Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By Saul Escobar Toledo
MEXICO CITY, Jul 5 2021 (IPS)

The visit of the Vice President of the United States to Mexico on June 8 served to address various issues on the bilateral agenda . The media gave importance especially to the migration issue, but Mrs. Harris gave a prominent place , also , to the labor question. Her appointments deserve some comments.

Saul Escobar Toledo

In the meeting she held with labor leaders, activists, and experts as well as in her press conference, the vice president argued that Biden´s government is “one of the most pro worker, pro unions in the US history ” . She publicly pledged to support the organization of unions and collective bargaining in the US and Mexico. She insisted that there is a coincidence with the administration of President López Obrador and that this common vision will bring greater economic prosperity and improve the standard of living of workers in both nations. She argued , to some extent , the benefits of union and collective bargaining since, she said, this leads to ” fair ” results for both parties, employees and employers. Our goal , she added, is that the new approach, settled in the USMCA (United States, Canada and Mexico Trade Agreement that replaced NAFTA) will ” translate into decent jobs on both sides of the border” . Later, a budget addition of 130 million dollars was announced to support technical assistance and programs for the implementation of the Mexican labor reform, and the eradication of child and adolescent labor. This expansion is linked to 610 million dollars that had already been contemplated for those same purposes. Of these, 100 million will be invested in the next six months.

Canada, the third partner of the T-MEC had announced through its ambassador in Mexico, on June 2, that its government will allocate 27 million dollars for programs that allow changes in the labor practices , promote reform and its implementation. That is, he said, to support Mexican workers and the promotion of democratic unions.

US policy has not consisted only in words and money. For now, there are already two complaints for labor reasons that have been formally taken up by the Biden government at the highest level under the mechanism proposed by the T-MEC (USMCA). As the commercial representative, Katherine Tai , in charge of presenting the complaint said, now it is about “defending the workers at home and abroad.”

One of the complaints refers to a conflict in a company called “Tridomex”, an auto parts factory located in Matamoros (a city of the northern border), where, they claim , collective bargaining and free association were seriously affected . The investigation is ongoing and if it were found , indeed, there were these faults , it would have to be repaired or, where appropriate, apply sanctions on the company including additional tariffs or bans on its exports. It must be said that this company is a subsidiary of Cardone Industries , based in Philadelphia , dedicated to the manufacture of auto parts . This is a good example of a maquiladora, the type of sweatshop where for many years there have been systematic violations of labor rights and the absence of representative unions and legitimate collective contracts (supported by the workers) .

This was the second complaint in a month formally filed by US authorities . The first was against a General Motors plant , where more than six thousand people work, located in Silao, Guanajuato. They found, also, serious irregularities committed during a voting process arranged to find out if workers were supporting a contract negotiated by an old and corrupt union. The scandal even reached US Congress; a special commission demanded that the company should not meddle in union affairs.

The new trade policy of the US represents a major shift. During many decades Washington has defended its companies and investors at all costs, supporting repressive measures against workers, direct intervention of the CIA (Central of Intelligence Agency) , and even violence against governments that have tried to be, as Ms. Harris said, favorable to workers and their organizations . The US administration had never shown solidarity for unions and the defense of labor, more so, when workers struggle against the arbitrariness committed by the subsidiaries of the large manufacturing consortiums located outside its territory.

This major change is due to several reasons, including strong pressure from the unions. The vice president clearly alluded to this situation when she spoke with the Mexican labor activists . Apparently, a political gap has opened in that nation, in which either a government with a progressive and pro-labor line is imposed; or there is only the ultra – conservative option of the Republican right whose central figure continues to be Trump. An Obama- or Clinton-style centrism does not seem a good alternative right now.

However, it is not clear how far the new direction of the Biden administration will go. Within his own party there is resistance to some of the president’s proposed changes , such as tax reform. In the case of Mexico , we don´t know yet what the reaction of the companies will be, which, for now, have denied their responsibility in the violation of labor rights. Will the top managers of the companies accept to change their labor schemes and open negotiations with the workers on fair terms, as the vice president said , or will they continue to keep “business as usual” with various legal maneuvers? If sanctions were applied, would they rather decide to leave Mexico and go back to the US? Maybe this last option would be welcome and supported by the US government.

Despite these uncertainties, and the damage caused by the pandemic including a slow recovery of the Mexican economy, the new US trade policy opens an opportunity for Mexico to change its relations with its commercial partners. The so – called “comparative advantage”, based in very low wages and poor working conditions in Mexico, has played up to now an important factor to attract foreign investments. To change this scheme the government of Lopez Obrador must not only carry out enhanced surveillance of labor laws as their commercial partners are claiming and is part of USMCA. In the medium term, it would have to propose a new industrial policy that would make it possible to attract foreign investment, while increasing wages and contractual benefits. For this to happen, so foreign companies would not be tempted to withdraw from Mexican territory, the government would need to offer incentives based on a more modern infrastructure; a better qualification of the workforce ; and more resources for research and development of science and technology.

In the medium and long term, sustained improvement in wages of the Mexican working class would imply a new agreement with the United States and Canada. Much more ambitious than what was already agreed in the T-MEC or USMCA: a new scheme of development cooperation is needed. A new kind of relationship between companies of foreign capital and Mexican workers, based on better jobs, with the support of the governments of the three nations would be viable only if it rests on a sustained increase of productivity . And the latter would require a relevant hike in investment based on modern technologies and production processes .

A change of this magnitude would need time and a favorable political environment in the North American region. New winds are blowing , but it is not clear if they will go far enough.

saulescobar.blogspot.com

 

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Twenty years after the blackout that prompted nine months of rationing to keep the power grid from collapsing, Brazil may see a repeat of the traumatic situation, this time with a more obvious climate change undertone. Scarce rainfall in the October to April rainy season in south-central Brazil reduced to critical levels the flow in […]

South Sudan’s national flag (centre) flies at UN Headquarters following its admission as the 193rd Member State. Credit: UN/E. Schneider

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 5 2021 (IPS)

When the United Nations renovated its building at a cost of over $2.1 billion, as part of a seven-year refurbishing project back in 2014, the seating in the cavernous General Assembly hall was increased from 193 to 204—primarily in anticipation of at least 11 new member states joining the world body sooner or later.

But the pace of new member states joining the UN, primarily from half a dozen breakaway regions dominated by separatist movements, has remained slow.

East Timor, described as the first new sovereign state of the 21st century, broke away from Indonesia and joined the UN in May 2002.

The UN played a significant role in supporting the democratic process in the country, now known as Timor-Leste. The UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) was deployed from 1992 to 2002 to administer the territory, exercise legislative and executive authority during the transition and support capacity-building for self-government.

Meanwhile, the Republic of South Sudan (population: 11.3 million), which seceded from Sudan, was the last of the 193 UN member states, joining the world body in July 2011.

But at least one potential member state— Kosovo– has been knocking at the door trying to seek admission rather unsuccessfully primarily because of opposition from one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC).

The UN’s relatively new member states, beginning in the 1960s, included Singapore (1965), Bangladesh (1971) and six republics, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia, resulting from the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Still, if political fantasies become realities, a lineup of new U.N. member states may include potential breakaway regions, including Kurdistan, Western Sahara, Chechnya, Abkhazia, Catalonia, Scotland and Palestine—not forgetting Tibet and Taiwan whose membership will be shot down by China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UNSC.

But currently the most likely candidate is Tigray which is moving towards an independent state after nearly eight months of fighting against Ethiopian military forces, described as one of Africa’s most powerful, this time backed by Eritrea.

If it does happen, Ethiopia would have generated two breakaway states: first Eritrea which became independent of Ethiopia in 1993, and now Tigray, with a population of 7.1 million.

The Tigray Independence Party (TIP) has long campaigned for secession from Ethiopia which it described as an “empire”.

Debretsion Gebremichael, the leader of Tigray, was quoted by the New York Times as saying, “even if the conflict ends soon, Tigray’s future, as part of Ethiopia, is in doubt”.

In the Times report on July 4, Gebremichael said “The trust has broken completely. If they don’t want us, why should we stay?”. Still, he added, nothing has been decided because “It depends on the politics at the centre”.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Ambassador to the UN, told reporters on July 2 the Security Council has held six closed-door meetings “and the situation in Tigray has not improved.”

She said the open meeting last week was the first opportunity to show that African lives matter as much as other lives around the world.

“But an open meeting is not enough,” she said, pointing out that “what we need to see is action on the ground.”

“We need to see a ceasefire that is permanent; that all of the parties agree to. We need to see the Eritrean troops return to their own border. We need to see unfettered access for humanitarian workers. “We need to see accountability for the atrocities that have been committed.”

“And at this moment I just want to express, again, our sympathy for the many losses of lives, including for MSF (Doctors Without Borders) staff who were killed recently,” she declared.

Meanwhile, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) says the Tigray People’s Liberation Front is in control of most of the Tigray region, including major towns.

William Davison, ICG’s Senior Analyst, said the Front has achieved these gains “mainly through mass popular support and by capturing arms and supplies from adversaries.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week he is deeply concerned with the present situation in Tigray.

“It is essential to have a real ceasefire paving the way for a dialogue able to bring a political solution to Tigray.” He said the presence of foreign troops is an aggravating factor of confrontation.

“At the same time, full humanitarian access, unrestricted humanitarian access must be guaranteed to the whole territory. The destruction of civilian infrastructure is totally unacceptable,” he declared. 

Excerpt:

South Sudan’s independence from the rest of Sudan was the result of a January 2011 referendum held under the terms of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the decades-long civil war between the North and the South.

By External Source
Jul 5 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Jan Egeland has been the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council since August 2013, a role which oversees the work of the humanitarian organisation in over 30 countries affected by conflict and disaster.

In June 2021, he was appointed Eminent Person of The Grand Bargain initiative. Within this role he is responsible for promoting and advocating for the advancement of The Grand Bargain’s commitments to better serve people in need. It is a two-year position he will hold alongside his day-to-day NRC position.

From January to May 2021, Egeland was appointed by UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, as Chair of the Independent Senior Advisory Panel on humanitarian deconfliction in Syria.

In 2015, he was appointed by former UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, as Special Adviser to the UN Special Envoy for Syria. Within this position he chaired the humanitarian task force responsible for the safety and protection of Syrian civilians. He stepped down from this role on 1 December 2018.

From 2011 to 2013 Jan Egeland served as the European Director at Human Rights Watch. He was appointed Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General for Conflict Prevention and Resolution from 2006 and 2008.

Prior to that, Jan Egeland was UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator from 2003 to 2006. In that role he helped reform the global humanitarian response system and organized the international response to the Asian Tsunami, and crises from Darfur to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lebanon.

In 2006, Time magazine named Jan Egeland one of the “100 people who shape our world.”

He served as Director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs from 2007 to 2011. He was the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Colombia from 1999 to 2001, where he led shuttle diplomacy efforts between armed groups and the government.

From 1992 to 1997, Jan Egeland served as State Secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has also been Secretary General of the Norwegian Red Cross and has held leading positions at Amnesty International.

Jan Egeland has 30 years of experience from international work with human rights, humanitarian crises and conflict resolution, and was among the initiators of the peace negotiations that led to the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993.

Jan Egeland published ‘A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity‘ in 2010.

ECW: World Refugee Day commemorates the resilience of refugees around the world. This year’s theme is inclusion, noting that together we heal, learn and shine. With this in mind, how do you see NRC moving forward with ECW and other organizations, to ensure that refugee children are included in education programmes in host communities so it is a win-win situation for all involved?

Jan Egeland: When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, about 1 billion students had their access to education completely disrupted. A year on, and three quarters of a billion students remain affected. The past year and a half has been particularly tough on displaced children and youth, who often do not have connectivity or access to distance learning that many school goers in richer nations had.

At NRC, we promote including displaced children and youth in formal education systems, in line with global policy to mainstreaming refugees into national education systems. We strive to be a champion for durable solutions, by prioritising recognised certification of learning so that displaced children and youth can continue their education and use their skills through local integration, resettlement or return.

