Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Over 600 million people in Africa require treatment for an NTD, making up 35% of the global burden. Credit: Uniting to Combat NTDs

By Thoko Elphick-Pooley
HOVE, United Kingdom, Jun 11 2021 (IPS)

As world leaders come together in the UK for the G7, the global response to COVID-19 and how we can build a better defence system against infection is at the forefront of discussions.  Whilst we applaud the incredible global efforts in tackling COVID-19 and support calls for vaccines to be shared equitably across the world, we also urge G7 leaders not to abandon efforts to tackle existing epidemics such as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), HIV/AIDs, malaria, TB and polio.

The gains that have been made fighting these diseases must not be lost or we risk disease resurgence that will be even more costly to address, which could lead to a disastrous disease epidemic with mass consequences.

Diseases like blinding trachoma, leprosy, intestinal worms, Guinea worm disease and elephantiasis; they blind, disable, and can even be fatal. These diseases are preventable and treatable, yet they still affect 1.7 billion people around the world

As demonstrated by COVID-19, health crises don’t pop up overnight. They are a consequence of systemic underinvestment in global health, lack of strong disease surveillance systems capable of detecting disease outbreaks, global data sharing protocols, weak health systems compounded by a lack of pandemic preparedness backed by sustainable financing for global health.

COVID-19 has shown us that it doesn’t matter whether you are a low, medium or high-income country. If you lack the essential medical supplies, lives will be lost. If you have a critical gap in health workforce and infrastructure, other essential health services will suffer as resources get diverted to fighting a pandemic. Moreover, diseases do not respect borders.

This is why we must not abandon efforts to tackle existing epidemics. Take neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), for instance, coined as such because of persistent neglect. NTDs is the collective name for a group of 20 infectious diseases and conditions. Diseases like blinding trachoma, leprosy, intestinal worms, Guinea worm disease and elephantiasis. They blind, disable, and can even be fatal. These diseases are preventable and treatable, yet they still affect 1.7 billion people around the world. They are a chronic epidemic that rarely make it to the top of anyone’s agenda. They affect the most vulnerable communities in low-resource settings, primarily in Africa. 

Over 600 million people in Africa require treatment for an NTD, making up 35% of the global burden. Across the continent, 12 countries are on track to eliminate an NTD in the next three years – an extraordinary feat based on years of necessary action.

Vulnerable African communities currently face a triple burden; the pandemic has had a devastating impact on health services; cuts to NTD treatments will make them more vulnerable to tropical diseases, and the prospect of these individuals receiving a COVID-19 vaccine before 2023 is highly unlikely. This triple threat makes some communities in Africa more vulnerable to future outbreaks and increases the risk of disease resurgence, undermining efforts to improve global health security. 

It is in the interest of all the G7 countries to sustain investments that directly underpin our safety, security and economic success – and to help shape a recovery plan that promotes the health and prosperity of individuals globally. Only then will we be able to prepare for and tackle future outbreaks of deadly infections.

We welcome the focus of world leaders on One Health, which is a collaborative effort to achieve health for people, animals and the environment at the local, national and global level. We urge G7 leaders to go a step further, beyond focusing on zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance, which simply isn’t enough to truly build pandemic preparedness.

Future health threats could develop from different origins, patterns, nature or impact. All aspects of One Health must be included if we are to improve global health security, including tackling other diseases, such as NTDs.

This will be a win-win for people and countries everywhere. Investments in NTDs have been a success story with 43 countries having eliminated at least one NTD, including 17 in Africa and 600 million people no longer requiring treatment for them. But the UK government’s recent exit from supporting NTD programmes, particularly during a pandemic, undermines years of progress and will deeply impact millions of Africans.

Now, 184 million tablets in 25 African countries are at high risk of expiring in 2021 and 2022 due to the funding cuts. By failing to place tackling NTDs and disease epidemics at the forefront of the global health security agenda, we risk our children’s lives and their future. Poverty will increase and access to education will be impacted. COVID-19 has shown the entire world how highly connected we are and now it is time for disease control to be dealt with collectively.

 

Thoko Elphick-Pooley is Executive Director of Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases

 

Boris Johnson’s recent pledge to cut emissions by 78 % by 2035 (compared with 1990 levels) is impressive in its ambition. Opponents are asking how such momentous pledges can be achieved. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Felix Dodds and Chris Spence
NEW YORK, Jun 11 2021 (IPS)

How are preparations for the Glasgow Climate Summit in November proceeding? Currently, we are more than halfway through three weeks of virtual preparatory negotiations taking place in June. These online talks are challenging in their own right, just as many had feared  (see: ‘Should the 2021 Climate Summit in Glasgow Still Take Place?’). 

As we enter the final few months before Glasgow, however, there is room both for optimism and deep concern. Curiously, both of these emotions center squarely on the critical role of the host government. 

The success or failure of a climate summit of this magnitude depends greatly on the role of the host government—or “Presidency”. In the past, we have seen both unfortunate missteps from the Presidency, such as Copenhagen in 2009, as well as untrammeled successes, like Paris in 2015. 

The success or failure of a climate summit of this magnitude depends greatly on the role of the host government—or “Presidency”. In the past, we have seen both unfortunate missteps from the Presidency, such as Copenhagen in 2009, as well as untrammeled successes, like Paris in 2015

There are several common elements that make up a good or even a great Presidency. First, the ability to build trust among member states is critical. While this sounds simple in theory, in practice it is immensely difficult, even without the added complication of a global pandemic creating both practical difficulties and showing once again the deep rifts between wealthy countries, which have hoovered up the bulk of vaccines, and developing nations. Another feature of a strong Presidency is its careful planning, both substantively and logistically. Can the UK deliver?

 

Always look on the bright side

Let’s start with reasons to be optimistic. First, the UK Presidency has made one very positive and intelligent move. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s recent pledge to cut emissions by 78 % by 2035 (compared with 1990 levels) is impressive in its ambition. It set a very high bar for other nations and could, potentially, give the UK a strong moral foundation for asking more of others. 

Another positive for the UK is the enduring quality of its civil service. While the UK’s politicians seem to have discovered a penchant for tripping on every possible banana skin in recent years, the reputation of the country’s public servants remains high. The performance of the National Health Service (NHS) during the pandemic is just one example. More relevant to the Glasgow Summit, however, is the caliber of its diplomatic corps and wider foreign service, which remains exemplary. 

 

How to lose friends and irritate people

Set against these positives, though, are several worrying facts. 

First, the UK is the assuming the Presidency in the immediate aftermath of Brexit, a process that has left both Britain and its EU neighbors both bruised and a low point in their relationship. Its exit from the EU could hardly be described as one that has built strong and positive relations with the remaining 27 countries. These are countries the UK will need onside to make Glasgow a success.

Secondly, the UK’s recent decision to cut  development aid from 0.7% to 0.5 % Gross National Income (GNI) feels like extraordinarily bad timing..

 

Development Aid

In October 1970, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution supporting the commitment to the 0.7% GNI for development aid from developed countries. While developed countries had agreed in theory, however, few were willing to put their money where their mouths were.

The UK was one of these few. In 2013, the Liberal Democrat MP Michael Moore introduced the Private Members Bill to the UK parliament that would enshrine the 0.7% GNI development aid target into law. In  theory, this would protect it from being a bargaining tool in any future government budget discussions. 

The law was passed in March 2015 under the Conservative/Liberal coalition government. All major political parties at the last election in 2019 committed to standing by this development target. 

Surprisingly, this changed in November 2020 with the Conservative UK Finance Minister’s Spending Review. The review indicated that in 2021 the government would reduce its allocation of development aid to 0.5 % (GNI). This has resulted in a huge cut: US$5.7 billion in aid will no longer be available. While the consequences are yet to be felt, it can hardly fail to be momentous. To put it into context, this cut is more than the combined ODA of Austria, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Iceland, Greece, Portugal, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. 

Up until the UK’s startling decision to cut its ODA, it has held the moral high ground on this issue. In fact, it was one of only six countries to have reached the United Nations goal of 0.7 %–and the only G7 country to do so. This gave the UK a great boost for the upcoming Climate Summit, where finance will be a critical issue. 

 

Tory misgivings 

Now Johnson’s government has surrendered this advantage, many experts are wondering how it will affect the host government’s efforts to win over the international community that will descend on Glasgow in November? Such cuts will have profound, on-the-ground impacts in many developing countries—hardly a smart way to “win friends and influence people.”

Some of Johnson’s own Tory colleagues have serious misgivings. While a possible parliamentary rebellion seems unlikely, a coalition of Conservative MPs led by former International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell, and including two former Conservative Prime Ministers, is opposed to the cut, viewing it as a self-inflicted wound. The Conservatives have a majority of 80 in the House of Commons, which means if Conservative 41 MPs supported the reinstatement of the 0.7% then the government could face a humiliating climbdown. 

 

Logistical confusion 

(Drawn from a briefing produced by our colleague Yunus Arikan from ICLEI who follows the UNFCCC negotiations as the focal point of Local government and municipal authorities (LGMA), one of the 9 stakeholders climate constituencies.) 

Another potential pitfall in the lead-up to Glasgow lies in the meeting’s arrangements and logistics. By early June, publicly available information for participants in Glasgow was in short supply. 

For instance, there was no information yet on the capacity of the Glasgow Blue Zone (the conference location where negotiations will take place) with no breakdown for governments and observers of layout and costs of pavilion and office spaces. 

Special Glasgow Summit visas are currently available only for Blue Zone delegations and visa applications have to be submitted to the UK embassies starting from August. At this time, however, no information is available to facilitate visa applications for Green Zone events (where businesses and civil society will operate). Clearly, the clock is ticking on all of this.

Current UK COVID-19 measures ask for a minimum two weeks of quarantine upon arrival for most international participants,. Does this mean visa applications have to be adjusted accordingly as well? Will the policy be altered ahead of the Summit for government officials and other participants? This is not yet clear.

The Glasgow Summit is scheduled to have a Heads of State session on 1-2 November and a High-Level Ministerial Session the following week. No specific arrangement has yet been announced for access of observers during either of these segments, which again makes planning difficult for many non-negotiator participants.

The UN Climate Change Secretariat is expected to announce calls for special events (known as “side events”) on the UNFCCC-accreditation restricted Blue Zone 29 June. The results will be announced on 30 September which will leave less then a month´s time for speakers and organizers to secure their vaccines-visas-travels-accommodation for Glasgow – which will be a challenge in itself for any COP or major intergovernmental conference in normal times. It is also not clear what specific COVID-19 measures will apply for side events and meeting rooms, which influences the number of speakers and participants.

There is also no information yet on whether the UK Presidency and/or the UN Climate Secretariat will offer special vaccinations for participants, or whether observers will enjoy such benefits. Even if they do, the basis of selection will need to be clarified and it is also not clear which countries will accept such offers. Clearly, many logistical matters need to be clarified in a short space of time.

 

Details, details

The Glasgow Summit will mark an important moment for Boris Johnson’s Government. After the perceived foreign policy missteps over Brexit, Glasgow represents Johnson’s best opportunity to show that his vision of a new, global Britain can become a reality. The Prime Minister has apparently set great store by showcasing what his country could become in a post-Brexit future. If managed correctly, it could be a crowning success of his leadership. 

Yet if he is to burnish such a crown and make it gleam once more, he will need to ensure the logistical details are taken care of, and promptly. Furthermore, he will need to provide more details for how the UK will meet its ambitious 2035 emissions targets, since opponents are already asking how such momentous pledges can be achieved. Bringing the full weight of his country’s diplomatic skills in the lead-up to Glasgow will also be needed. This is no time for half-measures. It should be a complete team effort. 

Johnson should consider changing tack on his government’s ODA cuts. If this reduction was repositioned as a one-off, single-year adjustment, an announcement to reinstate some or all of the 0.7 % commitment could be timed in a way that would give Glasgow—and Johnson’s own reputation—a major boost. 

Finally, it looks very likely that Convention on Biological Diversity Summit in China may go ahead with only Ambassadors from country embassies in China and no delates or stakeholders from outside China. The Biodiversity Summit starts three weeks before the Glasgow Climate Summit – it makes you think – is this an indicator of what is going to happen?

 

Felix Dodds is a sustainable development advocate and writer. His new book Tomorrow’s People and New Technologies: Changing the Way we Live Our Lives will be out in September. He is coauthor of Only One Earth with Maurice Strong and Michael Strauss and Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals with Ambassador David Donoghue and Jimena Leiva Roesch.

Chris Spence is an environmental consultant, writer and author of the book, Global Warming: Personal Solutions for a Healthy Planet. He is a veteran of many climate summits and other United Nations negotiations over the past three decades.

While the Caribbean boasts endemic species, rich land and marine ecosystems, for some countries limited land for economic development results in natural habitat degradation and deforestation, which is exacerbated by climate change. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 11 2021 (IPS)

Earth is in the throes of multiple environmental crises, with climate change and the loss of biodiversity the most pressing.

The urgency to confront the two challenges has been marked by policies that tackle the issues separately.

Now, a report by a team of scientists has warned that success on either front is hinged on a combined approach to the dual crises.

