Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Emilia Reyes, Iolanda Fresnillo, Neth Dano and Pooja Rangaprasad
NEW YORK, Feb 15 2022 (IPS)

On 10 September 2021, UN Secretary-General (SG) Antonio Guterres released the “Our Common Agenda” (OCA) report. This report was in response to a request from UN member states to “report back before the end of the seventy-fifth session of the General Assembly with recommendations to advance our common agenda and to respond to current and future challenges”.

UN member states are currently meeting, as part of a consultation process on the OCA report, to discuss these proposals. The report contains many concerning recommendations in relation to the global economic and financial architecture and has larger implications for democratic global governance.

Corporate capture of the UN in the name of multistake-holderism

Rather than reaffirming the role of inclusive member state led processes, the proposals made by the Secretary General (SG) rely on new multi-stakeholder approaches, termed ‘networked multilateralism’ in the report.

This would bring to the decision-making table global corporate monopolies and international financial actors that have concentrated wealth and power, subsumed regions into debt and austerity, eroded environmental integrity, exacerbated poverty and human rights violations, actively undermined equal and just access to vaccines, and profited from disasters.

This modality of operation undermines the United Nations’ role in international decision-making as well as the related accountability and transparency that is central to its legitimacy.

Speaking of the Common Agenda, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has highlighted the power of youth engagement and the importance of their voices across the UN system and beyond, recalling his proposal to establish an Office on Youth. Credit: United Nations

Multistake-holderism conflates duty-bearers (governments), rights holders (people) and corporations as equal stakeholders, under the illusion that all of them are equal in their rights, responsibilities, and capacities. Such processes would also embed the UN in extreme conflict of interests.

For instance, the SG proposes a multi-stakeholder digital technology track in preparation for a ‘Summit of the Future’ to agree on a ‘Global Digital Compact’. The proposal echoes the recommendation of the UNSG’s High Level Panel of Experts on Digital Cooperation which was co-chaired by key personalities in global technology platforms (Big Tech).

Instead of enabling the self-serving push from Big Tech, the UN should support inclusive, member state led processes to address the development divide that underpins the digital divide, to regulate and curb the growing powers and wealth of Big Tech and ensure that human rights are respected.

The extent to which the OCA report and its “solutions” rely on multi-stakeholder approaches, reinforcing the role of problematic exclusive membership clubs and giving a seat at the table to those who have preyed on disaster, is worrisome.

The UN should be the normative space for making decisions on critical global challenges which has increasingly been captured by global north led spaces such as the OECD and G20 instead. The UN should indeed be addressing all those substantive issues included in the agenda.

But it should be done through strengthening inclusive member state led processes. Not by surrendering to the corporate capture and undermining even more the possibility to regain global democracy.

Eroding existing inclusive, multilateral processes at the UN

The OCA report proposes to establish a multistakeholder ‘emergency platform’ as well as a Biennial Summit between G20, ECOSOC, SG and IFIs noting that “we still lack pre-negotiated ways to convene relevant actors in the event of a global economic crisis”. This is incorrect.

The UN’s Financing for Development (FfD) process already has the mandate to convene and make decisions in the event of a global economic crisis with a legitimacy spanning 20 years. In fact, an FfD crisis conference titled “UN conference on the world economic crisis and its effects on developing countries” was convened in 2009 in direct response to the global economic crisis.

The FfD process is already mandated to address urgent global systemic challenges on debt, international tax, private finance, ODA, trade, technology and financial regulation. The modalities of the FfD process already recognises civil society and the private sector as stakeholders for inputs, in addition to IFIs, WTO and UNCTAD, while ensuring that negotiations are clearly intergovernmental with member states as decision-makers.

The challenge is not the lack of existing processes to convene but the need to overcome the obstinate blocking from a handful of member states in the UN who prefer such decision-making to happen in undemocratic forums rather than the UN. Establishing multi-stakeholder initiatives will not resolve this political economy challenge and will only further delay decision-making by strengthening the status quo.

Recommendations to member states

Convene the 4th Financing for Development (FfD) conference: UN member states should urgently agree on the next FfD Conference to respond to the multiple crises we face and move towards a new global economic architecture that works for the people and planet.

We need leadership from UN member states to reinforce existing member state led processes rather than inventing new forums and summits that only delay decision-making.

Democratise global economic governance: Multilateral reforms are urgently needed to ensure the democratisation of global economic governance such as the need for a global debt workout mechanism at the UN, establishing a universal UN intergovernmental tax commission and a global technology assessment mechanism at the UN.

We call on UN member states to reject multistake-holderism that reinforces the role of problematic exclusive membership clubs (OECD, G20 etc) and enables corporate capture of intergovernmental decision-making and to instead uphold the democratic potential of the United Nations.

Emilia Reyes is co-convener of the Women’s Working Group on FfD; Iolanda Fresnillo is Debt Justice Manager at European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad); Neth Dano is Asia Director of Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group); and Pooja Rangaprasad is Policy Director, FfD at Society for International Development (SID).

This article is based on Civil Society FfD Group’s response to the OCA report: https://csoforffd.org/2022/01/19/response-to-un-secretary-generals-our-common-agenda-report/

 

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Experts say proper hygiene, especially during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life is critical. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Feb 15 2022 (IPS)

For two days in a row back in 2018, four-year-old Calvin Otieno suffered from diarrhoea and vomiting, and his mother responded by giving him a salt solution.

Pearl Otieno tells IPS that diarrhoea among children in Kibera, the largest urban informal settlement, is commonplace. A mixture of salt and warm water is often the go-to remedy.

“He did not seem to get worse, but he was not getting better either. He lay on the floor too weak to play,” she says.

It was too late by the time Otieno realized the magnitude of the situation and rushed her son to the nearby Mbagathi Hospital.

Kibera has long been synonymous with ‘flying toilets’, where residents relieve themselves in bags during nighttime and throw them away at dawn because they lack toilets inside their homes and fear using public toilets due to insecurity.

“Open defecation, flying toilets, lack of water and money to buy soap, people dumping household and human waste in open spaces is the life that children in the slums are exposed to,” says Nelson Mutinda, a Community Health Volunteer working hand-in-hand with a local NGO.

But Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) challenges are not limited to informal settlements in this East African nation.

Overall, even though Kenyans have access to safe drinking water at 59 percent, according to UNICEF statistics, only 29 percent of the population has access to basic sanitation.

In all, five million Kenyans practise open defecation, a problem that statistics by the World Bank show is similarly prevalent in many low- and middle-income countries.

Open defecation is prevalent in Chad, Benin, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Madagascar, Niger, Namibia, and Sao Tome and Principal. Only a handful of countries such as South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, Seychelles, Mauritania, and the Gambia have successfully addressed access to sanitation.

World Health Organization (WHO) data indicates that Africa is not on track to achieve universal access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation in keeping with global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In the absence of increased investments in WASH interventions, the health body stresses that Africa will remain off track due to the added pressure from climate change and projected growth in population.

Against this backdrop, WHO says children in Sub-Saharan Africa are at least 14 times more likely to die before their fifth birthday than children in developed nations.

According to government statistics, in Kenya, at least 64,500 children die every year before reaching the age of five. Three-quarters of these deaths occur before their first birthday.

Mary Wanjiru, a pediatric nurse at Mbagathi Hospital, tells IPS that, like Otieno, many die from preventable diseases because the primary cause of death is diarrhoea, pneumonia, or neonatal complications.

“It is very important for mothers to understand that proper hygiene, especially during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, is a very important pillar of child health. Poor hygiene can lead to death or a child failing to reach their full developmental and growth potential,” she says.

“WASH interventions are pillars of maternal, newborn and general child health because they prevent life-threatening infections such as tetanus, diarrhoea, sepsis and helps reduce stunted growth.”

According to USAID research, proper hygiene is a fragile pillar in Africa’s low- and middle-income countries.

In all, 50 percent of health care facilities lack piped water, 33 percent lack improved sanitation, 39 percent lack handwashing soap, 39 percent lack adequate infectious waste disposal, and 73 percent lack sterilization equipment, research shows.

While WASH interventions, such as safe drinking water, proper handwashing practices, and even basic sanitation, could prevent an estimated 297,000 global deaths among children under the age of five every year, this goal is not within reach for many Sub-Saharan African countries.

Hand washing, says the WHO, is the single most cost-effective strategy to prevent pneumonia and diarrhoea in young children successfully.

Still, data from UNICEF and WHO Joint Monitoring Programme released in August 2020 shows that an estimated 818 million of the world’s children lacked basic handwashing facilities within their schools. Of these children, 295 million live in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Overall, seven out of 10 schools lacked basic handwashing facilities in the least developed countries worldwide.

It is within this context that UNICEF paints a dire picture. Over 700 children worldwide under the age of five die daily of diarrheal diseases because of a lack of appropriate WASH services.

Children in conflict situations are especially vulnerable because they are nearly 20 times more likely to die from diarrheal diseases than in conflict.

“For ten years, I have worked in four slums in Nairobi. I find it very shocking that people have not understood how serious diarrhoea in children is. But small children will be given a mixture of water and salt, and sometimes some herbs and people just take the situation very lightly,” Mutinda observes.

Wanjiru agrees. She says that diarrhoea can escalate to a fatality within a matter of hours, “by the time mothers rush to the hospital with children suffering from acute watery diarrhoea, it is sometimes a losing race against time. Any form of illness among children should never be a wait-and-see situation. Seek immediate medical attention.”

 

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By Vikas Rawal and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
NEW DELHI and KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 15 2022 (IPS)

A recent Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) study shows the largest farms cultivate a high and increasing share of agricultural land in much of the world.

Farm size concentration
World Agricultural Census data for 129 countries show about 40% of the world’s farmland is operated by farms over 1000 hectares (ha) in size. About 70% is operated by the top 1% of farms, all bigger than 50 ha each.

Vikas Rawal

A rising share of farmland is in larger farms. But farm sizes in developed and developing countries seem quite different. Farms smaller than 5 ha accounted for 63% of land in low and lower middle-income countries. But such farms covered only 8% of farmland in upper middle and high-income countries.

The “share of farmland farmed on the largest holdings has increased in … several European countries (France, Germany and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and in the United States of America.” Similarly, in recent decades, more land in many Latin American and sub-Saharan African countries is in larger farms.

Data coverage uneven
Most agricultural censuses in developing countries do not cover large scale farms well. Official agricultural statistics in many developing countries focus on farm households, often ignoring corporate farms.

Agricultural censuses typically rely on land records, usually neither up to date nor complete. Large farms often have land registered to different persons and entities, typically to avoid taxes and bypass land ownership ceilings and regulations.

Government surveys in India have not comprehensively covered large farms, understating inequality. Other data from India suggest the top fifth of farms account for 83% of land.

Even where large farms are legally recognized as commercial entities, land is often held via subsidiaries in complex arrangements. For such reasons, the extent of concentration is probably greater than what the study suggests.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Ominous trends
Despite its limitations, the study findings are ominous. Changing inequalities in farmland ownership and cultivation have reduced the smallholder or peasant share of food production.

The study suggests that ‘land grabs’, new laws and policies have enabled large (capitalist) farmers, agribusiness corporations and other commercial entities to control most of the world’s farmland.

Disparities in government support allowed by World Trade Organization and other trade agreements have enabled large farms in developed countries, like the US, to gain more advantages over relatively uninfluential peasants in the South.

More advantages to big farm capital in recent decades, particularly to large-scale commercial agriculture in the global North, have enhanced their edge. More peasant distress has pushed many deeper into debt. Many of the most vulnerable have had to migrate, seeking precarious employment elsewhere.

Under various pressures not to protect food agriculture, developing countries have cut support for peasants. Withdrawal of such assistance has forced farmers to buy inputs at commercial prices. Meanwhile, many have to sell their produce cheap to those providing credit or other facilities.

By enabling easier land takeovers, commercial farming has quickly spread in ecologically fragile areas such as the Brazilian Cerrado, various parts of sub-Saharan Africa and steep slopes subject to deforestation.

Small farms, world food
The study has triggered a controversy by asserting that ‘family farms’ is a broader category than smallholdings. These would include large family-owned or run farms.

Hence, family farms account for 80% of the total value of food produced in the world, while smallholdings account for only 35%. These estimates have been contested by several civil society organizations who have protested to the FAO Director General.

Most agricultural censuses do not provide data on production by farm size. Instead, the study divides the total market value of a country’s food output by its total farmland. It then assumes a constant food output value per hectare. But this ignores significant differences in crop output among farms of different types.

Commercial bias
In many countries, large farms produce more commercial crops, not necessarily food. These may be for manufacturing (e.g., rubber, cotton), animal feed, or to be industrially processed for consumption (e.g., sugar, palm oil, coffee).

Many smallholder peasants consume significant shares of their own farm outputs. They typically work on limited land and need to meet their own food needs, rather than maximize cash incomes. Hence, their priorities may be rather different from those of commercial farms.

More fertile regions (e.g., river deltas) tend to have greater population densities, smaller farm sizes and higher productivity. Such smaller farms often grow multiple crops yearly, while larger farms with harsher agro-climatic conditions (e.g., higher temperatures, more snow or less water availability) often only have a single crop annually.

Although not universal, and often overstated, there is evidence of smallholders having higher land productivity, inversely related to farm size, owing to differences in the way factor inputs are used by various types of farms.

By assuming constant food output value per hectare, the study ignores many important variations, and probably under-estimates the contributions of small farms to world food supply.

Peasants marginalized
The study shows how various systemic advantages and biases have enabled big capitalist farms to control more of the world’s farmland and food supplies. But the share of food supply produced by smallholder producers is far from settled.

While more pronounced in rich countries, large corporate farms have also been growing in many developing countries. Even where family farming is predominant, increasing farm sizes have been apparent.

The study rightly notes the need to consider different types of farms in making appropriate policies for family farms of various sizes. This is necessary to better formulate policies to address poverty and livelihoods, especially for smallholder producers in distress.

It even suggests the need to “hold large scale and corporate agriculture accountable for the negative externalities of their production (for example on the environment)”. Besides better farming data, farmland concentration and its many implications in various parts of the world should be more appropriately addressed.

Vikas Rawal is Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has conducted field research on agrarian relations in different parts of India for three decades, and works on global agricultural development challenges. Inter alia, he was lead author of The Global Economy of Pulses (FAO).

 

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Brazil has become the world’s leading exporter of beef in recent years. It has more cattle than its 214 million human inhabitants. But this leads to serious environmental damage: deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, as cattle drive the illegal appropriation and possession of deforested public lands. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 14 2022 (IPS)

With its accelerated growth agriculture has emerged as a key sector of Brazil’s economy, but it is failing on its own to spread prosperity and reduce poverty and inequality, with industry in decline.

However, it can do so by bringing in foreign exchange with its large exports and thus create macroeconomic conditions for pro-poor social policies, argues Carlos Guanziroli, a professor at the Fluminense Federal University.