Only when it is not possible or appropriate to include refugees in formal education systems, e.g. in cases where government policy or the age of learners are barriers to inclusion, will we engage in alternative learning opportunities. Working with ECW and other partners, NRC will continue to advocate for governments to include refugee children in their national education programmes.

ECW: The Norwegian Refugee Council works in more than 30 countries around the world as a global advocate to help those forced to flee their homes. With 82.4 million forcibly displaced people worldwide and so many urgent needs, which are the refugee emergencies that you feel have most been forgotten by the international community and why is it so important to address them, now?

Jan Egeland: The three most forgotten crises in the world today are DR Congo, Cameroon and Burkina Faso, according to NRC’s World’s Most Neglected Displacement Crises report. These countries have become utterly neglected in terms of the scale of humanitarian needs, a massive lack of funding, as well as media and diplomatic inattention.

DRC is top of that list. We see it as one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. A lethal combination of spiralling violence, record hunger levels and total neglect has ignited a mega-crisis that warrants a mega-response. But instead, millions of families on the brink of the abyss seem to be forgotten by the outside world and are left shut off from any support lifeline.

When I visited DRC in May, it gained international attention momentarily when a volcano erupted in Goma. Sadly, when there is no volcanic eruption, the thousands that flee their homes each day go unnoticed. They do not make headlines, they seldom receive high-level donor visits and are rarely prioritized by international diplomacy. This is the case for many of the crisis areas we operate in.

It is therefore so good to see ECW’s emergency investment in DRC, from which NRC has received new multi-year funding that runs through to 2024. We hope the international community follows suit and better supports these neglected crises, otherwise the human suffering will continue and likely worsen. Many conflicts risk spreading across regions, embroiling countries that are comparatively more stable. For example, insecurity in Venezuela, South Sudan and Nigeria have all led to refugee crises in neighbouring countries.

ECW: As strategic partners of Education Cannot Wait, the Norwegian Refugee Council and other partners develop and implement plans to address refugees’ needs. A key advantage of the arrangement is funding to address not only emergency relief and early recovery responses, but to also link this to sustainable development. What are some impactful NRC/ECW projects and how are the funding needs?

Jan Egeland: NRC is doing important work in education that supports longer-term sustainable development. For example, ECW supports NRC’s Better Learning Programme in the Middle East, a programme designed to provide learners with mental health and psychosocial support to deal with the trauma and stress of being forced to flee. Through the ECW investment, we strengthen regional capacity to integrate school-based mental health and psychosocial support into education programming, advocate for enhanced mental health services for children and youth, and ensure the programme is available as a public good that can be scaled up and replicated across education in emergency projects.

In Nigeria, we are partnering with ECW for the first time this year through the country’s multi-year resilience programme. Working with other NGOs, including local actors, the UN and the government, we will target nearly 3 million young people, half of whom are displaced, over the next three years. The programme will build and renovate classrooms and learning spaces, support stipends for teachers, and increase continuity of learning by working with local partners to keep children and youth in school. Part of this programme also focuses on working with local and national educational authorities to develop capacity and have the resources to promote, administer and manage quality education programmes. This will be essential for long-term progress for Nigeria’s next generation.

ECW: Congratulations! While continuing to lead the Norwegian Refugee Council, this month you also assume the position of ‘Eminent Person of the Grand Bargain.’ The Grand Bargain was launched at the World Humanitarian Summit with a key goal being to increase the amount and effectiveness of aid delivery to people in need. How will you promote, and seek funds, for refugee children’s education?

Jan Egeland: The Grand Bargain aims to shift resources away from draining backroom activities to frontline delivery. This means that by making our work more efficient, we will release more resources for those who need it, including education for children and youth.

At the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting in June, we agreed to make our efforts in the next two years more focused and strategic, and in addition to accelerating localisation of aid, our priority is to increase quality funding. This would make our programmes much more predictable, which is especially important in planning reliable and quality education programmes. Strengthened engagement of local actors and participation of people affected by crises are also key priorities of the Grand Bargain. If we get these objectives right, we will have more stable, secure, meaningful school programmes for all children.

ECW: The World Humanitarian Summit recognized that children’s education in crisis situations must be part of a life-saving response. Refugee children are among the furthest left behind in responding to crises. Why is it so important to continue refugee children’s education from the outset of their refugee experience until they safely return home, or a longer-term solution is found for them and their families?

Jan Egeland: Education is a fundamental human right for all children and youth. Quality education provides children and young people with the skills, capacities and confidence they need to allow them to live lives that they have reason to value. Education also creates the voice through which other rights can be claimed and protected. These rights are particularly important for refugee and other displaced children and youth, and quality education provides protection, a sense of normality and hope for the future. Evidence consistently shows that education is a top priority for people who are displaced, and it should be made available from the onset of an emergency.

NRC works with displacement-affected and refugee children and youth to support them with education throughout the whole learning cycle – including after they finish school. We provide young women and men with opportunities for post-primary education, including technical and vocational education and training, agricultural training, and tertiary educational opportunities.

These opportunities are essential to the development of young people, to ensure that they have opportunities to pursue longer-term solutions and remain contributing members of the communities to which they belong, especially if they return home.

ECW: Climate change-induced disasters increasingly contribute to forced displacement, with +30 million people fleeing disasters in 2020; up 5 million from 2019. Such disasters mean many refugees are forced to flee multiple times, making them even more vulnerable. What are the main challenges in addressing climate change as it affects refugee children and what are NRC and partners doing to address them?

Jan Egeland: All aid organisations can, and should, do more to address climate change. At NRC, we are working to do better. We are currently in a process called ‘greening the orange’ – developing a new climate strategy, through which we aim to become carbon neutral in the future. This was a pledge I made at the Global Refugee Forum in 2019. Greening the Orange started as a grassroots initiative by staff and it will lead our climate work internally and externally.

In the meantime, we are already working on education projects that are climate-friendly. For example, in Colombia we are running a renewable energy and education project called Zero Carbon Education. In this project we installed an energy system with nine solar panels at a school in the Colorado community. This lit up six school classrooms, a kitchen, a communal church and two outdoor lamps for a sports centre. The project also provided environmental training on recycling practices, ecology and sustainable food to promote environmental awareness in school. The installation of the solar panels was accompanied by the construction and adaptation of a community garden for students and teachers. The children and adults received the panels and learned to maintain the new solar energy system through trainings.

We need to implement more projects like this across the world that tackle education and climate change at the same time.

ECW: We’d love to learn a bit more about you on a personal level. Could you tell us what are the three books that have influenced you the most – personally and/or professionally – and why you’d recommend these books to other people?

Jan Egeland: The first book I read as a child was “Nobody’s Boy” about the orphan Remi who was sold to a street musician at age 8. It made a huge impression on me, as I was the same age as Remi.

Then in my student years I was shocked by reading Eduardo Galeano’s “The Open Veins of Latin America” about the systematic exploitation and imperialism in South and Central America.

Now I am fascinated by “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” by Reza Aslan. It is a masterly account of the historic Jesus.

 

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In March 2021, the UN Human Rights Council was given a mandate to collect and preserve information and evidence of crimes related to Sri Lanka's 37-year long civil war that ended in 2009. Meanwhile, Western nations taking a cue from the Human Rights Council’s highly critical resolution on Sri Lanka appear to be tightening the noose. Credit: UN Photo / Violaine Martin. 43rd session of the Human Rights Council.

By Neville de Silva
LONDON, Jul 5 2021 (IPS)

For well over a century Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, has been known to the world as the ‘Pearl of the Indian Ocean’ for its multifaceted attractions. That is until blurb writers ruined it all with hyperbolic epithets that obscured the country’s magnetic charms, which attracted visitors from around the globe.

But one particular epithet has lived up to its name. Called ‘a country like no other’, Sri Lanka is increasingly beginning to prove this true – though not for the reasons that originally prompted it.

Over the years, groups of professional politicians and those drawn to the sphere, not to serve the public but by thoughts of self-aggrandisement and avarice, have dragged this once prosperous country, with its many natural resources and strong democratic institutions, towards its nadir.

From being Asia’s first democracy, with universal franchise granted in 1931– even before independence from Britain in 1948– political commentators and increasingly the public now fear that the country is teetering on the brink of militarism, with retired and serving senior officers in key positions in the civil administration, and others appointed to virtually oversee Sri Lanka’s 25 administrative districts.

While there is both international and local disquiet over the deterioration of democratic values, of more immediate concern is the country’s dire economic state. The situation is so critical that less than two weeks ago, the respected Sunday Times wrote that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government is ‘steps away from bankruptcy’.

At the same time, well-known economists were pressing alarm bells, warning about the possible breakdown of the banking system ‘causing a collapse of the economy’. The direct cause of the current crisis was the sudden hike in fuel prices in late June, which is bound to have a ripple effect on other commodities and services.

Bakers are already threatening to raise their prices, which could well have happened by the time this article appears.

A thermometer gun is used to take a boy’s temperature in Sri Lanka. Credit: UNICEF/Chameera Laknath

With the prices of staples such as rice and vegetables unbearably high, the average consumer, already burdened by the steepening cost of living, is being pushed to the wall by a government that came to power some 20 months or so ago promising to reduce poverty and improve living standards.

Rising living costs are compounded by a still uncontrollable Covid pandemic. This has compelled the government to impose lockdowns and curb travel – restrictions which are haphazardly lifted and re-imposed, despite the best medical advice – as daily wage earners run out of cash to buy food for their families and meet other domestic needs.

Political commentators and increasingly the public fear that the country is on the brink of militarism

Last month, the Sri Lanka Medical Association urged President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to continue lockdown restrictions without interruption–”considering that over 2,000 Covid 19 cases and over 50 deaths are being reported daily” and also the detection of the highly dangerous Indian variant’.

At the time of writing, health authorities reported another 52 fatalities and put the daily count of positive cases at 2,098. But such statistics seems to matter little to politicians and their military and medical cohorts, tasked with combating the spreading pandemic but ignoring the accumulating data and the advice of specialist medical professionals.

Meanwhile, the vaccination of the population, according to a pre-determined programme, has been disrupted by politicians who have drawn up their own priority lists and even threatened doctors and health workers who refused to accept their dictates, raising law enforcement issues and public criticism.

Those with power and influence find backdoor means to gain access to vaccinations, at the expense of an increasingly frustrated and angry public, who stand in long queues for hours awaiting their turn.

While the overall Covid containment programme is reportedly in a mess, along with an economy going steadily downhill, another pearl turned up in the Indian Ocean close to Colombo port. The X-Press Pearl, a Singapore-registered container ship, was carrying noxious cargo, including a leaking nitric acid container. With Qatar and India refusing to admit the vessel for repairs, it turned up in Colombo

That poisonous pearl spewed nitric acid into the ocean and then self-immolated, burning for days before part of it went down on June 2. As a result of the incident, more than 150 marine animals, including 100 turtles, 15 dolphins, three whales and scores of birds and fish beached in various parts of the country, not to mention the kilometres of beach covered with plastic pollutants, leading a UN representative in Colombo to describe the episode as a ‘significant damage to the planet’.

Meanwhile, the original pearl of the Indian Ocean is struggling to keep its head above water. The Sunday Times’ economics columnist Dr Nimal Sanderatne, an agricultural economist, former central banker and academic, painted a bleak picture in his weekly column in late June: ‘The external finances of the country are in a perilous state. External reserves have fallen, the trade deficit is widening, the balance of payments deficit is increasing and there are foreign debt repayments of about US$4 billion during the rest of the year.’

His views about the parlous state of the economy were echoed by several other economists, including the spokesman of Sri Lanka’s main opposition party SJB, Dr Harsha de Silva, and Dr Anila Dias Bandaranaike, a former assistant governor of the Central Bank.

In a desperate bid to boost reserves, Sri Lanka went for a currency swap of US$200 million with Bangladesh, once a struggling new nation in South Asia. Prudent economic policies and management, and national interest, brought Bangladesh to its current flourishing status.