It is the result of the first collaboration between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

“This has the potential to be game-changing both in terms of the way research is done and to highlight the synergies between these topics. Oftentimes, because we work in silos, we tend to forget that there is such a strong interconnection between these systems and clearly between climate and biodiversity,” co-author Shobha Maharaj told IPS.

Maharaj is a lead author on the small islands chapter of the IPPC’s 6th Assessment Report on the state of scientific, technical and socio-economic knowledge on climate change and 1 of 50 leading climate and biodiversity scientists who met virtually in December 2020, to explore the complex connections between the two fields.

Their workshop report was presented to the media on Thursday.

Among its arguments for addressing global warming and species loss simultaneously is evidence of some narrowly-focused climate fixes that inadvertently accelerate the extinction of plant and animal species.

According to the report, the scientific community has been working on synergies, or actions to protect biodiversity that contribute to climate change mitigation.

“There are some measures that people have been taking that are considered to be climate mitigation, but when done on a large scale can be harmful,” Maharaj said. For example, if you plant trees on a savannah grassland this can harm an entire ecosystem. We always need to step back and look at the big picture and this is becoming more integrated into the current dialogue between climate change and biodiversity, so it is definitely headed in the right direction.”

Maharaj says the findings can be instructive for regions like the Caribbean, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. While the area boasts endemic species, rich land and marine ecosystems, for some countries limited land for economic development results in natural habitat degradation and deforestation, which is exacerbated by climate change.

“Something as simple as the development of a regional protected area, rather than each island having its own protected area would go a long way in terms of highlighting, developing and growing the synergies and dealing with the trade-offs between biodiversity and climate change,” she told IPS.

The IPPC’s 6th Assessment Report on the state of scientific, technical and socio-economic knowledge on climate change calls for an increase in sustainable agriculture and forestry, better-targeted conservation actions. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

The peer-reviewed report comes ahead of two major climate meetings this year; the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, known as COP15, in October and the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in November.

Co-Chair of the IPBES-IPCC Scientific Steering Committee, Prof. Hans-Otto Pörtner said a sustainable future for people and nature remains attainable, but requires ‘rapid and far-reaching’ action.

“Solving some of the strong and apparently unavoidable trade-offs between climate and biodiversity will entail a profound collective shift of individual and shared values concerning nature – such as moving away from the conception of economic progress based solely on GDP growth, to one that balances human development with multiple values of nature for a good quality of life, while not overshooting biophysical and social limits,” he said.

The report lists measures to combat both climate change and biodiversity loss.

It cites ecosystems restoration as one of the cheapest and fastest nature-based climate mitigation solutions. Mangrove restoration, in particular, meets multiple global biodiversity and climate goals.

It also calls for an increase in sustainable agriculture and forestry, better-targeted conservation actions and an end to subsidies that support activities that are detrimental to biodiversity such as deforestation and over-fishing.

But it warned that just as climate change and biodiversity are inseparable, nature-based climate mitigation measures can only succeed alongside ambitious reductions in human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

“Land and ocean are already doing a lot, absorbing almost 50 percent of carbon dioxide from human emissions, but nature cannot do everything,” said Ana María Hernández Salgar, Chair of IPBES.

The 2019 Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the first of its kind in a decade, stated that the rate of global change in nature in the last half-century was unprecedented in history. It warned that the ruthless demand for earth’s resources had resulted in one million plant and animal species facing extinction within decades, with implications for public health.

Meanwhile, a recent World Meteorological Organisation ‘State of the Global Climate Report,’ found that concentrations of the major greenhouse gases increased, despite a temporary reduction in emissions in 2020, due to COVID-19 containment measures. The report also noted that 2020 was one of the 3 warmest years on record.

This week’s IPBES-IPCC Co-Sponsored Workshop Report on Biodiversity and Climate Change underscores that action is needed on both the climate change and biodiversity front – but going forward, must be addressed as 2 parts of 1 problem.

 

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Children work at a mine in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The UN says child labour figure has risen to 160 million, as COVID puts many more at risk. Credit: UNICEF/Patrick Brown

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jun 11 2021 (IPS)

Among the many daunting issues leaders of the G7 will have to discuss in their upcoming summit in idyllic Cornwall on June 11-13, child labour won’t be on the official agenda.

Yet the latest figures jointly released by ILO and UNICEF in occasion of the upcoming World Day Against Child Labour on 12th June are depicting a very worrying scenario with unprecedented rise of children engaged in work.

“Child Labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward”, the latest major publication on the issue, shows that there are now 160 million children in child labour, a rise of 8.4 million in the last four years, a very worrying, though unsurprising finding that is a major blow to the gains of the last two decades.

That’s why it is an imperative that the leaders of the G7 take a stand against this global plague, ensuring that any global strategy focused on “building forward better” must also enlist the fight against child exploitation as a top priority within a broader strategy to reset global development.

At legislative levels there are some encouraging developments that could pave the way for an holistic approach built on the Agenda 2030 that will create a global momentum around global target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The target, after which a global coalition against child labour is named, focuses on “taking immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”.

For example, several countries around the world including France and Netherlands have in place a strong human rights due diligence legislation that compels major corporations to have more robust compliance mechanisms along the lines of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct.

The good news is that the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, is expected to come up with a wide-ranging reform package on a mandatory human rights due diligence by the end of year though there is fear this might be further delayed.

Though future negotiations within the complex decision-making system of the EU might water down the final legislation, there is no doubt that the expectations are so high and the level of ambition expected to be found in the final document so large that half cooked measures won’t be accepted by the Parliament whose consent is mandatory for the legislation to be approved.

Amid also news that the G7 is close to a deal on a global taxation agreement that will affect the major world corporations, we might assume that the best and most effective way to tackle child labour “head on” is to force corporates to step up their commitment towards human rights.

Probably this is the most pragmatic manner from a western’s point of view to have child labour again at the center of the global agenda.

Given the almost universal discontent against big business all over the world, this is also perhaps the safest bet to ensure that G7 and G20 nations will not overlook the fight against child labour from their proceedings.

While it is vital that the global leaders meeting over the weekend in a beautiful setting in Cornwall to take a stand on the issue, yet we should not neglect that, most of the times, child labour is a phenomenon thriving out of an enabling environment in the developing world, and in the worst cases, it is almost an intrinsic element of the local fabric.

Oftentimes working children are recruited by small, often informal micro businesses in the developing world, economic entities that are not even under the purview of local tax offices nor those of the mostly ineffective Labour authorities in charge of checking on child labour.

The ILO-UNICEF joint report is clear on this point when it explains that it is “much more common in rural areas with 122.7 million rural children in child labour compared to 37.3 million urban children where children are involved in agriculture related work.

To confirm the trend, according to the report, the “largest share of child labour takes place within families with “72 per cent of all child labour and 83 per cent of child labour among children aged 5 to 11 occurs within families, primarily on family farms or in family microenterprises.”

These insights prove how challenging the fight against child labour has always been in the last two decades despite very encouraging improvements worldwide.

Exercising pressures on big corporations alone won’t suffice also because many of the developing countries with high number of working children are not attractive enough to host manufacturing sites that elsewhere are technically run by local contractors often in breach of the most basic human rights provisions.

To really build forward better, G7 and the G20 need to go well beyond a much-needed equitable distribution and production of vaccines, a mammoth task itself.

They need to come up with ambitious plans that will mobilize massive amounts of resources in unprecedented figures that will help developing nations not only to transit towards a net zero future but doing so by also ensuring a far greater equity in the national development outcomes pursued by developing nations that must be inclusive of the most vulnerable segments of their populations.

It means dealing with child labour not as a standing alone problem but as a part of a bigger strategy able to close the faulting lines so common in many emerging nations, like weak public health and poor education, lack of dignified job opportunities, all scars of remarkable but unfair economic pre-pandemic growths that proved to be unable to truly trickle down.

World leaders should go tough on billionaires and uncanny global corporations but at the same time they should remember the fight against child labour is a priority and an essential pillar to build a more equitable world.

A way for them to start would be to come up with an urgent plan of action to back those nations in the Pathfinders Initiative, countries who showed in the past commitment against child labour but whose efforts are now at risk of a brutal reversal.

Bold action is a must especially if we do not want to make a contempt of Year for the Elimination of Child Labour that happens to be undergoing unnoticed by most.

Eliminating child labour by 2025 might be out of reality but taking meaningful actions in that direction now is not.

The Author, Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal, writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives. He can be reached at simone_engage@yahoo.com

 

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Excerpt:

The international community commemorates World Day Against Child Labour on June 12

Agroecology can fight malnutrition, curb conflict AND build community self reliance and resilience–in hunger hotspots and beyond

By Daniel Moss and Amrita Gupta
BOSTON / NEW YORK, Jun 11 2021 (IPS)

Acute hunger is expected to soar in over 20 countries in the next few months, warns a recent report on global “hunger hotspots” from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). An estimated 34 million people are “one step away from starvation”, pushed to the brink by climate shocks, conflict, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Daniel Moss

The food aid industry is likely to be very busy in the coming years, even as Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, points out that the “right to food is different from a system of charity. Often the donors are part of the problem.”

At the Agroecology Fund–a force of more than 30 donors, 10 advisors and hundreds of grantee partners embedded in the global agroecology movement–we believe that to be part of the solution, an agroecological and food sovereignty lens must guide food security interventions, especially in times of acute crisis.

Evidence that agroecology is one of the most effective solutions to hunger and malnutrition mounting. Agroecology and traditional indigenous food systems help communities strengthen their food systems independent of external inputs or imported foods. By improving food sovereignty and access to healthy foods, agroecology increases farmer incomes, curbs out-migration from rural regions and addresses the root causes of hunger.

Importantly, agroecology addresses the root causes of conflict too. A new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) finds that countries where land and water become scarce or degraded tend to be more conflict-prone, and that “conservation, [and] sustainable and equitable management of nature plays an important role in preventing conflict and in rebuilding peace.” That is why agroecological practices, which steward natural resources, protect biodiversity, and support the wellbeing of indigenous and local communities, help curb conflict. Research by Coventry University in the UK also reiterates that agroecology creates a foundation for peace-building efforts in fragile environments.

In the past year, as Covid-19 exposed the vulnerability of our globalized, industrialized food system, our grantee partners sprung into action. Even in conflict zones or “hunger hotspots”, there exists local capacity to provide solutions.

Amrita Gupta

In Haiti, which imports the majority of its food, Mouvement Paysan Acul-du-Nord initiated cooperative farming in 25 communities to ensure food sovereignty. Those who owned land invited landless farmworkers to use it to produce food, and families shared harvests of rice, sweet potato, and beans with each other. In Nigeria, where artisanal fishers are among the most marginalized communities ––threatened by climate change, displacement and water pollution–– Fishnet Alliance provided fishing gear for fishers to feed their families and earn an income. The Alliance helped amplify fishers’ voices to policymakers: urging that traditional governance systems over the commons be respected. In Burkina Faso, Groundswell International trained women and youth to make masks and liquid soap, and encouraged the government to buy local agroecological produce for their school food and food aid programs.

These stories of resilience and grassroots can be found across the globe. In Palestine, as decades of conflict with Israel have deprived populations of land and water, the Union of Agriculture Work Committees (UAWC) saves traditional, locally adapted seeds for farmers; at refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, they helped families grow food on rooftops during the pandemic.

In Rwanda, communities involved in the Global Initiative for Environment and Reconciliation (GER) agroecology programs have begun peace-building talks to heal the deep rifts caused by the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. One survivor noted that agroecology diminishes mistrust and suspicion between groups as: communities work together to share harvests.

Now compare these strategies to the conventional development paradigm, in which boatloads of foods (too often, the surplus of US-grown genetically modified commodity crops) are “donated” to conflict areas, entrenching the unsustainable industrial agriculture model within the United States while undermining local agricultural practices and biodiversity in poorer countries.

As John Wilson, an advisor to the Agroecology Fund, says: “We have to be bolder in our nutrition approaches than we have been—more creative and innovative.” Our partners from Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Haiti and elsewhere, working at the frontlines of multiple crises, embody these bold and innovative approaches to deal with the root causes of malnutrition and conflict in the short- and longer term. Even as they fight hunger through self-help and mutual aid, they are improving livelihoods, stewarding landscapes, and mitigating climate change. And they are urging their governments to invest in small farmers and local agricultural production, so that communities can strengthen their resilience and achieve the deep and lasting food systems transformation we so urgently need. By supporting their efforts to make agroecology the cornerstone of global food systems, we can move millions away from starvation—in “hunger hotspots” and beyond.

Daniel Moss is the Executive Director of the Agroecology Fund. Amrita Gupta is the Fund’s Communications Lead. For more information on the Fund and its partners, visit the website.

