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GGGI and Qatar MME sign an MoU and funding agreement to promote climate resilience and green growth in Qatar

Tue, 10/12/2021 - 19:14

By External Source
SEOUL, Republic of Korea, Oct 12 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) and the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) of the State of Qatar have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to formalize their joint cooperation to promote climate resiliency and green growth in the State of Qatar.

The MoU was signed by His Excellency Dr.Abdulla bin Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Subaie, Minister Municipality and Environment of the State of Qatar, and Dr. Frank Rijsberman, Director-General of GGGI. The in-person signing ceremony was held at the GGGI Seoul headquarters. HE Minister Al-Subaie was accompanied by H.E. Khalid Ibrahim Abdulrahman Al-Hamar, Ambassador of Qatar to the Republic of Korea, and several other Qatari dignitaries, and was joined by GGGI’s senior management team.

H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, President & Chair of GGGI welcomed the Qatari delegation to GGGI and witnessed the signing ceremony. Congratulating MME and GGGI on the occasion, he said, “I am pleased to see this new milestone in GGGI’s growing relationship with Qatar. This demonstrates Qatar’s commitment to environmental sustainability which is linked to the long-term prosperity of every country”.

H.E. Minister Al-Subaie stated that “Today’s ceremony resembles our commitment, not only to the initiatives we are taking domestically but also to international cooperation for contributing to the green transition. I hope that this will be the beginning of many years of cooperation between us which will also benefit communities around the globe.”

GGGI’s Director-General Dr. Rijsberman remarked, “Qatar is a founding member of GGGI, and we look forward to working together with MME in supporting sustainable development in Qatar. This pandemic has highlighted the need for strong international cooperation and the need for green growth approaches for a resilient world for future generations. I am pleased with this strengthening collaboration and look forward to our joint work under the MoU that will benefit both Qatar and encourage other GGGI Member countries as well.”

Qatar is currently a Member of the Council of GGGI. Under this cooperation agreement, Qatar will provide USD 7.5 million for scaling up GGGI’s Doha office operations to support the State of Qatar in green growth policy, planning, and implementation. In Aug 2020, represented by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), Qatar signed a Host Country Agreement with GGGI to formally impart diplomatic privileges and immunities to its Doha office hosted at the MME. GGGI also has a cooperation program with the Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD) and formalized the partnership in October 2020 under which four QFFD-GGGI projects are being implemented to support climate resilience and green recovery in the Pacific, Caribbean, and West African regions.

Moderating the ceremony, GGGI’s Qatar engagement focal Dr. Pranab Baruah thanked involved colleagues at the MME and the Embassy of Qatar in Seoul for their various supports to advance the MoU process to conclusion.

Categories: Africa

Why Pakistani Women Feel Unsafe in Public Spaces

Tue, 10/12/2021 - 15:07

Women’s Day (Auret March) in 2018. Despite the growth of feminism and activism against gender-based violence, women still fear attacks in public places in Pakistan. Credit: Zofeen T Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Karachi, Oct 12 2021 (IPS)

The mauling, groping and tossing of a young woman by a crowd of between 300 and 400 men in a park in the eastern city of Lahore, in the Punjab province, may have caused a wave of country-wide disgust, but speaks volumes of how unsafe public spaces are for Pakistani women.

“If I’m not safe in my own city, I can never be safe in any corner of the world,” said the woman survivor, also a TikTokker, in an interview narrating the incident that occurred on Pakistan’s 74th day of independence and was captured on videos that went viral soon after.

Actor Ushna Shah echoed the same sentiment on Twitter: “What else has to happen for every single person to accept the fact that women are not safe in Pakistan. Women are not safe.”

Sheema Kermani says her dancers pack up and leave public spaces when confronted.

“Over the years, public spaces for women in Pakistan have been decreasing,” lamented Sheema Kermani, a renowned classical dancer, and founder of Karachi-based Tehrik-e-Niswan, a women’s rights group. She and her group have had their share of unwarranted episodes, performing in public spaces, even doing street theatre. They have had stones hurled at them or have been asked to stop their performance, in which case they pack up immediately and leave to “avoid confrontation”.

Despite more women joining the workforce and the emergence of young feminist groups that have “actually pushed for making public spaces safe for women,” Kermani observed, “the last couple of years has taken Pakistani society back many hundreds of years” where women are “hated, demeaned, exploited, abused, even raped”. She added: “It is as if their lives are of little consequence.”

And that is what the TikTokker felt when she said: “They [men] were playing with me,” as they ripped off her clothes.

This incident comes just weeks after the beheading of a former diplomat’s daughter in the capital. Another undated video that went viral, following the TikTokker’s assault, showed a man lunging towards two women riding on the back of a rickshaw and is heard kissing one of them. Police are investigating yet another video of a woman being stripped by a group of men in a park.

Prime Minister Imran Khan does not make it easier either when he blames women for these crimes that he says are “spreading like cancer”. “Wearing very few clothes,” he said, will have an “impact on the men unless they are robots”. In 2019, the information minister quoted the Prime Minister for blaming TikTok, a social media platform, for the “growing obscenity and vulgarity in society”.

“But I was not even vulgarly dressed,” the TikTok survivor had said in her interview.

Maria Memon was shaken to the core after experiencing verbal abuse.

“I can well imagine this woman’s trauma,” said TV anchorperson Maria Memon.

She had faced an unruly mob while covering an anti-government protest sit-in by the now ruling Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI), in Faisalabad, also in Punjab, in 2014, that had left her “shaken to the core” after being attacked by a volley of verbal abuse.

“They wanted to see me break down,” she said. When that did not happen, they started “throwing empty plastic water bottles and sticks at me,” she told IPS over the phone from Islamabad, the country’s capital.

Seven years later, said Memon, Pakistani women journalists remain “untrained”, “unprepared”, and “vulnerable” to a crowd that can quickly turn violent. While media outlets want to send women to these events, they seldom have a contingency escape plan to quickly evacuate them when things get rough.

In 2018, the London-based Thomson Reuters Foundation ranked Pakistan the sixth most dangerous country and fifth on non-sexual violence, including domestic abuse in the world for women.

Sana Mirza recalls her own humiliating incident and salutes those who report harassment.

“Unless these men are not punished, there will be no stopping them,” said Sana Mirza, Memon’s colleague, who faced a similar situation in another PTI rally in Lahore, just a few weeks after Memon, in 2014.

Unlike Memon, she broke down in front of the camera, “feeling humiliated,” she said, and the episode continued haunting her, and she refused to go out in the field for a good eight months. “I even removed myself from social media as these platforms had become too toxic, and I was unable to sleep,” she told IPS over the phone from Islamabad.

While many women, had they experienced what the TikTokker’s went through, would have kept silent, Mirza said, she saluted this woman “for her courage to lodge a complaint to the police”.

So far, over 60 men have been arrested after they were identified through the video using the national database. The police have geo-fenced 28,000 people and shortlisted 350 suspects, and the arrests continue.

But Mirza remains unconvinced the arrested men arrested will be punished. “They never are. Just look at the statistics!” she said.

According to Karachi-based War Against Rape, while sexual assault and rape cases have increased, the conviction rate is less than 3%. And this figure is about the crimes that are reported.

Amna Baig believes that women should report incidents as non-reporting emboldens the perpetrators.

While the “system may not be perfect”, Amna Baig, an Islamabad-based policewoman, defending the police system by not reporting such incidents was “emboldening” perpetrators. She termed the complaint filing by the TikTok user, albeit three days late, a very “courageous” step.

In her five years of being in the force at various cities in Punjab, she said, she had come across several murders of women by their spouses. Still, neither the deceased nor any family member ever filed a complaint of domestic violence (DV) before the murder.

“You can save so many lives if you report,” she said, adding, “Just lodging a complaint can act as a deterrent because the person knows he will be held accountable”.

Interestingly, Baig feels “safer” and “empowered” in a police uniform than in plain clothes. “I think the uniform exudes both the fear factor as well as respect,” and has never been harassed while on duty.

Still, it is not too late to ensure “women’s choices, voices, and lives count” if you ask Senator Sherry Rehman.

It was time to bring to life the domestic violence bill that she had first introduced back in 2004, as a member of the national assembly, but which she continues to stumble “on the barriers of misogyny and anti-women lobbies”.

The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) is vetting it to ensure it is in tandem with the Shariah [Islamic law].

“Why are only legislations related to women sent to the CII?” asked Rehman. “Like the rest, these too, can be discussed in the parliament, and their fate decided through voting just the way other bills are discussed and passed,” she added.

While she admitted no one law or series of laws would change the game, moving the law is the starting point, not the endpoint for change.

“Without baseline laws against domestic violence, for instance, such as the one in Sindh, the courts won’t have the legal scaffolding to provide the relief even if they are so inclined,” she pointed out.

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Categories: Africa

Disparities in Poverty Between Ethnic Groups & Across Genders Show Why We Need to Dig Deeper into Poverty Data

Tue, 10/12/2021 - 08:05

Credit: UNDP

By Sabina Alkire
LONDON, Oct 12 2021 (IPS)

During the pandemic, we learnt a new word – at least I did: comorbidity. It means that one or more additional conditions co-occur (all happen at the same time for a person) alongside a primary condition – in this case the virus.

And we learnt that when a person has significant comorbidities, the path of the virus can be tragic.

We therefore learned to be highly alert for diabetes, for lung conditions, and medical histories, and to protect vulnerable people in our circles carefully. As time went on, our circle of attention expanded – to handwashing, to overcrowding, to water and nutrition, or informal work – or risks like domestic violence, that make lockdown unbearable.

After a while, this habit of looking into comorbidities felt eerily familiar. Our and other teams working on poverty also scrutinise disadvantages that strike a person all-at-once. Instead of calling these comorbidities, we call them deprivations.

And a large package of deprivations is called multidimensional poverty.

But the idea is really rather similar: those who already have high poverty ‘comorbidities’ (in our language, people who are ‘multidimensionally poor’) are already facing difficulties, and are also most at-risk if a further threat strikes – like the virus.

But just as the virus affected different groups differently, the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating inequalities that poverty data was only just starting to explore before the pandemic hit.

Let me give an example from the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) produced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) this year.

We studied two layers of ‘co-morbidities’. First, we looked at a set of 10 indicators spanning conditions like child mortality, school attendance, electricity, water, and assets, and found out how many people are deprived in at least one-third of weighted indicators.

Second, we looked at poverty across ethnic groups, and through a gendered and intrahousehold lens. Data are pre-covid, but provide the most up-to-date assessment of all-at-once deprivations – of multidimensional poverty – that we have.

Sabina Alkire. Credit: Kiara Worth IISD/ENB

In the first place, looking across 5.9 billion people in 109 developing countries, we found that 1.3 billion were multidimensionally poor. And in terms of the poverty parallel for ‘comorbidities’, one billion lack clean energy; one billion lack adequate sanitation; one billion have substandard housing, 788 million live with at least one undernourished person and over half lack electricity – even to charge a cell phone or turn on at night.

So, the web of co-deprivations is indeed dense and tightly woven. And this dataset – which incidentally is online with all of these details in many forms, because we want people to use it – is disaggregated so you can map 1,291 subnational regions, or look at children, or female-headed households, or rural-urban areas, to see how the level of poverty and the overlaps across 10 indicators, vary. It’s a lot of information.

Next, we probed inequalities. We had some ethnicity data for 2.4 billion people in 41 countries – it’s not perfect, but the topic is too important to ignore. So, we disaggregated the already disturbing condition of multidimensional poverty by ethnic groups.

Disparity across these ethnic groups was astonishingly high – higher than across all 1,291 subnational regions. In Latin America, indigenous peoples stood out. For instance, in Bolivia indigenous communities account for about 44 percent of the population but 75 percent of multidimensionally poor people.

In Gabon and Nigeria, the disparity in poverty rates between ethnic groups spanned 70 percentage points. We did this study not to drum doom, but rather to shine light on ethnic disparities in the hopes that this will spark change.

Then there is gender. We know the vital importance of girls’ education in reducing undernutrition, child mortality, unemployment etc. So, we wanted to see how many of the 1.3 billion poor people don’t have an educated girl or woman in their household.

We used 6 years of schooling as our criterion. When the data came in, it gave us a start. Two-thirds of all multidimensionally poor people – 836 million – lack any educated girl or woman.

So, while there has been progress in poverty reduction, the road ahead is long. To understand more we peered inside the household, to look at boys and men in those households.

And we found that one-sixth of all multidimensionally poor people (215 million) live in households with an educated male, but no educated female – a daily disparity. But half the 1.3 billion MPI poor lacked any educated person. One meets these figures with a heavy heart.