When the currency swap was announced, one Sri Lankan wag remarked that it would have made more sense if Sri Lanka had swapped its advisors for those from Bangladesh, and the swap should be permanent to protect the country’s self-respect

Only a country that has lost its political sense and perceptiveness, or has abandoned all concern for its struggling people, could seek government sanction to import nearly 300 vehicles costing Rs 3.7 billion for its 225 parliamentarians and unnamed others, in the midst of a severe foreign currency crisis, when begging and borrowing seem the only options.

What is even worse, Sri Lanka’s premier state bank was ordered to open letters of credit one month or so before cabinet approval had been sought. Whoever ordered this remains unknown to the public at the time of writing.

Critics of the government say it is fast losing its one-time popularity as ill-considered and sudden policy decisions are heaped on existing economic and health problems, such as the snap decision to ban chemical fertiliser and pesticides, so essential right now for agriculture and export crops such as tea.

Scant wonder the government is being assailed by even close associates of the Rajapaksa family. One such is the head of the Catholic Church, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, who, in a strongly critical statement recently said that ‘even nature seemed to be turning against the rulers’.

Meanwhile, western nations taking a cue from the UN Human Rights Council’s highly critical resolution on Sri Lanka last March appear to be tightening the noose.

At the end of June, the European Parliament moved a resolution, with almost 90 per cent voting for it, urging the EU authorities to consider suspending the Generalised System of Preference (GSP Plus) trade concessions to Sri Lanka, which would be a serious blow to exports.

Later the Core Group of Western nations that sponsored the UNHRC resolution issued a statement condemning Sri Lanka’s human rights situation and new changes to the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Bleak times lie ahead.

Source: Current Affairs Magazine

Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who held senior roles in Hong Kong at The Standard and worked in London for Gemini News Service. He has been a correspondent for foreign media including the New York Times and Le Monde. More recently he was Sri Lanka’s deputy high commissioner in London

 

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Estimates reveal that there are 40.3 million people in slavery worldwide as part of a US$32 billion business. Credit: UN images.

By External Source
Jul 4 2021 (IPS)

Few people want to buy products that involve the exploitation or enslavement of the workers who make them – but that’s exactly what most of us do on a daily basis.

Estimates reveal that there are 40.3 million people in slavery worldwide as part of a US$32 billion business. Extreme labour exploitation and other forms of modern slavery are embedded within the supply chains of many of the products and services that we choose to consume regularly, such as laptops, mobile phones and clothing.

This raises important questions: how responsible are we for the slavery that is directly connected to our consumption, and what role should consumers play in reducing the demand and supply of products and services made by exploited workers?

How responsible are we for the slavery that is directly connected to our consumption, and what role should consumers play in reducing the demand and supply of products and services made by exploited workers?

On the one hand, the few examples of government legislation – including the UK’s 2015 Modern Slavery Act – clearly place some level of responsibility on consumers to be informed, to act, and to make choices that help to eradicate modern slavery. These actions include reporting suspected instances of exploitation and boycotting known products of slavery.

In contrast, however, others are increasingly arguing that it’s not up to consumers to police modern slavery. Commentators such as Sarah O’Connor and Emily Kenway remind us that the causes of slavery are systemic, embedded within the processes and structures of commerce and governance. They rightly suggest that slavery and forms of extreme labour exploitation cannot be reduced without addressing the structural role of government and business.

 

Consumer-citizen action

Global supply chains are complex and generally not visible or well understood by consumers. So asking them to take responsibility for how products are made may let businesses (who do understand this) and governments (who do have the power to change things) off the hook. Government and business do need to do more to address slavery in production systems through, for example, greater transparency, but where does that leave the role of the consumer?

Focusing on UK consumer understanding of modern slavery, our research highlights a more complicated and active role for consumers in challenging the exploitation of workers who produce the goods and services they consume.

It points to the broader observation that shoppers are often “complicit” when it comes to the social and environmental consequences of their consumer choices. Indeed, we find that consumers are not ignorant of the risks of slavery and extreme labour exploitation. More worryingly still, some consumers explicitly express their indifference towards such issues.

Reviewing the Modern Slavery Act and similar legislation reveals how our current system relies on consumers to report and boycott instances of slavery as a key mechanism in the overall eradication plan. We agree with the likes of Kenway that shifting responsibility away from businesses and governments and on to the consumer risks relieving these powerful players of their duties and commitments.

Yet, should this argument be used to negate all attempts to mobilise consumers? While it’s right to be suspicious of attempts to pass the buck on to consumers, we argue that removing all responsibility from consumers and insisting that the realm of consumption remains a seemingly benign and apolitical arena is not a useful way forward either.

The considerable consumer inertia in response to scandals in the UK such as Boohoo – which saw the company accused of sourcing its clothes from factories with poor health and safety records and paying staff less than the minimum wage – illustrates a need to sensitise consumers to the slavery in their consumption, and to elevate their power to act. This may be framed as calling on consumers to take positive citizenship action (lobbying) or negative action (boycotting).

It is important to recognise that consumer-citizens are not unfamiliar with taking action on important issues. For example, the understanding that we have environmental responsibilities as consumers is well rehearsed. It is accepted that “we must place on the consumer at least some of the responsibility for making the economy sustainable”, as Tim Jackson writes in Material Concerns: Pollution, Profit and Quality of Life.

Imagine action on climate change that didn’t include a role for consumers in taking some level of responsibility for their own impact through the consumer choices they make. Changing how we consume is a vital link in transitioning to a cleaner and more just society, even though businesses are disproportionately responsible for carbon emissions. It should be no different when we consider modern slavery.

While we don’t support the shifting of unrealistic levels of responsibility on to consumers when it comes to ridding society of modern slavery, our research does point to an important role for consumers, revealing that they do want to take action – just not on their own.

They want to be partners in this modern slavery equation, particularly with business and government. Greater consumer interest, involvement and action over modern slavery is bound to raise more, not fewer, questions about the role and responsibilities of other groups involved, leading to greater transparency.

The consumer perspective should be viewed as a useful ally to business and government strategies in the campaign to eradicate modern slavery. In our roles as consumer-citizens we can use our voices and actions to support and encourage positive change. And we must also focus our energies on holding those with greater power and involvement to account.

Deirdre Shaw, Professor Marketing and Consumer Research, University of Glasgow; Andreas Chatzidakis, Professor of Marketing, Royal Holloway University of London, and Michal Carrington, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, The University of Melbourne

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

One of the flyers pasted on a tree in the city of Sonsonate, in eastern El Salvador, which on Jun. 28 called for help to find Flor Maria Garcia, 33, missing since March. The next day, the young woman's body was found in a vacant lot near Cojutepeque, the city in the centre of the country where she lived with her husband, Joel Valle, arrested as the main suspect in the case of femicide. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Jul 2 2021 (IPS)

The pain that María Estela Guevara feels over the disappearance of her niece Wendy Martínez remains as intense as it was four years ago, when she learned that the young woman, then 31, had vanished without a trace in eastern El Salvador.

“I still feel the same pain, I want to know what happened to her,” Guevara, 64, who has always considered Wendy her daughter because she raised her from a very young age after she was orphaned, told IPS between sobs.

Guevara’s plight is shared by thousands of families in El Salvador who have lost relatives who simply failed to return home one day and were never heard from again.

At least 2,383 complaints of missing persons were reported in 2019, against 2,457 in 2018, according to the report Desaparición de personas en El Salvador (Disappearance of people in El Salvador), published in April by the non-governmental Fundación de Estudios para la Aplicación del Derecho (Foundation of Studies for the Application of Law – FESPAD). The document covered the period 2014-2019.

The phenomenon has been occurring for years in a highly polarised political context in which the governments in power have sought to downplay the problem in order to show that they are efficiently fighting crime, and the political opposition has sought to draw attention to it.

A grieving process that never ends

Wendy went missing on Sept. 30, 2017 in San Miguel, the capital of the eastern department of the same name. She was studying cosmetology and that day she left at 7:00 a.m. to fix the hair of several clients.

“She said she was coming home again at 11:00 a.m. to give her nine-year-old daughter lunch, but she never returned,” Guevara said. “I kept calling her until 12:00 at night, and she never answered.”

Wendy Martínez’s aunt and daughter have been waiting for her to return since 2017, when the then 31-year-old disappeared without a trace in the city of San Miguel, in eastern El Salvador, after leaving home early one September morning to fix clients’ hair. CREDIT: Courtesy of María Estela Guevara

Disappearances – nothing new in El Salvador

The phenomenon of disappearances is not new in this Central American country that was torn apart by a bloody civil war between 1980 and 1992, which left some 75,000 dead and 8,000 missing.

In the wake of the armed conflict, El Salvador has experienced a maelstrom of violence, mainly at the hands of youth gangs that over time have grown into powerful organised crime groups that control significant chunks of territory in this poverty-stricken country of 6.7 million people.

Gangs have historically been behind many of the cases of missing persons, as they attempt to leave no evidence of their crimes, said analysts consulted by IPS, but without ruling out the involvement of other actors in recent years.

“There is certainly a high probability that this pattern (of gangs) will continue,” lawyer Zaida Navas, legal head of State of Law and Security at Cristosal, an NGO that works to defend human rights in Central America, told IPS.

She added: “But disappearances are also the result of murders in cases of femicide, and executions by organised crime groups that are not necessarily gangs, and also due to personal disputes.”

One of the latest femicides was the high-profile case of Flor María García, 33, who had been missing since Mar. 16.

That day, her husband Joel Valle reported to the authorities that Flor María was missing. According to him, she had left home early in Cojutepeque, a municipality in the central department of Cuscatlán, to head to the capital, San Salvador.

Valle, a dentist, said Flor María had gone to pick up materials for the dental clinic where she worked as his assistant.

But in a twist to the case, authorities arrested Valle on Jun. 25 as the main suspect in his wife’s disappearance, and charged him with the crime of disappearance of persons.

“We always had doubts about him; we as Flor’s family knew that she suffered psychological and economic violence in her home,” her brother, Jorge Garcia, told IPS a few days after Valle was arrested.

He added: “We found it strange that the day she disappeared, he, Joel, only sent us a WhatsApp message at about 7:00 at night, asking if she was with us, in Sonsonate,” the city where Flor María was originally from, in the west of El Salvador, and where her family still lives.

The authorities found Flor María’s remains on Jun. 29 in a vacant lot on the side of the road near Cojutepeque, under tons of dirt and gravel.

The charges will be changed from disappearance of persons to femicide, the authorities said.

“I should have warned my sister, I should have insisted that she leave him when the incidents of psychological and economic, and even physical, violence occurred,” Garcia added.

It is no consolation, but Flor María’s family will be able to give her a religious burial and begin the mourning process.

However, many other families have no sense of closure, as long as their relatives remain missing.

The numbers game

Given the strained relationship between the government of Nayib Bukele and his political opponents, the issue of missing persons has once again gained national prominence, with the president defending his security programme, the Territorial Control Plan, as the reason for the drop in murder rates.

But his opponents say that while it is true that homicides have declined, cases of missing persons are on the rise.

According to government figures, homicides have dropped significantly since Bukele took office in June 2019 and began to implement the plan.

When the government took office, there were 50 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in El Salvador, a rate that has dropped to 19 per 100,000, said Minister of Justice and Security Gustavo Villatoro in a television interview in March.

But establishing how many people are missing in the country, and whether the number is increasing, decreasing or remaining steady when comparing time periods, is not an easy task, said analysts consulted by IPS.

This is true above all because there is no official census of cases, but three separate institutions keeping track of figures that are sometimes in line with each other and sometimes quite different: the National Civil Police, the Attorney General’s Office and the Dr. Roberto Masferrer Institute of Legal Medicine, and each one handles its own data based on the complaints received.

“I think the most honest – although I don’t know if the most rigorous – answer is that the official figures allow us to conclude that we have a partial view of reality, historically,” lawyer Arnau Baulenas, legal coordinator of the José Simeón Cañas Central American University’s Human Rights Institute, told IPS.

He clarified that he was not only referring to the current Bukele administration, but that this has been a problem for decades.