 

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Excerpt:

Agroecology can fight malnutrition, curb conflict AND build community self reliance and resilience–in hunger hotspots and beyond

Musah Razark Adams, 13, (r) shows the sling shot that he uses to hit birds with when he works in a local rice field. Adams and his brother, Seidu, 15, (l) work to so that they can pay for school materials. A new report on child labour shows that global progress against child labour has ground to a halt and that a further 8.9 million children will be in child labour by the end of 2022 as a result of rising poverty driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DEHLI, Jun 10 2021 (IPS)

Malleshwar Rao, 27, spent his early years as a child labourer in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. Soon after finishing school at a local ashram, where the children of poor parents, sex workers and orphans studied, the 9-year-old would rush to a local construction site to join his parents who would be toiling in the harsh tropical sun to construct buildings as daily wage earners. The supervisor would assign Rao simpler tasks and his extra income would help his parents feed him and his younger brother.

“Those were really tough days,” recalls Rao, now an engineering graduate and an entrepreneur who also runs a non-profit `Don’t Waste Food’ to feed the needy.  “There was never enough food in the house. I used to study in the morning, then work as a labourer, go back home to do my homework and then get up early the next day to rush to school again. Life was blur; there was no time to play even,” Rao tells IPS.

At the beginning of 2020, 160 million children – 63 million girls and 97 million boys – like the 9-year-old Rao, were working everyday.

According to a global report by the United Nations Children’s Fund and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released today, Jun. 10, the world is at a “critical juncture in the worldwide drive to stop child labour”, as the number of children in child labour has increased by 8.4 million children over the last four years.

“Global progress has ground to a halt over the last four years after slowing considerably in the four years before that. COVID-19 threatens to further erode past gains,” the report cautions.

New analysis suggests a further 8.9 million children will be in child labour by the end of 2022 as a result of rising poverty driven by the pandemic, the report states.

It also notes that while the global picture showed that while child labour in Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean was decreasing, progress in Sub-saharan Africa had “proven elusive” with child labour increasing.

In addition to working as construction labourer, Rao also took up random jobs at local eateries to earn 10 cents daily for three to four hours of work – dishwashing and organising groceries. “The added incentive was the leftover food which the eatery owner kindly gave to me. I’d eat some and bring the rest back for my family,” says Rao.

Former child labourer Malleshwar Rao was so affected by the hunger he felt as a child that he started his own charity to provide food for the poor. A new report shows that that involvement in child labour is higher for boys than girls. However, when girls’ household chores are included as child labour, the gap reduces. Credit: Neena Lal/IPS

Rao’s story is a microcosm of the larger story of child labour in the world that shows that involvement in child labour is higher for boys than girls. However, when girls’ household chores are included as child labour, the gap reduces.

“Among all boys, 11.2 per cent are in child labour compared to 7.8 per cent of all girls. In absolute numbers, boys in child labour outnumber girls by 34 million. When the definition of child labour expands to include household chores for 21 hours or more each week, the gender gap in prevalence among boys and girls aged 5 to 14 is reduced by almost half,” today’s report notes.

The report also shows that more than one third of all children in child labour are excluded from school and that “hazardous child labour constitutes an even greater barrier to school attendance.”

“For every child in child labour who has reached a compulsory age for education but is excluded from school, another two struggle to balance the demands of school and work. They face compromises in education as a result and should not be forgotten in the discussion of child labour and education. Children who must combine child labour with schooling generally lag behind non-working peers in grade progression and learning achievement, and are more likely to drop out prematurely,” the report states.

Rao, however, was fortunate to have completed school. Thanks to the help of good Samaritans who paid his fees, Rao was able to turn his life around by graduating with an electronic engineering diploma from a local college.

He then got a job at a social media company as a content curator, earning $450 a month.

“My parents were thrilled that I was the first educated person in the family who also bagged a respectable job with a great salary,” Rao tells IPS. 

“My mother couldn’t stop crying for days. However, tackling hunger was always important for me, so simultaneously I also launched my NGO which collects extra food from nearby restaurants to feed the poor. Apart from reducing food wastage in hotels and at social gatherings, the initiative has also prevented thousands in the city from not sleeping hungry.”

He has since left his job and started his own travel startup.

But during the pandemic, apart from ration kits, Rao has also been providing oxygen cylinders and cooked meals for those in quarantine. India has reported nearly 30 million COVID-19 cases and upwards of 350,000 deaths since the pandemic’s second wave began in March.

“I have 30 volunteers from the local community engaged in distributing food and helping people get in touch with blood donors as well hospitals who have COVID beds. Through our network, we’ve been able to provide groceries for around 70,000 families within this lockdown period  since March,” says Rao.

The money is raised through crowdsourcing on social media and through individual donors. The NGO has also started supplying masks and sanitary pads for construction workers. His volunteers have also helped cremate 180 dead bodies of deceased who were shunned by families for fear of catching COVID-19.

Having known what it is like to be hungry and struggle for a square meal, Rao says he often encounters poor children during his donation drives who remind him of his past.

According to the ILO, there are around 12.9 million Indian children engaged in work between the ages of 7 to 17 years old, the majority who are between 12 and 17 years old, who work up to 16 hours a day to help their families make ends meet. An estimated 10.1 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 years old are engaged in work, says the organisation.

Much of the problem lies in tardy implementation of laws, say activists. According to Dr. Ranjana Kumari, Director, Centre for Social Research, a Delhi based think tank, even though India has strict laws against child labour, they are full of loopholes which allow poor families and unscrupulous agents to circumvent them and exploit the children. 

“These poor kids work in hazardous industries like brick making, quarries, tobacco industry and glass making which not only puts an end to their education but also makes them vulnerable to prostitution and trafficking at a very young age. The implementation of the laws needs to be stricter,” says Kumari.    

The report calls for extending social protection to mitigate poverty and economic uncertainty which underlie child labour.

It also calls for, among others:

• an evidenced-based policy roadmap;
• for every child to be registered at birth, which would allow them to access social services;
• the expansion of decent work; and
• free, good quality schooling which can “provide a viable alternative and open doors to a better future”.

Meanwhile, Rao’s story shows that with education, former child labourers can lead better lives. He has been recognised by local personalities and was also mentioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his monthly radio talk show ‘Mann ki Baat’ (Heart to heart talk).  Rao has also received awards from local communities and organisations for his work.

“The pandemic has brought out the worst and the best in people. I’m now on lifelong mission to ensure that nobody goes hungry. My new startup isn’t yet profitable, but I’m earning enough to feed my family and also take care of the needy,” he says.

** Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Bonn, Germany

 

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

 

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Protective measures are being deployed along the coast. Credit: UNDP Egypt

By External Source
CAIRO, Egypt, Jun 10 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Children run after each other with kites flying along Egypt’s Nile Delta. Families and friends enjoy the scenery as they enjoy an afternoon picnic. Just a few miles away, farmers work in their fields of green. These diverse crops will feed millions of Egyptians. Throughout the region, cities buzz with people coming and going from factories and offices, playing football with their families, and building the economic engine that will support the nations’ goals for low-carbon climate-resilient development.

It’s a beautiful picture. A picture of progress, a picture of hope, a picture of peace.

Now imagine if this got impacted negatively. The Nile Delta hosts 18 million citizens – almost a quarter of Egypt’s population — as well as countless businesses, economic sectors, farms and more.

This terrifying scenario will come true if climate change isn’t taken seriously.

Millions at risk

The effects are already being felt. Consider the example of Aziz, who lives with his family in a humble home in the coastal city of Kafr ElSheikh governorate, 130km north of Cairo.

“Fishermen and farmers were afraid of going to work,” says Aziz, “because of the water’s rising levels that cover the shore during the storms.”

Aziz’s observations have been backed up by scientific reports. According to a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Nile Delta is one of the world’s most vulnerable areas when it comes to sea-level rise, extreme weather conditions, and other factors worsened by climate change.

This region accounts for more than half of Egypt’s economic activity through agriculture, industry and fisheries. The Nile Delta alone contributes about 20 percent of Egypt’s GDP.

Egypt studied the results and worked with international partners on solutions to protect vulnerable areas and their people.

To address these issues, the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation partnered with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) – the world’s largest dedicated climate fund – to launch a new climate project.

With the project’s help, 17 million people will be protected from coastal flooding with the installation of 69 kilometers of low-cost dikes system across the Nile Delta shores. They have been designed to look like natural coastal features and/or sand dunes.

The dikes will be stabilized with a combination of reed fences and local vegetation species to encourage dune growth by trapping and stabilizing blown sand. These coastal protection measures will reuse existing dredged materials that would have otherwise been deposited in the marine environment.

Extraordinary measures

Protecting the local communities, preventing economic losses, and saving human settlements and infrastructures require extraordinary measures.

“We realized that the rising water reaches us because there were no measures to protect our lives and properties,” said Aziz.

The number of extreme weather events inducing casualties and economic losses has increased significantly in Egypt over the last 10 years. Aziz has witnessed strong storms never seen before.

So far, 10 percent of the dikes have been installed. They were put to the test in December 2020, when the country witnessed one of the severe storms, including heavy rain and strong winds. People could personally see how extreme weather could be deadly if the country isn’t prepared. The dikes passed the test and blocked the unexpected sea surge at Nile Delta shores.

Integrated approaches

The physical solution is not the only way to address the negative impacts of climate change. An Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) plan will be implemented to make the area’s economic, social, and agricultural activities climate resilient. The plan will include establishing a system to monitor changes in sea levels and the impact of climate change on coastal erosion and shore stability.

Coastal development community activities are being delivered in different locations throughout the project intervention area. For example, an agriculture drainage system – located north of Bar-Bahry – will improve the productivity of approximately 1,000 acres north of the coastal highway and raise income for at least 500 families.

An urban drainage system in Al-aqoula village will protect the main roads from excessive rains. This will positively improve the quality of life for the entire village of 1,500 inhabitants, and facilitate their access to services such as schools, religious venues, markets and transportation.

As for Aziz, he says the work is already having an impact. “Farmers are back to the field after the project was implemented. We saw the change when we woke up to find that water was blocked from reaching us, our fields, and our homes,” says Aziz. “With this [project] in place, we hope our children will have a safe future.”

Excerpt:

With support from the Green Climate Fund and UNDP, Egypt is protecting its people and its economy from the devastating impacts of sea-level rise
 
UNDP

Participants in UN Women India’s Second Chance Educational and Vocational Learning Programme. Credit: UN Women

By Susan Ferguson
NEW DELHI, India, Jun 10 2021 (IPS)

Thousands of Indians have been affected by the latest COVID-19 outbreak. Not only those suffering from the disease, but also those who care for them.

Just as with the first wave and as with countless disasters before them, women have taken on the heavy burden of caring for the sick and finding ways to meet their family’s basic needs.

The combination of illness, unpaid care, economic slowdown, lack of access to financing for female entrepreneurs, and domestic violence has left many women unable to return to work.

Much of this is attributable to a long history of seeing the work women do as unimportant in the “real world” of the economy, and as unworthy of value in the household.

A recent Oxford report shows that Indian women and girls put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work every day — a contribution of at least ₹19 trillion a year to the Indian economy.[1] Yet in India, duties performed at home have historically not been considered “work,” due to norms of gender and caste.

Susan Ferguson. Credit: Yvonne Fafungian

If these trends aren’t reversed, it will have a devastating impact on the economy while further exacerbating gender inequality. For this generation of women to emerge relatively unscathed from this pandemic and be able to return to the workforce, we must invest seriously in the livelihoods of women and girls in our country.

India has now lost over 300,000 people to the virus and that number continues to rise as the country struggles to deal with a new, deadly variant that has overwhelmed its healthcare capacity.

Rural parts of the country are reliant on the incredible dedication of front-line women workers: Anganwadi workers, ASHA workers (Accredited Social Health Activist), community health workers and nurses, along with civil society organisers and volunteers.

This predominantly female workforce has been seriously overstretched. The ASHA programme has only been around for 15 years, but often they’re the only line of defence in remote areas.

These women have been hailed as national heroes for the hazardous work they have done, which has at times led to illness and death due to lack of protective gear. Many also face verbal and physical abuse during door-to-door surveys.

The accolades and appreciation — which are not tied to any economic benefits or opportunities — serve as an ironic reminder that these women are still often required to perform double duty in the form of seemingly endless unpaid labour at home.

Public spending in India on healthcare is only one percent of its GDP, which is far less than many other developing nations. Indeed, the Anganwadi and ASHA programmes technically qualify as volunteer work.

This devaluation of “women’s work” is reflected in the home. India’s First Time Use Survey states that while Indian men spend 80 percent of their working hours on paid work, women spend nearly 84 percent of their working hours on unpaid labour.

Health workers participating in UN Women India’s Second Chance Education programme display their “Certificate of Completion Essential Upskilling for Nurses on COVID-19 Pandemic Management”. Credit: UN Women

According to NITI Aayog, women spend 9.8 times the time that men do on unpaid domestic chores. In a country with a high proportion of multigenerational households, women spend on average 4.5 hours a day caring for children, elders and ill or disabled persons, compared with less than one hour for men.

The COVID-19 outbreak has only exacerbated this situation, and its impact on women’s participation in the formal economy is clear. Many women have had to stop working formally to devote themselves solely to unpaid work. In the decade before the pandemic, female labour force participation had already been trending downward, making women’s earned income in India just one-fifth that of men’s — well below the global average.