To put that number into perspective, across the 4.6 billion people who were not poor, only 4.2 percent of them lack an educated person. Yes, nowadays we yearn to leapfrog, to expand digital reach. But distressing basics – of education, of nutrition – are still a real part of poverty ‘comorbidities’.

So, comorbidities and multidimensional poverty cover common ground. And just as the Charlston Comorbidity Index among others has been widely used, so too we hope that this uncomfortable profiling of multidimensional poverty, and of structural inequalities by ethnicity, age, place and gender, will contribute to what Pope Francis calls “a global movement against indifference” so that the picture we find from the data for the rest of this decade is not one of a poverty pandemic.

Sabina Alkire is Director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative

Categories: Africa

Better Late than Never, but Act Now

Tue, 10/12/2021 - 07:40

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 12 2021 (IPS)

The world should now be more aware of likely COVID-19 devastation unless urgently checked. Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced an US$8 billion plan to quickly vaccinate many more people to expedite ending the pandemic.

New WHO plan
Perhaps frustrated after being ignored by rich country governments and major vaccine producers, the new WHO plan is relatively modest, but hopefully more realisable. Supported by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the Vaccination Strategy seeks to reduce vaccine apartheid by inoculating 40% in all countries before year’s end, and 70% by mid-2022.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

had urged governments to vaccinate at least 10% of their populations by September 2021. With almost 6.5 billion inoculations by then, almost a third of the world’s people were fully vaccinated. As noted by WHO Director General (DG) Tedros, “High and upper-middle income countries have used 75 per cent of all vaccines produced so far”.

Worldwide vaccination will also stem emerging new variants. But less than 0.5% of doses have gone to low-income countries, with less than 5% in Africa fully vaccinated. Thus, more than 55, mainly African countries have been largely left out in this ‘two-track’ vaccination effort.

Globally, about 1.5 billion vaccine doses are being produced monthly. The WHO Strategy deems this enough to achieve its targets, “provided they are distributed equitably”. Although more financing is still needed, it implies enough to procure most vaccines needed for poorer countries via COVAX and the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT).

Despite the past, the DG believes the Strategy can succeed if countries and companies supplying vaccines prioritise delivery and donations to COVAX and AVAT. He also urges sharing know-how and non-exclusive licences to spread increased manufacturing capacity.

Intellectual property impediment
Intellectual property rights (IPRs) underlie the world pandemic divide today. Undoubtedly, those who innovate should be rewarded for their achievement. But US law does not prevent price gouging by IP owners. Worse, there are no strong incentives for commercial vaccine suppliers to eradicate the disease.

Unsurprisingly, Pfizer has already revised its business strategy for its main revenue stream to be from selling ‘boosters’ and other COVID-19 needs. WHO and other initiatives to encourage voluntary technology and knowledge sharing have gone nowhere as major companies refuse to share knowledge.

Nevertheless, genome sequencing in China in early January 2020 and the almost free use of crucial techniques to produce mRNA vaccines – such as NIH-owned patents and CRISPR technology – have expedited such vaccine development.

Earlier claims that developing countries are not capable of producing the new mRNA vaccines are no longer credible. South Africa and Brazil have already made them under licence. Independent assessments suggest many more – including others in Africa – can do so.

The October 2020 TRIPS waiver request by South Africa and India goes beyond the 2001 WTO approval of public health flexibilities. This allows production using patent compulsory licensing (CL) in extenuating situations during public health emergencies. But the waiver has been blocked, mainly by rich European governments.

The waiver was not mainly about vaccines. When the request was first made, the only vaccine available was Russian. The waiver request for temporary IPR suspension – only for the pandemic’s duration – is for COVID-19 tests, treatments, equipment, vaccines and other needs, subject to strict conditions.

In the face of a global crisis demanding urgent action, the European Commission position – even a year later – is that TRIPS voluntary licensing (VL) is enough. It insists the waiver – and even CL – are not needed even though both VL and CL require country by country, patent by patent negotiations and licensing.

As affordable COVID-19 supplies are still desperately needed, the scale and scope of the current challenge still need the waiver. But no developing country – or for that matter, patent holder – has either the means or time to negotiate to meet all the needed VLs urgently.

Achieving Global Vaccine Equity
For Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center, adequately addressing vaccine equity requires raising output, deemed necessary for a more equitable response. The BU proposal calls for a simultaneous 3-pronged approach to quickly scale up vaccine supplies via:

IP constraints

financing

By contrast, CL would still require many separate, often lengthy negotiations and licensing for every patent involved in making needed items.

Massively increasing donations – especially from vaccine-hoarding and producing countries – can get many more doses to the under-vaccinated. Big rich G7 countries are still very far from meeting their own modest billion dose donation target.

COVAX, ostensibly for more equitable access to vaccines, has achieved about 10% of its promise, far less than the two billion doses pledged by year’s end. The proposed WHO moratorium on booster shots should continue until equitable vaccine access has been achieved.

Socio-economic inequalities among and within countries have also frustrated pandemic containment. Unsurprisingly, worldwide vaccine inequalities have exacerbated adverse effects. Sadly, the international community has the means, but not the political will to do the needed.

US missing leadership chance
Half a year ago, President Biden announced the US would support a vaccine patent waiver. His vaccine summit before the UN General Assembly was promising, but again did not deliver much. He can still make a world of difference, uniting the world to defeat the pandemic.

Without White House leadership, urgently needed technology sharing will not occur. As Moderna received federal government funding, the US President is legally empowered to ramp up its output and supplies, e.g., on a cost-plus basis. He could also get Moderna to enable others to quickly make vaccines needed.

Washington can thus ensure Moderna does the needed. If Biden wants to lead the world, he still has a small window of opportunity to lead and win the war against COVID-19. Not doing so will mean millions more avoidable deaths. Only together can we rise to the greatest challenge of our times.

Categories: Africa

Mental Health at a Cost, Inequality

Mon, 10/11/2021 - 19:46

Women are nearly twice as likely as men to suffer from mental illness, including depression. Credit: Unsplash /Melanie Wasser.

By External Source
Oct 11 2021 (IPS)

World Mental Health Day was on October 10, 2021. The theme for this year was “Mental Health in an unequal World”. This is an appropriate focus given the extreme inequities to access to mental health services that exist in our society.

We are three providers committed to mental health equity across the globe-in India, Uganda and the United States. While our countries and contexts may differ, our commitment to equality in Mental Health is the same. We recognize commonalities in the diverse impact that mental illness has on the most vulnerable members of our communities.

While there has been some focus on the poor access to mental health services in high income countries, between 75% to 95% of people with mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries are unable to access mental health services at all

Mental health disorders are considered the second leading cause of disease burden in terms of Years Lived with Disability (YLD) and sixth leading cause of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) in the world. Mental health and substance use disorders are a major source of disability across the globe, regardless of location or income.

While there has been some focus on the poor access to mental health services in high income countries, between 75% to 95% of people with mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries are unable to access mental health services at all. Lack of investment in mental health disproportionate to the overall health budget contributes to the mental health treatment gap.

Mental health is dependent on a milieu of advantages and disadvantages. Adversity, trauma, insecurities, poverty, power disabling environment and physical morbidities, among other factors, all contribute to poor mental health. These issues are all augmented in under-resourced areas and exacerbated among the most vulnerable.

Wealth inequality has impacted general health, including mental health. Women are nearly twice as likely as men to suffer from mental illness, including depression. This gender disparity may relate to social inequalities and living standards across nations.

While public health discourse has begun to address the mental health burden and address it, social inequalities must be understood to achieve any form of equality in the mental health landscape. Addressing disparities in mental health not only involves reducing the stigma associated with mental health diagnoses and treatment but also involves increasing access to care.

According to the United Nations, there are 9 per 100,000 mental health workers for the global population. However, when taking into account low versus high income countries this number varies substantially.

While this shows that mental health services are available, access is important in treating mental illness as well as an understanding of factors such as the social determinants of health that greatly contribute to one’s mental health.

Therefore when we attempt to reduce inequality in mental health, we must also make a worldwide commitment to promote policies that advance equality across gender, wealth, education and participation must be made to achieve the highest possible level of mental health for all people.

Reducing mental health inequalities and their impact on us is one of the most immediate problems that we face and needs urgent action. We suggest four ways to focus on mental health equity locally and globally with a greater focus on effective, pragmatic, scalable solutions that address disadvantages and foster resilience in people.

We need to co-create mental health services that integrate and not isolate people; options to access services should focus on keeping individuals within their own environment of comfort. Services should be provided to increase accessibility. This includes the provision of services at convenient locations within a community and during times beyond normal work hours, including evenings and weekends. Utilization rates will peak and mental well-being and outcomes will improve drastically.
The health care community needs to shift its mind-set to adopting holistic mental health processes and outcomes that embrace openness and creativity. Mental well-being should be normalised in the practice and policy of healthcare provision. This can help reduce the stigma associated with both seeking and providing treatment.
Communities should be engaged in grassroots efforts that focus on training members to become mental health gatekeepers and liaise with clinical practitioners. Strong and sustainable examples include Zimbabwe’s grandma benches, healing circles, and Mental Health First Aid education programs that have invested in the community to engage the solutions that best serve their purpose and needs.

Mental Health cannot be addressed in isolation since it is centered in a complex socio-cultural context. Solutions to enhance equity have to address the environmental and sociopolitical factors in play in the community and divest from oppressive systems that perpetuate marginalization of mental illness.

If the COVID-19 Pandemic and its associated lockdowns has not highlighted the urgent need to promote Mental health, then nothing will. We need to treat Mental health promotion as a public health emergency which needs immediate action necessary to generate equity in outcomes. Awareness is only the first step. High quality, affordable and normalized mental health should not be a privilege but a right, that everyone can claim.

Equal Mental Health Care for all; let’s make it a reality!

Author Biographies:

Shubha Nagesh is a medical doctor and a public health consultant and works at The Latika Roy Foundation, Dehradun, India.

Gabrielle Jackson is a licensed clinical social worker, therapist, and facilitator in private practice at Diasporic Healing LLC in Washington DC.

Rose Mary Nakame is a Registered Nurse, Public Health Specialist, and Executive Director of REMI East Africa in Kampala, Uganda.

Categories: Africa

India: Gaps in the Government’s Plan to Help Unorganised Workers

Mon, 10/11/2021 - 18:27

Effective digital intervention for unorganised workers needs to be supported by a strengthened non-digital infrastructure. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS.

By External Source
Oct 11 2021 (IPS)

The Government of India launched the e-Shram portal with the mandate of registering 380,000,000 unorganised workers in the country. The portal aims to bridge the gap in unorganised workers’ ability to access social welfare and employment benefits by issuing an e-Shram card (or Shramik card) upon registration.

This card assigns each worker a unique 12-digit number, which enables access to social security and employment benefits. The government also plans to use the data collected via the portal to create India’s first Aadhaar-seeded National Database of Unorganized Workers (NDUW).

At its core, this one-of-a-kind initiative is a welcome change as it will systematically bring unorganised workers under one umbrella. By expanding the scope of defining the term ‘worker’, it enables the inclusion of erstwhile excluded categories of domestic and migrant workers.

Failed attempts by workers to access the digital portal draws attention to the importance of strengthening non-digital infrastructure. This will improve access and effectiveness of digital interventions for the poor and marginalised unorganised workforce, whose reality is marred by a stark digital divide

The portal offers both online and offline registration routes. However, as described below, failed attempts by workers to access the digital portal draws attention to the importance of strengthening non-digital infrastructure. This will improve access and effectiveness of digital interventions for the poor and marginalised unorganised workforce, whose reality is marred by a stark digital divide.

Moreover, insights from workers attempting to access and register on the portal highlight the need for proactive and effective collaboration between employers, workers collectives, and civil society organisations (CSOs). This will help the portal deliver to its target beneficiaries.

Barriers in access to devices and the internet

Attempts to register three migrant domestic workers working in New Delhi—two from West Bengal (Amira and Nur) and one from Madhya Pradesh (Rita Devi)—shed light on the barriers in access, awareness, and ability to claim to benefits that many erstwhile excluded groups face.

The first attempt to digitally register Amira failed as she could not access the e-Shram portal using her keypad handset that had no internet. Nur was next—she was unable to access the website as the page was incompatible with her 2G internet connection and handset. And Rita, who did not have a mobile phone, relied on her employer to return her family’s calls.

Barriers in access to mobile number–seeded Aadhaar

We then tried using a desktop interface for registration. Amira was unable to register as her phone number did not match the mobile number linked to her Aadhaar. “In the migration to Delhi by train, I lost the registered number that my husband and I used… as a domestic worker, I had never used that number or Aadhaar to get any employment benefits… I didn’t know such benefits existed.”