Brazil used to be a food importer, producing only about 50 million tons of grains in 1980. Thirty years later the harvest was three times bigger and in 2020 it reached more than 250 million tons, the economist noted.

The fivefold increase in the harvest in 40 years was due to a strong growth in productivity, since the sown area expanded by only 60 percent, from 40 to 64 million hectares, according to the Agriculture Ministry’s National Supply Company.

The country became the world’s largest producer and exporter of soybeans, meat, sugar, orange juice and, long before that, coffee. Agribusiness exports reached 120.6 billion dollars in 2021 and led to a sectoral surplus of 105.1 billion dollars, which more than offset the industrial deficit.

Soybean is the main symbol of the success of agribusiness in Brazil, whose landscape has been stained with its monotonous crops. In four decades, agricultural research has achieved high soy productivity in the hot lands of the Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah. Flat land suitable for mechanization, with regular rainfall and the possibility of planting corn or cotton after the soybean harvest are the advantages of tropical agriculture in Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Economic cycles

Brazil achieved this agricultural strength in the midst of dizzying economic, demographic and political upheavals in the country over the last 100 years.

The 20th century industrialization drive, which picked up speed after World War II and continued until the 1980s, was apparently set to give rise to a new industrial powerhouse, the “Great Brazil” announced by the 1964-1985 military dictatorship’s propaganda.

But industry stalled since the 1980s, with its share of GDP declining in the following decades, while agriculture took off.

In the 1990s, a previously neglected sector, family farming, gained a more clearly defined identity, thanks to promotion policies. Guanziroli, then a researcher at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), contributed to this process.

Industrialization accelerated the urbanization of the population. Only 36 percent of Brazilians lived in cities in 1950. By 1980 the proportion had climbed to 67 percent and in 2010, when the last national census was carried out, it stood at 84 percent, according to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which puts the current population of Brazil at 214 million.

In other words, during the following cycle of strong agricultural expansion and industrial stagnation the tendency towards urbanization was maintained. Mechanization, extensive monocultures and the high concentration of land ownership are some of the reasons for the massive rural exodus.

But agriculture involves an extensive chain, which includes manufacturers of tractors, harvesters and other machinery, chemical inputs, packaging, as well as activities such as transportation and other services, said Guanziroli.

“This chain accounts for 22 percent of GDP and 28 percent of all jobs” in Brazil, he stressed in an interview with IPS in Rio de Janeiro.

Farmer Alison Oliveira stands among his organic crops on the small farm he works with his wife near the town of Alta Floresta, on the edge of Brazil’s Amazon region. Sustainable family farming is a barrier against deforestation and soybean monoculture. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Family farming

Family agriculture, which comprises 3.9 million farms with more than 10 million employed workers in Brazil, according to the 2017 agricultural census conducted by IBGE, is a sector which stands to experience major social and economic benefits from public policies.

“It is more labor-intensive and responds to trends towards local consumption and organic production, which are more evident in developed countries, especially in Europe,” said Rafael Cagnin, an economist at the Institute for Industrial Development Studies, promoted by the sector.

In addition to providing employment for families and potential employees, family farming enhances food security and boosts the local economy.

The activity is defined not by the size of the property or what it produces, but by the predominance of family labor, which must not be surpassed by hired workers, said Guanziroli.

Studies and proposals of researchers on the subject, especially in the 1990s, “sought to avoid simplifications, such as saying that family farmers were all poor and only produced food,” he said.

A misconception that is widespread – not only in Brazil – is that family farming is responsible for the production of 70 percent of the country’s food, Guanziroli said. He clarified that this is correct with regard to beans and cassava, but not to food production as a whole.

“This is a lie used for political means that affects dialogue and public policies, rhetoric that is not based on serious evidence,” he argued.

Studies estimated the share of family farms in total agricultural production at 38 percent in 1996 and 36 percent in 2006, according to IBGE census data. In 2017 the proportion dropped to 28 percent because of a prolonged drought that began in 2012 in the semi-arid Northeast region, which concentrates almost half of the country’s family farms.

A farmer harvests lettuce in Santa Maria de Jetibá, a mountainous agricultural municipality, the main supplier of horticultural products for school meals in the city of Vitoria, in southeastern Brazil. The synergy between family farming and school meals programs strengthens local production in the country. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Long-range policies

In Brazil, the recognition and clear definition of family farming benefited from good statistics from IBGE, a factor absent in many countries.

But studies on the subject and the proposals of researchers taken up by the government face hurdles, due to “ideological issues and the antagonism with agribusiness which has worn the issue down,” lamented Guanziroli.

“The idea was to clearly define family farming in order to promote projects and policies, such as credit,” he explained. It is an activity that is part of the agricultural business, integrated into the marketing chain, and inputs.

In spite of everything, the researcher assesses the balance of the last 30 years as positive. “Family farming has been consolidated, it has irreversible policies giving it a solid structure,” he said.

The best example is the National Program for the Strengthening of Family Agriculture (Pronaf), created in 1995, which continues to guarantee credits with low interest rates and favorable payment conditions. Not even the current far-right government, hostile to peasant farmers, has dared to abolish the program.

What is most lacking is technical assistance, “which never reached family farmers in those 30 years. We tried a thousand formulas, old institutions, non-governmental organizations, but we were unable to mobilize agronomists,” said Guanziroli.

Pig farmer Anelio Tomazzoni stands among biodigesters that convert the manure from his 38,000 hogs into biogas, in the southern state of Santa Catarina, Brazil’s main pork exporter. Energy production is a new aspect of agriculture and livestock farming in Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Agriculture and industry

Nevertheless, he believes that Brazil’s competitiveness lies in agriculture. “In industry we fell behind, it is difficult to compete with Asia,” he said. Some services, such as digital platforms, can be an alternative, but they require a long-term effort in education, in which Brazil is lagging.

But Cagnin told IPS from São Paulo that “Resuming Brazil’s economic and social development does not seem possible without progress in industry, following the example of other countries, especially the more complex ones.”

It is the sector that “generates and disseminates the most innovations in a capitalist economy, the one that builds bridges between other activities, adds value to agricultural or mineral products and promotes more sophisticated services,” he argued.

The economist, who specializes in industrial development, recognizes that Brazil’s political conflicts and educational shortcomings hinder progress in the midst of “technological transformations,” productive reorganization and new labor relations.

But industry is also indispensable because of the numerous serious risks facing the “agriculture of the future,” such as the climate crisis, changes in consumption and the directions that the large Chinese market will take, he maintained.

Everything points to the wisdom of not limiting the economy to a few export products, as Brazil is doing, and to seeking “synergies between industry and agriculture,” instead of excluding other sectors, he argued.

By External Source
NEW YORK, Feb 14 2022 (IPS-Partners)

Conflict, forced displacement, climate change and COVID-19 are disrupting the education of millions of crisis-affected children and adolescents around the world.

Yasmine Sherif is the Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nation’s global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises. When she and ECW partners from around the world operationalized the Fund in 2017, an estimated 75 million conflict-affected children were out of school. Today, that number has risen to 128 million – more than the total population of Japan.

Just a few short years later, under Sherif’s leadership, ECW is already a billion-dollar global fund, with US$1.1 billion raised in its Trust Fund and another US$1 billion leveraged through in-county multi-year resilience programmes to support these crisis-affected children and youth with the quality education that they desperately need.

To address this vast, unprecedented humanitarian and developmental crisis of disrupted education, visionary leadership, drive and direction is required. Not only is education an inherent human right for every child, but it is the foundation that supports achievement of all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Over the past few years, ground-breaking efforts have been made to re-position education as a top priority in humanitarian crisis contexts. The upcoming Summit on Transforming Education, as well as staunch support from the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, and the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina J. Mohammed, are testament to the central role education plays today in the multilateral UN system and beyond.

The clock is ticking. We now have just eight years to achieve the SDGs, or to at least close the gap, while simultaneously addressing the growing number of forcibly displaced people, the escalating climate crisis and building back better from the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To achieve these Global Goals – and build a more peaceful, more just and more prosperous world – a global movement grounded in the multilateral system, civil society and private sector is required. That global movement is Education Cannot Wait.

“I can’t see us combating extreme poverty, managing climate change, ending world hunger or creating gender equality, if we are going to leave millions of crisis-affected children and young people, not the least the girls, illiterate and disempowered without an education. If you want to invest in all the Sustainable Development Goals and universal human rights, you’ve got to start with the foundation and the glue. That foundation and glue is education,” Sherif said.

ECW’s pioneering approach as a global fund within the UN system, which reduces bureaucracy and improves accountability by closely aligning with civil society and the private sector, is a model that reforms the way the UN works. The Fund – connecting with partners across the globe through results, innovation, passion and accountability – showcases how humanitarian relief and longer-term development interventions work together through multi-year programming to respond to emergencies rapidly and sustainably.

Since ECW’s inception, this breakthrough Fund has invested in over 5 million crisis-affected children and adolescents in 42 countries and crisis contexts with safe, inclusive, child-centred, holistic education and emergency support.

ECW was formed in 2016 at the World Humanitarian Summit under the lead of the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, with the support of a wide coalition of UN, government, civil society and private foundation partners. It is through them, the world class team that Sherif has built and its strong governance boards, that ECW has been able to break through barriers and deliver quality education in the world’s most complex crises.

As head of the thriving global fund and movement, Sherif’s diverse background in human rights and her focus and determination to deliver results is making her a key champion and thought leader on the international stage for the rights of those left furthest behind. Whether she is driving the creation of the first education response plan for refugees in Uganda, calling for an end to attacks on schools in Cameroon or leading the first all-women UN delegation to Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, Sherif delivers her work based on the principles of human rights, human dignity and human empowerment.

“From a young age, I wanted to serve those who were in the most difficult circumstances of injustice, conflict and marginalisation in the world. I felt very responsible for humanity. I’ve always felt a responsibility for the world and believed that I could make a difference,” she said.

 
Early Years

Sherif was born in Stockholm and grew up in Sweden. From a young age, she was exposed to different cultures. Her Swedish mother and her Egyptian father encouraged her to be a world citizen, to read, learn and appreciate different customs and religions, and to adopt an inner moral compass in life and serve others. This ingrained in her values that she still holds today: to be respectful of all religions, beliefs and faiths, and to embrace diversity in all its forms. For her, it was only natural to pursue a master’s degree in International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law from Stockholm University in 1987.

Shortly after graduating, Sherif joined the International Committee of the Red Cross as an intern for their legal department, starting her long career in humanitarian and international development. Following this internship, Sherif spent a few years working for Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan who led the UN coordination of economic assistance to Afghanistan in 1989. In this position she was first posted in Geneva, Switzerland and then in Kabul, Afghanistan. After this, she joined her first UN peacekeeping mission in Cambodia in 1992 as part of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) mission.

“For me, the United Nations seemed like the natural trajectory in my life,” she said. “It represented the diversity of my own upbringing, and its Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights represented the values that ran like a blue thread through my childhood and adolescence.”

In 1994, she joined the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and led the first repatriation of refugees back to Bosnia. In 2000, she joined the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and was responsible for the new political and practical portfolio on the Protection of Civilians. She then spent over a decade with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) where she led the establishment and growth of the UN’s largest rule of law programming for crisis contexts.

“With my human rights background and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s UN reform, everyone needed human rights expertise. While having a family and two children to bring up, I was still able to move around between different UN agencies in need of human rights, protection and rule of law expertise. This allowed me to understand their different mandates and roles and deeply enriched my experience,” she said. “This has been invaluable for Education Cannot Wait. My team and I have to be catalytic and ensure that all UN agencies and all civil society organisations are given the same attention and financial investment opportunities. Without favouritism, we collaborate to achieve greater results.”

 
Captives in Cambodia

Sherif’s time at the UN is marked by great accomplishments and has taken her to over 40 countries. During her work in Cambodia in the early 1990s, she was responsible for human rights in the Battambang province, the country’s second largest province, leading a team of UN Civil Police officers. One day, a French police officer with the UN Police reported to her that there were undisclosed detention centres in the province, detaining political opponents. In the midst of a UN election, this required investigation. Sherif requested the officer to produce further evidence and he obliged. Pictures and concrete information were brought forward and Sherif launched an investigation together with the UN Civil Police.

“It was so sensitive and dangerous. We would interview witnesses at night in our UN Land Cruisers, so as not to be bugged in our guest house,” she said. “I would sleep with cassettes of the interviews under my pillow.”

Sherif worked with her human rights superiors in the capital, Phnom Penh, and police commanders in Battambang to plan a date to enter the undisclosed detention centres. In the meantime, local authorities had become suspicious and she received death threats.

“I remember the day we entered the detention centres. In the police station, I was on my walkie talkie, awaiting news from the UN Civil Police carrying out the operation. I was walking back and forth, and I said to myself: ‘Oh my gosh, what if you’re wrong? What if they enter these locations and there are no prisoners?’”

These doubts were erased when she received the call over the walkie talkie from the mission commander. They had entered the detention centre and found 20 political detainees.

“At that moment, the sky just opened. Our instincts had been right, our efforts were paying off and, most importantly, we did what we were there to do: ensure free and fair elections.”

This investigation led to a shift in the human rights approach of the UNTAC mission, with colleagues across Cambodia uncovering more undisclosed detention centres and saving more political prisoners. At that point, Sherif was only 26 years old and she had already contributed to the direction of a UN peacekeeping operation.

 
Rule of law

Another one of Sherif’s proudest achievements is her role in building UNDP’s rule of law programming across crisis-affected countries. This work drew on her legal expertise and experience in establishing legal aid and improving the capacity of justice systems in crisis-countries. Here, she strengthened her knowledge to better operate in the UN system through global programming investments, work across the humanitarian-development nexus and bring together partners through joint programming – all of which she has brought with her to Education Cannot Wait.

In the Darfur region of Sudan, atrocities such as rape and sexual violence were commonplace, and justice was not being delivered. To combat this, Sherif helped establish legal aid centres to support victims and their families through joint programming with UN agencies, civil society, and government institutions.

“I remember there was a little 10 year-old girl and a lower-level policeman had raped her. Her mother came to one of our legal aid centres and received legal help. We took the case to the court, and through the trust we had built and the capacity we had developed, the court worked and delivered justice. The policeman was sentenced to 10 years. We had many of these cases,” Sherif said.

After her mission to Sudan, Sherif was called to UNDP headquarters and asked to build UNDP rule of law programmes in all the crisis-affected countries they supported. It grew so fast that the then UN Secretary-General decided to establish a joint office for rule of law, co-hosted by UNDP and the Peacekeeping Department. This led to the UN jointly delivering rule of law in over 60 fragile or crisis-affected countries.

Building a global movement

In her current role, Sherif continues on her human rights mission. By spearheading the global movement that follows children and youth in crisis-contexts and using concrete results to measure success, she is a key advocate for their fundamental right to quality education.