Over the years, the Government of India and the States have taken initiatives to increase women’s participation in the workforce. Starting from removing restrictions on women’s right to work at night in factories or appointments as board members, to comprehensive maternity benefits and protection from sexual harassment at the workplace.

Initiatives such as the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, the Skill India Mission, and Startup India all have progressive policies, programmes, and legislations. Despite these important initiatives, the decline in women’s labour force participation has not yet been reversed.

After the recent outbreak of this pandemic, there is a risk that this exodus from the workplace could become permanent. This would decimate both women’s livelihoods and the economy at large.

On the other hand, according to IMF estimates, equal participation of women in the workforce would increase India’s GDP by 27 percent.[2]

This crisis can be avoided if India increases its public investments in the formal and informal care economies and taps into the job creation potential of the care economy.

As per the ILO, demand for care jobs (caring for children, people with disabilities, and the elderly, both in urban and rural areas) will increase with working parents and an aging population.

According to simulation results, increasing investment in the care economy to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 may generate 69 million jobs in India.[3] Analysis shows that if another two percent of GDP were earmarked for the Indian healthcare system, it would create millions of jobs, many of which would go to women.

It is vital that women working on healthcare’s front lines are recognized as formal workers and have the same benefits and protections as any comparable occupation. The implementation of progressive childcare and leave policies would also help relieve the burden.

But there also needs to be a mindset shift that recognizes the value of this equally vital unpaid work. In fact, Indian politicians have recently taken the unprecedented step of pledging to pay women for their unpaid labour, a move that activists have long been calling for — one which could be adopted in the rest of the world.

Some have criticized such proposals, saying that they would merely entrench gender stereotypes and discourage women from entering the formal workforce. That is why, over the long term, policies of this kind must be combined with ones that help women take part in the formal workforce if they so choose.

These include initiatives that help women entrepreneurs find and obtain financing for their initiatives — something they have struggled to access in the past.

It also includes expanding educational opportunities for women and girls. UN Women India’s Second Chance Education programme is a good example of how we can simultaneously address the pandemic recovery and offer opportunities for women to advance their careers, by training front-line health workers while providing employment pathways.

We need to also consider the persistent issue of income inequality. We consistently see larger wage gaps in countries in which women perform longer unpaid work hours. While this situation has improved over the years in India, investing in the care infrastructure will ensure women do not opt for lower-paying jobs when looking for roles that trade flexibility for hourly pay, due to the demands at home.

Private sector involvement is also critical in this area: family-friendly workplace policies are beneficial to women workers and can profit the entire economy.

In the end, it will come down to changing attitudes, sharing the burden equally and dismantling the idea that domestic labour is exclusively the domain of women. Whether it’s at home, in the office or in the field, we must stop taking women’s work for granted.

Susan Ferguson is the UN Women Representative for India. She joined UN Women in 2017, after a long career in international development. She has lived and worked in South Africa, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, and has experience working in grass-roots development agencies; establishing and managing social services; working within Local, State and Federal Government in Australia on social policy and social programmes.

Donate to help women in India severely impacted by the COVID-19 crisis ►

Notes

[1] https://www.oxfamindia.org/press-release/timetocare-india
[2] https://in.one.un.org/unibf/gender-equality/
[3] Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work: Key findings in Asia and the Pacific, ILO, 2018 (https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/care-economy/WCMS_633305/lang–en/index.htm).

 

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Credit: Bibbi Abruzzini

By Bibbi Abruzzini
PARIS, Jun 10 2021 (IPS)

In the last 20 years, disasters affected over 4 billion people. At global level we witness on average one sweeping disaster a day, the majority of which are floods and storms. From the Covid-19 pandemic to climate change, calamities are taking new shapes and sizes, infiltrating every dimension of society. From the emotional to the political, how do we deal with disasters? How can we create a whole-of-society approach to disaster risk reduction?

Right through this vortex of intersecting crises, a new toolkit and interactive website by Forus, the Global Network of Civil Society Organizations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR), Save the Children Switzerland and Inventing Futures, with the support of Fondation de France, looks at how civil society organisations coordinate disaster risk reduction and post-emergency interventions. Meant for civil society networks, activists, government officials and community-based organizations, the toolkit provides best-practices from around the globe.

“Today, we are all actors and victims of crises. How can we better understand and learn to cope with them? These practical tools allow us to discover the stakes, the exemplary actions and their effects, through simple definitions and concrete testimonies experienced by civil society,” says Karine Meaux, Emergency manager at Fondation de France.

“Building resilient communities in the face of natural and man-made hazards has never been more important. While disasters don’t discriminate, policies do. Together we can act and put pressure on decision-makers to promote a holistic approach to disaster prevention and reduction and truly people-centred policies,” says Sarah Strack, Director of Forus.

Civil society at the forefront of disaster management

From resilient communities in Nepal, to conflicts in Mali and peace processes in Colombia, the toolkit presents six approaches to disaster risk reduction gleaned from case studies compiled across the civil society ecosystem. The toolkit looks at various topics from capacity building, to local knowledge, resource mobilisation, partnerships with governments and long-term sustainable development and livelihood resilience, ensuring that communities ‘bounce forward’ after a disaster.

Credit: Bibbi Abruzzini

Specifically, the toolkit aims to clarify the crucial role frontline civil society organisations play in reducing the impacts of disasters in the midst of an expanding and intensifying global risk landscape. Bridging governments, communities and experts is the only way we can tackle the multiple ways disasters affect local and social processes such as education, migration, food security and peace. If civil society is not free to operate – or even exist – our collective capacity to deal with disasters and create long-term resilience is hampered.

“You have countries [in the region] in which civil society is not even allowed to exist. This reality changed a lot after the Arab Spring, with countries living in a terrible crisis, with military conflicts, where the role of civil society now is not only to struggle for their existence, but also to provide the population with basic needs and humanitarian interventions,” says Ziad Abdel Samad, Director of the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND).

Everyday disasters and inequalities

Robert Ninyesiga, from UNNGOF, the national civil society organisation platform in Uganda, argues that in most cases, “more effort has been put towards disaster response while neglecting the disaster prevention aspect”.

This therefore calls for continuous intentional awareness and capacity building as regards to disaster prevention and this can only be effectively achieved if sustainable partnerships between central governments, local governments, civil society organisations, media and citizens are strengthened.

Shock events, high-impact disasters, such as conflicts, earthquakes or tsunamis are just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath this layer there are an increasingly high number of “everyday disasters” affecting people around the globe. Localised, small scale, and slow onset disasters are often “invisible” – far from the spotlight. Those at low incomes are the most vulnerable and find themselves at the periphery of infrastructures, response systems and media attention.

For instance, in addition to being often exposed to intensive disasters such as floods and storms, residents in urban slums across Bangladesh are suffering much more than other communities since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Credit: Bibbi Abruzzini

“Most slum dwellers are daily wage earners, but they are not able to earn money. They are not able to maintain social distance, because in one room 4-5 members are living. Many people are using a shared bathroom. It’s very difficult to maintain hygiene. There is not enough space to sit or sleep at home while maintaining sufficient distance. Due to lack of money, many slum dwellers have only one or two meals a day. Violence and sexual harassment are increasing in the community due to cramped conditions. Children are not attending school,” explains the Participatory Development Action Programme (PDAP) which works in the slums of Dhaka .

These pressures add to regular “everyday” challenges of air pollution and garbage management, flooding, water-logged land, and poor quality water.

Local knowledge and Resilient Future

Civil society organisations often fill a tremendous gap and find themselves at the forefront of prevention and emergency efforts. The localisation of responses and partnerships are absolutely crucial to understand the needs of communities in pre and post-disaster scenarios.

In Honduras, civil society has created community-led interventions, to prioritise local plans of action across the country.

“Honduras, and Central America more in general, have been hit in the last 10 years by an intensification of disasters, most of them linked to climate change. Our role in helping communities to adapt to climate change and to deal with disasters, is in terms of capacity building, humanitarian assistance and advocacy by creating links between local, national, regional and global levels,” says Jose Ramon Avila from ASONOG, the national platform of civil society organisations in Honduras.

The intense and cascading nature of risks, such as seen in the cases of Covid-19 and climate change, represent a serious threat to the achievement of a sustainable and resilient future. Growing experience over the last three decades has revealed that disasters and development are closely linked. Ignoring the impact of disasters makes it more difficult to pursue sustainable development.

“Sustainable development can only be achieved when local risk is fully understood. Critical to understanding and assessing the complex threats and risks, challenges and opportunities faced by communities most at risk, is the need to partner with those people. This practical toolkit provides valuable insights and examples from GNDR members and others on how this can be achieved,” says Bijay Kumar, Executive Director, Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR)

It has also been found that much of the negative impact on sustainable livelihoods comes not from large, ‘intensive’ disasters, but from many smaller, ‘everyday’ disasters. It has become crucial to address intensive and everyday disasters and to integrate our responses with overall work to pursue sustainable development.

We need to ask ourselves this question: can we build new bridges of solidarity between civil society, communities and governments? Can we prevent and anticipate disasters? Our future is not disaster-free; to build resilient communities it is crucial to nurture strong roots for our society to flourish.

The author Bibbi Abruzzini is Communications officer at Forus.
Find the toolkit and microsite on Disaster Risk Reduction here. Available in English, French and Spanish.

 

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UN officials say they are worried that the achievements in the HIV/AIDS response are uneven and the most vulnerable are at highest risk. They say the new targets are urgently needed. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2021 (IPS)

World leaders, those on the frontlines of the AIDS response, civil society, academics and youth have agreed that there is no way to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 without tackling persistent inequalities among marginalised groups.

The leaders on Tuesday adopted a new set of targets to end the epidemic. Called the Global AIDS Strategy 2021-2026, it builds on the 2016 Political Declaration on Ending AIDS, with more ambitious plans to tackle issues like discrimination and criminalisation of same-sex relations.

“The inequalities blocking progress towards ending AIDS emerge when HIV intersects with complex fault lines across social, economic, legal and health systems,” the agreement states.

It contains pledges to decrease the annual number of new HIV infections to below 370,000 and AIDS-related deaths to 250,000 while eliminating new infections among children.

It sets a 2025 target to end HIV-related discrimination in all forms and to bring life-saving HIV treatment to 34 million people.

UN officials say since the first confirmed case of HIV in 1981 there has been significant progress in understanding and responding to the disease. This includes a 61 percent decrease in AIDS-related deaths since a peak in 2004 and ‘dozens of countries’ meeting or surpassing the targets set out to fast-track AIDS response in the 2016 Declaration.

But they are worried that the achievements are uneven and the most vulnerable are at highest risk. They say the new targets are urgently needed.

“The COVID-19 pandemic, conflict, and humanitarian emergencies, have impeded progress as health systems are placed under immense strain, and critical services and supply chains are disrupted,” said Volkan Bozkir, President of the 75th Session of the UN General Assembly. “Tragically stigma and discrimination persist, further isolating those already marginalised.”

Bozkir told the hybrid event that while all forms of inequality must be eliminated, HIV statistics among young women make a compelling case for prioritising an end to gender inequality.

According to UNAIDS, young women are twice as likely to be living with HIV as young men. In 2020, 6 out of every 7 new HIV infections among young people, aged between 15-19 in sub-Saharan Africa, were girls.

“Every girl and every woman must be free to exercise their fundamental human rights, to make their own decisions, to live a life free from fear of gender-based violence and to be treated with dignity and respect. All girls should have equal access to quality education. This is the foundation for a society where women feel safe to take their rightful place in the workplace, public life, politics, and decision-making,” he said.

Yana Panfilova, a 23-year-old Ukrainian woman who was born with HIV appealed to world leaders to help the millions of people with HIV who struggle daily with fear and isolation.

“Millions of people with HIV may have HIV pills, but they live in a world where their families and their societies do not accept them for who they are. I am here today as the voice of 38 million people living with HIV. For some of us, pills are keeping us alive, but we are dying from the pandemics of stigma, discrimination,” she said.

“The AIDS response is still leaving millions behind. LGBTIQ people, sex workers, people who use drugs, migrants and prisoners, teenagers, young people, women and children who also deserve an ordinary life, with the same rights and dignity enjoyed by most people in this hall.”

The Executive Director of UNAIDS Winnie Byanyima stated that HIV rates are not following the course outlined in the 2016 Agreement and warned that as part of the fall-out from the COVID-19 crisis, it is possible to see a resurgent AIDS pandemic.

“The evidence and analysis are clear. Inequalities in power, status, rights and voice are driving the HIV pandemic. Inequalities kill. As the Global AIDS strategy sets out: to end AIDS, we have to end the inequalities which perpetuate it,” Byanyima said.

The UNAIDS Chief said the world should applaud the new measures to confront the AIDS epidemic, adding that the policies and services needed to end AIDS will prove useful in beating COVID-19 and prepare the world for future pandemics.

“We cannot be neutral on inequalities. To get back on track to ending AIDS, we must be deliberate in confronting them. The only alternative is a vicious cycle of injustice, illness, and emergency. The most unrealistic thing we could do now is to imagine we can overcome our crises through minor adjustments or tinkering.”