Since Amira had not previously accessed employment welfare benefits which required mobile–Aadhaar authentication, she was unaware of the need to update her mobile number over the years. Through the process of trying to register her using Aadhaar, what Amira was most sceptical about was the misuse of her Aadhaar on an online portal that she did not have information about. She said, “This won’t take away my family’s PDS entitlements back in Bengal, right?”

For Nur and Rita, online registration on the portal failed because their Aadhaar was not attached to a mobile number. As the online e-Shram portal requires a mobile number-Aadhaar authentication, the workers were unable to use the digital intervention to their advantage.

In all three cases, failure to register online highlighted the need for workers to rely on common service centres (CSCs) and kiosks for assistance to register online and get their Aadhaar linked, thus depending on non-digital infrastructure to claim digital welfare benefits.

This is in tandem with findings from previous reports, which showcase that migrant workers’ precarity is reinforced due to the challenges they face during the process of updating their Aadhaar. Discussions with the team from Chalo Network, a financial inclusion initiative tell us that migrant workers face barriers firstly due to the limited awareness about the process, and secondly due to the time and financial cost involved.

This was especially noted during the pandemic when workers faced limited access to welfare due to issues in updating Aadhaar, which made them rely on non-digital infrastructure and intermediaries for support.

Creating an inclusive and conducive ecosystem for e-Shram beneficiaries

As the government takes steps towards building India’s Aadhaar-seeded NDUW and ease unorganised workers’ access to welfare benefits, few gaps remain to be filled. Filling these gaps is essential to effectively incorporating India’s 90 percent informal workforce that has so far remained on the margin of employment-related welfare benefits.

The government and welfare ecosystem need to address the bottlenecks which impinge on workers’ ability to effectively use the infrastructure to claim these benefits. Some key areas to be considered are:

1. Bridging the digital divide
Unorganised workers account for 92 percent of India’s workforce. In India, only 4.4 percent rural and 42 percent urban households have access to the internet, which is further skewed due to gender and regional disparity.

Poorer states like Odisha averaged at 5.8 percent internet access in rural areas while accounting for 81.5 percent unorganised workforce.
Only 21 percent women have access to mobile internet services.

In this digitally unequal landscape, the hope for an organic digital uptake of e-Shram seems a distant dream. However, the use of existing non-digital welfare infrastructure—welfare boards, fair price shops (FPS), CSC agents, and CSOs—which are present at the grassroots and have been working with unorganised workers might propel a speedy and effective uptake.

2. Reinforcing trust and reach
Historically, many unorganised wor k ers have remained outside the scope of employment-related benefits by the state. Noting their first-time inclusion, there is a need to create awareness and trust among the beneficiaries and the employment ecosystem about the advantages of registering on the portal.

As informality remains a feature of not merely state-worker relations but also worker-employer relations, it is important to reinforce trust among workers and their employers about the merits that the initiative holds. Here, grounded awareness campaigns with the use of multilingual posters and voice-based awareness initiatives will encourage registration uptake, especially among migrants, women, and adolescents workers, who presently remain marginalised due to literacy and language constraints.

3. Strengthening non-digital infrastructure
Effective digital intervention for unorganised workers needs to be supported by a strengthened non-digital infrastructure. To create impact at scale, the government should invest in the training and capacity building of non-digital infrastructure, including CSC and kiosks, which will be the first step for workers to use the portal effectively.

Additionally, the existing network of last-mile delivery agents from other government interventions such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), and Public Distribution System (PDS), among others, can be capitalised to create awareness and reach beneficiaries.

4. Avoiding workers’ self-selection out of the benefits
The e-Shram portal extends social welfare benefits to categories such as domestic and migrant workers, who so far have been excluded from the welfare infrastructure. It calls for special attention to be given to promote awareness about entitlements among workers whose labour has been excluded both in the policy and societal realm.

Accounting for the historical gendered exclusion of women’s domestic work in the realm of policy, a majority of domestic workers remain unaware of their rights and the entitlements they are eligible for. This is worse when workers are migrants in destination states where they have limited bargaining power vis-a-vis their employers. In this context, a proactive awareness campaign will help avoid workers’ self-exclusion and promote equitable inclusion as beneficiaries.

5. Integrating employers and CSOs as stakeholders
Lastly, noting the informal relation between employers and employees in the unorganised sector, it is critical to work with CSOs, employers, and intermediaries such as thekedars and contractors to enable an ecosystem that focuses on benefits to workers.

Nudging employers to encourage registration may potentially benefit the uptake, along with creating more awareness about the entitlements that unorganised workers can benefit from, without any penalty to employers. In particular, CSO integration with e-Shram can be seen in two ways.

First, by enabling workers access through non-governmental volunteer-based registration in their existing programmes. Second, by partnering with CSOs for effective delivery of benefits, similar to previous attempts in the health and education domains. Effective grassroots integration can provide a pathbreaking space for collaboration and strengthening of the welfare ecosystem for unorganised workers.

Harshita Sinha is a PhD Candidate at the London School of Economics working on migrant workers and the Indian informal labour market. She is also a migration fellow with India Migration Now and Bandhu Urban Tech. Her work looks at the intersection of citizenship and informal labour regimes in urban destination states. She has recently curated Voices of Informality, a knowledge platform which aims to bring forth grassroots stories on informality for practice-based action.

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

Categories: Africa

Day of the Girl Child: A Digital Generation Where Every Girl Counts

Mon, 10/11/2021 - 12:27

“People say that boys work in technology, but I think girls can also do it because when I started working on it, I really enjoyed it and it inspired me for the future, " says one of the Junior Regional Winners of the 2021 Technovation challenge, a UNDP supported programme that invites girls and young women to work in teams to code mobile applications and help solve real-world problems through technology. Day of the Girl Child October 11 Credit: UN Technovation

By Mirjana Spoljaric Egger
NEW YORK, Oct 11 2021 (IPS)

The theme of this year’s annual International Day of the Girl Child, on October 11, “Digital generation. Our generation.”, recognizes the digital transformation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. But while the pandemic accelerated the transition to online learning, working and networking, it also accelerated women and girl’s risk of being left behind.

In 2020, more than 60 million women in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) had no access to the mobile internet and so, were more likely than men to miss out on learning and working opportunities.

Access, ownership and use of digital tools are not gender-neutral: For instance, parents may be stricter with girls than boys in the use of mobile phones and activities that require the use of the internet, while households with limited computing resources might redirect these to boys and men over girls and women, often tasked with domestic chores and unpaid work. Factors such as affordability and cost also affect women and girls disproportionally.

Moreover, social norms, gender bias and a lack of support from the family and teachers often dissuade girls and women from choosing education programmes in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and from pursuing careers in these fields.

19-year-old South African girl Sebabatso Ncephe (left) developed an app – Afya Yangu, or “My Health” in Swahili. By allowing hospitals to directly communicate with patients, the app helps patients maintain privacy and dignity. Credit: UNICEF/Mosibudi Ratlebjane

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, one in three girls report being discouraged by their families from choosing STEM subjects more broadly at university, while in Ukraine 23 percent of women aged 15-24 report a lack of self-confidence as the main reason for not pursuing a career in technology. With fewer women pursuing STEM fields, the scarcity of women role models for the younger generation persists, reinforcing the problem.

Gender equality in STEM

We must all join forces to advance gender equality in STEM. Measures include removing gender stereotypes in education, raising awareness and promoting STEM subjects to girls and women, and offering career guidance to encourage girls to consider studying in fields dominated by men.

Our regional advocacy platform, STEM4All, is engaging with multiple partners – from policymakers and academic institutions to women and girls themselves– in sharing knowledge, building coalitions and making connections to advance gender equality in STEM.

Earlier this year, the platform facilitated a ‘Girls in Tech: Central Asia’ event, which brought together leaders from the tech industry and ICT role models to share experiences and offer advice to more than 120 girls and women in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

One of our goals in the platform is to profile high-impact initiatives by our partners, government, and the private sector. For instance, the Engineer Girls of Turkey project is a wonderful model of how we can increase the employability of qualified women in engineering with scholarships, internships and mentoring, and coaching support.

In Azerbaijan, UNDP has partnered with USAID in piloting a nine-month mentorship programme to equip young women and girls with tools and advice to progress in STEM fields. The platform is powered by the Accelerator Labs, a UNDP learning network created to accelerate progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Future of work

While the demand for workers in STEM occupations is only expected to grow in the future, in Europe and Central Asia, the share of women researchers in engineering and technology crosses 40 percent only in a few countries. The number of women in computer science is also particularly low compared to men: women are only 18 percent of ICT specialists in the EU, while just 16 percent of founders in the ICT and tech fields in Southern Caucasus and Western CIS are women.

Cultural and social norms, a lack of childcare support, and inadequate parental leave policies are major barriers to women entering and progressing in careers of their choice. These obstacles are amplified manifold in STEM fields, whose men-dominated workplaces and entrenched gender stereotypes present formidable impediments for many talented women.

Gender equality in STEM and in the future of work is a goal unto itself. We cannot deny half of humanity the opportunity to enter and succeed in this high-growth sector which powers the green and digital transition.

But there are also compelling economic and social reasons for us to strive towards this goal.

In the EU, for example, closing the gender gap in STEM could lead to an additional 1.2 million jobs. More women graduating in STEM subjects and choosing careers in higher-wage sectors can gradually increase their average earnings, helping to close the gender wage gap.

The world and the future of work need women’s skills and perspectives, talent and leadership, as much as those of men. This requires all our concerted actions to close the gender digital gap and leverage the power of technology to advance girls’ and women’s education, leadership and equal future.

Mirjana Spoljaric Egger is Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, Assistant Administrator of UNDP, and Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS. She was appointed to this position by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in August 2018 and assumed her duties in October 2018.

Categories: Africa

China and the UN at 50- What We Can Achieve Together

Mon, 10/11/2021 - 12:10

Delegation of the People’s Republic of China making its debut at the UN Assembly Hall. Credit: Xinhua

By Siddharth Chatterjee
BEIJING, Oct 11 2021 (IPS)

China was one of the architects of the United Nations and was the first signatory of the UN Charter in San Francisco in 1945.

But it was only in October 1971, with the Chinese delegation led by Mr. Qiao Guanhua, that China’s representation at the UN resumed. Since that time, the UN has had the great privilege of witnessing and supporting China in achieving one of the greatest periods of socio-economic progress in world history.

Now, on the 50th anniversary of China in the UN, I am honoured to serve as the UN Resident Coordinator, a post I took earlier this year.

While I took up my post in Beijing on 08 February 2021, I am only just beginning to understand its rich tapestry of over 5,000 years of civilization. The UN in China has had the privilege to shape and witness the profound economic and social transformations that have occurred since reform and opening-up.

As we commemorate a half-century of cooperation, a question naturally emerges: Which way now for the UN and China?

This is a weighty question, as China and the world are at a critical juncture. Tentatively emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, but with many countries still struggling terribly. Staring down the threats of climate change, with record-setting heat, fires, storms, and other disasters. Counting down the years in this “Decade of Action” to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

China’s standard-setting leadership in past decades gives me confidence that we can achieve even greater things in the years to come.

CHINA’S RECORD-BREAKING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening-up Policy began to transform the nation, as evidenced, for example, in Shenzhen, which changed from a fishing village on the Pearl River Delta into an international hub for research and innovation in a single generation.

And in 1979, China chose to accept development assistance from the UN, learning from its long experience in poverty alleviation and industrial and agricultural growth.

China’s success in the more than 40 years since then has been nothing short of miraculous. During this time, China:

The signs of this progress are evident not just in statistics, but in daily quality-of-life matters. Throughout China now lie the classic hallmarks of a market economy, with opulent shops from luxury brands, foreign and domestic. A far cry from what I saw as a young boy growing up near Chinatown in my native Kolkata, India, though fondly remembered as a warren of alleys, narrow aisles of food markets, elderly men playing board games in parks, with Chinese characters on the signs overhead.

For example, in Beijing during the early 1980s, cabbage was often the only vegetable on menus. With help from the UN’s development agency in China, availability at markets expanded — supporting the diversification of domestic vegetables and introducing new ones from abroad, such as broccoli.

This startling success is on track to continue. China’s per capita GDP is projected to more than double by 2025, reaching over $25,000, adjusted for purchasing power. The country’s surging economy is set to overtake 56 countries in the world’s per-capita income rankings during the quarter-century through 2025, the International Monetary Fund projects.

No less an authority than Professor Jeffrey Sachs, a United Nations SDG Advocate and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, has called China an “inspiration” in stopping the pandemic and ending poverty.