Through ECW’s investment modalities that deliver rapidly at scale while ensuring depth in quality and sustainability, millions of girls and boys in crisis situations around the world are able to resume or continue learning. In these contexts, education is invaluable and their only hope for a better future. It provides a pathway to their future and to that of their nations, while also offering protection, psycho-social services, school meals and a sense of normalcy.

To maximise ECW’s reach, Sherif works closely with public and private donors, strategic donor partners, host governments, UN agencies, and international and national civil society organisations to provide children with the quality learning opportunities they are entitled to. This includes providing whole-of-child services to address specific challenges.

Sherif credits The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, who spearheaded the establishment of Education Cannot Wait and now serves as Chair of the ECW High-Level Steering Group, for providing an effective and efficient platform that enables ECW to be the positively disruptive force that it is.

“Without Gordon Brown, there would be no 5 million children given a holistic, quality education in the contexts of armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters and protracted crises. He is the key person who inspired others to join him. I have great respect for him,” she said.

Although there is much work ahead, Sherif is very thankful for the small but dedicated ECW team of experts with whom she works, crediting their hard work for the Fund’s success. She is also very thankful for ECW’s many strategic and trusted donors and partners who continuously show their commitment to the Fund’s mission and share its overarching philosophy.

Sherif’s heart is committed to ECW’s mission. In spite of increasing threats to the education of millions of crisis-affected children around the world, she is confident that ECW will rise to the challenge and continue to grow and meet the needs of those left furthest behind. “We have to be optimistic and work as if success is inevitable,” she said.

Quoting Joan of Arc, she expresses her sentiments: “I am not afraid, I was born to do this.”

 

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Excerpt:

A deeper dive into the life of ECW Director Yasmine Sherif, the UN’s billion-dollar woman.

By Manuel Barange
ROME, Feb 14 2022 (IPS)

The ocean covers more than 70 percent of our planet. There is no question it is critical for our health and well-being. It provides half the earth’s oxygen supply and every organism in existence depends on it to survive.

Manuel Barange

The ocean is also vital for our nutrition and food security, cultural heritage and economic sustenance. Hundreds of millions of people rely directly or indirectly on the ocean for their lives and livelihoods. It’s not just about jobs or feeding our families. The ebb and flow of the tides is embedded in the history and traditions of thousands of coastal communities around the world.

Now this precious resource is under threat on several fronts, from unsustainable fishing and pollution to climate change and competing uses. The ecological sustainability of our ocean resources, and the future of our marine life and those who depend on it, have never been more tenuous.

This year’s One Ocean Summit celebrates the role of the ocean in our everyday lives and is an opportunity to strengthen our commitment to secure its conservation and sustainable use.

The clock is ticking.

Global marine capture fisheries production reached 80.4 million tonnes in 2019. The risk of overfishing to meet escalating demand is real. According to FAO’s assessment in its 2020 report, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, the proportion of fish stocks produced within biologically sustainable levels has fallen from 90 percent in 1974 to 65.8 percent in 2017.

Urgent action is needed to ensure all marine and ocean spaces are placed under effective management and fish stocks are restored to sustainable levels in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Mariculture, or marine aquaculture, grew to an eye-watering 32 million tonnes in 2019, but this is far below its scientifically estimated ecological limits. Policy reform, technological advancement and value chain development would enable significant expansion to help feed the world’s growing population and reduce pressure on land-based food systems.

Despite the many challenges, change is possible. Together we can create the environment for ‘blue transformation’, a new approach to the sustainable growth and management of aquatic resources that will not only feed the world’s growing population, but also ensure a sustainable future for the ocean and those who depend on it.

Aquatic foods from ocean and freshwater sources have a much lower environmental footprint than land-based animal protein and their diversity – over 2,500 species are captured and over 600 cultured – makes the sector more adaptable to climate change.

Three billion people already obtain vital nutrients and 20 percent of their animal protein from aquatic foods. With the right kind of sustainable development our marine resources can help to feed the world’s growing population which is expected to rise to 10 billion by 2050.

Blue transformation focuses on three objectives. First, it aims to promote the sustainable expansion of aquaculture to achieve a 40 percent increase in production by 2030, especially in food deficit regions, backed by appropriate policy frameworks, species and strain diversification, effective biosecurity and disease controls, training and support.

Second, fisheries management must be transformed where sustainability is failing or is unknown. While one in three fisheries is overexploited, effective fisheries management has rebuilt target species . In the US, for example, the sustainability index has increased from 38.2 percent at the turn of the century to 79.1 percent in 2021. Elsewhere populations of whales and other marine mammals are recovering from decades of exploitation, and the accidental catch of turtles and birds has been greatly reduced by changes in fishing practices.

Third, fish value chains need to be upgraded and developed so we reduce food loss and waste, add value through product development, and employ digital solutions to facilitate market access, especially for small producers. We also need to educate consumers about the importance of fish products for a healthy diet.

We cannot do it alone. Conservation and sustainable development of the ocean requires complex and negotiated action backed by scientific evidence and international collaboration. FAO is already at the forefront of change as the partner of choice to broker solutions across regions, sectors and partners.

Thankfully we are not too late. With an innovative approach, greater political will and strong partnerships and investment, we can work effectively to confront the impacts of climate change, overfishing and unsustainable practices and ensure the sustainable management of our ocean resources.

The future sustainability of our ocean depends on what we do today. We owe it to our children and to ourselves.

The One Ocean Summit took place in Brest in Brittany in the northwest of France on 9-11 February 2022.

Manuel Barange, is Director of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

 

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Climate uncertainty could mean an increase in conflicts as tensions arise over scarce resources, like water. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
Bulawayo, ZIMBABWE , Feb 14 2022 (IPS)

When years ago warnings were sounded that future wars would be fought not over oil but water, the predictions were dismissed as alarmist.

Yet, as climate uncertainty upends water availability in Africa, researchers say conflicts arise among local communities and across borders over access to scarce water resources.

In a commentary released in January last month, the Global Water Partnership (GWP) called for immediate action from world leaders to provide resources and funds to tackle what the researchers say is the “worst drought in a generation in East Africa.”

The climate crisis has led to widespread lack of pastures, decimating livestock, and creating a humanitarian crisis.

East Africa has seen a cyclical climate crisis where a mix of floods and droughts has resulted in increasing calls for action from more affluent countries.

“In 2011, the last severe drought to affect this region killed hundreds of thousands, but since then and despite promises by the international community, little has changed,” GWP says.

“There is a need to narrow the investment gap among rich countries, advocacy among African countries, and civic groups. African countries are already providing more funding to their water sectors than donor countries,” Alex Simalabwi, Global Water Partnership’s Africa Coordinator, told IPS.

And the statistics are pretty grim: one in every three people across Africa face water scarcity daily, and nearly 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa struggle to find access to drinking water, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB).

As UN Water starkly put it, “on a global scale, half of the people who drink water from unsafe sources live in Africa.”

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that US$100 billion needs to be invested annually towards climate adaptation in Africa by 2050, but that figure is far from being reached.

In a February 2 media brief, UNICEF said in Ethiopia alone, 6.8 million people would need urgent by mid-March, while another 4.4 million face acute water shortages, citing three consecutive droughts.

“The impact of the drought is devastating,” said Gianfranco Rotigliano, UNICEF Ethiopia Representative, adding that this has led to “major displacement out of affected areas.”

Researchers say these displacements have led to conflicts among communities over water.

“The lack of clean water is further exacerbating the situation for children and women. If children are forced to drink contaminated water, it puts them at risk to various diseases, including diarrhoea which is a major cause of deaths among children under five,” Rotigliano said.

Experts say increased collective action by African countries is required if richer countries act with the urgency demanded by the continent’s climate crisis.

“Africa countries should organise themselves to speak in one voice as a block. For Eastern Africa, a good example is the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD) which has set up a common approach to addressing issues especially related to climate change,” said Levis Kavagi, the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Africa Regional Coordinator for Ecosystems and Biodiversity.

“Issues presented together as a group attract greater traction,” Kavagi told IPS by email.

Last year, research commissioned by the humanitarian agency CARE International exposed the broken promises of what it said was a “decade-old pledge” of climate financing for developing countries.

“Water is often seen from the end-user point of view and its challenges, but the issues related to where the water comes from are often not given the limelight,” Kavagi said.

Amid those concerns, lobbyists are pushing for more action.

“There is no framework to hold rich countries accountable,” Simalabwi told IPS.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in February 2020, “between now and 2050, Africa’s population is set to double. This alone brings with it great opportunities but also new realities. If we are not able to find ways to support these countries to grow sustainably, all of our work for decades in the UK and globally will be in vain.”

Other experts, however, note that the delays by rich countries to act, go deeper.

“Rich countries may be reluctant to recognise, in financial terms, that Africa is disproportionately affected by anthropogenic climate change, including through water-related impacts because they could expose themselves to liabilities for billions of dollars in loss and damage payments,” said Nathan Mason, a research associate at the UK’s Overseas Development Institute.

“International NGOs, research and advocacy groups, and enlightened donors need to listen carefully to African counterparts, support their efforts and put them in the driving seat of funded programmes,” Mason told IPS by email.

For now, researchers remain concerned that not just East Africa but countries across the continent facing hunger and drought will have to wait a little bit longer for largess from rich countries as the climate-induced humanitarian crisis continues unchecked.

 

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A household participating in BRAC’s Graduation approach in Rangpur, Bangladesh. Credit: BRAC (2021)

By Imran Matin and Stephanie Levy
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Feb 14 2022 (IPS)

With consistent, robust economic growth, countries across Asia have made monumental strides in eradicating extreme poverty over the past 30 years. In Bangladesh, for example, the population living in extreme poverty dropped from 43% in 1991 to 10.5% in 2019. Similarly in Cambodia, poverty incidence fell from 53% in 2004 to below 10% by 2016.

In these countries, economic growth has enabled governments to develop new social protection programs, expand existing ones, and make substantial investments in human capital, leading to a more equitable distribution of wealth and enabling inclusive economic growth.

However, extreme poverty persists, and progress on poverty eradication has been fragile. Many people remain highly vulnerable to income shocks and threats to their livelihood, facing the risk of falling back into poverty. Social protection systems might not efficiently address the needs of the people who are poorest because of policy designs that lead to insufficient provision of safety nets, or because they fail to identify or reach the populations they aim to serve.

New threats to livelihoods from climate change and global pandemics are adding to these policy challenges. Asian policymakers must actively address the need for effective social safety nets not only to protect their economically vulnerable populations, but also to safeguard their countries’ future economic prospects and growth.

To achieve durable gains in poverty eradication, policies need to be ambitious and creative, and efforts need to be sustained, supported by strong political will. Policymakers must adopt a long-term perspective to resilience building, and embed flexibility to respond to emergencies and new threats to livelihoods. And policies must be informed by empirical evidence on what works in the local context.

We need an in-depth understanding of what works for sustained eradication of extreme poverty in Asia, focusing on interventions that governments can implement at scale. We can gain useful insights on such interventions by bringing two streams of knowledge together: evidence from formal research and lessons from practical experiences. Social and economic inclusion interventions like BRAC’s Graduation approach, founded 20 years ago, have developed and evolved by bringing together both forms of knowledge on extreme poverty alleviation, reaching more than 2.1 million households in Bangladesh alone. This approach has combined findings from academic research with reasoned intuition and practice-based knowledge to evolve, adapt, and deliver sustained impact.

Adapted to the local context, Graduation is a multifaceted set of interventions designed to address the complex nature of extreme poverty. The approach generally includes meeting participants’ basic needs, providing training and assets for income generation, financial literacy training and savings support, and social empowerment through community engagement and life skills training—all facilitated through in-person coaching.

Since 2002, BRAC has expanded the Graduation approach globally to reach participants in 16 countries. Source: BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative

Over the past two decades, researchers have gained four key insights from this approach’s success, which policymakers can apply to strengthen efforts to alleviate extreme poverty:

First, some people in extreme poverty need a “big push” to break out of the poverty trap and stay out of this trap long after the program stops. Often, a combination of factors and constraints prevents people from escaping extreme poverty and durably improving their livelihood, a growing body of research suggests. A “big push”, or transfer of both assets and skills large enough for people to cross such thresholds, is needed to unlock the trap and stay out of poverty, finds a 2020 LSE-BIGD study. The Graduation approach provides such a push. And 93% of program participants in Bangladesh see a continued increase in income, savings, and consumption and an improvement in self-esteem five years after completing the program. A 10-year study of Bandhan’s Graduation program participants in West Bengal also found sustained improvements in consumption, food security, income, and health outcomes.

Asian countries seeking durable program impact on extreme poverty should integrate these findings into their social protection strategies, ensuring that asset transfers are large enough and complemented with enough additional training and services to break the poverty trap and enable people to stay out of it for the long term.

A participant in BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation program in Rangpur, Bangladesh. Credit: (BRAC 2021)

Second, “multifaceted” interventions like the Graduation approach can address the multidimensional nature of extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is not only characterized by a lack of income but also often associated with poor health, social isolation and exclusion, a lack of education and professional skills, and low subjective wellbeing. Using learnings from the Graduation approach, governments and their partners can simultaneously tackle these other dimensions of poverty and lead to behavioral changes such as improved health, sanitation, and nutritional habits. Doing so will generate synergy across different program components and amplify their impacts on livelihood.

While cash transfers can play a crucial role in meeting basic needs, as we have seen during COVID-19, evidence suggests that a more holistic approach—combining cash and other services, as the Graduation approach does—can also produce longer-lasting impacts on economic and social inclusion. A meta-analysis by CGAP and IPA, comparing 48 cash, livelihoods, and Graduation programs, found that programs that provided only cash or only livelihoods training combined with assets showed declining effects two years after the intervention. Meanwhile, Graduation interventions which combined coaching, financial and skills training, productive assets, and support for basic needs showed continued improvements in productivity and assets two years after completion.

Third, anti-poverty programs and policies need adaptive resilience-building components based on practical knowledge to prevent people from falling back into poverty. By incorporating a resilience component into programs aimed at reducing extreme poverty, Asian countries can prevent possible undoing of progress that can result from sudden economic, climate, or health shocks.

At the outbreak of the pandemic, BRAC rapidly adapted the Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) program, connecting program participants to emergency cash transfers, health information, and government services while adjusting to social distancing and health procedures, ultimately enabling 98% of them to avoid falling back into poverty. Insights from local staff on the livelihood, nutrition, and health challenges participants faced due to the pandemic enabled the program to respond appropriately to their constantly changing circumstances.

BRAC adapted the coaching component of its Graduation approach in response to COVID-19 to promote masking, social distancing, and other health procedures. Credit: (BRAC 2021)

The Graduation approach also builds resilience by enabling people to move away from casual labor to diversified sources of income, in many cases from self-employment or salaried work. As a result, even after 13 years, participants who escaped the poverty trap through Graduation had more productive jobs and were less likely to lose them during the pandemic, according to a 2021 study by BIGD and LSE.