A report by the Efe news agency, based on official figures, stated at the end of May that in the first four months of 2021, reports of missing persons had increased by 112 percent compared to the same period in 2020, climbing from 196 to 415.

“But it is very difficult to assess whether the increase in complaints filed actually means there are more cases, because there is a counterargument: that people are reporting cases more because they see that the authorities are taking action,” Baulenas said.

He added, however, that “Such a sharp rise would indicate that disappearances have indeed increased.”

Bukele, for his part, said on Mar. 26 that as homicides have gone down, investigators are better able to investigate other crimes.

“It is not the same to investigate 40 homicides as three homicides a day,” he said in reference to the drop in the daily murder rate.

Meanwhile, María Estela Guevara does not lose hope of one day finding out what happened to Wendy on that day in September 2017.

“Her little girl is now 13 years old, and she still has hopes that her mom will come home, she tells me not to remove things from Wendy’s room, in case she comes back,” said Guevara with a heavy voice.

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• The Forgotten Migrants of Central America

By External Source
Jul 2 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The Bangladesh government does not fully meet the minimum standards for elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so and has demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period, considering the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on its anti-trafficking capacity and therefore remained on Tier 2, according to a US Department of State report.

The report titled “2021 Trafficking in Persons Report” further said these efforts included initiating more prosecutions, particularly of labour traffickers, beginning to operate its trafficking tribunals and collaborating with foreign governments on a transnational trafficking case.

“The government also opened an investigation into—and Parliament revoked the seat of—a member of Parliament involved in bribing a Kuwaiti official to fraudulently send more than 20,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers to Kuwait,” the report added.

“However, the government did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas. The number of convictions decreased, while law enforcement continued to deny credible reports of official complicity in trafficking, forced labour and sex trafficking of Rohingya, and child sex trafficking, including in licensed brothels, and did not demonstrate efforts to identify victims or investigate these persistent reports,” it further said.

“While international organizations identified signs of trafficking in hundreds of migrant workers returning from Vietnam, the government, instead of screening them for trafficking indicators, arrested them on vague charges, including for damaging the country’s image.

“The government continued to allow recruiting agencies to charge high recruitment fees to migrant workers and did not consistently address illegally operating recruitment sub-agents, leaving workers vulnerable to traffickers. Victim care remained insufficient. Officials did not consistently implement victim identification procedures or refer identified victims to care, and the government did not have shelters or adequate services for adult male victims.”

The report also gave a set of recommendations which included increasing prosecution, taking steps to eliminate recruitment fees charged to workers and so on.

To read the full report: https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-trafficking-in-persons-report/banglad…

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

A UN meeting on the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, 26 September. Credit: UN Photo/Kim Haughton

By Daryl G. Kimball
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 2 2021 (IPS)

After more than a decade of rising tensions and growing nuclear competition between the two largest nuclear-weapon states, U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed at their June 16 summit to engage in a robust “strategic stability” dialogue to “lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.”

Just as importantly, the two men also reaffirmed the commonsense principle, agreed on by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

The summit communiqué, albeit modest and overdue, is a vital recognition that the status quo is dangerous and unsustainable. It is a chance for a course correction that moves the world further from the brink of nuclear catastrophe.

Now, each side must walk the talk. The first step is promptly beginning a robust, bilateral, results-oriented nuclear risk reduction and disarmament dialogue.

With the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control agreement, expiring in 2026, there is little time to negotiate new arrangements necessary to further reduce the bloated U.S. and Russian strategic and nonstrategic nuclear stockpiles.

Second, if the two presidents are serious about nuclear wars being unwinnable, they need to formally declare that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter or respond only to a nuclear attack, not non-nuclear threats.

Once a nuclear weapon is used first by design, accident, or inadvertence, there is no guarantee that all-out nuclear war can be averted.

Given the catastrophic effects of even limited nuclear use, neither side would be the winner.

Daryl G. Kimball

Unfortunately, current Russian and U.S. nuclear use doctrines suggest that each side believes regional nuclear wars can be fought and won because such wars somehow can be kept limited.

In its 2020 iteration of policy, Russia “reserves the right to use nuclear weapons…in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.”

Whether Russia might contemplate an even lower threshold for use in a regional conflict has been the subject of much debate.

In 2018, the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) expanded the “extreme circumstances” under which the United States would contemplate first use of nuclear weapons to include “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks” against “U.S., allied or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.”

The document says “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks” could include chemical and biological attacks, large-scale conventional aggression, and cyberattacks.

These U.S. and Russian nuclear use policies are far too permissive and risky and must change. In a March 2020 Foreign Affairs essay, Biden said, “I believe that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack.” As president, Biden must put those words into practice.

Third, if a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought, the United States and Russia should not be expanding their capabilities to fight and prevail in such a war.

Russia has an obscene arsenal of some 1,500–2,000, lower-yield tactical nuclear weapons, and the United States believes this arsenal is poised to grow in the years ahead. The Trump administration meanwhile proposed to double the types of lower-yield nuclear options in the U.S. arsenal.

Even though Biden, as a presidential candidate, said “[t]he United States does not need new nuclear weapons,” his fiscal year 2022 budget proposes funding for a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile, one of the two new low-yield options pursued by Trump to provide additional strike options in a regional war.

Another way in which the “nuclear war cannot be won” statement can serve as a steppingstone to global risk reduction would be for all five permanent members of the UN Security Council (P5) to support that principle.

At a P5 meeting last year, China proposed a joint statement along these lines, but the United States vetoed the idea. Shortly before the Biden-Putin summit, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi revived the proposal.

When the Security Council’s permanent members meet in France later this year on nuclear matters, it should endorse the Biden-Putin statement to signal a shared interest in avoiding nuclear war and agree to launch an expanded set of talks on nuclear risk reduction and arms control.

In addition, Washington and Beijing could launch their own bilateral strategic stability dialogue to explore practical ideas for heading off destabilizing nuclear competition.

Luckily, nuclear weapons have not been used in combat since the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But someday, our collective luck is certain to run out, with catastrophic consequences, unless the leaders of the world’s nuclear-armed states act now to forestall a new nuclear arms race and rediscover the path to a world free of nuclear weapons.

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is the Executive Director of the Arms Control Association in Washington DC.

Rama Hansraj

By Mariya Salim
NEW DELHI, India, Jul 2 2021 (IPS)

Two Indian women, one Muslim and the other Dalit (former untouchables), separated by culture and geography, have found common ground in leading change in conflict-torn South Sudan.

Rama Hansraj, a Dalit, grew up in a humble railway colony in Secunderabad. Huma Khan, a Muslim, born and raised in the controversial north Indian city of Faizabad, now Ayodhya, home to the demolished Babri Masjid. Both agree their personal experiences of experiencing and seeing discrimination in India and the world led to their decisions to work in the international humanitarian field in conflict zones.

The women are activists and feminists who, through their experiences of struggle and years of work with India’s most marginalised, decided to work in geographies and contexts which ordinarily many would avoid.

“What else do you expect someone, who has grown up five kilometres (three miles) away from the disputed Babri Masjid site in an atmosphere of constant conflict and communal strife, to want to pursue?” says Khan in an exclusive interview with IPS. She was answering a question on why she chose to work in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan instead of choosing a more comfortable position.

In her last role in South Sudan, Khan was the senior women’s protection advisor, leading the section on conflict-related sexual violence at the United Nations mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). She is now a senior human rights adviser to the UN in Bangladesh.

Hansraj, country director of Save the Children in South Sudan, shared with IPS how her work on the ground in India and her interactions with the development sector motivated her to take up positions outside the country and institutions with decision-making powers.

“For us Dalits, access to basic facilities like education and land is a challenge. We face discrimination even in disasters,” she says while sharing her experience of working post-Tsunami in India.

Here she saw how Dalits, affected by the disaster, were not even allowed to stand in the same queue as others to receive basic aid.

“We started working on developing donor principles in disasters, highlighting the fact that they need to look at the vulnerabilities within the response and how the beneficiary selection needs to be more inclusive. That is when I saw that not working in these bigger organisations was not going to help us,” recalls Hansraj.

Khan spent many years in Gujarat as an independent activist living in resettlement colonies after the communal violence of 2002. There she worked to help rebuild communities and assist in the case of a gang rape survivor. Her lived experiences made her “unapologetically Muslim”.

She recalled how she refused to share the stage at an event organised by an international NGO where women were made to “unveil” as a symbol of freeing them.

Huma Khan

“It was a month after 9/11 that I had a study-cum-work trip planned to the US which I did not want to cancel,” Khan says. “I have had an object thrown at me and been called ‘Taliban’ while walking down a street in the US because I had covered my head to escape the cold.”

Hansraj has been part of anti-caste movements for as long as she can remember, and shared caste discrimination crosses borders and continents and is not only an “Indian problem”.

“Caste travels where Indians travel, and the international development sector is no exception. Indians abroad always assume I am upper caste, because otherwise how could I be in such high positions, being a Dalit,’ she says with sarcasm.

Both Hansraj and Khan were Ford Foundation fellows and got their initial international academic exposure with the fellowship.

One of the driving factors for both moving from India to take up challenging positions in countries like Yemen (for Hansraj) and Darfur and Afghanistan (for Huma) was their disappointment with the development sector in India and its treatment of Muslim and Dalit communities.

“Even if you’re working for a Dalit organisation, the funding decisions were still with those upper caste people sitting in the international NGOs, who basically made decisions for us,” says Hansraj.

“Even today, most positions of power in the development sector are occupied by upper caste individuals who decide what to fund and what not to, instead of letting us decide on our own issues.”

Khan, who co-founded the feminist rights and advocacy group AALI in India, also felt the space to grow, especially for a Muslim woman in the development sector in India, was shrinking, with those who occupied powerful positions continuing to do so for decades.

Both women worked in South Sudan for close to three years. When Khan left the country late last year, she became a senior human rights adviser to the UN in Bangladesh. Hansraj continues to head Save the Children in South Sudan.

South Sudan is the youngest country globally, gaining its independence from the Republic of Sudan in 2011. The country experiences constant instability and conflict since then.

Both Khan and Hansraj, in leading roles, have held interactions, negotiations and led advocacy and action-oriented processes with the leadership in the country, with tribal chiefs and community elders alike.

Constant armed rifts and coming face to face with former armed groups where negotiations were needed to either release abducted women or children, or both did not deter them.

“My team and I were able to facilitate the process of the release of women who were abducted, many as sexual slaves, in the Western Equatoria region of South Sudan. To deal with the leadership in the capital city of Juba was one thing, and to negotiate with the commanders on the ground had challenges of threat for us and especially for those women,” recalls Khan. The negotiation led to the release of dozens of women and children, many of whom were subjected to repeated rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage by members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO).

“For me, my identity and my experiences as a marginalised person mean I can identify myself with conflict-affected communities and communities that have been deprived of their basic freedoms, like South Sudan, ” says Hansraj.

Hansraj shared how she lived in constant fear of being raped when she was in the country in 2015-2016, having witnessed compound break-ins and rampant sexual violence.

“Women and children are abducted in the process of cattle-raiding here. There is intercommunal violence. In India, women and children from Dalit communities were abducted and trafficked for centuries into forced labour and sex work,” she says.

Hansraj feels she imported herself into a context, which is so similar and heart wrenching that sometimes she finds herself caught between emotions and practicalities.

Mariya Salim is a fellow at IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Jul 1 2021 (IPS)

In 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron announced plans for tougher laws to tackle what he called, “Islamist Separatism”, and a crackdown on “radical Islamists” in France, which he said were materializing through repeated deviations from the Republic’s values. To counter this, President Macron announced his plans to create a “French Islam”, a practise of the faith which would be regulated by the state.

Rim-Sarah Alouane

In February 2021, France’s National Assembly passed a controversial “Separatist Bill”, to reinforce the country’s secular identity. The draft legislation aims to address, “deliberate politico-religious projects leading to the creation of a counter-society and to indoctrinationation, running counter to French laws”. Ironically this legislation which is meant to protect constitutional values, including human dignity, gender equality has been critiqued for undermining those very values.