 

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• UN’s Battle Against Climate Hazards Undermined by a Devastating Pandemic

Excerpt:

Despite gains in the last few decades, global targets set out five years ago have not been met. UN officials told a High-Level Meeting on AIDS this week that among populations such as sex workers and women and girls in Sub-Saharan Africa, discrimination, gender-based violence and criminalisation are fuelling the epidemic.

Punta Remedios is a beach of singular beauty that also provides shelter for the boats of the fishing community of Los Cóbanos, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador. It is home to the only rocky reef with coral growth in the country, which is being damaged by climate phenomena and human activities. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
LOS CÓBANOS, El Salvador , Jun 9 2021 (IPS)

As fisherman Luis Morán walked towards his small boat, which was floating in the water a few meters from the Salvadoran coast, he asked “How can the coral reefs not be damaged with such a warm sea?”

Morán lives on the edge of Punta Remedios beach, just outside the 22-hectare Complejo Los Cóbanos Natural Protected Area, a marine reserve located in the western department of Sonsonate, El Salvador.

The site is known as the habitat of the only rocky reef with coral growth in this Central American country that has coastline only on the Pacific Ocean.

Los Cóbanos is a hamlet in the canton of Punta Remedios, Acajutla municipality, whose capital has the same name. It is located about 90 kilometres west of San Salvador. The village is in a coastal area of poor communities that mainly depend on fishing.

From talking about coral reefs with marine biologists who work in the area and with whom he collaborates, Morán has learned that they are hurt by warm water temperatures.

“This water is so hot that it already looks like soup,” the 56-year-old fisherman told IPS, aware that the impact on the coral is also affecting the livelihoods of people in the fishing communities.

Many of the fish species that are of commercial value to the community, such as red snapper, breed and find shelter in the reefs.

Other fishermen from Los Cóbanos with whom IPS spoke confirmed that fish are increasingly scarce in the area.

Fisherman Luis Morán, a resident of Punta Remedios beach in the hamlet of Los Cóbanos in western El Salvador, says human activities such as overfishing and unsustainable tourism are damaging the health of the coral reef located in that area of the Pacific coast, the only one of its kind in the country. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Melvin Orellana, 41, said he went to sea a few days ago, but caught less than 2.5 kilos of fish.

“I didn’t even cover the cost of the gas,” said the father of two.

Orellana uses nine 18-gallon (68-litre) drums of gasoline to run his 75-horsepower engine. A gallon (almost four litres) costs about four dollars.

He and the other fishermen make forays up to 70 nautical miles (130 kilometres) offshore to fish for shark, dorado and snapper.

Coral reefs at risk of perishing

The warming of sea temperatures produced by climate change and expressed, for example, in the El Niño phenomenon, is one of the factors that is damaging coral reefs around the world, and Los Cóbanos is no exception, said biologists interviewed by IPS.

Marine biologist Johanna Segovia (L) and her team carry out research in the waters of the Los Cóbanos National Protected Area in the Salvadoran Pacific. The expert says that as the coral reef ecosystem in the area is damaged, the livelihoods of local fishing communities are also affected. CREDIT: Courtesy of Johanna Segovia

This warming causes the “bleaching” of corals, colonial organisms that live in association with microalgae, which provide food through photosynthesis, but which the corals end up expelling when they are stressed by the increase in water temperature. When they lose the microalgae, they bleach.

That is a sign that they are being impacted; they are not yet dead, but they could die if the temperatures stay warm too long, marine biologist Johanna Segovia told IPS.

“If the coral stays at that temperature for three months, it starts to die… but if the temperature returns to normal, it can recover again,” added Segovia, a researcher at the Francisco Gavidia University in El Salvador.

The impact is already evident, and has been confirmed by biologists.

“We have gone from three percent coral cover to only one percent” in the Los Cóbanos nature reserve, Segovia said after diving among the reefs off the coast, which she does regularly as part of her research on the local ecosystem.

Currently, the live coral cover observed in the area belongs to the Porites lobata species.

In the vicinity of Punta Remedios beach, on the coast of El Salvador, many families have set up small, precarious food businesses, mainly offering seafood, to sell to tourists who visit and often have no regard for the environment, leaving garbage behind and trying to capture prohibited species, such as crabs. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

A report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned in 2019 that by 2050, 70 to 90 percent of the world’s coral reefs would be lost, even if actions were promoted at the international level that managed to stabilise global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

It is this warming of the water that drives fish away from the shore to compensate for the difference in temperature, as they are not able to regulate it themselves.

In addition to the phenomena associated with climate change, these organisms are being hit by the actions of industrial fishing and local communities.

For example, poor management of river basins upstream leads to pollution and sediment reaching the reef ecosystem.

The extensive use of pesticides in agriculture and deforestation affect the upstream river basins, whose waters carry pollution and sediments to the coral reef zone.

“Coral reefs are fragile ecosystems, and some environmental variables in the ocean, such as temperature and sedimentation, are factors that play a major role in their deterioration,” Francisco Chicas, a professor at the University of El Salvador‘s School of Biology, told IPS.

Unsustainable tourism is another cause of this deterioration, with visitors often disrespecting local regulations that prohibit affecting the coral ecosystem in any way.

José Cruz Miranda, a resident of Los Cóbanos, a village on the Salvadoran coast, was a fisherman for more than 30 years, but had to stop fishing due to health problems. Now he gathers empty cans, which he sells to a recycling company – environmental work that helps reduce pollution in an area with rich coral communities. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Tourists can approach species that are near the surface, but they are not allowed to touch them, let alone try to catch them.

It is even forbidden to take biogenic sand, which is yellow in color and is actually the remains of decomposed shells and corals.

In Punta Remedios people have organised to make sure nothing like that happens.

“On Sundays, my son-in-law confiscates bottles with sand and small crabs,” said Morán, who has four grown children and who, together with his wife, María Ángela Cortés, runs a mini seafood restaurant located on a wooden platform overlooking the sea.

He complained that tourists leave garbage strewn everywhere.

José Cruz Miranda, another local resident, collects empty soft drink and beer cans. He has a total of 30 kilos stored in his house. He sells them for 0.80 cents per kilo to a recycling company in Ajacutla.

Miranda, who has diabetes, uses the money from the cans to buy the medicine he needs.

“That helps me cope with my diabetes,” he told IPS.

María Ángela (“Angelita”) Cortés, 52, prepares a dish in her mini-restaurant on the beach of Punta Remedios, in the hamlet of Los Cóbanos on El Salvador’s Pacific coast. She takes advantage of the return of tourists to boost her business in an area with few job opportunities besides fishing, which is increasingly scarce due to the damage suffered by the local coral reef. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Central American similarities

The factors that are impacting the reefs in Los Cóbanos also affect the rest of Central America.

In Costa Rica, coral reefs “are losing their health due to all the anthropogenic and natural factors, and of course all of this is aggravated by climate change,” Tatiana Villalobos, co-founder of the non-governmental Raising Coral Costa Rica, told IPS.

That country has some 970 square kilometres of coral cover on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, although Villalobos noted that the figure is from 10 years ago.

There are areas, she said, where reefs recover better than others.

One example off the Costa Rican Pacific coast is Cocos Island, located about 535 kilometres to the southeast. The situation there has been controlled and the reefs can be said to be in good health.

It is on the coast, Villalobos said, where there has been a significant loss of coral cover, due to sedimentation, pollution and generally poor environmental practices.

Overfishing is also a problem, as it is in the rest of Central America and the world.

This happens when herbivorous species are fished, which causes changes in the ecosystem that end up impacting the reef.

Overfishing in Los Cóbanos, for example, is a serious problem, especially because although people from the local fishing communities use hand lines, those who come from other areas fish with nets, even though they are banned.

In Honduras, the situation is quite similar.

Gisselle Brady, programme coordinator for the non-governmental Bay Islands Conservation Ecological Association (BICA), told IPS that although the ecosystems and culture in this area of the Honduran Caribbean are different from those of the Pacific coast, the problems are basically the same.

Among them, she mentioned overfishing, climate change, unsustainable tourism, and the lack of regulation by the State to keep these ecosystems healthy.

On the contrary, Brady added that the Honduran government is promoting, with a law passed in 2018, further growth of the tourism sector, as well as the controversial industrial parks called Employment and Economic Development Zones (Zedes), which do not abide by national laws.

This is even impacting nature reserves with coral reefs, such as the Nombre de Dios park in La Ceiba, in northern Honduras, she said.

“It is sad that national laws are driving such unsustainable development,” said the expert from the island of Roatan, the largest in the Bay Islands department.

She pointed out that a measurement used in the so-called Mesoamerican Reef, which covers the Caribbean coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, gives a score of five when the reef is healthy.

Honduras has gone from three, considered fair, to 2.5, which is poor. Danger stalks its reefs. And it is not alone.

Excerpt:

This article is part of IPS coverage of World Environment Day, celebrated June 5, whose theme this year is “ecosystem restoration”.

Zoltán Kálmán is Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Hungary to the UN Food and Agriculture Agencies in Rome

By Zoltán Kálmán
ROME, Jun 9 2021 (IPS)

In three cycles I spent all together more than 15 years in Rome, at the Permanent Representation of Hungary to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and between my last two assignments in Rome my responsibilities in Budapest included FAO related issues. This made it possible for me to witness the development of this organization under the leadership of four Directors-General. Edouard Saouma, Jacques Diouf, Jose Graziano da Silva and Qu Dongyu. This long association and “historic” view of FAO would definitely help me in fulfilling the role of the Independent Chairperson of the Council of FAO (ICC). As conventional wisdom suggests, in order to make good decisions for the future we need to know, understand and learn from the past. The Independent External Evaluation, commissioned by the FAO Council in 2004, was an important milestone in this regard. It was followed by inclusive discussions among FAO Members about the recommendations and finally an Immediate Plan of Action was adopted by the FAO Conference. It was the most significant reform in FAO and I had the privilege to contribute to this process.

Inclusivity is the key for successful accomplishment of the tasks of ICC. This requires real, meaningful consultations both among the Membership and with the Management. I believe the practice of inclusive consultations and dialogues taking place at the World Food Programme could be considered as a good example. I had the honour to be Member of the WFP Executive Board between 2015-2020; served as Vice-President in 2017 and elected President of the Board in 2018. The inclusive, transparent and efficient working methods of the WFP EB are greatly appreciated generally by the Membership. No need to simply “copy and paste” the WFP model, but some of these working methods could be successfully applied at FAO as well, including the disciplined time-management, which could be achieved through inclusive preparatory consultations and jointly established rules.

According to my vision the position of Independent Chair implies certain authority and power, and I think this should be used for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the FAO Council. But in my interpretation the role of ICC is first and foremost a SERVICE. This service includes representing Members’ interests and assisting Membership to better exercise their functions, guiding discussions and building consensus. I have no hidden agenda to push for any particular interests of countries, regions or lobby groups. I cannot claim that I am a candidate of the EU, although many EU countries support my candidacy. Similarly, I am not a candidate of the European Region or the OECD, although I count on significant support from these groups of countries. I am simply a candidate from Hungary, but I would be Independent Chair of all FAO Members, representing the interests of all of them, independently, irrespective of the size, geographic location, political orientation, economic model or level of development of the countries. Transparency, independence, neutrality and impartiality are not just nice sounding words to me. I take these principles seriously as I did when I was President of the WFP EB. As a retiree, I would be qualified to accomplish the duties and tasks of ICC in a fully independent manner, in line with the spirit of the recommendations of the Independent External Evaluation (IEE).

Inclusivity means that I listen to all Members both at official meetings and informal discussions, with my door always open. Inclusivity would require efforts for a more active involvement of all countries while better engaging even those with small missions and limited capacities. Inclusivity also means full respect for multilingualism and due attention to the specificities of countries and regions.

In the past few decades I participated in many meetings, sometimes making tough discussions and I always have been constructive, finding solutions and reaching consensus through dialogues. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn a lot during my assignments in Rome and I am strongly motivated to make the best possible use of my past experience, for the benefit of FAO. Originally it was not my personal career ambition to become ICC. Rather, the most important motivating factor for me was the inspiration and encouragement of Permanent Representative colleagues from all regions, particularly from developing countries. In fact, a number of colleagues and friends from various regions approached me and encouraged me to consider applying, based on my background and experience, including as successful President of the WFP EB. This inspired me immensely and I am grateful for all the encouragement and also for the significant support to my election bid already received from many countries from all regions.