Fourth, Graduation interventions have the potential to stimulate the participant’s local economy, and if, scaled up, result in wider economic growth impacts. In Cambodia, LSE and UNDP conducted two studies on the potential impacts of the Graduation approach when integrated into the National Social Protection Strategy. A general equilibrium approach was developed to identify and trace the direct and indirect impacts on the local economy, on non-participants, and on wider economic growth. The study indicates that, through their effects on productivity, markets, and trade, Graduation interventions can simultaneously stimulate supply and demand, creating local synergies and multiplier effects that foster inclusive growth processes.

At the same level of public spending, the LSE-UNDP studies identify multiple benefits of Graduation packages relative to conventional safety net programs. Through human and physical capital accumulation, they allow participants to cover their basic needs and simultaneously engage in productive activities, generate income from self-employment, and participate in their local economy. Findings also show that both poverty and economic growth impacts are likely to last beyond the program implementation period, as the catalytic effects of productive assets and professional skills persist after programs have ended; these effects are over and above the impact of a cash-only transfer.

When developing poverty eradication interventions, governments in Asia can achieve greater long-term program impacts if they build on lessons learned from intensive practice and rigorous research. As Asian countries seek to recover from COVID-19 and build long-term resilience to future shocks, they should consider holistic interventions like the Graduation approach as investments with significant and durable returns for people who are economically vulnerable, enabling them to engage in productive activities.

Conventional safety nets will be always necessary. But, simultaneously, approaches like Graduation should be considered valuable tools to complement them and deliver sustainable impact at scale for people in extreme poverty.

Dr. Imran Matin is the Executive Director of BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), a research and post graduate education institute at BRAC University focusing on generating high quality evidence and insights based on field research on governance and development challenges and interventions.

Stephanie Levy is a Guest Lecturer at the London School of Economics with over 15 years of experience in development and poverty reduction policies in Africa and South-East Asia and a specific focus on the local economic impact of social protection, including cash transfers and graduation packages.

 

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Women ragpickers in Delhi scavenging through a pile of refuse for recyclable material. Credit: Dharmendra Yadav/IPS

By Baher Kamal
Feb 14 2022 (IPS)

Inequality is deadly… It contributes to the deaths of at least 21,300 people each day—or one person every four seconds. This is a “highly conservative estimate” for deaths resulting from hunger, lack of access to healthcare and climate breakdown in poor countries…

This is what a confederation of 21 member organisations and affiliates, representing a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice has reported.

This confederation, Oxfam International, also cites inequality resulting from gender-based violence faced by women and rooted in “patriarchy and sexist economic systems.”

 

Climate crisis fuels inequality

“The climate crisis affects us all, but it doesn’t affect us equally. The richest 1% of people in the world, about 63 million people, are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity”

In its report, Oxfam International outlines the fact that the climate crisis is one of the most harmful drivers of inequality.

“The climate crisis affects us all, but it doesn’t affect us equally. The richest 1% of people in the world, about 63 million people, are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.”

Yet, the impact of droughts, floods, wildfires and storms hits poor and marginalised communities first and worst, causing unpredictable growing seasons, crop failures, and sharp increases in food prices.

“People in low-and lower-middle-income countries are around five times more likely than people in high-income countries to be displaced by sudden extreme weather disasters.”

Destructive weather, rising seas, unprecedented fires and historic famines. “Climate change is happening now. It is one of the most harmful drivers of worsening hunger, migration, poverty and inequality all over the world.”

“In recent years, already with 1°C of global heating, there have been deadly cyclones in Asia and Central America, huge locust swarms across Africa.”

Also here, it adds that across societies, the impacts of climate change affect women and men differently. Women and girls must walk further to collect water and fuel and are often the last to eat. During and after extreme weather events, they are at increased risk of violence and exploitation.

 

Millions fleeing

Over the past 10 years, more people around the world have been forced from their homes by extreme weather-related disasters than for any other single reason.

The number of climate-related disasters has tripled in 30 years, with currently one extreme weather event recorded per week.

Since 2000, the UN estimates that 1.23 million people have died and 4.2 billion have been affected by droughts, floods and wildfires, the report reminds.

Last year, Oxfam reports, the world saw a record 50 billion US dollars worth of damages from extreme weather disasters exacerbated by climate change, pushing nearly 16 million people in 15 countries to crisis levels of hunger.

“Despite this, governments have delayed action to tackle the climate crisis to focus, instead, on the Covid-19 pandemic.”

 

Inequality is devastating

Inequality is not an abstract issue, affirms Oxfam International. “It has devastating, real-world consequences. It has made the Covid-19 pandemic deadlier, more prolonged and more damaging. It is rigged into our economic systems and is tearing our societies apart.”

 

The biggest surge in billionaire wealth ever

The world’s small elite of 2,755 billionaires has seen its fortunes grow more during Covid-19 than they have in the whole of the last fourteen years combined, says Oxfam in its report about inequality.

“This is the biggest annual increase since records began. It is taking place on every continent.”

It is enabled by skyrocketing stock market prices, a boom in unregulated entities, a surge in monopoly power and privatisation, alongside the erosion of individual corporate tax rates and workers’ rights and wages.

“Since the pandemic began, a new billionaire has been created every 26 hours.”

 

Then COVID

Here’s a hard truth that the Covid-19 pandemic brought home to us, the international confederation goes on.

“Over the past two years, people have died when they contracted an infectious disease because they did not get vaccines in time. They have died of other illnesses because they could not afford private care. They have died of hunger because they could not afford to buy food…”

… “And while they died, the richest people in the world got richer than ever and some of the largest companies made unprecedented profits.”

“Inequality disproportionately affects the vast majority of people living in poverty, women and girls, and racialized and marginalised groups. It is now prolonging the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has led to a sharp increase in poverty around the world.”

 

Vaccine apartheid

According to the report, more than 80% of the vaccines have gone to G20 countries, while less than 1% have reached low-income countries.

This ”vaccine apartheid” is taking lives, and it is supercharging inequalities worldwide. In some countries, the poorest people are nearly four times more likely to die from Covid-19 than the richest, according to the report.

 

Direct harm to all

“Inequality is deadly for the future of our world. The extreme concentration of money, power, and influence of a few at the very top has pernicious effects on the rest of us. We all suffer from a heating planet when rich countries fail to address the effects of their responsibility for an estimated 92% of all excess historic emissions.”

“We all lose out when the world’s wealthiest 1% use double the carbon emissions of the bottom 50%, or when a few powerful corporations are able to monopolise production over life-saving vaccines and treatments in a global pandemic.”

 

80% of the poorest, in rural areas

According to a World Bank’s report, four out of five people below the international poverty line still live in rural areas, and half of the poor are children. Women also represent a majority of the poor in most regions and among some age groups.

Of the global poor aged 15 and older, about 70% have no schooling or only some basic education.

And more than 40% of the global poor live in economies affected by conflict and violence, and, in some economies, most of the poor are concentrated in specific subnational areas. About 132 million of the global poor live in areas with high flood risk.

Moreover, says the World Bank, many of the poor face exposure to multiple risks. In a number of countries, a large share of the poor live in areas that are affected by conflict and that face high exposure to floods.

Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, it adds, many of the new poor are likely to live in congested urban settings and to work in the sectors most affected by lockdowns and mobility restrictions; many are engaged in informal services and not reached by existing social safety nets.

Conflict, climate change, and COVID-19 are having a clear impact on the global poor, in many cases having joint incidence upon those living in poverty, the World Bank’s report concludes.

 

A health worker administers a COVID-19 vaccine to a woman, in Malawi. The COVID-19 vaccination rate in Africa needs to increase six-fold for the continent to meet the 70 per cent target set for the middle of this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on 3 February 2022. Credit: UNICEF/Thoko Chikondi

By Gordon Brown
LONDON, Feb 14 2022 (IPS)

I am not sure the world will ever forgive us for worsening vaccine inequality and treatment of Africa as bad as under colonial rule.

People have become complacent about COVID-19. Our global (health) funds are fast running out of money. Vaccine inequity is getting worse.

We must alert the conscience of the world to act given the high possibility of more lethal variants coming back to haunt even those who are fully vaccinated. We may feel safe, but we are not safe, as long as the disease can spread and mutate.

The Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) ―the WHO’s initiative to coordinate the fastest health response out of the crisis― currently has a $16 billion funding hole, with only “weeks” left to resolve this.

Unless the money comes in urgently, we will not be able to fund the next stages of vaccines, treatments, testing, and even the medical oxygen and PPE needed by nurses and doctors (around the world).

Governments should take extraordinary measures, as it did for the 2008 global financial crash, and share the burden of funding according to their ability to pay, as they do now in funding UN peacekeeping or the World Bank or the IMF, rather than “unfair” and failing voluntary contributions. How the world had eradicated smallpox was a successful example.

It was short-sighted to take such a narrow view of national self-interest for rich countries to vaccinate only their own citizens in prolonging a mutating crisis that could cost them $5 trillion in loss of trade, economic activities, companies going bust, and jobs lost.

This will bite back even those countries that have a big vaccination program. Vaccination rates in rich countries currently stand at 75 percent against 11 percent across Africa.

We need a vaccine patent waiver and technology transfer. What’s happened in Africa is as bad as what happened under colonial rule. Africa has been deprived of vaccines but also of the ability to manufacture its own vaccines because it does not have the patents to do so.

The EU is unconscionable for taking vaccines made in South Africa late last year, at a time that Europe was 60 percent vaccinated while Africa stood at less than 3 percent. The World Trade Organization should have agreed a long time ago for the patent waiver.

The most urgent and immediate priority in tackling COVID-19 and getting more vaccines to people, especially in developing countries, was money. People are dying now ―right now― because we can’t get enough vaccines and equipment and therapeutics to them quickly enough. We have to solve the problem now, and that requires proper funding now.

Even now more than 70 percent of vaccines are still coming to the G20 countries which means that the other 175 countries are simply losing out. We’re in this terrible position where 60 million vaccines have already had to be destroyed in the US, Canada, the UK and the European Union. And 250 million more may have to be destroyed by Easter as being past their used-by date.

The COVID-19 response was lacking funding, coordination and leadership. An enlightened view of self-interest would tell rich country leaders that all people must have the chance to be vaccinated to eradicate a disease that is likely to mutate and come back to hit you, he said.

Social grassroots movements should come together around this big picture of saving lives. We have to expose the anti-vaxx lies. We have to realize that social media matters. Most of all we have to give people a bridgehead of hope and a sense of that we can change things.

If you can work for change and hope that the world can be a better place, you can persuade people to join you. I would stress organization and education and agitation, but I would stress the importance of persuading people that the world can be a better place through engendering hope in a better future.

Gordon Brown, a former Prime Minister of UK, was appointed in 2021 as World Health Organization (WHO) Ambassador for Global Health Financing and is a member of the Club de Madrid forum of democratic former Presidents and Prime Ministers. Last week he was guesting on Oxfam’s EQUALS podcast.

 

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It makes good economic sense for countries to invest in and fully utilise their total populations. Credit: Bigstock

By External Source
Feb 11 2022 (IPS)

Women remain under-represented in science careers and research all over the world. There are several reasons for this, including stereotypes about what kind of work women “can” or “should” do; patriarchal attitudes; and a lack of support for women pursuing science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) careers.

This isn’t just an abstract concern. Gender equality matters for many sound reasons. For one, it’s enshrined in international human rights law and it is one of the Sustainable Development Goals.

It also makes good economic sense for countries to invest in and fully utilise their total populations. Inclusive scientific leadership in which women are equally represented is best suited to the needs of modern society. Plus, valuing diversity and multiple perspectives sparks creativity and innovation. Both are important hallmarks of scientific endeavour.

We found a big divide between actions and words. For instance, 68% of international disciplinary organisations said they were committed to diversity and inclusivity. But only 32% said they were taking action by, for instance, developing policies that would drive diversity and inclusion. Only 16% of these organisations reported that they had a budget for activities related to gender equality

So, how are the world’s science academies and international disciplinary associations doing when it comes to getting – and keeping – women on board as members and leaders. That’s what we set out to examine in our new study. We focused on science academies and disciplinary unions because together, these organisations represent a large proportion of global scientific endeavour. They have the potential to be powerful change-makers and leaders.

The study followed a 2015 survey on gender inclusion in academies. This allowed us to pinpoint whether and how academies had made any progress in certain areas. There were some encouraging findings: for example, women’s membership of academies increased from 13% to 17% and women’s leadership on governing bodies from 21% to 29%. Young academies, which generally represent early career scientists, fared far better than their senior counterparts, which is a promising sign for the future.

But there’s still plenty for young academies to do. Most still have less than a quarter women’s representation, though there was one bright spot: South Africa’s Young Academy of Science is ranked highest in the world when it comes to female membership; 57% of its members are women.

The report sets out several recommendations for furthering gender representation and equality globally. These include developing and maintaining a central repository of gender-related policies and actions as well as working intensively with disciplinary associations where improvement is needed in women’s representation.

 

Key findings

The study was coordinated by GenderInSITE (Gender in Science, Innovation, Technology and Engineering), an initiative aimed at promoting the role of women in these disciplines and demonstrating how the application of a “gender lens” leads to more effective, equitable and sustainable development. It was a collaboration with the InterAcademy Partnership and the International Science Council.

The academies and disciplinary organisations surveyed are all members of the InterAcademy Partnership or the International Science Council. In total, they represent more than 250 unique organisations. That means the results we collected provide important baseline information for taking transformative action at a global level.

Here are some of the key findings:

• Young academies are setting the pace when it comes to gender equality. On average, women’s share of their membership is 42%; ten young academies are ranked ahead of the highest ranked senior academy in terms of percentage of women members.
• The highest ranked senior academy is the Academy of Sciences of Cuba. It increased its share from 27% in 2015 to 33% in 2020.
• There are big disciplinary differences in women’s representation. This perpetuates familiar patterns evident also in women’s representation in research fields. For instance, representation was relatively higher in biological sciences (28%) and social sciences, humanities and arts (27%). It was lowest in the mathematical sciences (8%).
• The Tanzania Academy of Sciences was among those academies that grew their representation of female scientists the most, increasing from 4% in 2015 to 12% in 2020. The Ethiopian Academy of Sciences now has the lowest representation of women members on the continent, at 9%.

We also found a big divide between actions and words. For instance, 68% of international disciplinary organisations said they were committed to diversity and inclusivity. But only 32% said they were taking action by, for instance, developing policies that would drive diversity and inclusion. Only 16% of these organisations reported that they had a budget for activities related to gender equality.

One of our most disappointing findings was that only six science academies of the 72 that participated last time discussed the 2015 survey report and its recommendations at a strategic planning session. This has prompted us to recommend that the IAP and ISC establish centralised monitoring and evaluation frameworks that require regular reporting of gender statistics by their member organisations.

 

Recommendations

The new survey contains a number of recommendations, which GenderInSITE, the InterAcademy Partnership and the International Science Council are committed to taking forward.