“Instead of responding with pragmatism, instead of bringing a rational response to a very difficult issue of radicalization and terrorism, we respond to these issues in a very emotional way, which is dangerous,” says French scholar and commentator Rim-Sarah Alouane in an interview to me.

“The law of Separatism has a list of amendments that will not only restrict civil liberty but also extend the law of 1905 on limiting religious freedom. This law is equal, it applies to everybody, but when you look at it, it will defacto affect Muslim groups,” says Rim-Sarah.

French officials insist the bill is not aimed at Muslims in France, but is against the reconstructed vision of a religion that behaves in a way contrary to the republic.

France has 5.7 million Muslims living in the country, one of the largest in Europe. This bill extends to what is known in France as the “neutrality principle”, which basically prohibits civil servants from wearing religious symbols, voicing political views and is extended to private contractors of public services.

“The groups that are in difficult positions will be in even more difficult positions due to such laws. Can you imagine, let’s say you work for a private company as a maid or as a garbage collector, you will have to be religiously neutral because your company has a contract with the state,” says Rim-Sarah.

The draft law against “separatism” also includes provisions which bolsters powers to close mosques promoting “extremism”, requiring associations to pledge allegiance to French “Republican principles”.

Rights group Amnesty International called for the many problematic provisions of the bill to be scrapped or amended. “The proposed law would be a serious attack on rights and freedoms in France. It would allow public authorities to fund only organizations which sign a ‘contract of republican commitment’ – a vaguely defined concept which is wide open to abuse and threatens the very freedoms of expression and association the French authorities claim to stand for,” the statement said.

Recently there was an uproar in France creating serious public debate concerns over the prohibition of the use of religious symbols for parents picking up their children after school, accompanying them on school trips, and during national sports competition.

Although the bill does not clearly state Muslims or Hijabs, this impacts mothers who do wear hijabs (headscarfs) while accompanying their children. An amendment was made in 2004, which prohibited use of religious symbols in schools in France, though parents were excluded from this ban, only to be opened up again for discussion.

French officials have often championed this ban as a protection of the country’s “secular constitution” and a defence against the regressive Islamic attitude towards its women. Only failing to give freedom or even a choice to Muslim women living in France, to decide what they want to wear or not want to wear.

The “Don’t touch my hijab” movement in France had Muslim women protesting the hijab bans, calling it Islamophobic and a way to exclude Muslim women in the country.

“The niqab ban is to just an excuse to go after the Muslim visibility. Whatever you think about the Niqab, we all have an opinion on it, it doesn’t really matter. I think it’s a conversation that should be around Muslim women, and its not the state that should decide what is religious or not.

“Imposing a woman to wear a certain garment is the same as imposing a woman to remove a certain garment. Muslim majority countries whether Saudi Arabia or Iran saying that a Muslim woman should dress in a certain way is wrong, but I would say the same for countries that say a Muslim woman needs to remove her hijab. It’s about the Muslim woman’s freedom, let Muslim women live their lives,” says Rim-Sarah.

The threat to secularism is often emphasized, in the case of France, by questioning French Muslims apparent lack of integration into what the state believes to be French society. The debate over integration is essentially structured around compatibility of religion and national identity, which has also become a strong political tool in France, and more so recently also across Europe.

France was the first country in Europe to ban full-face coverings in public in 2011, however other countries in Europe still have partial or total burqa bans, including Norway, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Latvia. Earlier in March Switzerland passed a referendum banning full face coverings in public spaces. The consequence of such construction is that terrorism and the veil end up being situated on the same level of analysis as violence against European values and principles and “constructing Muslims in Europe as enemies of European societies.”

The exceptional nature of France’s secularism or laïcité’ is more than just a basic separation of the religious and the political, “it is a deep structural and ideological system unique to France and French history.” Liberté, égalité and fraternité are the safe-house of French identity, but you can’t have cultural unity without accepting cultural diversity. The very same French secularism that shouts for freedom, takes that agency away from individuals with multicultural identities. The problem is the assumption that the Muslim population in France might affect the French identity because it could challenge the very concept of laïcité’. The Separatist Bill which is being used to reinforce France’s tradition by discouraging religious viewpoints and identities is only creating a society which is isolating, dominating and excluding minority citizens in the name of upholding republican principles.

“We have more legislation being passed on restricting civil liberties in France. It is deeply concerning because we are passing laws that are directly restricting civil liberties, rights and freedoms. When it affects one group, at some point everybody will be affected. People don’t seem to realize that, because they feel it is to defy political Islam, to fight separatism, will be just for the Muslims basically, but the reality is once one group is tackled, others will follow. You know history. The moment you attack an individual on the grounds of who they are, you are attacking the very foundation of democracy,” says Rim-Sarah.

The author is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi. She hosts a weekly online show called The Sania Farooqui Show where Muslim women from around the world are invited to share their views. You can follow her on Twitter here.

 

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Plastic bags may remain intact for years in the marine environment. Plastic products certified to be industrially compostable are no solution for littering, as they do not degrade efficiently in the environment and continue to pose a threat to wildlife as they break down. Credit: Eleonora de Sabata / Clean Sea LIFE

By Guy Dinmore
St David’s, Wales, Jul 1 2021 (IPS)

Documented images of albatross chicks and marine turtles dying slow deaths from eating plastic bags and other waste are being seared into our consciences. And yet our mass pollution of Earth’s seas and oceans, fuelled by single-use plastics and throw-away consumerism, just gets worse.

Plastic debris is estimated to kill more than a million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals and countless sea turtles every year. Plastics, with all their benefits and promises, have revolutionised societies and economies since their development in the 1950s, but now some 8 million tonnes end up in the oceans every year.

Waste plastic, making up to 80% of all marine debris from surface waters to deep-sea sediments, breaks down into micro-plastics which enter the digestive systems of sea and land animals and humans. Invisible plastic is in the water we drink, the salt we eat and the air we breathe. Experts are still working out the long-term impacts, such as cancer and impaired reproductive systems.

The fishing industry, nautical activities and aquaculture also leave a massive legacy in terms of ocean waste, poisoning and ensnaring sea life.

Hasna Moudud heads a small NGO in Bangladesh, working to protect coastal areas where vast rivers pour into the Indian Ocean, providing livelihoods and food for millions.

Her NGO, Coastal Area Resource Development and Management Association (Cardma), plants coastal trees, protects olive ridley sea turtles in a conservation hatchery in the Bay of Bengal, and helps women in cottage industries, using cane grass to make mats instead of plastic.

“Oceans are always neglected,” she tells IPS. “Small NGOs like myself take risks to save whatever we can of the fragile ecosystem that is left for our future generations.”

Plastic bottles and bottle caps are among the most frequent items found along Mediterranean shores. Credit: Eleonora de Sabata / Clean Sea LIFE

But to combine her NGO’s efforts with those of others, Moudud says she is “praying” to attend the IUCN World Conservation Congress 2020 in Marseille this September where government, civil society and indigenous peoples’ organisations from around the world will join discussions to set priorities and drive conservation and sustainable development action.

Meeting every four years – with this Congress delayed by the Covid pandemic – member organisations of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, vote on major issues to shape humanity’s response to the planet’s conservation crises. This particular Congress in Marseille is offering both in-person and virtual participation options, allowing those unable to make the trip to Marseille for the full Congress the opportunity to join discussions and provide their feedback.

Moudud’s NGO is a co-sponsor of Congress Motion 022: “Stopping the global plastic pollution crisis in marine environments by 2030.”

The broad resolution goes to the heart of the waste plastics issue. It notes that global production is due to increase by 40% over the next 15 years from current levels of around 300 million tonnes and that the world’s “predominant throwaway model” means that over 75% of the plastics ever produced to date are waste, “notably because the price of plastic on the market does not represent all of the costs of its lifecycle to nature or society”.

Recalling previous international efforts to set goals for ending marine plastic litter, the motion calls on the international community to reach a wide-ranging global agreement to combat marine plastic pollution. This would entail, among other measures, eliminating unnecessary plastic production, in particular single-use plastic waste; recycling and proper prevention of leakage into the environment; and public awareness campaigns.

Sunlight, salt and pounding waves grind marine litter down to plastic grains. Credit: Eleonora de Sabata / Clean Sea LIFE

Activists say previous international efforts to curb plastic pollution have been toothless. Moudud is among many who want mandatory and enforceable measures, accusing big business of what she calls “manipulative practices through sponsorship and malpractice without helping build the natural world”.

“No one is looking or holding the polluters responsible,” she says, calling for a toughening up of the resolution. “I am deeply involved in everything IUCN does to help save the natural world and sustainable living.”

Steve Trott, project manager for IUCN-member Watamu Marine Association which is tackling plastic pollution in their Marine Protected Area in Kenya, says Motion 022 clearly sets out the threats posed by plastic waste to marine and coastal environments, economies and human health and well-being.

“Watamu Marine Association and EcoWorld Recycling based on the Kenya coast embrace the IUCN call for action,” Trott told IPS.

Pushing circular economy initiatives, their NGO has created dynamic plastic value chains through partnerships between the hotels industry and local communities, sponsoring beach clean-ups and collecting plastic waste for recycling. This provides a second source of income for community waste collectors while local artists are also up-cycling plastic waste.

Reflecting one of the main themes of IUCN’s membership structure bringing together civil society and indigenous peoples and government authorities, Trott says Watamu is following a “win-win model which can be replicated and up-scaled, sending out an ‘Act Local, Think Global’ message to inspire others”. He hopes to attend the Congress in Marseille if all goes well.

Single Use items are littering the world’s oceans. Credit: Eleonora de Sabata / Clean Sea LIFE

The Plastic Waste Makers index, a study by Australia’s Minderoo Foundation, identifies 20 companies producing more than half of all single-use plastic waste in the world. Some are state-owned and multinational corporations, whose plastic production is financed by major banks. The report notes that nearly 98% of single-use plastic is made from what is called virgin fossil fuels — plastic created without any recycled materials.

Single-use plastics explain why fossil fuel companies are ramping up their production as their two main markets of transport and electricity generation are being decarbonised. By 2050 plastic is expected to account for 5%-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Humankind possesses unprecedented levels of knowledge but also the accompanying responsibility, knowing that oceans are in the poorest health since humans started exploiting them.

Single use plastics – and the estimated 130 million tonnes that are dumped each year around the world – have dominated studies and discussions on waste. Plastic bottles, food containers and wrappers, and single-use bags are the four most widespread items polluting the seas.

One element woven into similar narratives of how to tackle the world’s burning environmental issues – such as carbon emissions, species loss, and plastic waste – is the potential fix offered by technology. Motion 022 refers to the need for more investment in environmentally sound plastic waste collection, recycling and disposal systems as well as forms of recovery.

A study led by biologist Nikoleta Bellou at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon institute focuses on inventive sea-cleaning solutions to date, including floating drones. But her paper suggests that it could take about a century to remove just 5% of plastics currently in the oceans using clean-up devices because plastic production and waste are accumulating so fast.

Activists welcome IUCN’s intervention on plastic waste pollution and the strong mandate a successful and unanimous motion can convey to governments and international institutions. But they also caution against taking too narrow an approach towards tackling marine pollution at the September 3-11 Congress.

Eleonora de Sabata, spokesperson for the Clean Sea Life project, co-funded by the European Union’s LIFE programme, told IPS that the narrative needs to shift away from single-use plastic to single-use everything. “Technology” has come up with so-called ‘bio’ plastics as a replacement for some plastics but only to create a whole suite of problems of their own.

“It’s the throwaway culture that creates problems, whether plastic or not. Green washing and sloppy leadership are filling our world of single use,” she argues. Washing our consciences by simply substituting single-use plastics with other single-use items, such as supposedly biodegradable bags and cutlery, are not the answer.

 

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A woman in Madagascar walks for up to 14km a day to find clean water. Credit: UNICEF/Safidy Andrianantenain

By Guillaume Baggio, Manzoor Qadir and Vladimir Smakhtin
HAMILTON, Ontario, Canada, Jul 1 2021 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has undeniably amplified the existing vulnerabilities of billions of people worldwide. Marginalized communities in developing countries were excluded from social protection and support.

