “monetary tightening aimed at containing inflation would end up hampering growth that is already weakening”.

Interest rates rising globally
Among emerging markets and developing economies, South Africa’s central bank raised interest rates for the first time in three years in November 2021.

On 24 March 2022, the Bank of Mexico raised interest rates for the seventh consecutive time. On the same day, Brazil’s central bank raised interest rates to its highest level since 2017.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

On 4 May, the Reserve Bank of India raised interest rates – its first rate change in two years and first rate hike in nearly four. On 5 May, Chile’s central bank raised interest rates. Pressed by finance to curb inflation, more central bankers are tightening monetary policy.

Without evidence or reasoning, they insist higher interest rates will check inflation. Their recognized adverse effects for recovery and growth are dismissed as unavoidably necessary short-term costs for some unspecified long-term gains.

But despite facing higher inflationary expectations, tightening international monetary conditions, and Ukraine war uncertainties, the ECB and Bank of Japan have not joined the bandwagon, refusing to raise policy interest rates so far.

Interest rate – blunt tool
But central bankers’ dogmatic stances, knee-jerk responses and ‘follow the leader’ behaviour are not helpful. Even when inflation reaches dangerous levels, raising interest rates may still not be the right policy response for several reasons.

First, raising interest rates only addresses the symptoms – not the causes – of inflation. Inflation is often said to be a consequence of an economy ‘overheating’. But overheating can be due to many factors.

Higher interest rates may relieve overheating, by slowing economic activity. But a good doctor should first investigate and diagnose an ailment’s causes before prescribing appropriate treatment – which may or may not require medication.

It is widely accepted that the current inflationary surge is due to supply chain disruptions – exacerbated by war and sanctions – especially of essential goods such as food and fuel. If so, long-term solutions require increasing supplies, including by removing bottlenecks.

Higher interest rates reduce aggregate demand. But simply raising interest rates does not even address the specific causes of inflation, let alone rising prices due to supply disruptions of essential goods, such as food and fuel.

Interest rate – indiscriminate
Second, the interest rate affects all sectors, everyone. It does not even distinguish between sectors or industries needing to expand or be encouraged, and those that should be phased out, for being less productive or inefficient.

Also, raising interest rates too often, and to excessively high levels, can squeeze, or even kill productive and efficient businesses along with inefficient or less productive ones.

US bankruptcies had soared in the early 1980s after US Fed chair Volcker’s legendary interest rate spike. “Thousands of businesses that took out bank loans could fail”, warned a leading UK tax advisory firm recently.

Third, interest rates do not distinguish among households and businesses. Higher interest rates may discourage household expenditure, but also dampen all kinds of spending – for both consumption and investment.

Hence, overall demand may shrink – discouraging investment in new technology, plant, equipment and skills. Thus, higher interest rates adversely affect long-term productive capacities and technological progress of economies.

Debt, recessions and financial crises
Fourth, higher interest rates raise debt servicing costs for governments, businesses and households. With the exceptionally low interest rates previously available after the 2008-09 global financial crisis (GFC), debt burdens rose in most countries.

These undoubtedly encouraged risky, speculative behaviour as well as unproductive share buybacks, increased dividends, and mergers & acquisitions. Interest rate hikes have triggered many recessions and financial crises. Thus, raising interest rates now will likely trigger a new, albeit different era of stagflation.

The pandemic has pushed public debt to historic new highs. Forty-four per cent of low-income and least developed countries were at high risk of, or already in external debt distress in 2020.

Before the COVID-19 crisis, half the small island developing states surveyed already had solvency problems, i.e., were at high risk of, or already in debt distress. Thus, raising interest rates can trigger a global debt crisis.

Fifth, paradoxically, higher interest rates raise debt-servicing expenses, especially mortgage payments, for indebted households. Costs of living also rise if businesses pass higher interest costs on to consumers by raising prices.

Hence, the main beneficiaries of low inflation and higher interest rates are the holders of financial assets who fear the relative diminution of their value.