The priority areas to be discussed at FAO Council are included in FAOs Programme of Work and Budget, Medium Term Plan or Strategic Framework. I only wish to highlight 2 very important challenges ahead of us. First, food security for all, particularly in countries seriously affected by the COVID pandemic. Second, sustainable agriculture and food systems, with due attention to all 3 dimensions of sustainability. Naturally, the Independent Chair can have his own programme priorities, but these are discussed among the Memberships of all FAO governing bodies and a decision is taken by consensus. All these issues are also discussed with the FAO DG and the Management, with clear and distinct roles and responsibilities. FAO Members, through the governing bodies, can provide strategic policy guidance to the Management regarding the principles and priority areas to be followed, in line with the SDGs. The technical details on HOW to implement the programmes, remains to the highly professional Management and Staff of FAO. The overall management of FAO is the responsibility of the Director General of FAO. With the new leadership style of DG Qu Dongyu we are confident that he will continue to introduce positive changes, appreciating and motivating the staff, who are the greatest assets of this important Organization. He will definitely continue the tradition of listening to the views of the FAO Membership and respecting the guidance provided by the governing bodies. This will help him in his efforts to make FAO more efficient and effective, contributing to achieving Zero Hunger.

 

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Excerpt:

Zoltán Kálmán is Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Hungary to the UN Food and Agriculture Agencies in Rome

Muhammadu Buhari, President of Nigeria, addresses the general debate of the UN General Assembly, 2019. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Nelson Olanipekun
LAGOS, Nigeria, Jun 9 2021 (IPS)

Four years ago, Omoregie* and his friends were arrested without cause and taken into custody. When they got to the station, Omoregie watched as the police began to beat his friends. Afraid, he began to discreetly tweet about the attacks as they took place.

I and many other Twitter users could read his fears while he called for help through his tweets. Taking action as a lawyer, I was able to secure his release within a few hours with the help of other activists through the police unit responsible for citizen complaints.

I had been thinking of Omoregie this week when the government of Nigeria banned the use of Twitter in the country, making use of it a criminal offense. The ban followed the social media platform’s deletion of a tweet from President Muhammad Buhari in which he threatened violence against people in a region in the country’s South East where attacks had been made on public infrastructure.

While the banning of Twitter surprised many, the government’s action against social media platforms has long been threatened and is part of a long-term strategy to bend civil society and force Nigeria’s citizens into compliance with the government. Twitter has been a major source of activism and news in Nigeria

While the banning of Twitter surprised many, the government’s action against social media platforms has long been threatened and is part of a long-term strategy to bend civil society and force Nigeria’s citizens into compliance with the government. Twitter has been a major source of activism and news in Nigeria.

Nigerians spend almost four hours on social media daily and Twitter is the second largest social media platform after Facebook. Most public debates begin on Twitter and the platform often sets the tone for national news carried on traditional media. It has become the platform to hold government, institutions and powerful individuals accountable.

It has also long been a place for activism and to organize protests, including last year’s EndSARS protests, which led to the eradication of the Special Anti Robbery Squad. Ninety-nine people were killed during the EndSARS protest in Nigeria and Twitter helped to expose these abuses. This was most evident during an attack by police and the military on protesters at Lekki Bridge in Lagos.

Documentation of the attack, including a livestream by media personality DJ Switch forced senior military officers to intervene and later acknowledge the attack took place. Since livestreaming the attack, D.J Switch has been forced to seek asylum in Canada as a result of threats to her life.

This efficacy for activism has drawn government’s attention.

About two years ago, Nigerian government introduced a social media bill that sought to regulate the social media space and criminalize simple comments that authorities deemed ‘falsehoods’ or hate speech with fines and jail terms.

As a lawyer and an activist, I appeared before a Senate committee at the public hearing and gave statements about how we use social media to help fight human rights violations, consumer rights, and even to help find missing persons. After the public hearing, the bill was abandoned but, as we saw with last week’s Twitter ban, the Buhari administration did not give up on its ambitions to restrict social media.

They took their opportunity with last week’s shutdown. Nigeria’s judicial system has been effectively on strike for the past two months, so the Twitter ban was implemented without the oversight of the courts. In addition to banning Twitter, the government has demanded licensing of all social media platforms as well as services which stream news and entertainment via the Internet.

All of these restrictions aim to control freedom of expression; a right guaranteed under Nigeria’s Constitution as well as the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights–both of which Nigeria has signed.

The Twitter ban also comes as the Nigerian government increases offline crackdowns on citizen action. They have repeatedly trampled on the right of citizens to assemble and protest in physical space. Activists have been shot at by police and military and many arrested while protesting peacefully. Twitter has also been used to shine a light on these crackdowns.

Since the ban against Twitter was announced, the government has wasted no time in implementing punishment for users. Immediately after the announcement, Nigeria’s Attorney General directed the arrest and prosecution of anyone using the Twitter app.

Practically, this will mean police will be empowered to search telephones for the app. Police searches of phones—and unhappiness with those searches—are not new to Nigerians and were one of the reasons for the EndSARS protests.

The draconian ban also begs the question, if Twitter, a global platform which helps to spotlight the government excesses can be shut down, what safety is there for Nigeria’s local media, journalists and citizens? With the Twitter ban Nigeria risks further sliding into dictatorship and there will be fewer ways to organize challenges to it.

Some will argue that Twitter is to blame for its banning because it overstepped in deleting a tweet from President Buhari that Twitter argues violates its policy. But even if we accept that Twitter was wrong to delete a tweet, the federal government’s reaction to ban a platform so important to public debate and activists is petty and an extreme overreach.

It is time for the world’s democracies to take concrete steps and forestall Nigeria human rights violations. Censorship of independent voices is often a means to shut down accountability and enable autocratic rule.

Allowing the Twitter ban by a few politicians without criticism would signal that the world endorses autocracy. The world’s silence and inaction are an endorsement of the Twitter ban, a shrinking of the ability of civil society to organize and a violation of the rights of 200 million Nigerians.

*Not his real name

 

Nelson Olanipekun is a human rights lawyer and advocate who uses technology and law to accelerate the pace of justice delivery. He is a 2021 Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 9 2021 (IPS)

In February the killing of the Italian ambassador, Luca Attanasio, in the vicinity of the Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, did for a short while put the global spotlight on this troubled area, where warfare, poverty and general insecurity generate immense human suffering.

On the 22nd of May, the same area was afflicted by one more disaster – Mount Nyiragongo erupted. This huge volcano is located 20 kilometres north of the town of Goma and 10 kilometres from the border to Rwanda. A lava stream reached the airport and threatened the city centre of eastern Goma. Authorities urged all residents to evacuate the town – it has half a million inhabitants – causing thousands of people to leave their homes. At least thirty persons died during the chaos. The humanitarian crisis continues unabated. More than 230,000 displaced people are currently crowding small towns and villages around Goma. Lack of clean water, food and medical supplies are in many places, within and outside Goma, creating catastrophic conditions.

Scientists worry about a lack in precise monitoring data and a plausible second eruption. Earthquakes continue to shake the area, while cracks are opening up, revealing red-hot lava, evidence that magma is accumulating beneath the ground. Developments are monitored by personnel from the Goma Volcanic Observatory (GVO). However, after the World Bank in 2020 decided to terminate its contributions, the observatory is functioning under strained conditions.

In another part of the world, on Iceland, the volcano Fagradsfjall is since mid-February 2021 erupting intermittently, emitting a steady stream of lava, which effusion rate recently increased to approximately 12.4 cubic metres per second. Thankfully is the Reykjanes peninsula, where Fagradsfjall is situated, sparsely populated. However, this does not mean that volcano eruptions in remote areas do not affect people living far away from them.

In 2010, a series of minor eruptions of the Icelandic Eyjafjallajökull emitted a dust cloud which across western and northern Europe caused disruptions to air travel. For a period of six days the invisible ash was putting a complete stop to all flights. In 2004, a rupture in the earth crust along an undersea fault between the Burma Plate and the India Plate caused massive tsunami waves that devastated coastal areas along the Indian Ocean. At least 228,000 people died from the immediate impact of the tsunamis followed by other deaths due to the hardship they caused.

This catastrophe made me remember a visit I eight years earlier made to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (OVISCORI-UNA). The walls of a room were lined with seismographs, which writing needles quivered incessantly while measuring seismic activities along the San Andreas Fault and Mexican-Central American volcanoes.

The scientists I talked to reminded me that if you compared the earth to an apple, the thickness of earth’s outer crust could be likened to the apple’s skin. The earth’s crust occupies less than one percent of our planet’s volume and is under the oceans just eight kilometres thick and approximately 32 kilometres under the continents. Underneath the crust is extremely hot magma. The earth’s innards are constantly getting hotter all the way down to the innermost core, composed of immensely hot and compressed nickel and iron.

I asked the Costa Rican experts if they could predict an earthquake, or volcano eruption. To my astonishment they answered that it could possibly be done a few minutes before they occur, though this would be far too late for initiating an efficient evacuation of huge metropolises like Los Angeles and Mexico City. The scientists then told me that the San Andreas Fault has reached a sufficient stress level for an earthquake of great magnitude to occur and the risk is increasing more rapidly than previously believed. When I asked them when such a catastrophe might take place, they shrugged their shoulders and stated: “Maybe in ten, twenty years time, maybe earlier, maybe later, no one knows … but the catastrophe will come. We are at least sure about that.”

Humanity appears to be helpless when confronting such catastrophes. Nevertheless, we may be prepared for them by establishing efficient means to take care of the victims, make sure that constructions might withstand earthquakes and avoid establishing settlements too close to volcanos. We also have to take care of our environment and don’t destroy elements that could mitigate the effects of natural disasters. For example, the impact of the 2004 Tsunami on the Indonesian Aceh Province would have been less if huge areas of protective mangrove swamps had not been eradicated to construct fish ponds and shrimp farms.

Since I find myself in Italy it is hard to avoid thinking about the threat constituted by Mount Vesuvius, regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. Not the least since a population of three million people live close enough to be severely affected by an eruption, with 600,000 settled within a zone of extreme danger.

Historically, some of Vesuvius’ eruptions have blanketed southern Europe with ash. Harvests were especially severely damaged in 472 and 1631, resulting in disastrous famine. People living in the fertile agricultural landscape of Italy’s Campania region have genuine reason to be anxious about their health. For decades they have lived on top of potentially lethal toxic waste, illegally and secretly dumped by members of criminal organisations.

Some parts of the crater wall of Vesuvius looks like a geological strata, with layers formed by different types of waste – asbestos from demolished buildings, dioxin-rich chemical sludge, drums of solvent, etc.. Black water forms pools at the bottom of the crater, mixed with stinking, steaming pits of sewage and pitfalls down to sulphuric acid and incandescent magma. Furthermore the bottom of the crater is in most places covered by thick layers of ash and lava from earlier eruptions and it is scary to imagine what might happen when all this ash, trash and dregs through an eruption become dispersed in the atmosphere.

Our disregard for Mother Earth makes me think of a story by Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. In 1928, he wrote a short story called When the World Screamed, featuring a brilliant scientist called Professor Challenger. This slightly mad scholar assumes that the earth may be some kind of organism, akin to a giant sea urchin. To prove his theory Professor Challenger contacts two engineers, experts in deep-earth drilling.

They succeed in drilling through the earth crust, reach the mantle and the drill hurts a nerve of Mother Earth. Professor Challenger had thus proved that the earth actually is an organism, but at that very moment our ears were assailed by the most horrible yell that ever yet was heard. […] It was a howl in which pain, anger, menace, and the outraged majesty of Nature all blended into one hideous shriek.

It is a humorous and rather shallow adventure story, though it stays in the mind as a quite poignant reminder that the earth actually is a kind of organism that may be destroyed and hurt by the mindless actions of humans. As earthquakes and volcano eruptions prove, the earth is an extremely powerful and unpredictable entity. We cannot always anticipate how nature will react, but we can mitigate the effects from damage caused by natural disasters by taking better care of our habitat, as well as each other and not, as often is the case, fall victim to greed and rage.

Natural catastrophes are difficult to avoid and mitigate, but much more can be made to address a man-made disaster like the one already prevailing in Congo’s Kivu district. A spectacular cataclysm like an earthquake, or volcano eruption, often awake people’s compassion for the victims – for example did nations all over the world provide over USD 14 billion in aid to regions damaged by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Maybe we may hope that the human suffering caused by Mount Nyiragongo’s eruption might increase a commitment to support the eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo to overcome the endemic crisis engulfing this region and finally establish a lasting peace in this troubled and often forgotten part of the world.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

 

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Credit: US government

By Joseph Gerson
NEW YORK, Jun 9 2021 (IPS)

A new report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)—focusing on nuclear weapons spending– following on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recent decision that their Doomsday Clock, should be set as close as it has ever been to nuclear catastrophe. should serve as a wake up calls for humanity.

Preparations for genocidal or omnicidal nuclear war are undeniably suicidal madness. Worse, with provocative military actions by the U.S., Russia, and China in the Baltic, Black, South and East China Seas, and in relation to Ukraine and Taiwan, an accident or miscalculation could all too easily trigger a life ending nuclear cataclysm.

At a time when scientific, financial, and diplomatic cooperation are desperately needed to stanch and reverse the climate emergency and to overcome and prevent the current and future pandemics, 21st century nuclear arms races are already claiming lives and threatening our future with national treasures being wasted in preparations to end all life as we know it.

There had been hope that US President Joe Biden would apply the brakes to the massive $1.7 trillion U.S. upgrade of its nuclear arsenal and its triad of delivery systems.