Long-standing economic and social inequalities have deepened with the poor getting poorer. A sharp divide in the distribution of vaccines has revealed major issues in the global health sector.

Economic stimulus packages amounting to about $10 trillion were assembled in a matter of months — a much larger sum than what governments invested when the 2008 financial crisis struck. Yet, progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have largely decelerated.

In fact, the pandemic has made many of the goals literally unachievable in the time left to 2030.

Progress towards SDG 6 — Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all — is among the goals most suffering. The world at large was already off track on this before the pandemic.

An estimated 2 billion and 3.6 billion people still live without access to safely managed water supplies and sanitation respectively. Funds needed to tackle this immense challenge were estimated in 2016 to be US $74–166 billion annually until 2030.

They have never been raised, and now, likely, more is needed. Instead, due to the pandemic, water funding is now projected to decrease.

The cost of meeting other SDG 6 targets – beyond just universal water supply and sanitation – is not included in the above. With attention turning now to post-pandemic economic recovery plans, the question is: where and how do we get the money needed to achieve SDG 6 in the final nine years of the SDG era if we continuously failed to do so in the first six?

Recently initiated acceleration frameworks create some hope, and yet it is difficult to be particularly optimistic.

As we face unresolved global water challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic, while detrimental in itself already, might be a prelude to more threatening events. The world needs to get used to and prepare for “living with pandemics”, as the risk of infectious diseases now competes side by side with the risk of our failure to act on climate change.

New infectious diseases may increase in the next decades not the least due to continuing uncontrolled human destruction of ecosystems. Next pandemics could bring even higher mortality rates or as yet unimaginable human health impacts.

In this context, providing safe water and sanitation, and ensuring healthy freshwater ecosystems are no longer matters of just basic needs, human rights or dignity. They are the matters of survival for all. Strategic actions are required now rather than waiting for the next pandemic episodes.

Countries will likely have little choice other than addressing multiple development challenges simultaneously. Yet, from the standpoint of preparing for future pandemics, further prioritization of those challenges needs to be made.

In the global water sector, there are several items that may need to receive priority in the next nine SDG years:

· Ensure the universal water and sanitation access in healthcare facilities. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, roughly half of healthcare facilities lack access to basic water, and three quarters lack access to sanitation services, while data on access to basic hygiene services in these facilities is widely unavailable across all regions.

· Ensure water and sanitation access gap in schools. Globally, 31% and 37% of schools lack access to basic water and sanitation services respectively. Girls who lack access to safe water and sanitation at school are more likely to abandon their education creating long-term impacts, with losses in their lifetime productivity and earnings estimated at $15–30 trillion.

· Provide water access to refugees, who numbered more than 26 million in 2020. COVID-19 has worsened refugees’ living conditions and untreated water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene increased the possibility of infectious diseases – now and in the future.

· Improve water and health services for the urban poor. One in four of the world urban population live in informal settlements where social distancing, regular hand washing and other pandemic management practices are unfeasible. Short-term responses, including the suspension of water billing, and water trucks and water supply points, have been far from enough to offset the access gap in these areas.

The above challenges have a lot in common. All are explicitly human-centric and target the most vulnerable; hence they are critical to address if we are serious about leaving no one behind. All of them, if addressed, will alleviate the impact of future pandemics.

All contribute to SDG 6 targets on universal water supply and sanitation. All have strong links with other important SDGs, e.g. you cannot eradicate a source of refugees without ensuring peace, political stability and arresting environmental degradation.

And all are implicit within the current SDG targets. Achieving the above milestones may not be enough for universal access to water and sanitation, but they will still be unprecedented achievements in modern history.

Arresting the degradation of freshwater ecosystems – to alleviate the probability of future pandemics -also needs to be made much stronger. Although some relevant processes are on the way, they may turn out to be too lengthy to be effective.

Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that revisiting and articulating priorities in the ongoing SDG efforts may be in order. With almost 170 targets, the SDG framework, while comprehensive, is perhaps too ambitious for a rather short period.

And it is not just the matter of periodic assessment of the SDG progress, but also the matter of adjusting the targets; particularly when many original ones were blurred and when new major factors like pandemics recently reshaped the world. There are things that just can no longer wait. Fixing at least some of the world’s most chronic water problems is one of them.

Guillaume Baggio is Research Associate, Manzoor Qadir is Assistant Director, and 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.

 

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Illustration by Inge Snip. Credit: openDemocracy

By Khatondi Soita Wepukhulu
KAMPALA, Jun 30 2021 (IPS)

At Mulago, Uganda’s biggest public hospital, a receptionist at an HIV clinic for marginalised and ‘most at risk’ populations, including LGBT people, said that an undercover reporter’s 17-year-old gay brother could “quit” his same-sex attraction.

“Whoever wants to quit homosexuality, we connect them,” she said – to external counsellors, who have included Pastor Solomon Male, a locally known anti-gay campaigner. She also gave our undercover reporter the phone number of a man who “was once a patient here” and “was once a homosexual but isn’t anymore”.

The USAID aid agency – which says it supports LGBTQI+ inclusive development – gave the Most At Risk Populations Initiative (MARPI) that runs this clinic a $420,000 grant in 2019, ending this September. (It is unclear if any of this money went to this specific clinic.)

It is just one of several examples of health centres in Uganda where our undercover reporters caught staff providing, or providing referrals for, controversial anti-gay ‘therapies’.

Our investigation identified similar support for ‘anti-gay’ counselling activities at three hospitals in the Uganda Catholic Medical Bureau (UCMB) network. This network received more than $1m from USAID between 2019 and this April, though it is unclear whether the specific hospitals identified in this investigation received any of this money.

At one of these hospitals – Nsambya, Uganda’s biggest private health facility – staff referred our reporters to the private office of Cabrine Mukiibi, on the outskirts of Kampala, who mixed Freudian theories, biblical quotes and anti-gay insults in his diagnosis.

Mukiibi, who is also a staff counsellor at Nsambya, stated that sex without procreation “becomes evil” – before recommending what he called “exposure therapy”, telling our undercover reporter to “get a housemaid” that her supposedly gay teenage brother can “get attracted [to]’’, one who is “between 18 and 20 years of age”.

A spokesperson from the US embassy in Kampala, Anthony Kujawa, said that ‘conversion therapy’ goes against “the policy of the United States to pursue an end to violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics”.

In response to questions from openDemocracy, Kujawa explained that US funding for UCMB was supposed to support the capacity of Catholic health facilities involved in HIV and AIDS care. He said: “USAID does not fund or promote anti-LGBTQI+ conversion therapy and will investigate any report that a USAID funded partner is doing so.”

Rosco Kasujja, director of mental health at Makerere University’s school of psychology and head of the Uganda Clinical Psychologists Association, called openDemocracy’s findings “disturbing”. He blamed the lack of a national regulator for psychologists, which could ensure that all patients receive quality care.

“It’s really frustrating that we don’t have any power,’’ he said, in reference to his association’s voluntary and non-binding standards. “People are playing by their own rules and [we] can’t do anything about it.”

 

‘Extremely unethical’

Globally, more than 65 associations of doctors, psychologists or counsellors have condemned ‘conversion therapy’ practices, according to a 2020 report by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) rights group.

Three countries (Brazil, Ecuador and Malta) have banned these practices – which range from ‘talk therapy’ to physical ‘treatments’ including so-called aversion therapy, while Germany has banned them when applied to minors. Several US states have also passed bans, while the UK recently pledged to do the same nationwide.

Anal sex is illegal in Uganda, and homosexuality is heavily stigmatised. It is unclear how common ‘conversion therapy’ is, but openDemocracy teamed up with local researchers to document the experiences of 20 LGBT Ugandan survivors of such ‘treatments’.

Interviewees said such ‘therapy’ “felt like murder” and that they “suffered depression and anxiety”, drug dependence and suicidal thoughts. Mulago and a hospital in UCMB’s network were among the facilities they named as having provided the treatments.

Godiva Akullo, a feminist lawyer in Kampala, said of those providing ‘conversion’ therapies: “I think it’s extremely unethical behaviour.”

 

Unregulated therapy

In Kampala, openDemocracy undercover reporters visited three hospitals in the aid-funded UCMB network, looking for ‘treatment’ for same-sex attraction, and were referred to providers of such therapy either within the health facilities or externally.

At Kisubi Hospital’s “youth-friendly” clinic, a counsellor offered a session for 50,000 Ugandan shillings ($14), saying a “17 [year-old] is still a small child we can modify”.

At Lubaga Hospital, Matthias Ssetuba introduced himself as the facility’s “mental health focal person”. He claimed that homosexuality is caused by factors ranging from peer pressure to the internet, and also said that it can be “changed”.

“It is a mental health issue,” he added, “because once you start having sex with the same sex, much as those whites are saying ‘it’s normal’, in our society it’s abnormal. And anything to do with abnormality has something to do with mental health.”

He stressed that a person “has to accept” that they need help “in converting”.

In an email to openDemocracy afterwards, Ssettuba said it was the first time he’d had “such a case at the hospital”, which “has never aided any anti-LGBT conversion therapy”.

“We would only wish to support those who might want to do so at their own will,” he said. He did not reply to further questions about his statements to our undercover reporters.

Homosexuality, said Cabrine Mukiibi (the counsellor referred by Nsambya Hospital) is often caused by “unresolved competition” between a child and a same-sex parent for the attention of an opposite-sex parent during their development’s “phallic stage”.

He wore a label on his coat saying “clinical psychologist” when he met our reporters. He has also been quoted in local media as a “clinical psychologist”.

He said he had just finished (but not yet been awarded) a master’s degree in clinical psychology at Uganda Martyrs University, which is affiliated to the Catholic Church. But this degree is not listed on the university’s website, and Uganda’s higher education regulator told openDemocracy the university is not accredited to offer this programme.

Nsambya Hospital’s director Peter Sekweyama told openDemocracy that Mukiibi is “just offering counselling”, and that he is “trained in something like humanities”.

Kasujja, head of the psychologists’ association, said hospitals have a responsibility to ensure their staff are qualified – but warned that without national regulation of counsellors and psychologists, “there is going to be lots of abuse, […] lots of harm.”

No one from Kisubi Hospital responded to openDemocracy’s requests for comment. UCMB and the HIV clinic at Mulago Hospital also did not respond.

The US embassy in Kampala did not say if USAID funding to UCMB has been renewed.

Noah Mirembe, a human rights lawyer and trans man in Kampala, said that Ugandans who have been harmed by ‘conversion therapy’ practices and are interested in legal redress should contact the Taala Foundation (an organisation he co-directs) for support.

* Additional reporting by Nnanda Kizito Sseruwagi

 

This story was originally published by openDemocracy

A domestic worker in her house in the Dhaka’s Malibagh slum. She no longer has work because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Courtesy: Rafiqul Islam

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, Jun 30 2021 (IPS)

Rani Akter, a mother of five, usually works as a domestic helper in Dhaka’s Zikatola area. When the coronavirus pandemic broke out in Bangladesh last March, her employers asked her not to come to their homes for fear of infection.

“I lost my work in three houses one after the other, which became a nightmare for me. My rich employers did not allow me in their homes as they thought that I might carry the invisible virus,” Akter told IPS.

Akter’s husband also lost his job because of the COVID-19 lockdown and the family fell on hard times.

“We had nowhere to go. Once we had a home in Mehendiganj in the coastal Barishal district, but riverbank erosion engulfed our home eight years ago. That’s why we were compelled to stay in the city,” she said.

Akter began knocking on doors, looking — unsuccessfully — for work.

“We did not find government relief or cash assistance. But we had to survive and that’s why at first we were bearing family expenses from our savings. And when the savings were spent, we started borrowing from our relatives. We’ve already borrowed Tk 40,000 ($ 471). We are taking Tk 5,000 to 6,000 ($ 58 to $ 70) in loans per month from neighbours and relatives to meet our food demand and pay rent,” Akter said.