Developing countries vulnerable
Developing countries are particularly vulnerable. Higher interest rates in developed countries – particularly the US – trigger capital outflows from developing countries – causing exchange rate depreciations and inflationary pressures.

Higher interest rates and weaker exchange rates will aggravate already high debt service burdens – as happened in Latin America in the early 1980s after US Fed chair Volcker greatly increased US interest rates.

To discourage sudden capital outflows and prevent large currency depreciations, developing countries raise interest rates sharply. This may lead to economic collapse – as in Indonesia during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.

Although pandemic response measures – such as debt moratoria – provided some relief, business failures rose nearly 60% in 2020 from 2019. Middle- and low-income countries saw more business failures.

The World Bank’s Pulse Enterprise Survey – of 24 middle- and low-income countries – found 40% of businesses surveyed in January 2021 expected to be in arrears within six months.

This included more than 70% of firms in Nepal and the Philippines, and over 60% in Turkey and South Africa. Business failures of such scale can trigger banking crises as non-performing loans suddenly soar.

Instead of checking contemporary inflation, raising interest rates is likely to greatly damage recovery and medium-term growth prospects. Hence, it is imperative for developing countries to innovatively develop appropriate means to better address the economic dilemmas they face.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Lack of disclosure of contracts, payments and socio-environmental impacts characterize Mexico's coal industry. The picture shows workers at the Nueva Rosita coal mine in the northern state of Coahuila. CREDIT: Courtesy of Cristóbal Trejo

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 9 2022 (IPS)

In the northern Mexican state of Coahuila the current situation of coal, used mainly to generate electricity, is opaque.

A veil surrounds the industry in terms of production, consumption, inspections, pollution, contracts and the state of the mines that supply coal to two power plants belonging to the governmental Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).

In the southern state of Guerrero, another power plant uses coal from Australia and Colombia.

Cristina Auerbach, director of the non-governmental organization Familia Pasta de Conchos, said there is a veil of mystery surrounding the industry in Mexico.

“The system is not transparent. Sometimes the issue goes unnoticed, because at a global level coal in Mexico is insignificant. But it is so problematic that they can’t make it transparent because they can’t order transparency” in the country, she told IPS.

Her organization was created in 2006, following an explosion caused by methane accumulation that year at the Pasta de Conchos mine in Coahuila, which left 65 workers dead, 63 of whom were buried in the explosion and whose bodies have never been recovered.“With regard to coal…there is no national registry of how many pits there are. There have been complaints about illegal coal mining. The final results are quite poor. We don't know if it is lack of commitment, or a lack of interest in promoting transparency.” -- Sol Pérez

Coal is mined in Coahuila and Tamaulipas, in the north of this Latin American country. In December 2020, according to official figures, Mexico produced 459,414 tons of coal, which is highly polluting and harmful to human health.

But to meet domestic demand, the country imports about nine million tons per year.

Last March, coal-fired generation contributed more than 2,000 megawatts of electricity, three percent of the national total. In Coahuila, there are some 40 underground coal mines.

Ignored

Coal has been left out of the natural resource transparency schemes negotiated between the federal government and international civil society organizations in platforms such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and the Open Government Partnership (OGP).

EITI, created in 2003, brings together more than 50 countries and promotes open and accountable management of oil, gas and mineral resources. Mexico joined EITI in 2017 and is currently undergoing the first review of its compliance with the standards, a process that began last August and whose results are to be published in the coming months.

In Latin America, Colombia, a producer of hydrocarbons and coal, has the most advanced status, receiving a rating of “satisfactory progress” in implementing the EITI standards. The South American nation practices proactive transparency, issuing a biannual report.

Peru, another oil and gas producer, has made “significant progress,” according to the global transparency standard.

Argentina, Ecuador and Trinidad and Tobago are other hydrocarbon producers in the region that are also under evaluation, while Brazil and Venezuela do not belong to EITI.