This progress is all the more remarkable considering the hit that the pandemic has delivered to the global economy. China’s generosity and leadership on this front are commendable.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the 9th World Peace Forum in Beijing “to build a “Great Wall of Immunity” to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still, challenges remain. As with any economy at this stage of development, the relentless pursuit of high growth is reaching its natural limits, and China faces new economic, social, and environmental challenges.

NEW PRIORITIES FOR AGENDA 2030 AND BEYOND

The UN Sustainable Development Goals are meant to be achieved by the year 2030, and we are now in what is called the “Decade of Action.” I see three areas for close cooperation at this critical juncture.

First, a new sustainable development model. The Government recognizes slower economic growth as the “new normal.” Changing demographic, labour, and investment realities present China with new obstacles in addressing food security, pervasive inequalities, and cost-effectiveness in universal healthcare.

In a post-Xiaokang society, China needs to embrace innovations and services that drive equitable and inclusive progress, dealing with the legacies of rapid expansion to achieve the SDGs and leave no one behind.

Second, climate change. As a consequence of its large population and economy, China is the world’s single largest emitter of carbon dioxide, responsible for a quarter of global emissions. Having recognized the environmental costs of this development model, President Xi Jinping has set a bold ambition for China to hit peak carbon emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060.

This enormous feat will require a massive transition in how China’s economy works and its population lives every day. Seismic shifts in investments and technologies will be needed. Here, China’s recent pledge to end all financing of coal plants abroad and redirect its support for developing countries towards green and low carbon energy is most welcome.

We will need to sustain this momentum ahead of and following the COP 15 UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, the second UN Sustainable Transport Conference in Beijing, and the COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.

Third, multilateralism. China is a champion for multilateral efforts to address global challenges. China has the will, knowledge, and resources to contribute enormously to the SDGs and position itself as an exceptional member of the community of nations.

As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has described, “In its successful efforts in the fight against extreme poverty, China’s accomplishments in the past decades set a powerful example that can be shared with other countries, through South-South Cooperation”.

Today, China is the second-largest contributor to the UN peacekeeping budget and has sent more peacekeepers to UN missions than any other permanent member of the Security Council. China also played a vital role in shaping the consensus needed for the SDGs and the Paris Agreement.

Future efforts should emphasize initiatives that expand vaccine access, grant debt relief to lower-income countries, and provide sustainable financing for infrastructure and climate efforts.

On this front, we hope the Global Development Initiative announced by President Xi Jinping recently will accelerate needed international cooperation efforts and we extend our support to contribute our expertise, in line with international norms and standards.

CHINA AND THE UNITED NATIONS

The United Nations family in China is in lockstep with China’s vision. The 2030 Agenda and the recently agreed-upon Country Framework are the blueprints for building on the gains of the past.

In this Decade of Action to achieve the SDGs, the UN can support this ambition and convene, connect and catalyze stakeholders in leveraging China’s development experience to benefit other countries, especially those in Africa, in the spirit of South-South Cooperation.

As the world deals with the pandemic, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres put forward a “Common Agenda” at the 76th Session of the General Assembly, where he said, “We face a moment of truth. Now is the time to deliver…restore trust…[and] inspire hope. Humanity has shown that we are capable of great things when we work together. That is the raison d’être of our United Nations”.

October 2021 will also be time for the UN and China to celebrate our 50-year relationship. China and the UN will reimagine, innovate, reinvigorate and continue the hard and daily work and dedicate ourselves anew to creating lasting prosperity for the people of China and all the world.

The author is Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in China

Categories: Africa

When Girls Have Access to Technologies, A True Digital Revolution Will Be In Sight

Mon, 10/11/2021 - 09:12

2.2 billion young people below the age of 25 don't have internet connections at home, and girls are more likely to lack access. Young girls in Guinea. Credit: Karl Grobl/EDC

By Margaret Butler, Julia Fan, and Amy West
NEW YORK, Oct 11 2021 (IPS)

This year’s International Day of the Girl theme, Digital Generation, Our Generation, celebrates the potential of digital technologies while calling for the inclusion of all girls in accessing technology. The digital revolution will not be realized if girls without access to digital solutions are left behind. For years, advocates of technology for development have been repeating the mantra that technology is not a panacea. Yet in racing to connect, catch up, and create greater access, we ignore at our own peril the inconsistent or non-existent household- and community-level access girls have to technologies. While digital solutions are available and evolving all the time, they should be accompanied by hybrid methods which include new ways to use analog technologies, so that existing local resources are reimagined and redistributed in ways that support more girls learning.

If we want to ensure equal access to technology to close the gender digital divide, these on-the-ground realities are critical to decision-making and planning. To be clear, the global COVID-19 pandemic amplified digital platforms for learning, training, and connecting, but at the same time some 2.2 billion young people below the age of 25 still do not have internet access at home. Girls do not have equal access to or equal ownership of phones or tablets in the home, and they lack opportunities to gain the digital literacy, which would enable them to grow their own learning, expand their information sources, or communicate with others. The gender digital divide has increased in recent years, with only 15% of women in lower- and middle- income countries using the internet. Globally, girls have significantly less access to the internet, tablets, mobile phones, radio, and television than boys, further exacerbated by household poverty levels, geography, disability, and competing social cultural norms. An estimated 52% of girls have to borrow a mobile phone if they want access compared to 28% of boys. These technological gender gaps are most often due to girls and women lacking access, skills, familiarity with tools, representation and participation in STEM, and leadership and resource support to become champions within the technology sector.

The Coalition for Adolescent Girls (CAG), which is made up of 76 organizations around the world that work with and for girls, has seen the effectiveness of hybrid approaches to technology solutions firsthand. Several of its members focus on strengthening the enabling environments that will reach and retain girls as participants in digital education, health and wellbeing interventions, and youth development opportunities that leverage existing local resources that are fit-for-purpose.

At AMPLIFY Girls, a CAG member based in Kenya, recent research in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda demonstrates that for girls, lack of access to remote virtual learning tools and resources is a clear barrier to staying in or returning to school. Girls do not have regular use of remote learning devices, such as radios, television, smart phones, or computers to participate in virtual classrooms. When directly asked about government-sponsored radio or television lessons, girls said that they did not participate because there was no radio or TV at home. For those that did have a radio or TV at home, a male family member had priority access and they were burdened regularly with household chores.

African organizations are often overlooked as innovators in the technology space, yet are providing contextually relevant services to close the gender digital divide. AkiraChix in Kenya recruits young women from the most remote communities in eastern Africa and invests in year-long training to help them successfully launch their careers in technology. Jifundishe runs an independent study program that young mothers, historically banned from returning to school in Tanzania, can access to complete both secondary and tertiary education through self-paced learning.

In the Philippines, another CAG member, Education Development Center (EDC), conducted early assessments on gendered use and access of technologies only to learn that few girls own computers or tablets in rural areas in particular, making it difficult to access virtual education and training offerings. Skills development training and materials in those contexts, therefore, have been disseminated through a blended learning approach comprising paper-based, self-directed curriculum for home-based learning, reinforced by interactive audio instruction and home visits by peer leaders and mentors (among these, women).

EDC also utilizes interactive audio instruction and blended learning at-scale to strengthen access and learning of soft skills, literacy and work readiness—this has been particularly valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic, where in-person learning has come to a standstill. In Uganda, EDC has delivered a combination of interactive audio instruction and small group-based home learning activities, including HIV/GBV prevention and life skills curriculum to reinforce household protection messages and mitigate the high risks faced by girls during the pandemic. Radio remains an accessible and low-cost analog method for achieving learning and health messaging at scale.

Research by CAG members Women Deliver and Girl Effect in India, Malawi, and Rwanda show that digital technologies also hold promise for increasing access to sexual and reproductive health information for girls, but this increased information alone is not enough to produce improved health outcomes. While girls may access health information online, girls are wary of acting on that information because they are unsure of its validity and accuracy, as well as fear social stigma. Linking online information to appropriate youth-friendly medical and community services allows girls to verify that information and seek care.

As these examples and research demonstrate, hybrid digital and analog solutions are not only the most inclusive, but also lead to improved learning and development outcomes, especially for girls. Indeed, digital access is critical to development and innovation. But we should not throw any technology – old or new – at a challenge without ensuring that girls and boys return to school, and have equal access to the content, the tools, and the skilled and knowledgeable teachers and mentors who are vital to sustained uptake and learning outcomes.

On this International Day of the Girl, we call for the broadest access possible to critical health information and education, and we emphasize the importance of contextual relevance in choosing what tools – whether analog or digital – are most effective in achieving impact. If we do this, we create greater opportunities for girls to engage with learning first and then technologies, which ultimately will strengthen multiple development outcomes.

The authors are Margaret Butler of AMPLIFY Girls, Julia Fan of Women Deliver, and Amy West of Education Development Center. Amplify Girls, Education Development Center, and Women Deliver are active members in the Coalition for Adolescent Girls (CAG), a member-led and driven organization dedicated to supporting, investing in, and improving the lives of adolescent girls.

Categories: Africa

UN Chief, in an Unprecedented War of Words, Battles it out with a Member State

Mon, 10/11/2021 - 08:45

Food is distributed to people in the Afar region of Ethiopia.

The first round of food distributions to people in Afar and Amhara regions impacted by the spread of the conflict in northern Ethiopia has been completed, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on October 5. However, distributions of supplies into Tigray are lagging behind due to various impediments to the movement of humanitarian aid, the UN agency warned. Credit: WFP/Claire Nevill

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 2021 (IPS)

A growing diplomatic battle is being played out at the United Nations between Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and one of the world body’s member states: the politically-troubled Ethiopia which is desperately in need of international humanitarian assistance.

But the war of words – in an institution where the Secretary-General is traditionally considered subservient to all 193 member states – is rare by UN standards forcing Guterres to exercise his “right of reply” in the Security Council, the most powerful body at the UN.

When the Secretary-General was confronted with a question at a news briefing last week specifically about his right of reply “which we had never –ever— seen in the Security Council”, it triggered the question: “is this an expression of the level of your displeasure, at the moment, with the Ethiopian Ambassador?”

“It is my duty to defend the honor of the United Nations,” Guterres shot back.

The brouhaha followed the Ethiopian government’s decision last week to declare seven UN officials, mostly doling out humanitarian assistance, ”persona non grata” (PNG).

In international diplomacy, PNG is based on the principle of reciprocity: “you expel our diplomats and we expel yours” as evidenced during the Cold War era between the UN and the then Soviet Union.

In a May 2018 piece, a former Diplomatic Editor of The Times Michael Binyon pointed out that expelling diplomats en masse became a characteristic of the Cold War, when diplomats from the Soviet Union and its allies were often suspected of being intelligence agents and were ordered to leave – usually after a spy scandal.

Inevitably, the Russians and their allies retaliated, kicking out western diplomats. The largest single expulsion was in 1971, when Britain’s Conservative government expelled 90 of the Soviet Union’s 550-stong embassy in London and stopped a further 15 diplomats from returning.

But the UN does not have diplomatic reciprocity, nor does Guterres have the power or the authority to expel Ethiopian diplomats either from the UN or from New York city.

The Ethiopians say the seven UN officials were booted out of the country because they “interfered in the domestic affairs of Ethiopia”.

But as of Friday, there was no response from Ethiopia to the Secretary-General’s request for concrete evidence for the expulsion.

Guterres also argues that the concept of persona non grata applies to relations between sovereign nations, not relations between the UN and its member states.

Ambassador Taye Atske-Selassie Amde of Ethiopia said his country was not under any legal obligation to justify or explain its decisions, and listed allegations of “misconduct” by UN officials.

The dispute was apparently triggered by the fact that the UN was also providing humanitarian assistance to rebel forces in a country where nearly seven million people require such aid.

When it provides urgently-needed food and medicine, the UN says, its distribution is not guided by politics, but by human factors.

Kul Gautam, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, a UN agency which has provided humanitarian assistance to millions of people world-wide, told IPS: “Yes, I am aware of several UNICEF and UN Reps being PNG’ed, but never did the UN take as strong and categoric public position as in this case”.

In the past, he said, the UN Secretaries-General and heads of agencies have protested and condemned such expulsions, “but I do not recall the UN ever questioning the offending government’s right to declare UN international staff persona non grata.”

Thus, it came as a (pleasant) surprise that in the case, involving UN staff PNGed by the Ethiopian government, the Secretary-General made a bold public statement questioning the actions and statements of the Ethiopian government both to the media and at the UN Security Council.

“I hope and trust that the S-G’s new-found position has been carefully reviewed and corroborated by the UN Legal Office and that it will be sustained –if the case were challenged at the International Court of Justice.”