She said her family was running into debt and she did not know when their suffering would end.

Shahana Akter (20), a single mother who works as a domestic helper in Netrakona town, also lost her work when the pandemic started. But she was more fortunate that most.

“When I lost my work, I thought how my five-year-old son and I would survive. I had no savings. But I was lucky enough as I got a new work after two months of the lockdown,” Shahana Akter told IPS.

Millions of domestic workers lost their jobs because of COVID-19

There is no official data on the number of domestic workers in Bangladesh. But according to Rezaul Haque, additional secretary (Labour Wing) of Bangladesh’s Labour and Employment Ministry, around 95 percent of domestic helpers are women and girls.

A 2006 International Labour Organisation (ILO) study estimated that Bangladesh had four million domestic workers in a country with a population of 163 million.

While a recent study by the National Domestic Women Workers Union (NDWWU) showed there are about 2.2 to 2.5 million domestic workers, of which about 60 percent or 1.5 million were live-out workers with the remaining 40 percent living their employer’s homes.

According to NDWWU general secretary Murshida Akter Nahar, when the coronavirus outbreak began here in March 2020, many domestic workers lost their jobs without notice and without being paid the wages owed to them. 

It is estimated that around 1.2 million live-out workers lost their jobs since March 2020.

“And many domestic helpers were forced out of their employers’ houses, so they had to suffer a miserable life during the lockdown last year. They had no shelter to live and no food to eat in Dhaka city. That was why many of them were compelled to leave the city,” she told IPS.

Once the COVID-19 infection rate reduced, many domestic workers returned to the city, hoping to be re-employed by their former employers. But most did not get their jobs back.

Nahar said those domestic helpers who had been able to find employment, lost their jobs when the coronavirus situation started deteriorating once again this March. “But they did not get enough support from the government.”

She said many domestic workers started begging, resulting a rapid rise of beggars on the city streets.        

Mahmuda Begum (40) lives in a small rented house in the city’s Zikatola area and she had also worked in the area as a domestic helper. When the pandemic began she lost her job overnight.

“I lost my only livelihood option due to COVID-19. I spent all the savings that I had. Now I have no money to pay house rent (Taka 5,000 per month or $58) or buy food and other essential goods. That’s why I had no option but to borrow money at high interest,” Begum told IPS.

Begum, a widow and mother of two, said she did not pay her rent for four months and her family often have to starve for lack of food. “We cannot eat meals three times in a day,” she added. 

Shahana Akter (20), a single mother and domestic worker in Netrakona town, also lost her work when the pandemic started. She was able to find employment again. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

Domestic work is an unregulated sector

Rights bodies have been demanding ratification of the ILO Convention 189 and implementation of the Domestic Workers Protection and Welfare Policy. In 2015, the Bangladesh government adopted the Domestic Workers Protection and Welfare Policy aiming to ensure the rights of domestic workers and they were supposed to be a registration process. 

“But the government is yet to implement the policy. We are also demanding the government include the domestic work issue in the Labour Act to be amended,” Nahar said.

Domestic Workers Rights Network coordinator Abul Hossain said: “At the onset of the lockdown enforced in Bangladesh, the domestic workers faced a lot of suffering. About 30 percent of them, who lost work, were compelled to return to their villages and those who were in the city did not have any work. A majority of them did not get any government support.”

He said that many were now in a difficult situation as they could not pay rent and were trapped in debt. He said this also resulted in a rapid rise in family feuds.

Hossain, also a trade union leader, said it was impossible to currently ensure the rights of domestic workers and suggested bringing them under a legal framework to establish their rights.

Haque, additional secretary (Labour Wing) of the Labour and Employment Ministry, said the government distributed cash assistance and relief among the unemployed by preparing their lists. He said that there was no specific social protection scheme for domestic workers as they worked in the informal sector.

Haque said that if the proposed Domestic Workers Protection and Welfare Policy Act was passed, the rights of domestic workers could be established.

“Talks continue with stakeholders concerned to formulate a law to ensure the rights of domestic workers,” Haque said.      

_______________________________________________________________________________

This feature was made possible by a donation from Farida Sultana Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Farida Sultana passed away in December 2020 after battling COVID-19 for two weeks. 

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By External Source
Tonga, Jun 30 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Last week, the Tonga Laboratory Services completed the installation of a 4 module GeneXpert testing equipment used for diagnosis of COVID-19 infection and to increase SARS-coV-2 testing capacity.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, each Pacific Island Country and Territory (PICT) had one or two GeneXpert equipment for diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) and sexually transmitted infections (STI), supported by Global Fund. The same equipment had been used for COVID-19 testing in the last 12 months.

The progressive increase in demand for COVID-19 testing in PICTs over the past months resulted in frequent equipment downtime due to repair and maintenance affecting not only COVID-19 testing but also TB and STI testing. Therefore, the need to have a dedicated equipment for COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 testing was critical.

Telesia Apikotoa, Laboratory Manager at Tonga Laboratory Services, said this equipment will help them prepare for the worst should an outbreak occur. “This equipment will strengthen our COVID-19 testing capabilities and receiving 4 additional modules for testing is of great help to us. We acknowledge the support received since the beginning of this pandemic to improve our laboratory’s services and capabilities”.

Dr Eka Buadromo, Senior Laboratory Advisor at the Pacific Community’s (SPC) Public Health Division, said that SPC continues to provide technical support to Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) during this COVID-19 pandemic through the provision of polymerase chain reaction testing facilities, equipment, consumables, and reagents required for SARS-CoV-2 testing.

“The deployment of GeneXpert equipment to PICTs specifically to test for SARS-CoV-2 will improve diagnostic accuracy, turnaround time of test results and also lengthen the life-span of the instrument”.

This has been made possible by the Pacific Community (SPC) with financial support from the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) Grant and European Union (EU), while purchased through the UNICEF-procurement system for COVID-19 emergency supplies.

So far, 12 PICTs have received GeneXpert equipment and SPC continues to work with the Joint Pacific COVID-19 Incident Management Team and other donor partners to support the supply of GeneXpert testing cartridges and further ensure that PICTs are well prepared to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

Credit: UNICEF Uganda/2021/Abdul

By External Source
NEW YORK, Jun 30 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies – is developing a curriculum derived from the seminal work of world-renowned psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”, and its related branch of psychotherapy, Logotherapy. The curriculum, which has been preliminary field-tested in Uganda, aims to fully tap into the resilience of girls and boys living in crisis settings.

Psychosocial support is a core component of the holistic education programmes supported by ECW and its partners to help adolescent girls and boys in armed conflicts, forced displacement, climate change-related disasters and protracted crises to cope with the incommensurable hardship and adversity they face.

“Crisis-affected girls and boys endure abnormal challenges of armed conflicts, widespread violations of their human rights, chronic insecurity and constant threats to their lives and sense of safety. To achieve quality learning outcomes and empower them to thrive towards their potential, one must address their trauma and experiences of adversity. By empowering them to find a meaning in their experience, they stand greater chances of healing, unleashing their resilience and becoming positive agents of change in all walks of life. Logotherapy is a forward-looking and profound approach that ignites the strength of the human spirit,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait.

“With this ground-breaking curriculum we want to shift the dominant narrative that hardship prevents young people from achieving their goals or fully living their story of life. Viktor Frankl provides an empirical and inspiring example of how extreme hardship can actually fuel global contributions. At Education Cannot Wait, this is also our stance. We want to empower children and adolescents in armed conflicts and forcible displacement to turn their gruesome adversity into ultimate hope and capacity to shed their light of knowledge, wisdom and compassion onto their communities, nations and the rest of the world.”

Frankl posits that human beings can withstand significant suffering if they can access meaning and hope and recognize their choices and potential. Frankl tested his research while enduring Nazi concentration camps in World War II. The themes he conveys include dehumanization, profound loss, injustice, and unspeakable cruelty. Without making comparisons, Frankl presented logotherapy in his world-renowned book, “Man’s Search for a Meaning,” which is today universally recognized as one of the top schools of thoughts in Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS). Thus, all of these concepts are relatable and relevant to adolescent girls and boys living in conflict and disaster-affected communities.

By providing a curriculum as a global good, ECW aims to offer a structured alternative approach to partners who work with adolescents experiencing hardship. Through dialogue, reflection and activities focused on the life and teachings of Viktor Frankl – as well as role models such as Malala Yousafzai, Wangari Maathai, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela – young people will explore how to create connection, find meaning, imagine a different future, and contribute to the world in big and small ways. ECW supported the field-testing of the curriculum package – titled “An Instruction Manual for Life” – with groups of adolescents in a non-formal community setting with upper secondary students in Northern Uganda in early 2021.

Initial results from the testing found that young people and facilitators enthusiastically embraced the curriculum as “relevant, exciting, engaging, and new.” Youth reported high satisfaction and showed that they learned and internalized key concepts. Facilitators expressed strong interest in the curriculum as they felt that local schools fell short in supporting adolescents in profound and critical thinking, individual expression and self-reflection to access their resilience, inner strength, hopes and dreams.

Based on the feedback of the field testing, ECW filmed introductory videos to accompany each of the three “blocks” of the curriculum: “Deep Dive”, “Find Your Meaning” and “Dream Big.”

Watch videos

Watch all the ECW Logotherapy Life Lessons Videos on our playlist.

Additional testing will be conducted before the curriculum is finalized and published.
For more information on the curriculum, please contact info@un-ecw.org

 

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Excerpt:

This first of its kind curriculum acknowledges the immeasurable resilience of adolescents living in crisis settings, encouraging them to use their experience to become their potential.

Health workers on Bwama Island on Lake Bunyonyi in Uganda prepare to administer COVID-19 vaccines. “The threat of a third wave in Africa is real and rising”, said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. “Our priority is clear – it’s crucial that we swiftly get vaccines into the arms of Africans at high risk of falling seriously ill and dying of COVID-19.” Credit: UNICEF/Catherine Ntabadde

By Kristalina Georgieva and Abebe Aemro Selassie
WASHINGTON DC, Jun 30 2021 (IPS)

Sub-Saharan Africa is in the grips of a third wave of COVID-19 infections that threatens to be even more brutal than the two that came before.

This is yet more evidence of a dangerous divergence in the global economy. One track for countries with good access to vaccines, where strong recoveries are taking hold. And another for those countries that are still waiting and at risk of falling further behind.

The growth of infections in sub-Saharan Africa is now the fastest in the world, with an explosive trajectory that is outpacing the record set in the second wave. At this pace, this new wave will likely surpass previous peaks in a matter of days—and in some countries, infections are already more than double, or even triple, their January peaks.

The latest (delta) variant—reportedly 60 percent more transmissible than earlier variants—has been detected in 14 countries.

When the pandemic first hit, quick action by policymakers helped prevent infection rates seen elsewhere around the world. But it pushed already strained local health systems to the breaking point.

Only six months after the initial crisis, the region experienced a second wave that swiftly outpaced the scale and speed of the first. Now, another six months on, sub-Saharan Africa faces its third devastating wave.

The only way for the region to break free from this vicious pandemic cycle is to swiftly implement a widespread vaccination program.

A still-vulnerable region

The sheer speed of this third wave highlights the difficulty policymakers in sub Saharan Africa face in heading off a crisis once it gets under way. In Namibia, for example, new cases reached the previous January peak within only two weeks, and tripled another two weeks later. For many countries, by the time a new surge is identified, it may already be too late.

And the options employed during previous waves may no longer be feasible. The re-imposition of containment measures would likely come at too high an economic and social cost, and is simply unsustainable—and unenforceable—over a prolonged period.

Looking back, most sub-Saharan African countries entered the second wave in a more difficult economic position than the first, with shrinking fiscal resources to protect the vulnerable, additional millions thrown into poverty, and depleted household balance sheets.

While some countries have taken steps to improve preparedness, unfortunately, very few have had sufficient resources—or time—to strengthen public health systems.