The José López Portillo thermoelectric plant, owned by the governmental Federal Electricity Commission and located in the northern state of Coahuila, burns coal to generate energy in Mexico. CREDIT: CFE

OGP, founded in 2011, groups 78 nations and hundreds of civil society organizations. In Mexico, the 4th National Action Plan 2019-2021 revolves around 13 topics, including transparency in final beneficiaries of companies in the hydrocarbon and mining sector.

Transparency can help strengthen accountability, the fight against corruption, the evaluation of public policies and informed decision-making by stakeholders, such as local communities.

Sol Pérez, a researcher at the non-governmental Fundar, Centro de Análisis e Investigación, questions the lack of exhaustive information on fossil fuels.

“There is no effective access to information” in the state-owned oil giant Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), she told IPS.

“With regard to the issue of coal, the picture is very similar,” she added. “There is no national registry of how many pits there are. There have been complaints about illegal coal mining. The final results are quite poor. We don’t know if it is lack of commitment, or a lack of interest in promoting transparency.”

The “EITI-Mexico Shadow Report: Progress and Challenges in Socio-environmental Transparency”, published in May 2021, concluded that the government and companies have persisted in their refusal to disclose disaggregated socio-environmental information on the extractive sector.

The report, prepared by organizations participating in EITI, exposed phenomena such as the partial existence of data on royalty payments for the exploitation or use of national waters and the lack of complete files on environmental matters.

Another case addresses the unavailability of geo-referenced oil well locations.

The document found that out of 49 hydrocarbon contracts of EITI companies, only 10 include social impact assessments, while only two contain an environmental impact analysis.

Mexico ranks 12th in the world in oil production, 17th in gas extraction, 20th in proven crude oil reserves and 41st in proven natural gas deposits. But its position in the oil industry is declining due to the scarcity of easily extractable hydrocarbons.

Since 2020, hydrocarbon production has been dropping. In February 2020 oil extraction totaled 1.73 million barrels per day; the following year, 1.67 million; and last February, 1.63 million, according to the government’s National Hydrocarbons Commission.

Gas has followed a similar trajectory, with production totaling 4.93 billion cubic feet per day in February 2020; 4.838 billion cubic feet per day 12 months later; and 4.673 billion cubic feet per day last February.

The lack of sufficient domestic gas makes imports necessary, especially from the United States, which have been on the rise since 2020, after a drop between 2018 and 2019.

Imports of gas grew six percent between 2020 and 2021 – from 853 million cubic feet to 904.6 million. Last February, imports totaled 640 million, more than half the volume of the entire previous year.

View of a service station of the state oil giant Pemex in Mexico City. The company’s activities suffer from a lack of transparency and access to information, despite commitments in this regard made by the Mexican government. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Empty promises

For its part, OGP includes the development of a National Action Plan to drive beneficial ownership transparency and initiate the publication of such data from hydrocarbon and mining companies, with the aim of building a corporate Beneficial Ownership Register by 2023.

Actions included the preparation of a diagnosis of final beneficiaries in Mexico and a pilot project for the dissemination of information, which have been completed.

These examples show how little importance the Mexican government attaches to access to public information and transparency in the extractive sector.

In addition, they highlight the challenges ahead for the government in implementing the regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, in force since April 2021 and known as the Escazú Agreement.

In 2020, CFE purchased 1.58 million tons of coal through 60 direct contracts awarded to producers in the Coahuila coal region, without environmental and social impact assessments, as revealed last November by the non-governmental organization México Evalúa.

Although the country evolved in the Resource Governance Index, developed by the non-governmental Natural Resource Governance Institute, between 2019 and 2021, issues such as governance of social and environmental impacts still need to be improved.

“Governance of local impacts is poor, mainly due to opacity in the disclosure of environmental mitigation plans, which the government considers confidential,” the paper states.

Increased pressure

In 2021 and 2022, EITI priorities in Mexico include providing information about the energy transition, supporting open data, providing information on investment decisions, strengthening revenue mobilization, addressing corruption risks, and measuring impact.

In the design of OGP’s new action plan, which is to be ready in August, civil society wants to include a commitment to transparency in hydrocarbons, mining and electric energy.

Auerbach, the activist, complained that communities have become “sacrifice zones” in exchange for mining.