One of our next steps is to extend the survey to other global science organisations. This will contribute to a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of gender equality in global science. The report also recommends developing and maintaining a central repository of gender-related policies and actions as a way of encouraging those organisations committed to gender transformation to learn from best practice examples.

GenderInSITE, the InterAcademy Partnership and the International Science Council have all committed to using their regional presences to gain insights and advance the gender equality agenda. This is especially so in countries or regions that are lagging. The same sort of work will be undertaken in disciplines that have been found wanting in terms of women’s representation.

Our three organisations will also establish centralised monitoring and evaluation frameworks that require regular reporting of relevant gender statistics by our member organisations. This reporting will happen at a high strategic level. In this way, we hope that gender transformation is prioritised.

It’s also important to note that we’re not merely focusing on numbers, since these are only part of the picture. Science academies and disciplinary organisations are also being encouraged to focus on making diversity and inclusion central to their institutional cultures.

Roseanne Denise Diab, Director: GenderInSITE, Unesco and Peter McGrath, Researcher, Biosciences, The InterAcademy Partnership

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

A woman is vaccinated against COVID-19 in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. February 2022. Credit: UNICEF/Jospin Benekire

By Svenja Blanke, Felix Kolbitz and Oliver Dickson
BUENOS AIRES/ DHAKA/JOHANNESBURG, Feb 11 2022 (IPS)

In 2021, Global South countries came out on the short end of vaccine supply deals. In 2022, they are building capacity to produce vaccines themselves.

Latin America’s vaccination rate is among the highest in the world. Chile leads the way with 86 per cent of the population completely vaccinated, followed by Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador. Some countries even achieve rates of over 90 per cent for those having received the first jab.

The region, which had been struggling with very high infection and death rates, put on a remarkable vaccination marathon in 2021. All existing vaccines from the West, China, and Russia were being used to meet the huge demand.

Since the turn of the year, however, Omicron has caused incidences to spike again – in Argentina alone from a 7-day incidence of 57 in mid-December to an incidence of 1720 exactly one month later. Luckily, the relatively high vaccination rates can prevent the worst.

The geopolitically most relevant issue in this third pandemic year, however, is vaccine production in countries of the Global South itself. Some countries are setting out to produce their own vaccines. The Caribbean island nation of Cuba – as has often been the case – is taking a special path. It has already developed various vaccines, rolled them out, and – with over 90 per cent – now has the highest vaccination rate in all of Latin America. But what is happening in the region beyond Cuba’s special path?

In 2021, the three largest countries in Latin America – Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina – started to produce components of the production process of existing vaccines. Argentina launched its vaccination campaign on 29 December 2020 with Sputnik, making it the first Latin American country to approve the Russian vaccine.

Meanwhile, 20 million doses have been used in the country. And parts of the European or Russian vaccine production have been relocated to Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil – or rather, it was the countries’ proactive approach which brought production to the region through agreements with the market-leading laboratories.

For example, the Richmond laboratory near Buenos Aires – a traditional Argentine pharmaceutical laboratory and company – handles the filtration of the active ingredient from Russia and subsequently the filling, finishing, and packaging of the Sputnik vaccines through a transfer technology agreement with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).

By January 2022, 6.5 million doses had already been produced. This strategy made it possible to cover local demand more quickly.

At the same time, a new production plant of the company is being built in Greater Buenos Aires, with the aim of covering the whole manufacturing process from active ingredient to packaging, with up to 400 million vaccine doses per year – also for export.

AstraZeneca’s production by the mAbxience laboratories from Argentina and Liomont from Mexico was only able to start with a delay in 2021, as US national security interests had initially prevented the export of the raw active ingredient from the US. In the meantime, 70 million doses have been jointly produced and distributed in the region. Many more are to follow. But this is only part of Argentina’s global health strategy.

Argentine laboratories and academic research institutes, supported by the state, are already developing their own Covid-19 vaccines. The four most promising projects are called ARGENVAC, ARVAC, COROVAXG.3 and ‘Spinetta’. They come from different Argentinean public-private partnerships and are either in the preclinical or clinical phase with the aim of bringing these vaccines to market in 2023.

The Argentine government under President Alberto Fernández emphasizes the importance of ‘sovereignty’ and independence from existing market leaders. And of course, local production and regional distribution is necessary to reduce global inequality in distribution and access.

Moreover, Argentina has so far donated 1.7 million vaccines within the region. While a patent waiver or the lacklustre COVAX initiative are being debated, local vaccine development in the countries of the Global South, which have or are building a corresponding infrastructure, provides for a much more promising geopolitics of health.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s vaccination campaign has been marked by ups and downs. Following an agreement with India and the Serum Institute, the vaccination campaign began as early as the end of January 2021, with mass vaccinations nationwide starting in February. A digital registration system that worked well from the beginning contributed significantly to the success, but made it difficult to register for those without an internet connection.

With India’s export ban in April 2021, the vaccination campaign in Bangladesh had suddenly collapsed. With emergency approvals in the same month, vaccination only resumed with Sputnik V from Russia and Sinopharm from China.

After the approval, the possibility of producing both vaccines under licence in Bangladesh was also discussed for the first time. Sinopharm then signed an agreement with the Bangladeshi company Incepta in August 2021 to fill and distribute 5 million doses per month in Bangladesh.

However, the vaccine will not be produced in Bangladesh itself. According to its own estimations, Incepta could fill up to 800 million doses per year.

In parallel, Bangladesh is currently developing its own vaccine: Bangavax. The Bangladesh Medical Research Council (BMRC) approved Globe Biotech Limited’s Covid-19 single vaccine Bangavax for human trials in November 2021.

These human trials are currently underway and are expected to continue for at least six months.

However, because of bureaucracy and scientific complications, the approval process has been delayed for several months. As these procedures are too lengthy, further mutations in the virus could mean that Bangavax is already obsolete by the time approval is granted.

A successful result, however, could help reduce vaccine shortages in Bangladesh and the Global South. The Bangladeshi vaccination campaign, which has so far been quite successful but dependent on vaccine supplies, would then run more smoothly.

So far, vaccination scepticism has only been observed towards Chinese vaccines, as they have the reputation of being less effective or losing their effectiveness more quickly. Overall, the willingness to get vaccinated is very high. The government has set ambitious targets and plans to have the majority of the population vaccinated by March.

Since the end of January 2022, the number of infections has been rising rapidly because of the Omicron variant, hitting a country where, according to the World Health Organisation, only about 35 per cent of the nearly 170 million inhabitants are vaccinated. At the same time, the will to wear masks, keep distance, and reduce contacts has decreased considerably.

Reports from Europe that Omicron only leads to mild symptoms mean that a not insignificant part of the population no longer takes the danger seriously. In response, the government has started a booster campaign. By the end of January 2022, just under one million people had been boosted.

Bangladesh has a large generic pharmaceutical industry and the technical know-how to produce vaccines on its own, including mRNA vaccines, through Beximco Pharma. So far, however, the government has had to rely on agreements with the pharmaceutical giants of the Global North to enter into patent-legal production. But even if the patents are waived, Bangladesh would have to streamline and speed up its own bureaucratic approval systems to enable timely production.

South Africa

South Africa, much like most of the developing world, realised very early on that it lacks critical infrastructure for Covid-19 vaccine production, storage, and transportation. This put the country at an early disadvantage during global vaccine production and supply negotiations through various international fora and direct bilateral engagements between the South African government and global manufacturers.

When the vaccine rollout finally began, the Cyril Ramaphosa administration was heavily criticised early on for being slow off the mark. While many African countries had already started vaccination programmes, the South African government reported being stuck in complicated negotiations with manufacturers Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.

One of those negotiations paid off really well as the government was able to announce the local manufacturing and packaging of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine in South Africa through the local privately owned pharmaceutical company, Aspen Pharmaceutical.

The announcement of local production stirred hope in the country and across the continent that Africa will finally get the equitable and timely supply of the Covid-19 vaccine. But that hope was quickly dampened when it was discovered that the Aspen-produced vaccines were exported to Europe first, while African states had to wait.

While Aspen Pharmaceutical is a manufacturing partner to Johnson & Johnson, the company still ultimately decides and instructs where those shots end up.

On the bright side, the partially state-owned vaccine developer and manufacturer, BioVac, having been a long-standing local manufacturing partner to Pfizer will finally be able to manufacture the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in 2022. This is a result of ongoing negotiations between South Africa and Pfizer.

While this is a major win for the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), as BioVac is a key vaccine supplier in the bloc, it still does not settle concerns about exclusionary patent protections.

While the Ramaphosa administration faced criticism at first for securing vaccine supply too slowly, its redemption came when the government of South Africa along with the government of India lobbied for developing nations to be granted TRIPS waivers and was able to win over the White House after President Biden announced that the US government that they support the waiving of Covid-19 vaccine patents. This proposal, however, was strongly opposed by the United Kingdom, Germany, and several other EU member states.

While securing reliable vaccine supply through local manufacturing, the South African government is now concerned by the impact of vaccine scepticism and hesitancy, a problem that plagues the continent at large. With only about half of the adult population in South Africa having received at least one jab of a vaccine and uptake continuously slowing down, the African vaccination crisis still looms large.

Dr Svenja Blanke is the editor of the social science journal Nueva Sociedad based in Buenos Aires; Felix Kolbitz heads the office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Bangladesh; Oliver Dickson is a broadcaster, political analyst, and former Director in the Ministry of Home Affairs in South Africa.

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

 

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Feb 11 2022 (IPS)

While living and working in Paris I joined the Cercle Suédois, a social club founded in 1891, at a time when Sweden and Norway were unified in one kingdom. By that time, Alfred Nobel was a frequent guest and in one corner I sometimes ended up standing in front of the writing desk where he in November 1895 had written his famous testament, stipulating that 94 percent of his total assets (equivalent to 120 million USD in today’s money value) was to be allocated to the establishment of five prizes. These prizes would every year be awarded to deserving individuals, who ”irrespective of their nationality” had contributed to ”the progress of humanity and preservation of peace in the world.”

Nobel desk

Placed on the desk is a facsimile of the will that actually is quite difficult to understand. Alfred Nobel had spent most of his time outside of Sweden and even if he was a polyglot, with proficiency in French, Russian, English, German, and Italian, his Swedish had after many years abroad become somewhat rusty and the formulations he used in his will are occasionally slightly peculiar.

The first three prizes would be awarded for ”eminence” in physical -, medical – and chemical sciences, while a fourth prize would be bestowed upon authors of ”literary work in an ideal direction.” During the entire century which followed upon the establishment of the literary prize, the meaning of the word ”ideal” has been disputed. Could it mean that the “literary work” had to be ”idealistic” in the sense of promoting peace and general well-being? Or did Alfred Nobel by ”ideal” mean ”excellent”? The members of the Swedish Royal Academy, who were given the task of awarding the prize, have mainly leaned towards the latter meaning.

The fifth prize stipulated by Nobel’s testament has been considered as even more controversial and has over the years been agitatedly debated. Alfred Nobel stipulated that it was to be awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, constituted by five members appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, and bestowed upon persons or institutions that have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Criticism of Alfred Nobel has focused on his leading role in the global sale and manufacture of weapons. Accordingly, it has been suggested that his main motive for creating the Nobel Prizes was to improve a tarnished reputation. In 1888, had the death of his older millionaire brother, Ludvig, caused several French newspapers to publish lengthy obituaries of Alfred Nobel. One newspaper wrote: “The merchant of death is dead, Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” Alfred became upset by this confusion with his brother and he was in particular disturbed by the accusations that he had benefited from and become wealthy due to misery inflicted on others.

Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) was born in Sweden, but after several business failures his father had moved to Saint Petersburg, where he became wealthy as manufacturer of machine tools, explosives and sophisticated weaponry. In 1842, the family joined him in the Russian city. Since his factory produced armaments for the Crimean War (1853–1856) Immanuel Nobel’s wealth increased even more, but when the fighting ended his firm had difficulties in switching back to regular production and after some years he was forced to file for bankruptcy, leaving his Russian factory in the care of his eldest son, Ludvig. Immanuel Nobel moved back to Sweden with his wife and other children. By investing in innovative and highly effective arms manufacture and the developing oil extraction around Baku, Ludvig recuperated the finances and assured a rapidly increasing wealth for the entire family. His very gifted, younger brother Alfred could thus dedicate himself to science and profitable innovations. He invented dynamite, a safer and easier means of harnessing the explosive power of nitroglycerin and it was soon used all over the world for mining and infrastructure development.

During his life, Nobel issued 355 international patents, among them ballistite, precursor of several modern smokeless powder explosives, which among other uses currently are employed as rocket propellants. Besides his activities as researcher and innovator, Nobel wrote poems and tragedies in English and French and like his older brothers he was a skilled businessman, establishing more than 90 armaments factories around the world – most notably the still existing Swedish firm Bofors, which he developed from being an iron and steel producer into a major manufacturer of cannons and other armaments.

Alfred Nobel traveled around the world, maintained sumptuous houses in France, Germany, Italy and Sweden. He enjoyed opera and theatre, had several love affairs and became friendly with literary giants like Victor Hugo. However, he remained a solitary character, given to bouts of depression, did not marry and had no children.

In 1876, Alfred Nobel put an advertisement in a Viennese newspaper, probably because he assumed Germans in general were diligent and well educated, though he considered that German-speaking Austrians were more agreeable than German nationals: “Request: Wealthy, well-educated elderly gentleman, living in Paris, seeks contact with a language-proficient lady of mature age for employment as a secretary-head of household.” The young Austro-Bohemian Countess Bertha Kinsky responded to the ad and was eventually hired as Alfred Nobel’s secretary. She soon left his employment to marry a previous lover, Baron Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner, though this did not hinder Bertha from maintaining an intensive correspondence with her former employer.

Bertha von Suttner had become a fervent pacifist after experiencing the French aggressive thirst for revenge after a devastating loss to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. As part of her efforts to spread her message of peace and fraternity Bertha von Suttner wrote the novel Die Waffen Nieder – translated into English as “Lay Down Your Arms!: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling”. It became a bestseller and was promptly translated into several other languages. Bertha von Suttner lectured around Europe, appealing to younger audiences and supporting efforts to educate them about the horrific costs of war. It has been argued that Bertha von Suttner aroused a sense of shame and guilt in Alfred Nobel, particularly through her insistence that “great accumulations of property should go back to the community and common purposes and support a renewed enrichment of the world.”

While I watched Nobel’s writing desk at Cercle Suédois, remembering that he at the insistence of Bertha von Suttner had bequeathed 94 percent of his assets for what he believed to be for ”the progress of humanity and preservation of peace in the world”, I could not avoid thinking about a statement Bill Gates and Warren Buffett made in 2010, asking for “a commitment by the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to giving back.” The Giving Pledge website states that up until now, 210 mega-millionaires have agreed to accept Gates’ and Buffett’s appeals.