In the past, Gautam pointed out, UN staff being PNGed by authoritarian governments for taking a principled stand in the best interest of the UN or the causes they serve (e.g. the best interest of children, in the case of UNICEF), was often seen as a badge of honour for the staff member concerned.

After all, UN staff pledge their allegiance to the UN Charter that speaks of “We the peoples of the United Nations”, and not “We the governments of the United Nations”.

And UN staff are specifically barred from taking instructions by their national governments or host country governments, he argued.

Humanitarian aid being delivered to the Tigray region of Ethiopia by a convoy of 50 trucks last month. UN appeals for faster passage for aid convoys to Ethiopia’s Tigray. Credit: WFP

“Some governments would prefer that the UN and its agencies simply send them a cheque as part of their cooperation. But the UN General Assembly as well as the governing boards of UN agencies, Funds and Programs expect the UN staff on the ground to carefully monitor the utilization and effectiveness of the support they provide,“ he said.

“Let us hope that the UN S-G’s well-considered response to the unilateral action by the Ethiopian government will lead to empowering UN international civil servants to carry out their humanitarian and development activities without any fear or favour in the best interest of the people to whom such support is intended.”

Thomas G. Weiss, Presidential Professor of Political Science and Director Emeritus, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, told IPS “Lots of UN officials have been declared PNG by a country in which they were posted. SGs sometimes complain and sometimes keep quiet”.

Stephen Zunes, a Foreign Policy in Focus columnist and senior analyst, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council, told IPS: “I cannot recall any previous time a Secretary General has exercised his right to reply.”

But this is not the first time UN officials have been expelled or declared persona non grata, he pointed out.

Most recently, Morocco expelled most of the MINURSO peacekeepers from occupied Western Sahara and invoked PNG status on the Secretary General’s Personal Envoy Christopher Ross.

The difference is that with Morocco and with the other previous cases, the government in question had at least one permanent member of the UN Security Council as a staunch ally, thereby limiting the Secretary General’s ability to confront them so decisively, said Zunes.

“This unprecedented action regarding Ethiopia may be as much a reflection of Ethiopia’s relative diplomatic isolation as it is the seriousness of their anti-UN action,” said Zunes, a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco.

Gautam said, Ethiopian Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Abiy Ahmed, like Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, has deeply disappointed the international community by committing or condoning serious human rights violations against the people of an ethnic minority community in his own country.

The fact that some militants within the ethnic community may also have committed atrocities, does not justify the harsh and disproportionate actions against innocent civilians by the ruling government of a democratic state which must be held to a higher standard, he argued.

“While there have been several cases of UN officials expelled from various countries by authoritarian governments, Ethiopia declaring as many as seven UN officials providing humanitarian assistance as persona non grata (PNG) on seemingly trumped-up charges, is unprecedented.”

Also unprecedented is the position taken by the UN Secretary-General, whose spokesperson stated that “…it is the long standing legal position of the Organization not to accept the application of the doctrine of persona non grata with respect to United Nations officials”.

He went on to say that “This is a doctrine that applies to diplomatic agents accredited by one state to another state. The application of this doctrine to United Nations officials is contrary to obligations under the Charter of the United Nations and the privileges and immunities to be accorded to the United Nations and its officials”.

Categories: Africa

Pandemic Highlights Urgent Need to Improve Sanitation in Brazil

Fri, 10/08/2021 - 18:58

Many people living on the banks of rivers in the Amazon rainforest live in stilt houses over the water. Water into which garbage and other waste is dumped – the same water that is used for human consumption, with important consequences on their health, whose magnitude was underlined by the Covid pandemic. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RÍO DE JANEIRO, Oct 8 2021 (IPS)

Basic sanitation, a sector that is undervalued because, according to politicians, it does not bring in votes, has gained relevance in Brazil due to the pandemic that has hit the poor especially hard and the drought that threatens millions of people.

Brazil has made very little progress in sewerage construction in the last decade. In 2010, only 45.4 percent of the population had sewer service, a proportion that rose to 54.1 percent in 2019. Access to treated water increased from 81 to 83.7 percent in the same period.

During that time, however, hospitalisations due to waterborne diseases decreased by 54.7 percent, from 603,623 to 273,403, according to the study “Sanitation and Waterborne Diseases” by the Trata Brasil Institute, released on Oct. 5 in the city of São Paulo.

Among children under four, who represent 30 percent of the patients requiring hospital admission, the reduction was slightly more pronounced, 59.1 percent.

“The data make it clear that any improvement in the public’s access to drinking water, collection and treatment of wastewater results in great benefits to public health,” the Institute’s president, Édison Carlos, stated in the report.

Covid-19 has underscored the country’s social and economic inequalities by disproportionately affecting the poor, who for one thing are the least likely to have sewerage services.

This is reflected in the distribution of basic sanitation infrastructure by region in Brazil. In the North, only 12.3 percent of the population was served by a sewer system in 2019, the last year data was available from the governmental National Sanitation Information System (SNIS), which served as the basis for the study.

As a result, it is the region with the highest rate of hospitalisations, 22.9 per 10,000 inhabitants. It is also the region that concentrates the country’s most generous water resources, as it is located entirely in the Amazon basin.

But the presence of so many large rivers does not mean the local population has drinking water. In fact only a little more than half of the population has access to clean water.

The result is a high incidence of diarrhea, dengue fever, leptospirosis, schistosomiasis, malaria and yellow fever, all of which are waterborne diseases.

One of the favelas or shantytowns of São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, where local residents have turned a stream into an open-air garbage dump and a source of frequent flooding due to lack of sewage and garbage collection. Nor do favelas in Brazil’s cities have piped water. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

At the other extreme, the Northeast region suffers from water scarcity in most of its semiarid territory. With only 28.3 percent of the local population served by sewer systems and 73.9 percent with access to treated water, it recorded 19.9 cases of hospitalisation per 10,000 inhabitants in 2019.

Part of the progress in sanitation in the region is due to the more than 1.2 million rainwater storage tanks that have been set up in rural areas by the Articulação do Semiárido (ASA), a network of 3,000 social organisations created in 1999.

The semiarid ecoregion, an area of 1,130,000 square kilometres (most of it in the Northeast) that is home to 27 million people, suffered the longest drought on record from 2012 to 2017, and even until 2019 in some parts.

But this time the hunger, violence and exodus to other regions triggered by similar calamities in the past did not occur.

Disparities in health

A comparison of Brazil’s 26 states reveals more alarming disparities. The northeastern state of Maranhão, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, registered 54.04 hospitalisations per 10,000 inhabitants, far higher than its Amazonian neighbour to the west, Pará, with 32.62.

“Maranhão faces huge challenges in sanitation, as does Pará, but it has higher population density, more people living close together and in contact with dirty water in the open air, for example. Its beaches, often polluted by irregular waste, are another factor to consider,” said Rubens Filho, head of communications at the Trata Brasil Institute and coordinator of its new study.

At the other end of the scale, Rio de Janeiro stands out with the lowest rate of hospitalisations, only 2.84 per 10,000 inhabitants, even though some of its low-income municipalities are among those with the poorest sanitation coverage.

“It is possible that some municipalities do not register cases of waterborne diseases or that people do not seek medical assistance,” Filho told IPS from São Paulo, in an attempt to put the low rate of hospitalisations into context.

“Above and beyond the differences between states, Brazil still has more than 270,000 hospitalisations for preventable diseases; these are costs that could be drastically reduced if everyone had sanitation coverage,” he stressed.

Rainwater harvesting tanks are now part of the landscape in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast, thanks to recent initiatives to help people live with drought. There are some 200,000 tanks for irrigating crops, like those of farmer Abel Manto, and 1.2 million to store drinking water. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The North and Northeast are the poorest regions in the country, despite the enormous contrast in terms of their ecosystems – rainforest vs semiarid. They are both far from the goal of near universal sanitation in the country by 2033, set by a law – the Legal Framework for Sanitation – passed in 2020.

More precisely, the aim is to bring treated water to 99 percent of the population and sewerage to 90 percent in this enormous country of 213 million people.

The three regions least affected by the lack of such infrastructure, the Midwest, South and Southeast, are suffering this year from the effects of reduced rainfall, apparently due to climate change and no longer to occasional, short-lived droughts.

The low rainfall began in 2020 and since then has caused interruptions in the water supply in cities such as Curitiba, capital of the southern state of Paraná, and an increase in forest fires in the Pantanal, wetlands on the border with Bolivia and Paraguay, and in the southern Amazon jungle.

This year, many cities in the southeastern state of São Paulo began rationing water. In the state capital, São Paulo, and surrounding urban areas, the local sanitation company reduces the pressure in the pipes at night, a measure that prevents leaks but leaves some areas without water.

The fear is that there will be a repeat of the 2014 and 2015 water shortage crisis, which was similar to other shortages that have occurred this century. Twenty years ago a similar drought caused blackouts and ushered in energy rationing for nine months, starting in June 2001.

Brazil depends heavily on rivers for its electricity supply. Even though the proportion was much higher two decades ago, hydroelectric power plants still account for 63 percent of total installed generation capacity.

Reforestation and recovery of springs and headwaters have become part of the country’s sanitation and energy policy.

The frequency of droughts in south-central Brazil confirms the role of the lush Amazon rainforest in increasing rainfall in large areas of this country and neighbouring Argentina and Paraguay.

So-called “flying rivers” carry moisture from the Amazon to South America’s most productive agricultural lands and to watersheds that play a key role in the production of hydroelectricity. But deforestation of the world’s largest tropical forest is taking its toll.

A view of the shantytown in São Bernardo do Campo, the hub of Brazil’s automobile industry, near São Paulo. A common sight in the poor neighbourhoods in Brazil’s cities: unpainted cinderblock houses are stacked on top of each other over streams, into which they dump their debris and garbage. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Lessons learned from Covid-19

Covid-19 has highlighted the urgent need for sanitation. There is a consensus among epidemiologists that the lack of sanitation is one of the factors in the unequal spread and lethality of the coronavirus, to the detriment of the poor, by limiting access to proper hygiene as a preventive measure.

With 598,152 deaths recognised by the Ministry of Health up to Oct. 4, Brazil’s death toll is second only to that of the United States, which counts more than 703,000 deaths due to Covid. But in proportional terms, 280 Brazilians have died per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 214 in the U.S., according to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland., which keeps a global record on the pandemic.

The need for improved sanitation infrastructure is also gaining momentum for financial reasons. Brazil’s states, whose governments control the main sanitation companies, see privatisation as a source of revenue to overcome their fiscal imbalance and possibly give the sector a boost.

The 2020 Legal Framework for Sanitation encourages the concession of the service to the private sector as a way to attract investment and meet the goal of near universal coverage.

Companies in four Brazilian states have already been privatised. In Rio de Janeiro, on Apr. 30, 2021, the sanitation services of three of the four areas into which the state was divided will be handed over to private groups for 4.2 billion dollars, 133 percent more than expected.

The fourth area is to be privatised later this year. The 35-year concession requires larger investments than the sums paid for the operation of the services.

Cleaning up rivers, lakes and bays, expanding and repairing the pipeline network, improving water quality and reducing distribution losses, estimated at 41 percent, are tasks that will fall to the new owners.

Categories: Africa

Rural Communities in El Salvador United to Supply Water for Themselves – VIDEO

Fri, 10/08/2021 - 18:02

The well of the community water system in Cangrejera, in central El Salvador, is 60 metres deep, and a 20-horsepower motor drives the pump that directs the liquid to a tank four kilometres uphill. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
LA LIBERTAD, El Salvador, Oct 8 2021 (IPS)

As the saying goes, united we stand, divided we fall, hundreds of families in rural communities in El Salvador are standing together to gain access to drinking water.

The Salvadoran state fails to fulfill its responsibility to provide the resource to the entire population, and the families, faced with the lack of service in the countryside, have organized in “Juntas de Agua”: rural water boards that are community associations that on their own manage to drill a well and build a tank and the rest of the system.

It is estimated that in El Salvador there are about 2,500 rural water boards, which provide service to 25 percent of the population, or some 1.6 million people, according to data from the non-governmental Foro del Agua (Water Forum), which promotes equitable and participatory water management.

One of those community systems has been set up in the small village of Desvío de Amayo, in the canton of Cangrejera, part of the municipality and department of La Libertad, on the central coastal strip of El Salvador.

The system provides water to 468 families in Desvío de Amayo and eight other nearby villages.

“Governments have the constitutional obligation to provide drinking water in each country, but when they are not able to do it, as it happens here, the families decided to meet to take decisions and seek support either from NGOs or municipal governments to set up drinking water projects”, José Dolores Romero, treasurer of the Cangrejera Drinking Water Association, told IPS.