“They don’t care if we are informed or not, if we protest or not, it changes absolutely nothing,” she said. “There are environmental liabilities from 50 years ago, from 30 years ago or from last week. And that is not included. Whatever the CFE and Pemex say is fine and the rest just go along with it. Under this government, they are untouchable. The Ministry of the Environment says that it is going to review how the area will end up when they finish exploiting the concessions in 50 years.”

EITI’s alternative report suggested publishing information on environmental impact mitigation in priority maritime areas for biodiversity conservation that host oil projects and payments for environmental licenses, environmental taxes, non-compliance with regulations or environmental impacts.

Pérez said the Escazú Agreement offers an opportunity to promote transparency and access to information.

“The ideal conditions don’t exist, but Escazú is an opportunity. On the environmental issue, the lack of information is well identified. The lack of public commitment is worrisome. We can link EITI and Escazú,” she said.

Journalist Jeffery Moyo, with his lawyer, Doug Coltart, outside the Magistrate’s Court, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Moyo faces charges of violating Section 36 of the Immigration Act. His sentencing is expected on May 31, 2022. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, May 9 2022 (IPS)

For international journalist Jeffery Moyo, doing his job could land him in prison if Zimbabwe authorities have their way.

“Journalism is a crime in Zimbabwe, and the regime is reactive to independent journalism,” says Moyo, an international correspondent for the New York Times and the Inter Press Service (IPS).

Criminalising journalism

Moyo (37) has been charged with violating Section 36 of the Immigration Act, based on allegations he made a false representation to immigration officials. This pertains to the accusation of him obtaining media accreditation for two of his colleagues, Christina Goldbaum and Joao Silva, from the New York Times. He faces ten years in jail if convicted of breaching Zimbabwe’s Immigration Act by helping two US newspaper journalists work in the country.

Arrested in May 2021 and detained for 21 days at Bulawayo Prison before being released, Moyo was initially denied bail on the grounds he was a threat to national security.

“I am living in perpetual fear because I don’t know what the regime is plotting against me,” Moyo told IPS in an interview before he was due in court in Bulawayo. “If you are an independent journalist in Zimbabwe, you should always watch your back because somebody might be following you intending to harm you because of your work.”

Moyo lamented that his continued now year-long court ordeal has meant he has little productive time doing his job, which means lost income.

“Any regime that projects itself in this manner has skeletons in its closet. I fear they might at some point harm me at a time the world would have forgotten about me because this is a regime that sees shadows everywhere around itself,” Moyo added.

The journalist’s trial resumed at the Bulawayo’s Magistrate Court last week after the State rejected an application to dismiss his case early this year. The trial started in the week that the world commemorated World Press Freedom Day.

Moyo was charged with contravening a section of the Immigration Act and that he had produced fake media accreditation cards for the New York Times journalists. The defence had applied for the case discharge noting that the State’s case against Moyo was on “shaky grounds”, but a Bulawayo Magistrate ruled that the State had sufficient evidence against Moyo. The court sought to cross-examine Moyo, and he chose to remain silent.

Moyo’s lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, told the court that her client chose to remain silent because the Magistrate had already found that the accreditation cards were fake without referring to any evidence on which the application for dismissal was based.

Mtetwa commented that whether or not Moyo testified, the Magistrate had decided that the accreditation cards Moyo allegedly obtained for two foreign journalists were fake and wanted Moyo to implicate himself – which is against the law.

“He [Moyo] had no onus to testify, and the Constitution says you have a right to remain silent and even the attempt to put questions to someone who has said ‘I wish to remain silent’, for me, is an exercise in futility. If he wants to find him guilty, let him find him guilty on the evidence that the State has led, which in his ruling he (the Magistrate) has completely ignored,” Mtetwa told IPS.

Moyo has pleaded not guilty, and he will be sentenced on May 31, 2022.

Zimbabwe has enshrined freedom of the press in its Constitution, but media advocacy groups say freedom is not guaranteed.

The media rights advocacy group, Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Zimbabwe, recorded at least 27 violations in 2021, a decline from the 52 a year earlier.