I doubt if this is really happening, assuming that many billionaires are giving to fake, or rather ineffective, charities while continuing to accumulate wealth faster than they can possible give it away. This does not mean that I doubt that Bill and Melinda Gates are doing a lot of good, though in 2010 Bill Gates net worth was 53 billion USD and it has now become more than 134 billion, while Warren Buffett’s net worth increased by 43 billion USD. I cannot help wondering what half of these enormous fortunes would have accomplished if dedicated to improving the well-being of the world’s population. Of course, some of Gates’ and Buffett’s humongous wealth must have been dedicated to their much advertised ”pledge”, but what about the other ”mega-millionaires”? I wonder – in particular while considering Trump’s fake charities and blatant tax-dodging and the offshore accounts that billionaires are opening in their efforts to pay next to nothing in taxes.

It is far from any negligible sum. The World’s Billionaires is an annual ranking by documented net worth of the wealthiest billionaires and is in March every year compiled by the US business magazine Forbes. In 2021, the list included 2,755 billionaires with a total net wealth of 13.1 trillion USD, 86 percent of these billionaires had more wealth than they possessed the year before. To me these figures are as incomprehensible as the vastness of the Universe.

Topping Forbes’ preliminary list in 2022 is Elon Musk with 256.1 billion USD, followed by Bernard Anault (with family) with 195 billion, Jeff Bezos with 187.1 billion, Bill Gates with 134 billion, Larry Page with 119.7 billion, and Warren Buffett with 116.5 billion USD.

Currently, individuals with a fortune of more than 1 million USD constitute approximately one percent of the world’s population, while they control 46 percent of the global wealth. This is quite incomprehensible and considering the minuscule impact of these billionaires’ philanthropy, I cannot avoid thinking there must be some truth to the French anarchist Pierre Joseph Prudhon’s famous dictum that La propriété, c’est le vol! Property is robbery! The good intentions of a guilt-ridden Alfred Nobel and the emerging benefits from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation might contribute to ”the progress of humanity and preservation of peace in the world.” Nevertheless, it must be something fundamentally wrong with a world order enabling such a staggering accumulation of private wealth. Hopefully, some of these fabulously rich people might like Alfred Nobel one day realise that their fortunes originate from the labour of others and donate their wealth for the benefit of community.

 

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Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 2022 (IPS)

The Joint Inspection Unit (JIU)– the UN’s only independent external oversight body mandated to conduct evaluations, inspections and investigations– is conducting a survey probing the widespread racism and discrimination in the world body.

In a circular to staffers worldwide, the JIU says it is conducting “a system-wide review of measures and mechanisms for preventing and addressing racism and racial discrimination (RRD) in the institutions of the United Nations system.”

The survey will examine the various forms of RRD at the individual, institutional, and structural levels and the measures and mechanisms in place, including cultural and contextual factors that facilitate or constrain efforts by organizations.

According to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ latest annual report submitted to the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee last month, the United Nations currently has more than 36,000 staffers in 463 duty stations world-wide and spread across 56 UN agencies and entities.

The survey is expected to gather both staff and non-staff perceptions of the entire UN system, in the context of an ongoing JIU review on measures and mechanisms for preventing and addressing RRD in the institutions of the United Nations system.

The survey is web-based and can be accessed through this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JIU_CSWS_RRD.

As widespread discrimination – based either on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or nationality—continues throughout the UN system, there are several interest groups who have bonded together to fight for their legitimate rights.

These groups include the United Nations People of African Descent (UNPAD), UN Globe for LGBTQ community, the UN Feminist Network, and most recently, the Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI).

Shihana Mohamed, a founding member, and one of the coordinators of UN-ANDI, told IPS: “We, welcome the proposed reforms initiated by the Secretary-General and by other UN bodies, including the on-going JIU review, towards addressing racism and racial discrimination in UN system.

She pointed out that the issue of racism in the UN system is deep-rooted with many forms and dimensions.

“While addressing and preventing racism in the UN system will not be an easy task, I believe that these initiatives will assist us in identifying the root causes and other associated factors’” said Mohamed, a Sri Lankan national.

“I strongly encourage the UN-ANDI members to participate in the current JIU survey and provide the pertinent information to identify forms, patterns and root causes of racism in the organizations of the UN system,” she declared.

Credit: Joint Inspection Unit, United Nations

In its circular, the JIU says anonymity and confidentiality are assured in all phases. All analyses will be treated with strict confidentiality. There will be no direct attribution to the original source of the data collected.

“In developing the survey, we have analyzed the similarities and differences of 7 separate UN system organization survey instruments on racism, racial discrimination and staff engagement”.

“For a system-wide review, they provide potentially useful questions, many of which we have used in this survey based on their overlap with the criteria of interest and alignment with established items that are commonly employed in empirical research and that have proven to have strong psychometric properties, and also based on value from a system-wide perspective.”

The development of the survey, JIU points out, was guided by an expert on diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) and on racism and racial discrimination. It was supported by an ad hoc advisory group of experts on racism and racial discrimination from the private and public sectors, and from within the UN system. It also benefitted from several United Nations personnel, including senior staff.

Last year, the UN Secretariat in New York, faltered ingloriously, as it abruptly withdrew its own online survey on racism, in which it asked staffers to identify themselves either as “black, brown, white., mixed/multi-racial, and any other”.

But the most offensive of the categories listed in the UN survey was “yellow” – a widely condemned Western racist description of some Asians, including Japanese, Chinese and Koreans.

The online survey came to an inglorious end— even before it began—without an apology towards those who were offended.

According to the 2021 annual report of the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC A/76/30), the largest number of unrepresented (17) and underrepresented (8) countries in the UN system were in the Asia and the Pacific region (para. 148)—perhaps victims of discrimination.

In 10 or more organizations with no formal guidelines for geographical distribution, staff were not represented from 64 countries and among them, 25 countries were from the Asia. Twelve countries did not have staff in 15 of the organizations, with seven of these countries from Asia and the Pacific (para. 155).

In an interview back in 2020, and citing his personal experiences in overseas peacekeeping operations, Roderic Grigson, a former Peace Keeping Officer and a twelve-year veteran of the UN, told IPS: “When I arrived in Ismailia, which was where the UN Emergency Force (UNEF II HQ) was located, the UN compound was a mixture of both civilian and military staff. The international civilians, like me who came from overseas, were treated very differently to the local Egyptian staff in many ways”.

For example, he said, the locals who were disparagingly called ‘gyppos’ were not allowed into the international mess (club) in the compound unless they were cooks, waiters or barmen.

“If I wanted to bring a local into the bar for a meal– even if it was someone who worked right next to me during the day– I would be refused entry”, said Grigson, author of the ‘Sacred Tears’ trilogy: a historical fiction set during the civil war in Sri Lanka.

This attitude towards the locals, he noted, “extended across all the UN peacekeeping operations I visited during my time in the Middle East– whether in Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, or Cyprus, it did not matter.”

“The International UN staff in all the UN missions treated the locals like lackeys. And they hated us for it. And I felt very uncomfortable working in this environment,” he said.

“Even though I was considered an ‘international’ having been recruited in New York, I was from Sri Lanka and felt I was a ‘second class’ international given the European clique that was predominant at the time”.

Having grown up in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), which was once a British colony, “I had experienced first-hand what it felt like to be treated as one of the colonial masters on the island”.

“My grandfather who was Scottish, lived with us. He worked in a senior management position in the British colonial administration of the island. He had a position of privilege given his race and colour which extended down to his family. Working for the UN felt exactly like that,” Grigson declared.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last month announced plans to appoint a Special Adviser to investigate the growing discrimination based on racial, national or ethnic origins in the world body.

“Racism and discrimination have no place in our world — least of all at the United Nations”, he warned, pointing out that the “diversity of our personnel is a source of profound richness. Yet I am fully aware and deeply concerned that colleagues have experienced the indignity, pain and consequences of workplace racism and racial discrimination.”

“This is unacceptable”, said Guterres in a message to UN staffers January 25.

He has also pledged to establish a Steering Group to oversee implementation of the Strategic Action Plan on racial discrimination —and report progress to the Executive and Management Committees.

 

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By External Source
Feb 10 2022 (IPS-Partners)

Speed dating is about having a short time to communicate things that could change your life. That’s exactly what we’re doing on this podcast, by introducing you to people with unique insight into our relationship with nature.


 

I know the work we do isn’t easy but I truly believe that if I can help get voices out, I want to continue doing what I do. | Picture courtesy: Bisma Bhat

By Bisma Bhat
Feb 10 2022 (IPS)

My name is Bisma Bhat and I am a journalist in Srinagar, Kashmir. I currently work as a features writer at Free Press Kashmir, a weekly magazine.

I have lived in Srinagar all my life. My father passed away when I was very young. My two younger sisters and I were raised by our mother. Becoming a journalist was not a part of my life plan. After completing school, I got admission at Shri Mata Vaishnodevi University in Katra, Jammu and Kashmir, for a bachelor’s degree in architecture.

However, because the college was a little far from home and my mother was concerned about my safety, I decided not to go. Instead, I graduated with a bachelor’s in science from a women’s college in 2016. That same year the militant Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter, which led to a lot of tension in Kashmir.

Around that time I visited a nearby tertiary care hospital with my mother for her annual check-up. While I was waiting for her outside the doctor’s room, I saw an unconscious man with a bullet injury in his head being rushed down the corridor on a stretcher. I could hear his mother crying.

As my shock wore off, I remember thinking that I had not spotted even one journalist or media person in the hospital covering what was happening there. I was shaken up, but I also felt that I needed to do something.

Following that incident, I decided to apply to the Central University of Kashmir for a master’s in convergent journalism. I graduated in 2018 and got my first job at Kashmir Monitor, a daily English newspaper. I worked there for almost three years, up until August 2020. I then joined Free Press Kashmir.

It isn’t easy being a journalist in Kashmir. I sometimes only end up covering stories from Srinagar and the areas around me due to lack of connectivity and safety. I also can’t stay out for too long during the day and have to be back home before it gets dark

We currently don’t have a lot of reporters at Free Fresh Kashmir and so I also end up doing a lot of daily reporting work. However, my main interest lies in covering conflict-based and missing-persons stories. I also write for national news portals such as The Wire, Article 14, and Firstpost.

7.00 AM: I spend most of the morning finishing household chores—cleaning the house and utensils and also preparing food for my husband before he leaves for work. Because of COVID-19, my office has allowed me to work from home, but my husband has to go to office every day since he is a government employee with the Department of Education.

Whenever my father-in-law sees me doing household chores, he urges me to go to the office or go outside to source stories. He often tells me I should focus on my job and not spend too much time working at home.

1.00 PM: I quickly finish lunch and sit down with my laptop to start working on a new story. As a first step, I make a list of all the people I have to get in touch with to piece the story together. Once I’ve finished identifying potential sources for the story, I start calling each of them.

For me, talking to all the parties involved is very crucial to the process of writing a piece. I recently worked on a story in Peerbagh, Srinagar, where the domestic help had stolen INR 3–4 lakh and was on the run.

When I got to know about this case, I first reached out to the family whose house had been robbed and got the details from them over a phone call. I asked them exactly what had happened, when they found out, about the role of the placement agency in this entire incident, etc.

After speaking with them, I called the district police station and the agency that had placed the domestic help in that house to hear their version of the event. I won’t go into too much detail about what I found out through my calls because it is a bigger story I am currently working on and hope to pitch to national publications soon.

Having worked as a journalist for a few years, I am comfortable reaching out to people to ask for information. However, this wasn’t always the case. I remember when I started out as a journalist with Kashmir Monitor, I didn’t have many sources in the field.

It was very difficult to find stories, and often I had to travel to the location of the story to be able to write it. During my initial days, I also had to visit various government offices and interact with senior officials in order to get information for research.

As a young female journalist, this wasn’t an easy task. Sometimes I was offered information in exchange for ‘certain favours’. I remember being scared back then. I was very young and had just started building my career; I didn’t know how to handle those situations. It is only now, after having spent many years in this field, that I know how to approach people and how to respond in such instances.

3.00 PM: Once I’ve made notes from all my calls, I start researching online to see if articles covering similar cases have been published in India before. If I find any, I read them. When I need to, I also step out to speak to sources for the story that I am writing. As soon as I feel confident about the outline I have, I shut my laptop and bag. I prefer to start the actual process of writing only the next afternoon and I usually email the story to my editor by the evening.

I remember when Article 370 was abrogated in Kashmir in 2019. Neither could I go to the office nor could I email stories to my editor because all network towers had been blocked. At that time the government was allowing limited internet connection at the Media Facilitation Centre. So I would download my stories on a pen drive and travel all the way to the centre, only so I could share what was happening in Jammu and Kashmir with editors in Delhi.

It isn’t easy being a journalist in Kashmir. I sometimes only end up covering stories from Srinagar and the areas around me due to lack of connectivity and safety. I also can’t stay out for too long during the day and have to be back home before it gets dark.

However, when I got selected for the Sanjay Ghose Media Awards in 2020, it gave me the opportunity to travel to rural areas and write stories that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to. As a part of the process, I was also able to work on five pieces covering issues related to women.

I spoke to a lot of women during that time and realised that they are all suffering in some way. Most of them aren’t aware of their rights and they don’t know whom to approach or what steps to take when they are ill-treated at home by their husbands or families.

I also realised that very few people from media organisations visit these parts of Srinagar and write about the problems that people are facing here. Reports of violence and conflict in areas such as Anantnag and Bandipora—areas that I was covering at the time—are fairly common.

However, there are very few human-interest stories. The voices of the people living in these places almost never reach us, let alone the rest of the country. As a journalist in Kashmir today, I want to try and change some of that.

6.00 PM: After preparing dinner, I make myself a cup of tea and pick up a book on the history of Kashmir that I’ve been reading. I usually enjoy conflict and war-based stories, but recently I’ve also found myself reaching out for historical fiction and non-fiction books on Kashmir.

Over the course of my career, I’ve realised how important it is to have hobbies and interests that help me relax. As journalists we encounter violence, bloodshed, and deaths almost on a daily basis, especially in a conflict area such as ours. These experiences often don’t leave you.

I still can’t seem to shake off the memory of this one story I was working on in 2020. It was about a girl in Kulgam who had been raped and left to die. When I went to talk to the family, it had only been three days since the girl’s death. I spent one or two hours with them so that they would feel comfortable sharing the details of the incident with me.

They were still in shock but they were also angry because they felt that nobody was doing anything—the entire valley, according to them, was quiet about what had happened. I remember them asking one question repeatedly: When did we get so insensitive?

After covering and writing stories like this on a regular basis, especially about violence against women, I decided to seek professional help for my mental health. Thinking about this case still causes me anxiety.

7.00 PM: I get a call on my phone; it’s the police. They assure me that it’s a routine verification call. They ask me where I work and what exactly I do. As I answer their questions, I try to remember if I’ve written something recently that could warrant a call from the police. As soon as they hang up, I call up my colleagues to check if they have also received similar calls. Thankfully, they inform me that they all did and were asked the same questions.