Created in the 1980s, this board finally obtained in 2010 a contribution of US$ 117,000 from the National Administration of Aqueducts and Sewers (Anda), the sector’s authority, for the expansion and improvement of its network infrastructure, he explained.

For more information, you can read an article on the subject of this video here.

As agreed by those involved in this effort, each family pays seven dollars for 20 cubic meters a month. If they consume more than that, they pay 50 cents per cubic meter.

“We benefit from the water, it is a great thing to have it at home, because we no longer have to go to the river, remember that we cannot go there because it overflows during the rainy season, so this community system benefits us a lot”, María Ofelia Pineda, from the village of Las Victorias, told IPS, while washing a frying pan and other dishes.

“Before, we had two or three hours of water during the day, and now we have it all day long, I am very happy for that, because I have it all day and all night,” said Ana María Landaverde.

Categories: Africa

Mounting Scramble for Coronavirus Vaccines in Zimbabwe

Fri, 10/08/2021 - 14:39

Zimbabweans readily join the COVID-19 vaccine queues, but the rollout hasn’t been smooth. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Zimbabwe , Oct 8 2021 (IPS)

More than a month ago, she lost her parents, brother, and wife, to the coronavirus. Then her fiancé battled COVID-19, but 27-year-old Melinda Gavi said she had not contracted the disease.

Gavi joined crowds scrambling to get vaccinated at Parirenyatwa hospital in the Zimbabwean capital Harare even though she was previously sceptical about getting vaccinated against the dreaded disease.

Her parents, brother, and wife were equally sceptical of the COVID-19 vaccines before they were visited by the disease, which eventually claimed their lives.

In a country of about 15 million people, nearly 5.5 million have had at least had one dose of the vaccine the Reuters COVID-19 tracker, which assuming that each person needs two doses, represents 18.8% of the population.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed in October that Zimbabwe had received 943 200 COVID-19 vaccine doses from the global COVAX Facility in September and October for its ongoing vaccination campaign.

IPS has been following the rollout of the vaccines in various centres over the past few months, recording people’s personal experiences in the queues.

Gavi says it has taken her days to get vaccinated.

“This is my third day coming here at Parirenyatwa to try and get vaccinated,” Gavi told IPS as she stood in a long and meandering queue at Zimbabwe’s biggest hospital.

About 200 people gathered at the back of the hospital, some looking tired as they lingered in the queue. Some sat on the pavements and or flower beds, waiting for their turn to get vaccinated in the slow-moving queue.

“We have limited vaccines, and often on a day we are vaccinating just 80 people and everybody else often just goes back home without getting vaccinated,” a nurse who refused to be named as she was unauthorised to speak to the media, told IPS.

In February this year, Zimbabwe began vaccinating its citizens against coronavirus after receiving a donation of 200 000 doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine.

But when the vaccine first arrived, it was met with growing scepticism from social media platforms like WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook, which fuelled the vaccine hesitancy.

This is no longer the case. Now healthcare workers have to battle hordes of people scrambling for the vaccine.

“With time, as more and more people got vaccinated without severe safety fears, the public became more assured, and demand for vaccines gradually started to rise,” said epidemiologist Dr Grant Murewanhema in Harare.

In Bulawayo, on July 8, in the presence of IPS, at the United Bulawayo Hospital, a nurse moved along the queue of people waiting to get vaccinated, counting up to 60 recipients. She told the rest to return the next day.

She told them she only had enough vaccines for 60 people.

At number 60 was 47-year-old Jimmy Dzingai, who said he was a truck driver.

“Oh, better, at least I am going to get vaccinated,” said Dzingai then as he heaved a sigh of relief, folding his hands across his chest.

Meanwhile, as they were told to leave, others did so but grumbled as they filed outside the hospital, some waving their face masks in anger, shouting at hospital authorities for turning them away.

“This is not the first time I am coming here to try and get vaccinated. I have been here four times, and this is my fifth day starting mid-June – only to get excuses,” 54-year-old Limukani Dlela, a man who said he lived in Matsheumhlope, a low-density suburb in Bulawayo, told IPS saying that at times the excuse was that there not enough vaccines available and at other times there were a limited number of vaccines.

Corruption and nepotism have characterised this Southern African country’s bitter war against COVID-19, and many people like Dzingai, the truck driver, have not been spared by the rot.

As Dzingai stood at the end of the queue, four middle-aged women strode past him and all others, going straight to the head of the queue and quickly got vaccinated and left.

According to one of the nurses who manned the queue, “the four were staff members and couldn’t wait in the queue like everybody else.”

The nurse said this even though the four women, after receiving doses, immediately left the premises just like any other ordinary person.

“I was talking to my bosses right now, and my truck has been loaded for me to take the delivery to Zambia. I have told my bosses I was getting my vaccine. Instead, you are telling me I’m not going to be vaccinated. You should get water to inject me and give me the vaccine certificate. I will not leave this place without the vaccine,” swore the truck driver.

But the nurse would have none of it.

“You won’t be vaccinated today. That won’t happen, unfortunately,” she said.

Dzingai vowed to stay put at the hospital until he was vaccinated, but because the four women who jumped the queue and got vaccinated before him, it meant he (Dzingai) and three others who had waited at the end of the queue had to leave without the jab.

With many Zimbabweans like Dzingai now eager to get vaccinated, the government has so far authorised the use of China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm, Russia’s Sputnik V, and India’s Covaxin and the U.S. Johnson and Johnson vaccines.

It has not, however, been easy for people to get the doses. Now bribery has become the order of the day at Zimbabwe’s hospitals like Sally Mugabe Referral hospital in the capital Harare.

Lydia Gono (24), from Southertorn middle-income suburb in Harare, said she had to ‘switch to her purse’, which is local parlance for a bribe, to get quickly vaccinated at Sally Mugabe hospital, the closest medical facility to her home.

“I spent close to a week trying to get vaccinated here without success, but today I just rolled a US 10 dollar note in my hand and shook the hand of a nurse who manned the queue, leaving the note in her hand. I was taken to the front and vaccinated without any delay,” Gono told IPS.

Tired of the corruption and nepotism and the delaying tactics characterising the vaccination process at public healthcare centres, many middle-income earners like 35-year-old Daiton Sununguro have opted for the private medical centres to get their vaccines parting with US 40 dollars for a single dose.

“Paying is better than having to wait for many hours before getting the vaccine at public healthcare facilities. I will still come back and pay the other US 40 dollars for my second dose,” Sununguro told IPS at a posh private medical facility in Harare’s Mount Pleasant low-density suburb.

Categories: Africa

Build Forward Fairer in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Fri, 10/08/2021 - 07:44

A view of the city of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. Credit: UN News/Vibhu Mishra

By Windi Arini
JAKARTA, Oct 8 2021 (IPS)

Cities have been epicentres of the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020. City authorities have been the frontlines responders—from running testing stations, to managing food distribution, to disposing of corpses. Yet they are often under-resourced, and their critical role in policy implementation is often overlooked.

Now a growing movement of Human Rights Cities is charting the way forward through pandemic recovery plans to not only ‘build back better’ but also ‘build forward fairer.’

In many cities, structural inequalities that existed before the COVID crisis had resulted in sprawling slums, traffic congestion and pollution. Poorer residents have limited access to water, sanitation, clean cooking fuels and other amenities: COVID and lockdown measures have exacerbated those inequalities.

Loss of income opportunities and confinement to sub-standard housing, for example, have made this a worse pandemic for some than for others. Local authorities should now take concerted action to include marginalised groups such as slum dwellers, women, migrants and minorities in pandemic response and recovery efforts—as some are already doing.

In the southern city of Birgunj, Nepal, bordering the Indian state of Bihar, many were cut off from access to basic amenities when the city went into lockdown. The city authorities set a target that no one should lack food, and undertook 45 days of relief distribution.

They also made household deliveries of oxygen to COVID patients, to reduce the load on the city’s hospitals.

In Nagpur, India, to tackle rampant profiteering, the city authority introduced a single-vendor system for sales of remdesivir, a drug used to treat COVID patients.

Baguio City. Credit: John Lorenz Tajonera / Unsplash

In Baguio City, Philippines, the city has surpassed the testing average, and has now set an ambitious target of vaccinating 95% of its residents.

These cities have all allied themselves with the growing movement of Human Rights Cities in the region. Their commitment is to reframe their policies and practices to align with human rights principles and norms that originated in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

If the approach can be summed up in one phrase, it would be ‘no one left behind’ — the slogan popularised by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by the international community in 2015.

Asian governments are often viewed as laggards in the implementation of international human rights standards. This is unfair. While social and development challenges loom large, city authorities are often in the forefront of action for change.

The pandemic has brought opportunity for local governments to better protect human rights—as the cities mentioned here have chosen to do. However, many local government authorities need capacity building and practical guidance to “localise” human rights in ways that are relevant to their own post-pandemic context. In this effort, national authorities can give important signals and support.

In 2016, the Indonesian government’s Ministry of Law and Human Rights established a national platform on Human Rights Regencies/Cities (Kabupaten/Kota Peduli Hak Asasi Manusia). The platform enables voluntary assessment of city authorities’ performance in fulfilling people’s economic, social, and cultural rights (such as the right to water and sanitation, or the right to food) while also giving attention to some civil and political rights (such as the right to information, non-discrimination and, more recently, participation in governance).

As of 2020, 439 of 514 regency and city authorities in Indonesia had participated in the program, and 259 of them had been recognised as Human Rights Cities or Regencies.

City authorities derive prestige from the award, and have taken steps to connect international human rights norms with national laws and city by-laws, policies and programmes. The East Lampung Regency in Sumatra, for example, has highlighted its commitment to achieving an inclusive, democratic and solidarity-based society through dialogue with urban dwellers.

A mayoral decree emphasises the city’s role in safeguarding human rights, and identifies the responsible units within the mayor’s office, their tasks, and the scope of their budgets.

In Gwangju, Republic of Korea, local authorities decided to tackle the issues of poverty, high suicide rates, out-of-school children, and mobility-impaired residents. Through open forums and consultations, in which they sought to understand the situation of migrants, undocumented workers and other marginalised residents.

Based on the outcomes, they devised several action plans that included educating citizens on migrant rights, and establishing a comprehensive support network for migrants.

In October 2021, the City of Gwangju convenes local government authorities from around the world at the annual World Human Rights Cities Forum. The City of Gwangju has been at the forefront in the promotion of the Human Rights City concept, and emphasizes the importance of local government authorities taking active and responsible roles in promoting and protecting human rights.

In this year’s forum, city authorities will discuss the emergence of new social contracts for the post-pandemic recovery, and 11 local authorities from Asia will present their own projects for integrating human rights-based approaches into local policies and programmes for more resilient, fair, and sustainable cities.

Throughout the region, there is a growing realisation that protecting human rights makes for safer, greener, and better places to live. Adopting a human rights-based approach helps prioritise vulnerable groups that would otherwise be overlooked, and addresses local needs and challenges through participatory processes. City authorities hold the keys to embedding good practice and ‘building forward fairer.’

Windi Arini is a Programme Officer at the Jakarta Office of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. She is a specialist in the area of Inclusive Societies and holds a Master of Philosophy in Theory and Practice of Human Rights from the University of Oslo. Prior to joining RWI, she worked as a Human Rights Officer at the ASEAN Secretariat and as a Programme Manager for a law office.

Categories: Africa

Hack the Planet Competition 2021 Finalists Offer Innovative Climate and Ocean Solutions

Thu, 10/07/2021 - 20:08

Six finalists will pitch their concepts to a panel of judges for the grand prize

By External Source
Oct 7 2021 (IPS-Partners)

After an unprecedented pan-Commonwealth search for innovative satellite-driven solutions to tackle the challenges of the climate emergency and ocean sustainability, the Satellite Applications Catapult and the Commonwealth Secretariat are delighted to announce the inaugural finalists of the Hack the Planet competition 2021.

The six finalists include inspiring leaders with game-changing solutions that leverage the power of satellites to make a real difference in the Commonwealth and the world.

They will now enter the final stage of the competition for a live pitch event, where they will pitch their concepts to a panel of expert judges.

There is a prize-pool of £20,000 plus over £85,000 worth of satellite data and cloud computing services for the winners of the competition.

The finalists are:

CAPELLA (The Gambia)

Loop Recyclers Tech (Nigeria)

Marine Wildlife Tracking with Snapper GPS (UK)

Plastic-i: Mapping Ocean Plastics from Space (UK)

Project 30 (Trinidad and Tobago)

Terangi Team (Malaysia)

The ideas and commitment demonstrated by all six finalists to delivering real-world change greatly impressed the judges, who offered them their congratulations on reaching the final stage of the competition.