“When the Constitution is violated, especially by the police who are supposed to enforce the law, then it presents a challenge … to uphold the constitution,” said Tabani Moyo, MISA Zimbabwe Executive Director. He added there was a need for continued consultation with law enforcement agencies in Zimbabwe to come up with workable interventions to prevent harassment of journalists.

More rhetoric, fewer reforms

Despite the government’s commitment to promoting press freedom and the freedom of expression, the continued harassment of journalists and the muzzling of critics tells a different story.

The arsenal of punitive laws meant to restrict fundamental rights of free expression and association point to repression rather than the freedom that the Zimbabwe government espouses.

For example, Zimbabwe repealed the draconian Access to Information and Privacy Act (AIPPA). However, journalists are still harassed and threatened, casting a long shadow on the Zimbabwe government’s commitment to free expression.

“We no longer have serious cases where journalists are harassed, beaten up or killed in this country. What we have is a robust exchange of ideas with journalists,” Zimbabwe’s Deputy Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Kindness Paradza, told a  World Press Freedom Day commemoration event in Bulawayo last week.

“There is a lot to celebrate in Zimbabwe because we have done away with AIPPA, which was a bad law. In its place, we have put the Freedom of Information Act, the Zimbabwe Media Commission Act,” said Paradza. He added that the Zimbabwe Media Practitioners Bill is also on the cards.

The World Press Freedom Index notes that there has been an opening of the media landscape in African countries like Angola, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, which moved seven points down the Index ranking from 130 in 2021 to 137 in 2022.

“The media situation in Zimbabwe has improved slightly since the dictator Robert Mugabe’s ouster in 2017. Access to information has increased, and self-censorship has declined,” the Index observed in an analysis of Zimbabwe’s press.

The Index noted that while levels of violence against journalists had declined significantly under the Mnangagwa administration, they remain alarmingly high, and self-censorship is routinely practised to avoid reprisals.

“Acts of intimidation, verbal attacks, and threats (especially on social media) are all still common practices. Cases of journalists being imprisoned and prosecuted are nonetheless now rarer, the most notable case being that of Hopewell Chin’ono, an investigative journalist who spent almost a month and a half in prison in 2020,” according to the World Press Freedom lndex.

Extremely harsh laws are still in effect, and, when new laws have been adopted, their provisions are just as draconian as those they replaced, the Index noted, citing that the amended penal code,  the Official Secrets Act and the new Cyber Security and Data Protection Act continue to hamstring journalism in Zimbabwe.

Commenting on the press freedom in Zimbabwe, Mtetwa said the government indicates right but turns left. She explained that what the government says about complying with the niceties of the law and being seen to be complying with international best practices is different from what is happening on the ground.

“We have had many, many journalists arrested under the second republic. Why is this happening? They are abusing the criminal justice system to harass journalists,” Mtetwa told IPS.

“They arrest you and look for something in the criminal law, knowing there is no case. You have seen the Hopewell Chin’ono cases,” she says. Two of the cases against Chin’ono have been dismissed, but one case is still awaiting a trial date. He denies the charges.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Derived from naturally occurring microorganisms, microbial inoculants offer the same benefits as chemical fertilizers while reducing agricultural systems environmental footprint, according to the author. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, USA, May 9 2022 (IPS)

Around the world, commercial fertilizer prices are soaring, pushing farmers and countries into a frenzy. In addition, soaring fertilizer prices are sparking fears of inflation, food supply shortages and food insecurity. There are several reasons that have contributed to the rising fertilizer prices including the Russian-Ukrainian war and the global pandemic.

To avert the ongoing fertilizer crisis, farmers in developed and developing countries alike, could turn into other alternative products such as microbial inoculants. Derived from naturally occurring microorganisms, including the billions of beneficial bacteria that teem in the soil near plant roots, microbial inoculants offer the same benefits as chemical fertilizers while reducing agricultural systems environmental footprint.