8.00 PM: My husband and I have dinner together and I tell him about the police call I received earlier. He gets worried and asks me to seriously consider changing my profession for my own safety. This is a conversation we’ve had many times—he tells me it’s too dangerous to do the work that I do, and I tell him that while I do understand the dangers, I don’t want to do any other job.

There is so much suffering in Kashmir. Every day someone’s son, brother, or father is reported missing. Recently I ended up helping a family I had never even met because of a story I had written about three Muslim boys who got arrested in Uttar Pradesh after cheering for Pakistan’s cricket team.

Out of the three boys, two were extremely poor and were on scholarship. In order to afford a lawyer, one of their families had to sell their cow. When I wrote and tweeted about the story, my Twitter feed was filled with messages from people wanting to help and transfer money to the family so that they could get their cow back.

I know the work we do isn’t easy but I truly believe that if I can help get voices out, if I can help someone in any way, I want to continue doing what I do.

As told to IDR.

Bisma Bhat works as a journalist with Free Press Kashmir. Her features have appeared in leading national news portals including Firstpost, Article 14, and The Wire. She has a master’s degree in convergent journalism. Bisma was awarded the Sanjoy Ghose Media Award 2020 for her reportage on the violence against women in Jammu and Kashmir.

 

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

By External Source
Feb 10 2022 (IPS-Partners)

 

ECW: You played a critical role in establishing Education Cannot Wait just five years ago. As the Chair of ECW’s High-Level Steering Group, what are some of the key successes achieved by ECW over the last five years; and what needs to be done in the next five years as we approach the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development deadline?

The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown: Education Cannot Wait has had to deal with increasingly difficult challenges, from Myanmar, Syria and Yemen to the Sahel and now Afghanistan. Yet it is delivering beyond all expectations – with speed in its humanitarian efforts and depth in its coordinated approach to development – and is supporting our global efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG4. This work – delivered in partnership with governments, donors, UN agencies, civil society organizations, the private sector and other key stakeholders, including the media – is having positive, concrete impacts aiming to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for the world’s most vulnerable children and adolescents.

In just five years, the ECW Trust Fund has mobilized over US$1.1 billion and has a growing number of public and private sector donors. In January, ECW received its single largest contribution – an additional €200 million from Germany – which is now the Fund’s largest donor, followed by the United Kingdom and Denmark. At the country-level, an additional $1 billion worth of programming has been aligned to ECW multi-year resilience and joint programmes.

ECW and its partners have delivered investments in 42 countries to date. This includes 24 countries experiencing protracted crises supported through multi-year resilience education programme investments and 35 countries experiencing new or escalating crises supported through First Emergency Responses, including the Fund’s fast-acting response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

As well as catalyzing help for millions, over 5 million children and adolescents have been reached directly and given the hope and opportunity of a quality education. An additional 30 million have been reached through the Fund’s COVID-19 emergency education response, which provides remote learning, new water and sanitation facilities, and life-saving messaging that slowed the spread of the virus.

We know that investing in 12 years of quality education for girls is one of the best investments we can make, and I’m proud to say that around 50% of the children reached through ECW’s multi-year investments are girls, and around 48% of the 70,000 teachers we’ve reached are women.

But there is so much more that needs to be done. ECW needs an additional US$1 billion in urgent funding, bringing the total to $3 billion by 2026, to accelerate the impact of this breakout and breakthrough UN global fund. ECW wants to represent the UN at its best, and the Fund has become a UN model for reform, partnership, innovation, multilateralism and most importantly, results for crisis-affected girls and boys.

As we look forward to the next five years – and in our sprint to deliver inclusive and equitable quality education for all by 2030 – we must bridge the humanitarian-development nexus and deepen our investments to integrate short-term emergency responses into our longer-term development aid interventions in crisis-zones.

This will need to include what are called ‘whole-of-child’ holistic education packages that are adapted to the specific needs of girls and boys in crisis settings. Our transformative approaches hope to address access to gender-sensitive issues, water, sanitation and hygiene, mental health and psychosocial support, gender-sensitive issues, as well as protection, targeted responses for children with disabilities, refugees and IDPs, and embracing new and innovative ways of delivering education.

ECW: ECW has identified a minimum an additional $1 billion by 2026 in funding gap for education in emergencies and protracted crises. What must be done now to both close the funding gap and build even more effective approaches across various key actors like ECW, IFFEd, GPE, UN agencies, civil society organizations and donors?

The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown: This year, ECW will launch its new Strategic Plan to deliver on our promise of quality education for the world’s most vulnerable children and adolescents. This is our investment in public goods, our investment in peace, and our investment in prosperity. The strategic plan will build on successes and lessons learned from the first rounds of multi-year investments and adapt to the amplified risks connected with armed conflicts, forced displacement, health pandemics, the climate crisis and protracted crises.

For the strategic plan period of 2023-2026, ECW is calling on all public and private supporters to contribute at least an additional US$1 billion. This increased funding will support the education of an additional 10 million children and youth furthest left behind in conflicts and emergencies – including 6 million girls to reach our 60% target.

Germany just announced €200 million (US$228.3 million), in new, additional funding for ECW. With this new multi-year announcement, Germany is now ECW’s number one donor and the Fund’s leading donor to commit to multi-year funding. I call on world leaders and the private sector to follow Germany’s inspiring example and immediately scale up funding to ECW and meet and surpass the generous contributions of ECW’s top three donors: Germany, the United Kingdom and Denmark.

These multi-year financial commitments are crucial to increase the predictability and effectiveness of education responses in protracted crisis settings. COVID-19 and climate change have compounded humanitarian needs with the number of people needing aid reaching new records in 2022 at 274 million people. More than 1% of the world’s population is now displaced. Recent estimates indicate that the number of crisis-impacted children being denied their human right to an education has now jumped to 128 million.

These crises are not going away. Environmental problems will intensify the pressures. This is our chance to literally change the course of humanity, by changing the lives of every single crisis-affected, out-of-school child today. We must continue to work even more efficiently and effectively across governments, global funds, UN agencies, public and private sector donors to rise to the challenge with decisive action and united resolve.

ECW: How can we activate the private sector to both address the funding gap and to help better deliver on the world’s promise and commitment for equitable, inclusive, quality education for every girl and boy, no matter who or where they are? Importantly, why is addressing the education in emergencies challenge a good investment from the perspective of the private sector?

The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown: ECW offers a unique proposition for private sector companies, philanthropic foundations and corporate social responsibility operations. By partnering with ECW ¬– and following the visionary example of The LEGO Foundation and Verizon – you are partnering with the United Nations. This means global reach, global depth and global opportunities.

Investments in education deliver a fantastic return on investment by opening up new opportunities for skilled workers, and then new markets, and our work offers increased security, predictability and economic resilience across the globe.

According to UNESCO, for every dollar invested into girls’ rights and education, developing nations could see a return of $2.80. Making sure all girls finish secondary education by 2030 could boost the gross domestic product (GDP) of developing countries by 10% on average over the next decade.

Think about it this way: if every Fortune 500 company would invest just $22 million into Education Cannot Wait, we could raise $11 billion and reach close to 50 million children with the power of an education. I can’t think of a better investment that they could make today that will positively impact their future, children’s futures, and the future of humanity.

ECW: UN Secretary-General António Guterres is convening a summit on Transforming Education in September 2022. From your global vantage point as the United Nations’ Special Envoy for Global Education, what issues must be addressed to even more effectively transform the delivery of quality education in emergencies and protracted crises to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4?

The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown: We must invest in the education of those left furthest behind – refugees, internally displaced people, children with disabilities, and girls. And we need to invest not just in one-off responses, but systematic changes. This means ensuring we have the resources, plans, policies, training, education, infrastructure and human power needed to connect all the parts to deliver on our promise of universal, equitable education.

Continuity is also key. Our investment in education in emergencies is an investment in an end to poverty, an end to hunger, and a more peaceful, more stable world. If children are not able to complete a minimum of 12 years of quality education, we will fall short of every target.

And what happens to the best and the brightest in countries torn apart by armed conflicts and protracted crises? All too often, they leave their country and seek asylum in the developed world. This perpetuates negative cycles of poverty and derails concerted sustainable development efforts.

We need a global scholarship fund akin to the Fulbright, Kennedy and Mandela scholarships – but for refugees this time – a fund that is big enough to cope with the higher education needs of these refugees and displaced persons. We need to invest more in early childhood education and accompany children from the minute they are born to the moment they enter the workforce as strong, capable and powerful agents of change.

ECW: Humanitarian crises are lasting longer, children are forcibly displaced for years (even lifetimes), we are witnessing unprecedented global movements of people, schools are under attack, COVID-19 has disrupted education worldwide, and climate change is an existential risk to humanity. What are among the top 3 countries facing education crises today and how can we come together to address them?

The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown: Afghanistan is by far the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world today. The world must come together with $4.4 billion in urgent funding. This includes a substantial investment in ECW’s multi-year resilience programme in Afghanistan, along with other global responses.

For the education response in Afghanistan, we must set tight guardrails that ensure girls have unrestricted access to education. Through the UN’s direct execution modality, we have the opportunity to fund girls’ education without funding the de-facto authorities. ECW’s partners on the ground such as UNICEF, UNESCO and Save the Children are ready to deliver. Now is the time to build back better, and make sure an entire generation of Afghan girls and boys is not forgotten.

Displacement, climate change, attacks on schools and other factors are pushing children and families across borders. ECW’s regional responses in the Sahel and in South America (in response to the Venezuela Regional Crisis), provide strong examples of how we can look at the big picture to deliver education not just at the country level, but across vast geographies and vast demographics.

No one crisis or country should take precedent. It is our humanitarian and moral imperative to reach every child in every country with the safety and hope a quality education provides.

ECW: Your latest book, Seven Ways to Change the World, provides a visionary look at the future of planet Earth. Why and how can we best break down the barriers to education, and better connect the dots to address the challenges of global health, climate change, nuclear proliferation, global financial instability, the humanitarian crisis and global inequality?

The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown: This is about investing in public goods. Investments in climate action, global health, and education benefit every person on the planet. We need to replicate the system we have for UN peacekeeping, the IMF and World Bank to create a burden sharing formula for global public goods, including education.

Think about our promise through the Paris Agreement to transfer billions of resources, technology and know-how from developed countries to developing countries through funds such as the Green Climate Fund. We know that if we are going to address the climate crisis, we need to bring all our collective resources together to address this existential challenge.

The same should be true for education. Investing in education is investing in peace, global financial stability, and a more equal world. It’s investing in a public good that benefits both rich and poor alike. My question isn’t why should we invest in education now, but why we haven’t already put education at the top of the global agenda?

ECW: Finally, you are clearly an inspiring, tireless and compassionate man – former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a UN Special Envoy, a best-selling author, a global humanitarian and true visionary. Why have you chosen to focus so much of your time and energy on education and why are you so passionately supportive of ECW’s mandate for crisis-affected children and youth?

The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown: A few years ago, I and others saw a gap which was not being properly filled, hence Education Cannot Wait, and we were lucky to find as our first Director Yasmine Sherif. We had development aid which came in long-term programmes but could not deal with the immediate crisis faced by refugees. On the other side, we found that humanitarian aid was excluding education because it was focused on food, shelter and health. So, we had to fill the gap and did so by creating Education Cannot Wait – the UN’s global billion-dollar fund for education and emergencies.

ECW, led by Yasmine Sherif with her dynamic and diverse team of experts, is taking this crucial issue forward by not just providing aid for crisis-affected children, youth and refugees to get them the education that is their inherent human right, but also by coordinating and acting as a catalyst for other organizations to do more.

ECW is already delivering real education results for crisis-affected children and youth and can do even more with additional, urgent funding. I encourage donors to get involved without delay. Thank you.

About Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown is the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Since September 2021, he also serves as WHO Ambassador for Global Health Financing.

He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010 and is widely credited with preventing a second Great Depression through his stewardship of the 2009 London G20 summit. He was one of the first leaders during the global crisis to initiate calls for global financial action, while introducing a range of rescue measures in the UK. In April 2009, he hosted the G20 Summit in London where world leaders committed to make an additional $1.1 trillion available to help the world economy through the crisis and restore credit, growth and jobs. They also pledged to strengthen financial supervision and regulation.

Previously, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007, making him the longest-serving Chancellor in modern history. During ten years at the Treasury, Gordon masterminded many of Labour’s proudest achievements including the Minimum Wage, Sure Start, the Winter Fuel Allowance, the Child Trust Fund, the Child Tax Credit and paid paternity leave. His record on global justice includes his negotiation of debt cancellation for the world’s poorest nations and the tripling of the budget for life-saving aid. His time as Chancellor was also marked by major reform of Britain’s monetary and fiscal policy as well as the sustained investment in health, education and overseas aid.

His role in government continued to shape his views on the importance of education as a fundamental right of every child in the world and the key to unlocking better health, greater social stability, more rights and opportunities for women and a higher standard of living. He is a passionate advocate for global action to ensure education for all. In his role as UN Special Envoy for Global Education, he works closely with key partners to help galvanize support for global education investment and the use of innovative financing to reach the UN’s global goals. He is Chair of the High-Level Steering Group for Education Cannot Wait, Chair of the Inquiry on Protecting Children in Conflict; and Chair of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity.

In 2020, he played a key role leading a group of 275 former world leaders, economists and educationalists calling for international action to prevent the global health crisis creating a “COVID generation” to avoid the reality of tens of millions of children with no hope of an education.

In his role as WHO Ambassador, Gordon has been invited by WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to raise awareness internationally on the great need for sustained global health financing, particularly from G20 and G7 countries, and the immediate task is to work together to finance the vaccination of the whole world and protect the poorest countries from the terrible effects of COVID-19 and other diseases.

In addition to his global education work Gordon is an advisor to the Graça Machel Trust, a Senior Panel Member at the Kofi Annan Foundation initiative on Electoral Integrity, and he is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Within the United Kingdom, Gordon is also the founder of Our Scottish Future, and the Alliance for Full Employment.

Gordon is the author of several books including Beyond the Crash: Overcoming the First Crisis of Globalisation, My Scotland, Our Britain and My Life, Our Times and most recently, Seven Ways to Change the World (Simon & Schuster, June 2021).

Gordon has a PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh and spent his early career working as a lecturer and in television production. He has been awarded several honorary doctorates, most recently Doctor of the University from The Open University.

He is married to Sarah Brown, the Chair of global children’s charity, Theirworld and Executive Chair of the Global Business Coalition for Education, and the couple live in Fife, Scotland with their two teenagers.

The African Storybook Project has developed writing and publishing apps that are promoting literacy. Credit: Saide

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 10 2022 (IPS)

Suwaiba Hassan published an engrossing story. She used digital apps that are giving literacy a boost.

The student from Katsina State in Nigeria, Hassan, won a National Reading Competition for a story she created using the African Storybook reader app and the African Storybook maker app. Saide, an education NGO, developed the apps through its African Storybook (ASb) project.