Earlier in the competition, 30 shortlisted teams were invited to participate in a rigorous, knowledge exchange programme where they learnt about satellite technologies and elements of design thinking that could support their ideas, and hone these into robust, compelling pitches.

The final event will be livestreamed on 14th October from 12:00 BST. To find out more and register to attend click here.

About the Hack the Planet competition

Hack the Planet is an entirely virtual international ideas competition that brings together concepts from diverse communities living on the front-line in facing the challenges of the climate emergency and ocean sustainability across the Commonwealth, together with the technical resources to support the innovation of new solutions. It is run by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Satellite Applications Catapult and supported by Amazon Web Services, Deloitte, Maxar and Planet Labs.

The competition aims to stimulate discussion around the development of new approaches tackling the sustainability of the ocean, incorporating satellite data and technologies. Solutions are aligned to the 10 action areas of the Commonwealth Blue Charter.

To find out more, visit http://hacktheplanetcompetition.com/

Excerpt:

Six finalists will pitch their concepts to a panel of judges for the grand prize

Categories: Africa

Mangrove Blue Carbon for Climate Change Mitigation

Thu, 10/07/2021 - 12:46

Mangroves could be the silver bullet needed to mitigate climate change, however, approximately 75 percent of mangrove forests globally remain unprotected and overexploited. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Oct 7 2021 (IPS)

Smelly, boggy, and full of bugs, mangroves’ superpowers are well hidden. However, there is rising confidence that mangroves are the silver bullet to combat the effects of climate change.

“Mangrove ecosystems are a habitat and nursery grounds for various plants and animals and can absorb three to four times more carbon than tropical upland forests, helping to mitigate the effects of climate change,” Dr Sevvandi Jayakody, a senior lecturer at Wayamba University of Sri Lanka, tells IPS.

Mangrove forests also act as a natural defence against storm surges, including mitigating the effects of cyclones and tsunamis, says Dr Nicholas Hardman‑Mountford, Head of Oceans and Natural Resources at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Within this context, he says, Commonwealth countries are working together under the Commonwealth Blue Charter, an agreement made by all 54 member states, to actively work together to tackle ocean-related challenges and meet global commitments on sustainable ocean development.

The Blue Charter works through voluntary action groups led by ‘champion countries’, who rally around marine pollution and the sustainable blue economy.

The Mangrove Ecosystems and Livelihoods Action Group consists of 13 countries, including Australia, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Maldives, Nigeria, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago Vanuatu, and the United Kingdom, is championed by Sri Lanka.

Mangrove blue carbon could bolster climate change adaptation, mitigation and resilience efforts, experts say. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Hardman‑Mountford tells IPS that countries exchange knowledge centred on mangrove protection, management, and sustainability within the action group. Shared knowledge includes a wide range of topics, including policy, legislation, and regulatory frameworks.

Leveraging on the protective power of mangroves, Jayakody says that Sri Lanka is actively building its second line of defence. The country’s first line of defence, the reefs, were heavily compromised by the deadly 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami – one of the worst disasters in modern history, killing nearly 230 000 people across dozens of countries.

Such was the devastation that the government of Sri Lanka estimated losses of over $1 billion in assets and $330 million in potential output.

Worse still, approximately 35 000 people died or went missing. In Sri Lanka alone, property damage included 110 000 houses, of which 70 000 were destroyed. In all, at least 250 000 families lost their means of support.

Experts say that mangroves have immense capacity to prevent such catastrophes and combat other devastating effects of climate change.

Bolstered by growing scientific evidence, Trinidad and Tobago, the dual-island Caribbean nation, has made significant strides in building its defence using mangroves.

Dr Rahanna Juman, Acting Director at the Institute of Marine Affairs, a government-funded research institute, tells IPS that in 2014, the government of Trinidad and Tobago commissioned an aerial survey of the country. Using this data, an estimate of carbon in mangrove forests across the country was ascertained.

“This information illustrated how mangrove and other hardwood forests could offset emissions and was incorporated into the Greenhouse Gas inventory of Trinidad and Tobago. Importantly, the survey conclusively demonstrated that mangrove forests store more carbon per hectare than other hardwood forests,” Juman expounds.

In 2020, the Institute of Marine Affairs received funding from the British High Commission to fund a mangrove soil carbon assessment project involving Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

Dr Juman indicates that the assessment found that “the amount of carbon in the mangrove soil was many times larger than the amount of carbon above the ground. This is an assessment that could be replicated in other Commonwealth countries because we have developed a low-cost technique of undertaking this important assessment.”

Adding that Mangroves are starting to be incorporated into the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programme, which means countries could potentially earn money from protecting and restoring mangroves.

Meanwhile, Hardman‑Mountford cites various challenges in exploring blue carbon because it is still an evolving area of science and policy.

Sri Lanka understands this challenge all too well. After the Tsunami, Jayakody says that the government launched vast mangrove restoration projects covering over 2 000 hectares in partnership with other agencies.

Due to limited information on mangroves, she tells IPS that a majority of these projects failed. Undeterred and leveraging on scientific research over the years, Sri Lanka is today a success story in restoring and conserving mangrove cover estimated at 19 600 hectares.

Other challenges facing countries keen on mangrove blue carbon include a lack of protection for mangroves because approximately 75 percent of mangrove forests globally remain unprotected and overexploited.

Over the years, Jayakody indicates that mangroves have been at a very high risk of destruction because their power to prevent coastal erosion, protect shorelines, and provide livelihoods for coastal communities through fisheries was not fully understood.

Hardman‑Mountford agrees, adding that mangrove forests have declined globally with a loss of between 30 to 50 percent over the past 50 years from over-harvesting, pollution, agriculture, aquaculture, and coastal development.

The Commonwealth has a huge role to play in reversing this decline.

Overall, there are 47 Commonwealth countries with a coastline.

“Nearly 90 percent of Commonwealth countries with a coast have mangroves, and at least 38 of these countries with mangroves have provided some level of protection to their mangroves. In all, 16 countries have protected about half or more of their mangroves,” he says.

This is a challenge that Sri Lanka is successfully overcoming. With an estimated 40 percent of the population in Sri Lanka living along the coastline, Jayakody says that there was an urgent need to protect both livelihoods and coastlines from further degradation.

“In 2015, Sri Lanka established the National Mangrove Expert Committee, and through that, all mangroves were mapped. More so, several new areas were brought under protection, and there have been relentless efforts to improve the communities’ understanding of the importance of mangrove ecosystem,” she says.

Further, Sri Lanka recently validated the Best Practice Guidelines on the Restoration of Mangroves in Sri Lanka and the national mangrove action plan, in line with the mangrove policy adopted in 2020.

Other countries making strides in the right direction include the Australian government’s involvement with blue carbon and especially ongoing efforts to build capacity in blue carbon science, policy and economics through multi-sectoral partnerships.

“To support its efforts in blue carbon advocacy and outreach, the Australian government launched the International Partnership for Blue Carbon (IPBC) at the UNFCCC CoP in Paris in 2015,” says Ms Heidi Prislan, a Blue Charter Adviser at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Australia is also one of the 28 countries that refer specifically to the mitigation benefits of carbon sequestration associated with coastal wetlands in its National Greenhouse Gas Inventory. In comparison, 59 other countries mention coastal ecosystems as part of their adaptation strategies.

To increase opportunities for blue carbon to participate in the national emissions reduction scheme, the Emissions Reduction Fund, the Australian government has supported research into potential mitigation methodologies that could be implemented to generate carbon credits from domestic projects.

Equally important, she says that Commonwealth member countries have collectively made 44 national commitments to protect or restore mangroves.

As the world stares at a catastrophe from the devastating effects of climate change, the massive potential of blue carbon and, more so, mangrove blue carbon to bolster climate change adaptation, mitigation and resilience efforts can no longer be ignored.

Categories: Africa

The CDC Turns Its Back on Migrants and Science

Thu, 10/07/2021 - 11:46

Credit: UNOHCR.

By Jamile Tellez Lieberman and Joe Amon
PHILADELPHIA, US, Oct 7 2021 (IPS)

Last month, asylum-seeking families at the U.S.-Mexico border appeared to have won a victory, however temporary, in their last-ditch bid for safety in the United States. It was also a victory for evidence-based public health policy.

The 1,954-mile-long southern border has always been a magnet for debate, with deep political divides. Bolstered by Donald Trump during his presidency, long-simmering anti-immigrant rhetoric and xenophobia surrounding migration and immigration increased dramatically.

Starting in 2016, under the previous administration, thousands of migrant families who made it to the southern border were told by immigration officials that they must remain in Mexico to await their asylum decisions, rather than in the United States.

The CDC was once heralded for its apolitical, evidence-based public health policy. Sadly, this is no longer the case. The first step in restoring the CDC’s tarnished reputation is to repeal the CDC’s Title 42 order

With long waits for the processing of their asylum cases, families caught in this legal limbo were forced to make do in temporary settlements in Mexican border towns, many of which are controlled by cartels. Life in these settlements is violent, unstable and impoverished.

In March 2020, then Vice President Mike Pence directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to use its emergency powers to effectively seal the southern border, overruling the agency’s scientists. The CDC invoked Title 42 of the Public Health Service Act which gives federal health officials the ability to take extraordinary measures to limit transmission of an infectious disease.

In practice, the “extraordinary measures,” however, did not apply equally to all travelers entering the United States, including travelers who may have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Nor were these measures calibrated to where COVID-19 cases were most prevalent.

These scattershot measures have no meaningful impact on the pandemic in this country. Instead, they victimize migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico, including asylum seekers.

Despite promising that his administration would respect science, the CDC’s Title 42 order has been renewed under the Biden administration. Public health leaders, human rights advocates, and former CDC officials and academics have repeatedly called on the CDC to end the use of Title 42 in favor of evidence-based approaches that can protect migrants and the American public from COVID-19 transmission. United Nations officials have also raised concerns that the expulsions may violate the United States’ obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, weighed in on Title 42 and the recent COVID-19 surge on October 3, saying that migrants are “not the driving force of this, let’s face reality here.”

No matter the CDC’s reasoning, one thing is clear: this policy enables profound and irreparable harm to migrant families and single adults. If forced back to Mexico, they would be once again at the mercy of the violent Mexican cartels they were so desperate to escape.

Hope has come from the judiciary if not from the CDC. On September 16, 2021, a federal district court judge in the District of Columbia granted the motion to reject Title 42 and issued an order that prohibits the expulsion of migrant families, saying, “in view of the wide availability of testing, vaccines and other minimization measures, the Court is not convinced that the transmission of COVID-19 during border processing cannot be significantly mitigated.”

The CDC was once heralded for its apolitical, evidence-based public health policy. Sadly, this is no longer the case. The first step in restoring the CDC’s tarnished reputation is to repeal the CDC’s Title 42 order. This will jumpstart the overdue process of returning the CDC to its role as an exemplar in public health policy-making instead of providing cover for xenophobic immigration policies.

Beyond Title 42, the CDC must work to restore its reputation with the American public and regain our trust. This is urgent during the current public health emergency, as well as future crises. It will be a lengthy, painstaking process, but without it, the consequences to public health would be immeasurable.

The order to reject Title 42 was set to take effect on September 30, but an appeals court suspended the judge’s order on October 1, permitting border officials to expel migrants. Amidst this legal back and forth, the question we are left wondering is: Who are these measures meant to protect? The COVID pandemic in the U.S will advance and retreat regardless of immigration policy.

The CDC is turning its back on migrants, as well as science. More broadly, the Biden administration is not listening to scientists, despite his pledge to return to science-based, humanitarian, decision-making. It’s not too late to rebuild trust in science, migrants and their contribution to America, and the American people they hope to become part of.

Jamile Tellez Lieberman is a Doctor of Public Health candidate at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health and a Global Alliance for Training in Health Equity (GATHER) Fellow.

Joe Amon is the director of global health at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health and former director of health programs at Human Rights Watch.

Categories: Africa

Where on Earth is a Water-Secure World?

Thu, 10/07/2021 - 08:11

Water scarcity affects several African countries. The UN estimates that the number of people with insufficient access to water at least one month a year will surpass 5 billion by 2050. Credit: Orazgeldiyew / Creative Commons

By Vladimir Smakhtin
HAMILTON, Canada, Oct 7 2021 (IPS)

It is not uncommon for a water-centric research, policy or development organization or network to declare its long-term vision of the “water-secure world”. It reads nicely and feels great.