Moreover, scientific evidence, generated over the years including through both long-term studies and short-term studies have shown that these microbes when applied directly to seeds can improve the crop growth, nutrition, and productivity. As an example, a 10-year long-term field study carried in Germany showed that beneficial microbes increase maize plant growth and the availability of phosphorous – and essential plant nutrient – in the soil. In Italy, beneficial soil microbes improved tomato yields. In the US,

Due to their popularity, microbial inoculants are currently valued at $12.9 billion. Complementing their popularity is the proliferation in the number of start-ups and companies developing and commercializing microbial products. These include AgBiome, Indigo, Novozymes, Corteva, BASF, and Bayer.

What’s more is that these microbes can provide other benefits to plants including helping them to tolerate drought and hot temperatures that have increasingly become common with climate change. Further, they can increase plant defenses against crop damaging insects. These products also offer environmentally sustainable integrated crop management.

Cost wise, in the US, for example,  microbial inoculants are relatively priced, from $30 – $100 per gallon.

Of course, there remains a few challenges including the often-cited inconsistent results and  concerns that these products could eventually become invasive.

As fertilizer prices keep escalating, we must invest in understanding and harnessing these naturally occurring microbes to improve crop productivity.

Just like we are investing in producing fertilizers, there is need to invest in science that is aimed at understanding beneficial soil microbes and the mechanisms that underpin microbe facilitated crop growth improvement.

Microbial inoculants could be the next sustainable tools for breaking the dependence on fertilizers.

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute, New Voices.

Approximately half of the planet’s habitable land is now being used for the production of food, which accounts for an estimated 70 percent of freshwater consumption. Credit: Bigstock.

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, May 9 2022 (IPS)

People require food, with more people requiring more food and less people requiring less food. Despite that self-evident relationship, most governments appear reluctant to accept the intimate link between the supplies of food and the numbers of people and continue calling for the further growth of their populations.

The world’s population of approximately 8,000,000,000, or more than double its size at the start of the Green Revolution in the mid-1960s, is again facing a food crisis across many countries and areas. And that food crisis is expected to worsen in the near term.

The food crisis in dozens of countries, which are located primarily in Africa and Asia, is largely due to the three Cs: conflict, climate change, and COVID-19. Also, the recent conflict in Ukraine due to Russia’s military invasion has further exacerbated the food crisis.

As a result of the conflict in Ukraine, a growing number of governments are erecting new barriers to stop the exports of food products and other important commodities at their borders. Those barriers are expected to worsen the food crisis with shortages and higher prices for a variety of goods in many food insecure countries.

Today an estimated 800 million people, or 10 percent of the world’s population, are hungry. Also, projections show that the world is not on track to end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030, i.e., Sustainable Development Goal 2.

The future growth of world population, which is currently increasing by approximately 80 million per year, is expected to be concentrated in regions that contain most of the countries suffering from hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition.

Of the expected growth of the world’s population of nearly 600 million over the next eight years, Africa, much of which is dependent on imported food, accounts for 47 percent of that demographic growth, followed by Asia at 43 percent (Figure 1).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Moreover, the projected percentage increases in the populations of Africa’s sixteen food insecure hotspot countries are among the world’s highest and well above the global average. By 2030 many of the populations of those African countries are expected to increase by no less than 25 percent.

The current population of Niger, for example, is expected to increase by 34 percent over the next eight years, i.e., from 26 million to 35 million. In contrast, the projected increase of world population of 7 percent over those eight years is a fraction of the rates of Africa’s food insecure hotspot countries (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

The expected population growth of food insecure countries by mid-century is even more striking. Whereas world population is projected to increase by about 20 percent by 2050, the populations of some African food insecure hotspot countries are expected to double in size by mid-century. A particularly rapid rate of future demographic growth is the population of Niger, which is expected to increase from its current 26 million to 66 million by mid-century.

The future growth of world population, which is currently increasing by approximately 80 million per year, is expected to be concentrated in regions that contain most of the countries suffering from hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition

Another African food insecure hotspot country whose population is expected to double in size is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, increasing from 95 million today to 195 million by 2050. The African country with the largest population, Nigeria, is also projected to increase substantially from its current 217 million to 401 million by 2050, thereby displacing the United States as the world’s third largest population.