Instead, the Biden budget released last week reflects no change from the Trump era nuclear weapons buildup, including funding for the first strike “money pit” ICBM replacement missiles, “more usable” battlefield weapons to be deployed in Europe, and SLBM’s and so-called missile defenses to the Asia-Pacific.

Those, in turn, are leading China to increase the size of its deterrent nuclear forces and to reconsider its no first use doctrine.

How to remove the existential nuclear threat?

Disarmament! popular movements, like those which brought the Treaty for Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) into being, and which in the United States, are pressing to halt spending for new nuclear weapons and for the Biden Administration to adopt a no first use doctrine, are essential.

In the very near -term political leaders and civil society must press Presidents Biden and Putin not to waste the opportunity inherent in their forthcoming summit. They should rise to their historic and existential responsibilities and emulate the 1989 Malta Summit in which Presidents Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev jointly declared an end to the Cold War.

Among the actions that the two presidents should take are:

• Declare that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
• Commit to adopting no first use nuclear doctrines and near-term negotiation of verifiable agreements to eliminate the danger of first strike nuclear war fighting.
• Restore the INF Treaty limitations and prohibit deployment of “more usable” battlefield nuclear weapons.
• Renew their commitments to Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and publish a timeline for the fulfillment of commitments made during previous NPT Review Conferences.
• Announce commencement of negotiations to eliminate the danger of cyber hacking of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and their infrastructures essential for human security.
• Halt provocative military U.S., NATO, and Russian military exercises in the Baltic and Black Seas and the Arctic Ocean and along the NATO/Russian border.
• Halt shipment of arms supplies to the warring parties in Ukraine and renew their commitments to fulfilling the Minsk agreements.
• Commit to jointly provide vaccines and necessary materials for more than a billion Covid-19 shots via COVAX, and to future joint research for pandemic prevention.
• Commit to joint initiatives to reverse climate change.

More than five decades ago, at the height of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, two moral and intellectual paragons of the 20th century, Lord Russell and Albert Einstein warned that “We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?”

Their answer: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is President of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, and Vice-President of the International Peace Bureau.

Girls in rural Somalia spend a large portion of their time helping with household chores. But thanks to Education Cannot Wait funding many girls are now able to receive an education. Credit: Save the Children

By Abdalle Ahmed Mumin
MOGADISHU, Jun 8 2021 (IPS)

Ten-year-old Sabah Abdi from Ali Isse, a small rural village on the Somaliland-Ethiopian border, scored well in her recent exams, placing third overall in her local village school of 400 students.

Yet is was just three years ago Sabah spent her days helping with household chores and herding goats, rather than studying because her pastoralist family could not afford her school fees.

“I’m very glad to be among the top three students in the village school. I am hoping to be a doctor and cure sick people in the village when I grow up,” Sabah told IPS.

Droughts, food insecurity prevent Somaliland children from attending school

Recurrent droughts, food insecurity, water shortages, poverty and inequality hinder efforts to get more Somaliland children in schools. Families in this part of Somaliland are dependent on their livestock for basic food and income, with many moving from place to place in search of good rains and pasture.

In July 2019, the Somaliland Government, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises – and UNICEF Somaliland launched a multi-year resilience programme to increase access to quality education for children and youth impacted by ongoing crises in Somaliland.

The Somaliland national primary net attendance ratio is estimated at 49 percent for boys and 40 percent for girls. Only 16 percent of children who are internally displaced and 26 percent of children in rural communities are enrolled in primary schools. 

If fully funded, ECW’s $64 million three-year education programme will reach 198,440 (out of whom 50 percent are girls) children by end of the third year, including 21,780 supported through ECW’s seed funding. Currently 18,946 students – 46 percent of whom are girls – have benefitted from the programme in 69 targeted schools in six regions. Out of these, a significant number of out of school children 6,342 (3,074 girls) have been enrolled in schools.

In addition, ECW has also launched two other similar multi-year investments in Puntland and in the Federal Government of Somalia and Member States in the amounts of $60 million and $67.5 million, respectively. The three programmes are aligned in outcomes and focus on increasing access to free education for the most marginalised children and youth, including for pastoralist communities.

“The positive impacts of ECW’s multi-year investments in Somalia and the tangible difference we are making together with our partners in the lives of Sabah and so many other marginalised girls and boys are heartwarming and inspiring. For the first time, many of these children and youth can learn and develop themselves in a safe, protective and inclusive environment,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait. “Yet, so much more remains to be done. I call on strategic donor partners to join our efforts and fully fund the three programmes. Together, we can restore the hope of a better future for Somalia’s most vulnerable children and youth.”

The Hani school in Sanaag region, Somalia. Credit: Save the Children

Free schooling thanks to ECW funding

The primary school Sabah attends offers free schooling thanks to support from ECW. It has enabled her and other kids from this rural community to start learning.

Sabah’s mother, Anab Jama, said she is now able to keep her children in the village school while her husband travels with the animals in search of fresh forage and water. “I stayed behind to take care of the children at school. I don’t want them to miss the free education,” Jama told IPS. 

Last year, ECW funding supported the distribution of education kits by local partners and the Somaliland Ministry of Education during the COVID-19 lockdown so children could continue their studies until schools reopened at the end of 2020. The kits included books and solar lamps.

“When the pandemic hit Somaliland, we closed down the school and sent kids back home,” Mohamed Abdi Egal, the headteacher of the Ali Isse primary school, told IPS. “There was not any other option we could provide to continue students’ learning. That was the biggest disruption we saw. When we resumed late 2020, we started to maintain social distancing and hand-washing.”

“Education is considered a vital element in the development of the community but when emergencies unfold like COVID-19 it shows how it hampers provision of essential services, including education,” Egal told IPS.

Thanks to funding 11,052 students, 4,568 of whom are girls, were able to sit for their grade 8 centralised final examinations in Puntland State, Somalia. Credit: Save the Children

Schooling tailored to pastoralist families’ needs

A year after the 2019 programme launched, the number of enrolments of children in the pastoralist community increased substantively – from 12 percent to 50 percent due to the programme design – said Safia Jibril Abdi, UNICEF Education Specialist in charge of managing the ECW-funded programme in Somaliland.

“Education always needs long-term planning. In the drought-affected areas families are on the move and besides that the children do the hard work, such as grazing animals. Girls are core for rural families when it comes to household chores,” continued Abdi.

“We started afternoon classes during the beginning of the school year [in August 2019] and teachers were hired. When the education timing matched the rural families’ lifestyle it brought impact and is much better for rural children.”

The programme targeted children 10 years and above and those who would be able to successfully complete their secondary education in five years within the constraints of their nomadic lifestyles.

Local community members in 15 locations across Somaliland have established education committees to ensure the long-term sustainability of providing education here.

“The goal was to increase access of children to the education with a safe environment. Also, the most important is to make the project sustainable for the local community,” Abdi told IPS. “Girls in school have certain needs, such as sanitary pads, which we provide to them. This helps teenage girls not miss ongoing classes during their periods.”

The UNICEF Education Specialist said that the benefits of the collaborative approach that saw the various actors, including the Ministry of Education, rural communities and civil society organisations, working alongside and with funding from ECW to deliver education for crisis-affected children made the initiative successful.

“It is a sad reality that one in every two children in Somaliland doesn’t have the opportunity for free education. With the launch of the ECW programme we are now able to reach these marginalised children many of whom are in the conflict affected and rural areas,” she said.

Meanwhile, Save the Children, an ECW partner working in Somalia’s Puntland State, has launched multiple distance learning initiatives, including uploading lessons online to help students continue their studies despite COVID-19 lockdowns.

As a result, 11,052 students, 4,568 of whom are girls, were able to sit for their grade 8 centralised final examinations.

“We have created an online learning programme under the ECW fund that targeted primary schools in Puntland. Currently 15,604 students, among them 6,924 girls, have access to education with the support of ECW in Puntland,” Ahmed Mohamed Farah, Save the Children’s ECW Education Consortium manager in Puntland, Somalia, told IPS.

As an ECW implementing agency, Save the Children aims to strengthen the Puntland government education system and enhance the quality by monitoring students’ dropout as well as managing the education system in the four regions it targets in the northeastern Somalia.

According to Farah, ECW funding also paid for the exam fees of 1,000 students from 51 target schools across Somalia.

“Certain students from the low-income families and those in the remote areas could not register for their national primary school exams due to the registration fees therefore we were able to cover for their exam fees.

“Six out of the 10 top grade students were girls. That is the impact,” Farah said.

 

—————————————————————————————————————————————————–

To learn more about Education Cannot Wait’s work for children and youth caught in emergencies and protracted crises, please visit: educationcannotwait.org and please follow @EduCannotWait on Twitter.

 

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Credit: Australian Institute of Marine Science

By Mark Haver and Marina Porto
PARIS, Jun 8 2021 (IPS)

Increasingly, youth are rising up to declare that they’ve had enough of the cyclical exploitation of the environment that jeopardizes their own future.

Youth activism through the Global Climate Strikes and Fridays For Future protests have helped spur revolutionary policy frameworks, like the Green New Deal championed by U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

International organizations and sovereign governments have now interpreted the Green New Deal into frameworks and policies of their own; it’s clear that environmental policy led by youth has energized the discussion on global decarbonization and the social impacts of climate change.

However, the Green New Deal only mentioned the ocean once. We need to insert more Blue into the green transition.

Earth’s vast oceans are humanity’s single most important climate regulation tool. As governments coalesce around plans to quite literally save our species, we must recognize that there is no future without understanding the role the ocean has to play.

Beyond human life support, the ocean economy contributes to ecosystem services, jobs, and cultural services valued at USD 3-6 trillion, with fisheries and aquaculture alone contributing USD 100 billion per year and 250+ million jobs.

Our ocean, however, is overfished, polluted with plastic, and exploited for non-renewable resources like minerals and fossil fuels. This perpetuates a cycle of generational injustice and leaves youth to inherit an increasingly degraded environment with less and less time to restore it. Not only is this detrimental to progress at large, but our most vulnerable global communities, who contribute the least to global emissions, will feel the effects of our degraded environment the most severely.

Youth not only need to be proactive advocates for the SDGs, we need to hold the global community accountable to commitments they have made between nations and to youth as the greatest stakeholders in the future health of our environment.

Creating the “Global Blue New Deal”

In 2019, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance distributed surveys across its network to identify the key youth policy priorities for a healthy ocean and just future. We received 100+ responses from 38 countries in 5 languages.

Over the past year, SOA’s Youth Policy Advisory Council synthesized these into a youth-led, crowdsourced ocean policy framework: the Global Blue New Deal.

The first public draft of our Global Blue New Deal is being launched now, at the dawn of the UN’s Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, which aims to gather global ocean stakeholders behind a common framework to deliver “the ocean we need for the future we want.”

Youth want to contribute to the success of the Ocean Decade and call on the international community to recognize our policy suggestions as part of the solutions our planet needs.

The vision of the Global Blue New Deal is to “outline an ocean policy framework that integrates crowdsourced youth priorities that will be proposed to governments on international, national, and local scales for implementation.”

It is organized under four pillars, each containing specific ocean policy solutions.

In brief:

Pillar 1
Carbon Neutrality: Transition to a Zero Carbon Future

1. End offshore drilling and invest in renewable ocean energy
2. Decarbonize the shipping industry
3. Reduce land-based marine pollution
4. Transition to a circular economy
5. Strengthen legislation and enforcement against ocean contamination

Pillar 2
Preserve Biodiversity: Apply Nature-based Solutions to Promote Healthy Ecosystems and Climate Resilience

1. Support the global movement to protect 30% of the world’s ocean by 2030
2. Enforce against non-compliance in Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)
3. Establish a global moratorium against deep-sea mining
4. Transition from “gray” manmade infrastructure like culverts and seawalls to nature-based blue carbon infrastructure including the restoration of wetlands, mangroves and marshes

Pillar 3:
Sustainable Seafood: Match Increasing Global Demand Sustainably

1. Encourage sustainable governance of capture fisheries
2. Enforce against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing
3. Eliminate capacity-enhancing fisheries subsidies
4. Provide a sustainable path for aquaculture
5. Fund research and development of plant-based and cell-cultured seafood

Pillar 4:
Stakeholder Engagement: Include Local Communities in Natural Ocean Resource Management

1. Ensure the sustainability of coastal ecotourism
2. Promote ocean research and innovation, with a goal of mapping 100% of the global seafloor by 2030.
3. Emphasize ocean literacy and capacity building
4. Build stakeholder participation in ocean governance

We invite like-minded youths, scientists, policymakers, and other ocean stakeholders to visit https://www.soalliance.org/soablog/youth-led-blue-new-deal and help as we finalize the Global Blue New Deal ocean policy framework during our public comment period throughout July.

Each generation has inherited an increasingly degraded ocean environment with the poorest, most vulnerable communities feeling the impacts the most severely. This is our opportunity to rewrite the long history of compromising our ocean.

Mark Haver and Marina Porto are Chair and Co-Chair respectively of the Youth Policy Advisory Council of the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, the world’s largest youth-led network of ocean allies.