And it is intuitive and logical to perceive that a water-secure world is the one where “water security” is ensured. In every country.

The concept of “water security” has emerged on the global stage primarily over the last two decades. Its shortest and most elegant definition says water security is a “tolerable level of water-related risk to society.”

A conceptual framework of water security based on a more comprehensive definition encompasses various needs and conditions that should be taken into account — water for drinking, economic activity, ecosystems, hazard resilience, governance, transboundary cooperation, financing, and political stability.

Hence water security is not just about how much natural water a country has, although this matters a lot, but also how well the resource is managed.

Water security is considered a unifying concept that can help coordinate efforts towards a common goal. This common goal, however, remains unclear. Absolute water security simply does not and will never exist anywhere.

The devil, as usual, is in the details: how do you define “tolerable”, adequate”, “acceptable” — and other adjectives and variables that reflect the uncertainty normally associated with water security measures?

Perhaps the most advanced initiative to measure water security, started almost a decade ago with regular updates, is the Asian Water Development Outlook. It largely follows the principles of the water security conceptual framework noted above and employs over 50 indices to rate various aspects of it.

The most recent Outlook (2020) suggests that New Zealand, Japan and Australia are the most water secure nations in Asia-Pacific region, while Afghanistan is the most water insecure.

This is hardly surprising: the more developed a country is, the more effective its water management, the higher its water security ranking, even if the country’s water resources are limited.

Also, such regionally focused assessments compare a limited selection of countries and essentially reflect relative “status” rather than how close or far the countries are from achieving some global standards or milestones.

The uncertainty surrounding water security measures therefore prevails. All this has implications for development.

An obvious one is that the water-secure world we envision is either a mirage or a “nirvana concept.” The first is deceiving, the second unachievable. Either way, the focus created by imprecision is on movement, not on result, and conveniently excuses not knowing where we are going.

It may be argued, for example, that water security underpins, albeit implicitly, the global development Agenda 2030, including Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 (entirely dedicated to water) and other water-related targets scattered through the SDG continuum.

Yet, similarly to water security itself, such SDG targets are either left “strategically vague” or simply undefined. Only SDG targets 6.1: universal (i.e. 100% in every country) water supply; 6.2: universal (i.e. 100% in every country) sanitation; and 6.3: halving (i.e. 50%, without country specifics) the proportion of untreated wastewater globally are explicitly quantitative.

Unclear, though, is whether their achievement by 2030 was politically or scientifically motivated. (The role of science, or lack thereof, in global water development is another debate).

From this standpoint, it is not surprising that the water-related SDGs set in 2015 have clearly turned out to be over-ambitious; indeed, it was conceded, even before the pandemic hit, that SDG6, for example, is off-track.

Going forward it may be more practical to define and quantify some globally acceptable water security standards — e.g. evolving, functional, optimal, or similar categories.

A country’s water status can then be seen in a context of these standards, and that, in turn, can help define action plans with a visible target.

Furthermore, the visibility horizons should be immediate short-term — five years or less — so that accountability is not passed to succeeding generations of experts, policymakers and politicians.

Water security standards need to relate directly to the number, type and scale of problems. To move from one standard to another, problems need to be eradicated, not just mitigated.

The “movement” towards nirvana water security may then become at least well-structured. Achievements and remaining gaps should be easier to see and articulate. And water science could finally play a central, practical role in the process.

Going even further, a water security philosophy may not even be necessary at all if we simply focus on solving — i.e. eradicating well-known water problems in a process designed with short steps and clearly measurable results, which should be realized in every generation.

Sadly, looking back at the last 50 years, it is hard to see a single global or regional water problem that has been, indeed, eradicated. And, accordingly, not a single country can currently boast that it is, indeed, water secure.

So much for a water-secure world.

Vladimir Smakhtin is the Director at the UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health, which is supported by the Government of Canada and hosted at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. The Institute marks its 25th anniversary in 2021.

Categories: Africa

Stop Calling the Military Budget a ‘Defense’ Budget

Wed, 10/06/2021 - 12:12

Credit: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Oct 6 2021 (IPS)

It’s bad enough that mainstream news outlets routinely call the Pentagon budget a “defense” budget. But the fact that progressives in Congress and even many antiwar activists also do the same is an indication of how deeply the mindsets of the nation’s warfare state are embedded in the political culture of the United States.

The misleading first name of the Defense Department doesn’t justify using “defense” as an adjective for its budget. On the contrary, the ubiquitous use of phrases like “defense budget” and “defense spending” — virtually always written with a lower-case “d” — reinforces the false notion that equates the USA’s humongous military operations with defense.

In the real world, the United States spends more money on its military than the next 10 countries all together. And most of those countries are military allies. What about military bases in foreign countries?

The U.S. currently has 750, while Russia has about two dozen and China has one. The author of the landmark book “Base Nation,” American University professor David Vine, just co-wrote a report that points out “the United States has at least three times as many overseas bases as all other countries combined.”

Those U.S. bases abroad “cost taxpayers an estimated $55 billion annually.”

As this autumn began, Vine noted that President Biden is “perpetuating the United States’ endless wars” in nations including “Iraq, Syria, Somalia and Yemen” while escalating “war-like tensions with China with a military buildup with Australia and the UK.”

All this is being funded via a “defense” budget? Calling George Orwell.

As Orwell wrote in a 1946 essay, political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” In 2021, the hot air blowing at gale force through U.S. mass media is so continuous that we’re apt to scarcely give it a second thought.

But the euphemisms would hardly mean anything to those in faraway countries for whom terrifying and lethal drone attacks and other components of U.S. air wars are about life and death rather than political language.

You might consider the Pentagon’s Aug. 29 killing of 10 Afghan civilians including seven children with a drone attack to be a case of “respectable” murder, or negligent homicide, or mere “collateral damage.”

Likewise, you could look at numbers like 244,124 — a credible low-end estimate of the number of civilians directly killed during the “war on terror” in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq — and consider them to be mere data points or representing individuals whose lives are as precious as yours.

But at any rate, from the vantage point of the United States, it’s farfetched to claim that the billions of dollars expended for ongoing warfare in several countries are in a budget that can be legitimately called “defense.”

Until 1947, the official name of the U.S. government’s central military agency was the War Department. After a two-year interim brand (with the clunky name National Military Establishment), it was renamed the Department of Defense in 1949.

As it happened, that was the same year when Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” appeared, telling of an always-at-war totalitarian regime with doublespeak slogans that included “War Is Peace.”

Today, the Department of Defense remains an appropriately capitalized proper noun. But the department’s official name doesn’t make it true. To call its massive and escalating budget a “defense” budget is nothing less than internalized corruption of language that undermines our capacities to think clearly and talk straight.

While such corroded language can’t be blamed for the existence of sloppy thinking and degraded discourse, it regularly facilitates sloppy thinking and degraded discourse.

Let’s blow away the linguistic fog. The Pentagon budget is not a “defense” budget.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Categories: Africa

Will Taliban Honour UN Treaties Signed by Afghanistan Over the Last 20 Years?

Wed, 10/06/2021 - 08:23

As schools slowly reopen in parts of Afghanistan, it is important to ensure that both girls and boys are able to return safely. Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August, they have made some commitments to uphold human rights. However, their subsequent actions have “sadly contradicted” those promises, the UN rights chief told a side event of the General Assembly on 21 September 2021. Credit: UNICEF

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 6 2021 (IPS)

When the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan receives the political blessings of the 193-member General Assembly– and eventually inherits its seat at the United Nations– it will have to ultimately prove its credentials as a member of good standing by adhering to the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) – as all member states do.

But judging by Taliban’s crackdown on women’s rights since it took office after the US pullout on August 30, it has given no indication it will abandon its longstanding policy of repressing women – and have barred them from schools, universities and workplaces.

The Taliban’s UN membership will undeniably give legitimacy to the only – or perhaps one of the few – member states which is ruled by an insurgent group once designated as a terrorist organization by the United States.

But a lingering question remains: will the Taliban, as a member state, honour all those UN treaties and international conventions—guaranteeing both human rights and women’s rights—signed or ratified by the former US-backed Afghan government over the last 20 years?

“With regard to accepting and honouring international human rights Treaties and Conventions– based on what we know today and the public declarations they have made, as opposed to practices on the ground– I would speculate they may declare their observation of Human Rights Treaties ‘within the context of Sharia Law’ which, of course, they will not define,” says one former senior UN official, who served in Afghanistan during the former Taliban regime (1996-2001).

Dr Palitha Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, set the record straight, when he told IPS: “Afghanistan is a member state of the UN, not the Taliban. Being a member state of the UN does not imply that Afghanistan is a party to all UN treaties. Only to those treaties to which it has, as a State, become party. The act of becoming party to a treaty is a conscious, well considered and deliberate act of a State.”

Afghanistan, as a State, will continue to be bound by the treaties to which the State of Afghanistan is a party, he said.

“When a State becomes party to a convention/treaty, the government becomes bound by it too. If Afghanistan is already party to any Human Rights treaty, including women’s rights and child rights, the government of Afghanistan will be bound by it,” he noted.

And there is no squiggling out of such an obligation, declared Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

Meanwhile, one of the Articles of the UDHR, described as a milestone document in the history of human rights, points out everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Furthermore, says the UDHR, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

The former Taliban government was described as an oppressive regime that denied some of the basic civil liberties to Afghans and provided a safe haven for terrorists of all political stripes while it also rejected a demand from the UN and the international community to name an inclusive cabinet with representation of women.

“Those who hoped for, and urged for, inclusivity will be disappointed,” said Deborah Lyons, UN Secretary-General’s Representative for Afghanistan.

“There are no women in the names listed,” she said last month.

Lyons also pointed out that the (new) Taliban government in Kabul “contains many of the same figures who were part of the Taliban leadership from 1996-2001”.

Of the 33 appointments, she said, many are on the UN’s sanctions list, including the prime minister, two deputy prime ministers and the foreign minister.

According to published reports, the Taliban has not only dismantled the Ministry for Women’s Affairs but also replaced it with the Ministry for Vice and Virtue, a notorious religious police of a by-gone era known to ruthlessly crack down on women who were seen in public without male relatives.

Dr Kohona, meanwhile, said the current Taliban authorities are not recognised by any other state. In the circumstances could they be considered to be the legitimate successor government to the previous authorities?

For all practical purposes, he pointed out, the Taliban appears to be in full control, including of the territory of Afghanistan and its population.

“The Taliban’s writ applies through most of the country. These elements are critical for the recognition of a government by the international community.”

Already Afghanistan’s neighbours have begun the process of working with the new authorities. Reports suggest that Afghanistan has been invited to join the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, said Dr Kohona.

“Afghanistan’s strategic location and its hoard of precious minerals tempted many before. One can assume that it would only a matter of time before the new authorities are recognised by other important states”.

Recognition of the new authorities in Kabul and efforts to pressure them into abiding by global human rights standards might also open up another can of worms, he argued.

The Afghan authorities could also turn round and seek accountability for the human rights violations and war crimes committed by the occupying NATO and other forces. Allegations abound, he said.

Australia has publicly acknowledged and apologised for the egregious acts committed in Afghanistan by its Special Forces. Many allegations relating to the troops of other occupying forces have also been made, said Dr Kohona.

Addressing the UN’s Third Committee on October 4, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Afghanistan’s human rights situation is “deeply worrisome”.

The Taliban said it will build a more inclusive political order which respects the rights of all persons. But early actions have been inconsistent with those commitments.

“We welcome the UN’s efforts to monitor and report on the human rights situation moving forward. We will judge the Taliban by its actions, not its words.,” she declared.

Meanwhile, the Taliban—represented by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan—last month named its own Ambassador Suhail Shaheen to replace the outgoing office holder Ghulam Isaczai –even as it unsuccessfully staked its claim for a speaking slot at the high-level session, which ended September 25, and a seat at the UN General Assembly.

So far, it failed in all its efforts.

Perhaps the most significant is its attempt to capture a UN seat which has to be approved, first, by the nine-member UN Credentials committee comprising Russia, China, the US, Sweden, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Chile, Bhutan and the Bahamas, and subsequently ratified by the 193-member General Assembly.

A tall order but it is likely to clear both hurdles—sooner or later. As of now, the Credential Committee is expected to meet sometime in November.

Asked about the status of Afghanistan’s membership, the President of the General Assembly Abdulla Shahid told reporters last week: “The General Assembly, as the universal body, makes the decision”.

So, it will be the 193 countries who will decide,” he said, pointing out that the Credentials Committee will review and submit its findings and then the entire 193 member countries “will have the opportunity to decide.

“This has been the past practice and it’s been done many, many times”, he declared.

Categories: Africa

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