Outside of Africa six additional countries, which have been affected greatly by armed conflicts and violence, are also considered food insecure hotspot countries. Those countries are Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen in Asia and Haiti and Honduras in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Following the Green Revolution in the late 1960s, global food production has outpaced the rapid growth of world population during the second half of the 20th century. World population has more than tripled since 1950, from 2.5 billion to 8 billion today.

At present, approximately half of the planet’s habitable land is now being used for the production of food, which accounts for an estimated 70 percent of freshwater consumption. That vital human activity has important consequences for the planet, including contributing to biodiversity loss, pollution, deforestation, and soil degradation as well as to greenhouse gas emissions.

Part of the responses to those consequences for the planet include reducing meat consumption and moving the world’s population to a more plant-based diet. In addition to the improvements to human health, eating mostly plant-based foods would contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduced animal waste.

In many parts of the world, especially those food insecure hotspots noted above, the effects of climate change and environmental degradation are greatly impacting the production, availability, and distribution of food with droughts, floods, high temperatures, wildfires, desertification, pests, rise in sea levels, etc.

In addition to aiming to increase the supply of food and making healthy diets affordable and accessible for populations with low household purchasing power, greater efforts are needed to reduce the overall demand for food by stabilizing the size of populations.

In addition to reducing high morbidity and mortality rates, governments should endeavor to reduce high fertility rates. Expediting the demographic transition in countries with high death and birth rates would contribute considerably to reducing the future sizes of those populations and thereby the projected demand for additional food.

For example, Africa’s future population, which has increased six-fold since 1950, could be markedly less than currently projected if the continent’s demographic transition is expedited. If the future fertility rates of African countries were to follow the United Nation’s low variant projection instead of its medium variant, the population of Africa would be 200 million less by 2050 and more than a billion less by 2100 (Figure 3).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Reductions in the rapid growth of populations in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere will certainly not resolve the problems of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. Other major challenges need to be addressed, including conflict, climate change, and COVID-19.

However, it is also certainly the case that lower rates of demographic growth will lead to fewer additional people in the future. Such demographic reductions will in turn lead to reduced future demand for food.

As stated at the outset, the relationship between food and people is self-evident. Namely, people require food, with more people requiring more food and less people requiring less food.

It’s well past the time for governments to embrace the relationship between food and people. To do so entails governments adopting comprehensive policies and implementing effective programs aimed at reducing high rates of population growth and stabilizing the size of their populations.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

 

Credit: UNICEF Ethiopia/2021/ Nahom Tesfaye

By External Source
NEW YORK, May 9 2022 (IPS-Partners)

Conflicts in Northern Ethiopia’s regions of Afar, Amhara and Tigray, have pushed children and adolescents out of school and are fueling humanitarian needs in the region. In response to this crisis, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) announced today a US$2 million First Emergency Response Grant that will reach more than 20,000 refugee and displaced, as well as host community children and adolescents. This brings ECW ongoing investments in Ethiopia to over $30 million.

The 12-month grant will be delivered by UNHCR and local strategic partners, focusing on early childhood education, primary education, accelerated learning programmes and secondary education, in and around refugee camps, as well as a settlement in the northern regions of Ethiopia. The interventions are intended to primarily target refugees in the camps of Aysaita and Serdo in Afar, Alemwach site in Amhara, and Mai Aini and Adi Harush in Tigray. Approximately 62% of the people to be reached with this assistance are girls, and 10% are children with disabilities.

As a result of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict, children and adolescents in Afar, Amhara and Tigray have missed education opportunities. To date, approximately 13% of previously enrolled refugee children and youth in Ethiopia have not returned to school.

“Refugee and host-community children and youth are in urgent need of safe and protective learning environments. Children and adolescents face high risks of recruitment into armed groups, human trafficking, radicalization and exploitation. They have already lost their homes and loved ones. We cannot allow them to also drop out of school and thereby destroy their very last hope: an education that will empower them to arise from their dispossession and suffering,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.