And, now, the scale of the current wave is once again threatening to overwhelm local health systems. News reports across the region point to overwhelmed hospitals. The sick are dying while waiting for a bed. Non-emergency surgeries have been canceled to preserve space for COVID-19 patients.

And military hospitals have been opened for civilian use. Oxygen has become a key constraint, with supply already failing to keep up with the demand for critically-ill patients. The region’s scarce health workers continue to be at risk.

The risks of leaving Africa behind

The vaccine rollout in sub-Saharan Africa remains the slowest in the world. Less than 1 adult in every hundred is fully vaccinated, compared to an average of over 30 in more advanced economies. This means even most essential frontline workers continue to work unprotected. In this context, some of the world’s more fortunate countries have stockpiled enough vaccines to cover their populations many times over.

Without significant, upfront, international assistance—and without an effective region-wide vaccination effort—the near-term future of sub-Saharan Africa will be one of repeated waves of infection, which will exact an ever-increasing toll on the lives and livelihoods of the region’s most vulnerable, while also paralyzing investment, productivity, and growth.

In short, without help the region risks being left further and further behind.

And the longer the pandemic is left to ravage Africa, the more likely it is that ever more dangerous variants of the disease will emerge. Vaccination is not simply an issue of local lives and livelihoods. It is also a global public good. For every country—everywhere—the most durable vaccine effort is one that covers everyone, in every country.

What can be done to speed up the vaccine effort?

IMF staff has put forward a global proposal that targets vaccinating at least 40 percent of the total population of all countries by end-2021, and at least 60 percent by the first half of 2022.

Africa is expected to receive 30 percent vaccination coverage through COVAX and another 30 percent coverage through the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT), established by the African Union under the leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

We see seven key steps to ensure these vaccination targets are met:

• • First, it is essential to deliver vaccines to sub Saharan Africa as soon as possible. Given that much of the global supply of vaccines for 2021 has already been bought up, many countries will be forced to wait until 2022 to get them. So, the fastest way to get vaccines to sub Saharan Africa is for advanced economies to share their stockpiles bilaterally or through multilateral initiatives. COVAX has already received pledges for over half a billion doses. But these need to turn into actual deliveries as soon as possible to make a difference. Indeed, the goal should be to get a quarter of a billion doses to the region by September.

 

• • Second, vaccine manufacturers should speed up supply to Africa for the rest of this year. Advanced economies with vaccine manufacturing capabilities should encourage their manufacturers to do so, especially when demand at home is falling short of supply.

 

• • Third, AVATT should be fully financed to ensure coverage of 30 percent of the African Union population. This requires an estimated $2 billion, that would for example allow AVATT to execute its optional contract of 180 million doses with J&J.

 

• • Fourth, remove cross-border export restrictions on raw materials and finished vaccines. This includes ensuring that the Aspen facility in South Africa—a key supplier to AVATT—is operational at full capacity, and resuming exports from the Serum Institute of India to COVAX. African vaccination plans rely heavily on these two facilities.

 

• • Fifth, financing of at least $2.5 billion and upfront planning will also be critical to ensure health systems can deliver shots-in-arm promptly as vaccine supply ramps up. Many countries in the region, including eSwatini, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, and Rwanda, have quickly and effectively administered their limited supplies. These countries, along with others in the region, have had to place their vaccine campaigns on hold as they wait for the arrival of the new supplies that they have recently procured at comparatively high cost or the donated supplies from other countries’ stockpiles. It is these shortages—rather than the ability to administer shots—that has so far been the biggest constraint. But when supply picks up, health systems must be prepared to vaccinate as many people as possible. And this is doable as the experience in many developing countries show—the likes of Seychelles, Mongolia, Bhutan, and Maldives impressively scaled-up vaccinations quickly once their vaccine supplies arrived.

 

• • Alongside vaccination efforts, countries must also ensure that their public health systems are able to handle an influx of cases. This includes accelerating the acquisition of vital COVID-19 health tools, including therapeutics, oxygen, and personal protective equipment. No matter what the speed of vaccinations, these supplies are needed now to help save lives. This will require urgent grant financing to pre-emptively procure and deliver a minimum package of critical COVID-19 Health Tools to address the rising health and economic costs arising from the surge in cases driven by the delta variant.

 

• Finally, the magnitude of the region’s financing needs requires a coordinated effort on the part of the international community. Few countries have the fiscal space to finance this effort on their own, considering the region’s already elevated debt levels and already pressing spending needs. Most of the international community’s financial assistance will need to come in the form of grants or concessional loans. With our colleagues from the World Bank, WHO, WTO, and others, the IMF has formed a special task force to ensure that countries get the resources and vaccines they need.

As always, Africa can count on the IMF. We remain deeply committed to all countries in the region. We’ve ramped up our lending to sub Saharan Africa—last year it was more than 13 times our annual average—and support to increase our access limits will allow us to scale up our zero-interest lending capacity.

And the unprecedented $650 billion new SDR allocation, far and away the largest in the Fund’s history, once approved will make $23 billion available to member countries in sub Saharan Africa.

Yet the gravity and urgency of the situation requires the global community working together. We all have a stake in this. So, in all countries—advanced and emerging alike—we can reclaim our physical and economic health from the pandemic. And so that sub Saharan Africa can resume its path toward a more prosperous future.

Kristalina Georgieva is the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Abebe Aemro Selassie is the Director of the IMF’s African Department.

 

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Net-zero emissions from food and land use, reimagining school meals and advancing healthy diets will be on the agenda at the Pre-Summit next month

By External Source
ROME, Jun 29 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The UN Food Systems Summit has revealed the 15 action areas with more than 50 solution clusters that will inspire discussions at the Pre-Summit in Rome from July 26-28.

Each action area, developed by more than 500 members of the Summit’s five Action Tracks, represents a cluster of game-changing propositions that aim to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by transforming food systems.

The solutions, published on the online Summit Community, are to support Member States as they work through national pathways for food systems transformation. They will also help catalyse new coalitions and commitments from governments and partners to support these pathways, many of which will be announced at the UN Food Systems Summit in September in New York.

The solutions were refined from more than 2,000 ideas proposed during 18 months of dialogues, surveys and open fora with Indigenous Peoples, youth, producers, researchers, NGOs and governments.

Among the game-changing solutions are initiatives to reimagine school meals programmes and proposals to include the cost of a healthy diet when calculating poverty lines.

Other solutions include the development of deforestation-free supply chains, and subsidies redirected towards sustainable production and consumption.

Initial ideas for new partnerships include an Indigenous Peoples Food Systems Trust, a Coalition for African Youth in Agriculture, and a Food and Land Net Zero Country Alliance, for countries to commit to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from food and land use by 2050.

Notes to editors

Journalists can register for news updates from the Summit here and apply for Pre-Summit accreditation here.

For more information: FSScommunications@un.org

About the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit

The UN Food Systems Summit was announced by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, on World Food Day last October as a part of the Decade of Action for delivery on the SDGs by 2030. The aim of the Summit is to deliver progress on all 17 of the SDGs through a food systems approach, leveraging the interconnectedness of food systems to global challenges such as hunger, climate change, poverty and inequality. More information about the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit and list of Advisory Committee and Scientific Group members can be found online: https://www.un.org/foodsystemssummit

Excerpt:

Net-zero emissions from food and land use, reimagining school meals and advancing healthy diets will be on the agenda at the Pre-Summit next month

The changes needed to get to net-zero emissions in the global energy sector by 2050 require everyone to make choices now that align to our collective goal

By Pete Richardson
TORONTO, Canada, Jun 29 2021 (IPS)

Life is a series of choices. And choices have consequences. When it comes to climate change, some choices have bigger consequences than others, and there’s a startling takeaway: your next “big” decision will play a meaningful role in our collective ability to reach Net-Zero by 2050.

Pete Richardson

Last month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published a roadmap describing how the global energy sector can zero-out its emissions by mid-century. In a report that includes many remarkable statements, three stand out. First, behavioral changes, like walking instead of driving, amount to just 4% of the required reductions. Second, more than half of all decarbonization is linked to consumer choices, such as installing low-carbon heating. Third, electricity sector emissions have to nosedive even as electricity demand doubles.

Two conclusions flow from this. If governments and industry follow the IEA roadmap, consumers won’t need to modify their behavior much; the overwhelming majority (96%) of emissions reductions will come from other changes. This may come as a relief to many. But there’s a nuance; the IEA distinguishes behavior from choices. That means – and here’s our second conclusion – every choice each of us makes today that has a long-term climate impact must be made in a way that propels us toward zeroing emissions.

It’s hard to imagine how individual choices can affect long-term global targets; the time frame is too remote, and a collective goal is too abstract. But reverse-engineering the actions required, and understanding how those actions must be spread across society, accelerates and personalizes the importance of today’s choices.

This is because of a concept called committed emissions. Every new ‘thing’ that we build or buy has an expected working life. Understanding the climate impact of a ‘thing’ therefore requires knowing both the rate at which it generates carbon, and how long (in years) it will operate. For example, cars last, on average, 15 years, whilst power plants can run for decades.

That means there are fewer than two generations of cars before 2050, and just one generation of power plant. In fact, the issue is more pressing than that; the IEA’s roadmap requires electric vehicle sales to swell from 5% of today’s market to more than 60% by 2030, and our carbon “budget” for new-build power plants is already compromised because of the longevity of our existing power fleet.

The startling result is that your next big decision will have a meaningful impact on our collective ability to hit Net-Zero by 2050. Put differently, if you are fortunate enough to influence an investment in a new car or power plant, you must have a compelling reason (and there are fewer than you think) to invest in anything other than a zero-emissions-vehicle or zero-carbon-ready power plant.

Why are we focusing on cars and power plants? Shouldn’t we also eat less red meat, and avoid plastic bags? The answer is yes; all of it matters. But – and here’s the crux – some choices have an exponentially bigger climate impact than others. To illustrate, your decision to use reusable bags at the grocery store, while admirable, means little if you drive a gas-guzzling truck to get there.

So which choices have the most impact? Simply put, it’s the choices about machines and appliances that – historically – have involved burning things, and it’s a short list. Power plants and cars are on it. So too are the things that heat our buildings and cook our food. Today, many of these activities involve fire, and that needs to change if we are to reach Net-Zero by 2050.

The challenge with switching out fire for electrons (or other zero-emission technologies) is that history, bias and noise are all against us. History, because past energy transitions have taken time. Bias, because we are prone to favor information that supports pre-existing beliefs. And noise, because we are bombarded with conflicting information on a daily basis.

These challenges are compounded by the fact that many of our “big” choices are made under pressure, e.g. an appliance has failed and we need a new one, NOW. In these circumstances, we routinely rely on heuristics (mental short-cuts to make quicker decisions), which tend to disadvantage new approaches.

In the wild, that normally means a mid-winter failure of a gas furnace will result in a like-for-like replacement, even though the same job could be done by an electric heat pump. Here, no-one can blame the stressed householder. Similarly, it’s tough (but easier) to blame an under-pressure board that continues investing in emission-heavy technologies.

The toxic combination of history, bias, noise and pressure is worsened by information asymmetry, which is to say that a Google search for “replacement furnace” yields more experts in gas heating than heat pumps. And all that is before accounting for price differences between carbon-intensive and low carbon alternatives, which can be significant.

The remedy? Getting ‘climate-smart’ information into decision-makers’ hands. (Note: our biggest challenge is not technology.)

This requires excising historic ‘truths’ that weren’t true in the past, and aren’t true now. It means correcting for bias and noise, and being transparent on the true costs of carbon. It means training our workforce differently, and making low-carbon alternatives cost-competitive at point-of-purchase. For the expanding electricity sector, it means developing a fleet strategy that centers on a timely shift to Net-Zero

Big choices are hard. But they are pressing, and they are critical. Bad choices today amplify tomorrow’s challenges, and each of us bears responsibility for that.

Pete Richardson is a Climate Strategist at Manifest Climate, with a focus on energy, and a drive to effect change at scale.

 

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Excerpt:

The changes needed to get to net-zero emissions in the global energy sector by 2050 require everyone to make choices now that align to our collective goal