The apps are easy-to-use storybook development tools allowing children to write and publish their own stories, which can be read and shared without internet connectivity.

Titi and Donkey was written by Suwaiba Hassan a student from Katsina State in Nigeria. Credit: ASB

Hassan turned to the online apps to help her write and publish her award-winning story – Titi and Donkey. The story is about a girl who narrowly escaped losing her grandmother’s money to a cunning donkey. Hassan wanted to inspire other girls to write and read in writing it. She did more. Her story motivated parents in her home state to encourage more girls to go to school after Hassan won a National Reading Competition and all expenses paid scholarships to cover all her education levels. Northern Nigeria has a high number of out-of-school children.

Conquering literacy one story at a time

The African Storybook Project has created a digital library of open license African storybooks to address the challenge of education inclusion and access to appropriate reading materials for young African children. It has been piloted in 15 African countries.

The applications are helping conquer illiteracy one story at a time by providing reading material in home languages that reflect local content for children to read, says Jenny Glennie, Saide Executive Director.

Saide contributes to the development of new open learning models, including the use of educational technology and open education resources in Sub Saharan Africa.

“We are promoting the idea that you have a publisher in your pocket and a library on your phone,” Glennie tells IPS.

On average, 2000 unique storybooks in 222 African languages have been published online, created mainly by students, teachers and librarians. More than 1.5 million children in Africa benefitted from the storybooks downloaded from the ASb website, especially after COVID-19 hit leading to the close of many schools.

The ASb project works with local educators and illustrators, including children, to develop, publish, and use relevant storybooks in children’s language.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), some 40 per cent of the global population does not access education in a language they understand.

UNESCO cautions that literacy promotion should be looked at from a perspective of multilingualism because several international and regional languages have expanded as lingua franca. In contrast, numerous minority and indigenous languages are endangered.

Literacy in local languages encourages reading and writing among learners because they use the material in their mother tongue every day, noted Belina Simushi, Education Programme Officer with the Impact Network Zambia, an education service provider operating schools in Zambia.

In Zambia, she said learners are taught in English, a foreign language.

“Our learners need books to be written in a local language, which I believe can act as a stepping stone for learning how to read and write,” said Simushi. She led a story-writing project in which teachers wrote over 300 storybooks they uploaded online using the ASb Storybook Maker and guide.

“I also believe that by accessing books written in Cinyanja [a language widely spoken in Zambia and Malawi], our learners can read about stories, cultures and other topics that can help them enjoy reading books and develop a love for reading books,”.

Righting illiteracy

Reading is an important skill in the development of young learners. Pupils at a primary school in Gwanda, Zimbabwe, enjoy a reading moment. Credit, Busani Bafana/IPS

According to the Lost Potential Tracker, nine out of 10 children in Sub Saharan Africa miss the age ten basic literacy milestones, according to the Lost Potential Tracker, an interactive analysis tool measuring the scale of the global learning crisis. The tool jointly created by the One Campaign, the Global Partnership for Education and Save the Children in 2021, shows the depth of the global learning crisis.

Alice Albright, CEO of the Global Partnership for Education, says reading and writing are essential building blocks for children to succeed.

“This tool shows the depth of the global learning crisis – and what a critical situation the world faces if we do not prioritise education.”

While Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children International, warned that the world faces an unprecedented education emergency worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Children in some of the poorest and conflict-affected countries are the most badly affected.

“If we are to live up to our commitments to achieving the full range of Sustainable Development Goals and the children’s right to education, then improving literacy levels is a must,” Ashing noted, emphasising that being able to read was a foundation skill that enabled children to realise their full potential.

The ASb apps have also opened new opportunities to promote and preserve some of Africa’s least spoken languages, which are on the verge of dying off because they are not written down, said Dorcas Wepukhulu, the East and West African Storybook Partner Development Coordinator at Saide.

“The apps have enabled a different learning process that goes beyond the usual stringing of words. It is motivating. The fact that the stories they have written can be published and read by others is something children are very proud of and want to do,” said Wepukhulu. She explained that they are encouraging many people across Sub Saharan Africa to use the apps while helping the marginalised talk about their experiences and boost languages that have not been published in creating reading materials.

Smangele Mathebula, African Storybook Partner Development Coordinator for Southern Africa,  noted that the apps had given children a chance to be fully present as they interact with technology in sharing their experiences.

The African Storybook Story Maker App won the 2021 Tech4Good Awards in Education given by UK-based Tech4Good Awards. The awards celebrate fantastic businesses, individuals and initiatives that use digital technologies to improve the lives of others and make the world a better place. Saide was also voted the Winner of Winners in the virtual awards ceremony.

“Emerging as the Winner of Winners in this year’s awards reinforces our efforts to continue promoting the use of the Story Maker across Sub-Saharan Africa as a way of empowering children to tell their own stories and for communities to self-publish,” Glennie said.

 

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By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 10 2022 (IPS)

The global consensus about an international treaty on pandemic prevention is certainly a milestone towards the creation of a global health security framework.

A new treaty is likely to bind the member states to higher standards of compliance, especially if a global accountability mechanism is also enforced.

Consider the disregard towards the International Health Regulations (2005), IHRs, the only tool available to control what in jargon is referred as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

Despite numerous review exercises, some of which taken more than a decade ago in the aftermath of the first SARS outbreak in Asia and again after EBOLA hit Western Africa, the vast majorities of these regulations were not enforced in the following years.

The consequence is that we are still paying the price and very dearly.

Though the negotiations on the treaty details, especially the complex aspects of its binding legality, won’t be a cakewalk, such tool can offer a strong bulwark against future lethal cross border infections.

Yet a global treaty won’t be nearly enough alone to guarantee a pandemics free future.

What missing is the willpower to truly link preparedness and basic health care, something that is complex and very expensive at the same time.

A real breakthrough in the global health system will be seen when a new willingness is found unprecedented levels of basic health financing around the world, especially in the developing nations.

We need massive investments in building national health systems able to provide what it is normally referred as Universal Health Coverage, defined by the WHO, as access to a broad range of services, which would include the services that contribute to preparedness to future pandemic

If new resources are essential, the capacity of managing them properly is equally important so that the weakest member nations of the United Nations can strengthen their health system.

Unfortunately, for most of them, there is still a long way to go.

The WHO has a huge responsibility and duty to support such process but so far it failed and with it, the international community.

A different organization, starting from its governance, might instead radically change the status quo and enable the creation of trust that essential if we want more money to build national public health system based on equity.

In the case of the IHRs, it is true that primary responsibility of enforcing them lays with the member states, the WHO is the guardian and at the same time a key enabler in their implementation.

A stronger WHO could have done more not only to compel governments towards the implantation of the IHRs but also to be more effective in partnering with developing countries in rebooting their national primary health care centers and hospitals.

Instead, the agency’s reputed failures since the first outbreak of SARS in early 2000s showed the inability of a too complex and too political organization without adequate means.

That’s why we need to ensure that the WHO can play a much bigger role: not in replacing the ministries of health in the developing world but in supporting them in building equitable health systems.

For this to happen we do not need the WHO to be re-tooled and re-purposed but also re-founded.

The focus on the new treaty should not prevent drastic changes in how public health services are delivered in the developing nations and a lifting any “red line” in re-thinking the WHO.

Since 2017, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, its current Director General, embarked the organization into a process of key changes but these improvements, important as they are, do not go far enough.

What we need is a radical turnaround.

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, again new proposals have been made to strengthen the organization.

A lot of emphasis has been laid on increasing the predictability and availability of unmarked resources, so called of “Assessed Contributions”, rather than having, as happens now, a WHO totally relying on voluntary contributions from donors that so far constitute the vast majority of the resources it manages.

Such contributions are driven by interests and priorities of the donors rather than those of the agency.

A balancing in the budget contributions of the organization might surely help but at the same time it might be worthy reflecting that some of the most results-oriented agencies within the UN System are entirely dependent on such voluntary contribution.

This for example is the case of UNDP and UNICEF, the strongest and richest agencies within the UN System. Perhaps the real problem is not the lack of resources in itself but the politicization of an organization that is basically owned by its member states, the governments.

The same could be said for UNESCO.

It is not a coincidence that both agencies share low budgets and are among the weakest among their peers.

At UNICEF, for example there is nothing akin to the role played by the World Health Assembly that effectively controls the WHO.

The governance there is totally different and it is led by an Executive Board representing the member states that though, have considerable sway over the management of the agency (that’s why the Executive Director is always an American), it is less politicized and less controlling than an assembly of member states.

Perhaps what we should have is a global fund for public health more similar in its governance and delivery to UNICEF.

Such radical transformation, improbable at the moment, might be instrumental in truly rebuilding from scratch the WHO and instrumental in turning it into a much more effective agency with less competing centers of powers like is happening now with what are de-facto semi-independent regional offices.

As consequence a new organization branded as the Global Fund for Public Health could attract the huge investments that developing countries need to build strong and resilient health system, insuring Universal Health Coverage for all their citizens.

So far donors have been too narrow and selective when focusing on public health.

For example, the focus has been on prenatal and postnatal care, reproductive health, all very important domains of public health.

Yet such narrow focus on these areas through a silos approach prevented investing into creating, in partnership with the developing countries, reliable and equity-based health systems at disposal of the public.

Let’s not forget what the Secretary General said back in 2016 Seventieth session Agenda entitled “Strengthening the global health architecture” dedicated on strengthening of implementation of the recommendations of the High-level Panel on the Global Response to Health Crises Report, one of the several published so far to retrofit the health system to deal with global pandemics.

“I believe that WHO needs to reposition itself as an operational organization, clarifying its reporting lines and adjusting its business processes so that it can perform its operational role most effectively during times of health crises”.

Moreover in 2016 the Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future argued that “public health is the foundation of the health system and its first line of defense”.

For this to happen we need a new WHO and such a new organization could create the trust for an unprecedented mobilization of funding in public health, resources that World Bank and other regional banks and donor agencies should disburse.

Both Indonesia and Germany, respectively guiding this year the G 20 and the G 7, expressed a strong commitment to reform the global health system.

A narrow focus on a pandemic preparedness treaty would be a miss opportunity to truly revolutionize global health governance and with it, reset and transform the WHO.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, an NGO partnering with youths living with disabilities. Opinions expressed are personal.

 

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Pulses provide nutrients and energy and they help prevent diseases like diabetes and coronary conditions. The United Nations declared 10 February World Pulses Day.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Feb 9 2022 (IPS)

Pulses and meat are both needed as part of your diet, however… While the total emissions of greenhouse gases from global livestock amount to 7.1 Gigatonnes of Co2-equivalent per year, representing 14.5% of all anthropogenic emissions, pulses have root nodules that absorb inert nitrogen from soil air and convert it into biologically useful ammonia, a process referred to as biological nitrogen fixation.

Moreover, cattle (raised for both beef and milk, as well as for inedible outputs like manure and draft power) are the animal species responsible for the most emissions, representing about 65% of the livestock sector’s emissions, according to a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Pulses, instead, provide nutrients and energy and they help prevent diseases like diabetes and coronary conditions.

“They are rich in proteins and minerals, have high fiber content and low-fat content, and no cholesterol. The carbohydrates in pulses are absorbed and digested slowly, and thus help control diabetes and obesity.”

 

Meat, instead…

Back to livestock, the Organisation says that, in terms of activities, feed production and processing (this includes land use change) and enteric fermentation from ruminants are the two main sources of emissions, representing 45% and 39% of total emissions, respectively.

And that manure storage and processing represent 10%. The remainder is attributable to the processing and transportation of animal products.

 

Pulses on display at a farmer’s market in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

 

Protein for the poor

In many cultures, pulses are considered as ‘protein for the poor’ and their high nutrient content makes them ideal for vegetarians and vegans to ensure adequate intakes of protein, minerals and vitamins, says FAO.

In addition to their function and role in reducing greenhouse gases emission, the world body highlights the following ten great benefits:

1. Pulses are naturally low in fat and contain no cholesterol, which can contribute to reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
2. Pulses are also low in sodium. Sodium chloride – or salt – is a contributor to hypertension and can be avoided by consuming foods with lower sodium levels such as pulses.
3. They are a great source of plant-based protein. Surprisingly, 100 grams of dry lentils contain a remarkable 25 grams of protein! During cooking, pulses absorb considerable amounts of water thus reducing their protein content to around 8 percent.

Yet, you can still increase the protein quality of cooked pulses by simply combining them with cereals in your meal, for example, lentils with rice.

4. Pulses are a good source of iron. Iron deficiency is considered one of the most prevalent forms of malnutrition and is one of the most common types of anaemia. To help optimise the absorption of iron in our bodies from pulses, combine them with foods containing vitamin C (lemon juice on lentil curry for example).
5. Pulses are high in potassium, which supports heart health and plays an important role for digestive and muscular functions.
6. Pulses are often quoted among the top high fiber foods, necessary for supporting digestive health and helping to reduce the risks of cardiovascular diseases.
7. Pulses are an excellent source of folate – a B-vitamin naturally present in many foods – that is essential to the nervous system function and especially important during pregnancy to prevent fetal defects.
8. Pulses can be stored for a long time and therefore can help to increase the diversity of diets, especially in developing countries.
9. Pulses are low glycaemic index foods. They help to stabilize blood sugar and insulin levels, making them suitable for people with diabetes and ideal for weight management.
10. Finally, pulses are naturally gluten-free. This makes them an ideal option for coeliacs.

 

A full World Day for pulses

The United Nations declared 10 February World Pulses Day, keeping alive the positive momentum surrounding these healthy, nutritious and protein-rich legumes after FAO’s successful International Year of Pulses Campaign in 2016.

“They are our delicious ally in achieving food security, reducing malnutrition and creating a #ZeroHunger world.”

 

Love for pulses

“There is a lot to love about pulses! They are inexpensive, healthy, environmentally-friendly and, last but not least, tasty!”

“Red, green, white, black, brown… name a colour and we can give you a pulse! And what exactly is a pulse, you might ask? Well, pulses are a sub-group of legumes that are harvested for their dry seeds. Beans, lentils and peas are commonly known pulses.”

“But the world of pulses is much more than that! From lupins to lentils or cowpeas to chickpeas, pulses can surprise you with their breadth and depth,” explains the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

No matter whether they have an alluring name like velvet beans or a curious one like winged beans, pulses are wonderful foods for both human and environmental health, FAO underlines.

 

Vital and inexpensive

“They are a vital and generally inexpensive source of protein. They are full of vitamins and minerals that can help prevent diseases like diabetes and coronary conditions.”

Planet-wise, it adds, pulses are good for soil health, and many are also drought resistant and climate-resilient, their genetic diversity helping them adapt to changes in climate.

 

Less popular now!

Despite the many benefits, these extraordinary foods have lost popularity in recent years and worldwide consumption has decreased because of rising incomes and related consumer preferences, reports the world body.

Anyway, you surely know how to cook pulses. However, should you want to learn more, please click here: Pulses recipes from around the world!