“Education does not only provide protection to children and support them to return to normalcy; it is also beneficial to their mental and psychological health, which are critical for effective learning. ECW’s valuable funding will support interventions to address the educational needs of the affected girls and boys as quickly as possible and will significantly contribute to strengthen the co-existence between the displaced communities and their hosts in Northern Ethiopia,” said Mamadou Dian Balde, UNHCR Representative in Ethiopia.

The ECW investment will further support the construction and rehabilitation of classrooms including temporary learning spaces and latrines to increase access to safe, protective and gender-sensitive learning environments for emergency-affected children. Innovative cash transfers will incentivize families to return their children to school, as part of the wide back-to-school efforts.

The programme also includes the recruitment and training of teachers and school administrators and the provision of individual learning materials. Teacher training will cover subject knowledge, curriculum, planning and pedagogy topics. The funding will also support strengthening of school and community capacity to provide gender and crisis-sensitive education for emergency-affected girls, boys and children with disabilities.

The new funding builds on the impact of ECW’s US$1 million Tigray response, announced in April 2021, along with the Fund’s ongoing Multi-Year Resilience Programme in the country.

Excerpt:

UNHCR and local strategic partners will reach 20,000 refugee and host community children and adolescents impacted by displacement and conflict in Afar, Amhara and Tigray Regions.

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, May 9 2022 (IPS)

“I first think about my children. They are why we were forced to leave – because our children are always our first concern.”

These are the moving words of Victoria, who fled the brutal war in Ukraine with her two daughters. Her eyes welling up with tears, she recalled their dangerous journey from Ukraine. She and her two school-aged daughters were forced to leave behind everything they have ever known.

Yasmine Sherif

I met Victoria during my recent mission to Moldova, together with USAID, FCDO-UK, UNICEF, UNHCR, Theirworld and civil society senior representatives. Victoria and her girls now live with a host family in Moldova, and despite the hardship and uncertainty of what the future holds for her loved ones still in Odessa, she finds some respite in the fact that her two daughters are attending school. “Here they can continue their education, socialize and take their mind off the war. They can forget about it for a while and just be children again.”

Tragically, the story of Victoria and her daughters is not unique; it is the story of the 5 million Ukraine refugees who have already fled the deadly conflict in Ukraine. It is also the story of over 128 million children and youth whose lives today are shattered by armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters and other crises across the globe: in Africa, Asia, Middle East and South America.

The global loss of childhood and sense of despair have become universal. This is a shameful trend for humanity and the time has come to transform despair into hope. The most cost-effective and efficient way to do so is through urgent, substantive and predictable financial investments in quality education for those children left furthest behind in emergencies and protracted crises.

As Leonardo Garnier, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General for the ‘Transforming Education Summit’ stresses in this month’s high-level interview: “The truth is that education remains one of the most underfunded areas of humanitarian aid, receiving less than 3% of total global humanitarian funding. This has to change.”

To ensure quality education for vulnerable children caught in the midst of crises requires urgent, bold and significantly scaled-up financing by both humanitarian and development actors, as well as the private sector. The European Union is an excellent role model: it invests 10% in education from both its humanitarian and development envelopes.

What kind of financing are we willing to invest to make a transformative change? How much do we value true transformation to ensure that every child and adolescent can access a quality education as their last hope when everything else in their world has fallen to pieces?

This year, as we accelerate our efforts towards the 2030 Agenda deadline, the UN Secretary-General’s ‘Transforming Education Summit’, being convened in September 2022, is our collective opportunity to make a real difference. By transforming the way in which we deliver financing through pooled funding, grants and loans and by transforming financial envelopes into significant, combined humanitarian-development investments for education, we can and we must, transform the lives of girls and boys through education, and thereby deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals and all Human Rights.

Anything less is not the transformation we urgently need today.

Yasmine Sherif is Director, Education Cannot Wait
The UN Global Fund for Education in Emergencies and Protracted Crises

IPS UN Bureau

 

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