 

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Nurses greet visitors at a clinic set up at a hospital in Thailand to treat people with suspected COVID-19 symptoms. Credit: WHO/P. Phutpheng

By Fatou Haidara and Helen McEachern
VIENNA/LONDON, Jun 8 2021 (IPS)

The leaders of the G7 group of nations will soon gather in Cornwall, United Kingdom, (June 11-13) to devise plans to ‘build back better’ from the COVID-19 pandemic. The summit takes place in the wake of a crisis that has both revealed and further exacerbated existing economic and social inequalities, including gender inequalities.

This meeting and the run-up to the United Nations Climate Conference (COP26) in November 2021 provide an opportunity to put women front and centre of global economic plans.

This crisis should be used as a wake-up call to evolve from business-as-usual. It is time for governments and the international community to embrace measures to level the playing field for women entrepreneurs and ensure their knowledge, experience and great untapped potential are at the forefront of national economic recovery plans, including for sustainable, green and inclusive economies and societies.

Impact of COVID-19 on women entrepreneurs

For women entrepreneurs, the pandemic has meant reduced incomes, temporary and permanent business closures, the dismissal of employees, missed business opportunities and reduced access to often already limited finance and capital.

Women-owned enterprises are overrepresented in sectors most vulnerable to the detrimental impacts of COVID-19 – such as retail, hospitality and tourism, and services, as well as manufacturing such as in the textile industry.

With children being homeschooled and heightened care needs for older people, there is also an increasing amount of unpaid care work which is disproportionately carried out by women. (Even before the pandemic, most women-owned businesses were on average smaller and had less capital than those owned by men – which results in limited resilience to the economic hit created by the pandemic.)

Data analyzed by the COVID-19 Gender and Development Initiative suggests that in every region of the world women are more likely to have been forced to close their businesses because of the pandemic.

Recent research by the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, based on responses from 125 women entrepreneurs in 32 low- and middle-income countries, provides critical insights into women entrepreneurs’ experiences and challenges in 2020.

Most women entrepreneurs responding to the survey reported that the pandemic has had a negative impact on their businesses, and nearly four in ten responded that their business may have to close as a result.

Over a third of these women reported they would struggle to afford necessities like food if their business closed down, and almost half of them reported that they have lost out on formal financial investment opportunities due to the pandemic.

With regard to the type of support required, a UNIDO survey1 on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on women and youth entrepreneurs in the manufacturing sector and manufacturing-related services recorded responses of more than 1100 entrepreneurs (759 of them women) from 34 countries.

It showed that access to finance, customer retention, market diversification and product development are the areas where women entrepreneurs need the most assistance to recover from the economic repercussions of the pandemic. Also, women entrepreneurs indicated more need for support than men entrepreneurs, again suggesting that the pandemic has had a disproportionately negative impact.

Investing in women entrepreneurs critical

The playing field for women entrepreneurs already needed levelling before the pandemic. The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2021 report shows that laws and restrictions continue to prevent women from entering the workforce and starting businesses.

Around the world, women still have only three-quarters of the legal rights afforded to men on average.2 Women entrepreneurs are also less likely to have access to human, financial and social capital, and globally, only one in three businesses are owned by women.3

In addition, women are less likely than men to start and operate a business, both in OECD4 and low- and middle-income countries5.

While investing in women entrepreneurs is first and foremost a critical issue of economic justice and women’s rights, there is also a strong economic incentive. Joint research by the Boston Consulting Group and the Cherie Blair Foundation from 2019 found that if women and men participated equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could rise by 3-6%, boosting the global economy by USD 2.5-5 trillion.

Unlocking the untapped potential of women entrepreneurs to boost the world economy should therefore be a priority in the post-pandemic recovery.

Time to step up commitments to support women entrepreneurs

Gender-neutral macroeconomic policies and recovery packages will not reach those most in need. In fact, they continue to reinforce existing gender inequalities and contribute to the discrimination against women in economic participation and entrepreneurship. This will leave women – and their families, communities and wider societies – worse off.

Since the Leaders Declaration of the G7 Summit of 7-8 June 2015 identified women’s entrepreneurship as a key driver of innovation, growth and jobs, and respective commitments were formulated in the G7 Roadmap for a Gender-Responsive Economic Environment in 2017, successive G7 Presidencies have continued to advance this cause.

The meeting in Cornwall is an opportune moment to further strengthen these commitments and adopt concrete measures for a green economic recovery that empowers women and benefits all. Both national policies and international cooperation should prioritize building more gender-responsive, just and resilient economies, with policies and fiscal packages that address deeply-ingrained inequalities.

In particular, we call on leaders at the upcoming G7 Summit to ensure that post-COVID-19 recovery efforts and fiscal packages support sectors where women are strongly represented and that have been hit hard by the pandemic, such as hospitality and tourism, manufacturing, retail, health and social care. We need concrete budgetary commitments. In addition, measures need to be put in place so that women entrepreneurs have equal access to market opportunities, such as through public procurement, as well as access to finance.

Yet, even these actions will not be enough if structural inequalities persist and discriminatory social norms and legal barriers are not tackled through transformative policies. There is a further need to ensure more gender-targeted and universal social protection mechanisms which are missing in so many countries around the world, and to ensure that macroeconomic policies recognize and address the gender inequalities in unpaid care and other domestic responsibilities.

It is also essential that the voices of women entrepreneurs and their organizations are heard by the international community, including the G7, and that women entrepreneurs are involved in any policy negotiations seeking to ‘build back better’.

Today, women make up only 24% of governmental COVID-19 task forces globally,6 thus creating the risk of perpetuating gender inequalities and leaving women’s needs unattended.7

The international community faces a unique opportunity to shape a post-COVID-19 economy to which women and men have equal access and can equally contribute to through their businesses. Our organizations stand ready to collaborate on this endeavour.

1 UNIDO, “Assessment of the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on women and youth entrepreneurs in the manufacturing sector and manufacturing-related services”, 2020.
2 World Bank ‘Women, Business and the Law 2021’, 2021
3 World Bank Enterprise Surveys. Retrieved from The World Bank Gender Data Portal: Share of small, medium, and large firms with a woman among the principal owners (%), latest data available for 2019
4 OECD (2019). The Missing Entrepreneurs 2019 – Policies for Inclusive Entrepreneurship.
5 World Bank Enterprise Surveys, World Bank Data Portal, as presented in the World Bank Blog of Daniel Halim (5 March 2020): Women entrepreneurs needed—stat!
6 “COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker”, UNDP
7 Further reading: “Vienna Discussion Forum 2020 – The future is gender-inclusive: Global responses in crisis management and recovery”, 27 November 2020, UNIDO.

Fatou Haidara is Managing Director, Directorate of Corporate Management and Operations, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO); Helen McEachern is Chief Executive Officer, Cherie Blair Foundation for Women

 

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Excerpt:

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a devastating impact on women and girls, and the fallout has shown how deeply gender inequality remains embedded in the world’s political, social and economic systems, says UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 8 2021 (IPS)

With the pandemic setting back past, modest and uneven progress, huge disparities in containing COVID-19 and financing government efforts are widening the North-South gap and other inequalities once again.

Developing country pandemic
Developing countries are struggling to cope with their generally feeble health systems. These had been weakened by funding cuts and privatisation policies prescribed by both Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs): the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 has become a “developing-country pandemic”.

Anis Chowdhury

Developing countries – especially lower middle-income countries (MICs) and low-income countries (LICs) unable to afford diagnostic tests, personal protective and other equipment, medical treatments and vaccines – now account for much more and still fast rising shares of worldwide deaths and infections.

With grossly uneven vaccination, death and infection rates in high-income countries (HICs) have dropped as LIC and MIC (LMIC) shares have spiked. The Economist estimates much higher mortality rates in developing countries than suggested by official data: 12 times more in LMICs, and 35 times greater in LICs!

Greater global divergence
The COVID-19 pandemic and policy responses have further set back Agenda 2030 for global sustainable development. UNCTAD estimates developing country output fell by 2.1% in 2020. To make matters worse, progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was poor even before the pandemic.

The world now faces greater divergence, as developing countries fall further behind due to the pandemic and disparate responses to it. The IMF management proposes US$50bn can accelerate vaccination to end the pandemic worldwide, with benefits worth US$9 trillion!

The IMF estimates average LIC growth declined sharply to 0.3% in 2020 from over 5% in the previous three years. It also projects 33 developing countries – including 15 in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and nine small island developing states – will still have lower per capita incomes in 2026 than in 2019.

Constrained fiscal space
Most developing countries faced constrained ‘fiscal space’ even before the pandemic. The average tax/GDP ratio in 2018 was 12% in lower MICs and 13% in LMICs, compared to 25% in developed countries.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Developing countries’ poorer fiscal means are often due to weaker revenue collection, lower incomes and larger informal sectors. They also lose between US$49bn and US$194bn yearly to illicit transfers, e.g., to corporations’ ‘trade mis-invoicing’ or ‘transfer pricing’.

Africa loses about US$89bn, around 3.7% of African output, to illicit capital flight yearly. This revenue loss is almost equivalent to the total inflow of official development assistance (ODA) and foreign direct investment African countries received during 2013-2015.

Developing countries are typically caught in harmful tax competition in a ‘race to the bottom’ following ‘neoliberal’ advice from the BWIs and others. Thus, statutory corporate tax rates declined from 39% in MICs and 46% in LICs in 1990 to 24% and 29% in 2019 respectively.

From frying pan into fire
Developing countries have long faced limited fiscal capacity and policy space or choice, worsened by decades of neoliberal policy conditionalities and advice. Donors and the BWIs have also urged LMICs to borrow from international capital markets rather than official sources.

Meanwhile, ODA increasingly supports private businesses. Such new mechanisms, e.g., ‘blended finance’, promised to turn aid ‘billions into trillions’ of private finance for Agenda 2030. The promise has failed spectacularly, depriving countries relying on declining ODA while advancing the interests of private finance.

Thus, LMIC debt surged before the pandemic. Total (public and private) debt reached over 170% of emerging market and developing economies’ output and 65% of LIC GDP in 2019. The increase in EMEs involved almost equal shares of both external and domestic debt.

This bad situation has worsened – with less tax revenue, reduced exports and ODA cuts – due to the pandemic as government spending needs rise sharply. In April 2020, UNCTAD called for US$1tn in debt relief of developing country obligations – estimated at between US$2.6tn and US$3.4tn in 2020 and 2021.

Donor support unlikely
However, rich countries, especially G20 members, have responded frugally to this call, while private commercial lenders have rejected all debt relief initiatives so far. This poor country predicament has been worsened by World Bank refusal to supplement IMF debt service cancellation for the most vulnerable LICs.

Meanwhile, ODA has remained below half the donor aid commitment, made half a century ago, of 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI). The aggregate ODA/GNI ratio fell from 0.31% in 2017 to 0.29% in 2019.

The IMF estimates LICs need around US$200bn for relief and recovery up to 2025, and another US$250bn to resume development progress. It projects another US$100bn will be enough to cover ‘downside risks’, e.g., due to delayed vaccination and more lockdown measures.

However, some major donors have already cut their already modest aid budget allocations. Meanwhile, no rich country has yet pledged to transfer its unused new IMF special drawing rights (SDRs) to provide more recovery finance for developing countries through the 15 designated multilateral financial institutions which can so use SDRs.

Financing relief, recovery, reform
Fiscal measures of around US$16tn have already been rolled out globally, with HICs accounting for more than 80%. In contrast, fearing the macroeconomic consequences of borrowing and spending much more, developing countries have committed much less.

While developed countries have deployed 28% of their much higher national incomes, the ratios are only 7% for EMEs, 3% for SSA and 2% for LICs. Besides urgently containing the pandemic and its consequences, developing countries must quickly, effectively and adequately finance relief and recovery from COVID-19 recessions.

Cooperative efforts to secure much more tests, equipment, treatments and vaccines must be quickly stepped up. Meanwhile, the UN system, including the BWIs, needs to urgently expand developing countries’ means to finance measures to ‘build forward better’.

 

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Members of civilian militias gather in Zagtouli for a rally. Credit: Henry Wilkins

By Henry Wilkins
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, Jun 7 2021 (IPS)

On the night of Friday 4th June, a group of unidentified armed men stormed the village of Solhan in the north of Burkina Faso, shooting indiscriminately, looting the market and burning homes. A report by RFI, the French radio station said there could have been as many as 200 attackers by some accounts of survivors.

Security sources confirmed children were targeted, with 7 minors killed according to official figures. Now, the total number of dead stands at, at least 160 – a massacre.

The extent of the carnage is still unknown as figures for the dead and injured continue to rise. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Heni Nsaibia, a senior analyst at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, pointed out, “The massacre in Solhan is the single deadliest attack recorded in Burkina Faso. The only comparable event at this scale was the massacre in Yirgou, in January 2019.”

The attack marks a recent surge in violence after a period of declining attacks from March 2021, in part brought on by negotiations between the government and the armed groups which have plagued Burkina Faso since 2015.

The government of Burkina Faso has been battling armed groups including Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) and Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), Al Qaeda’s local affiliate, with assistance from French and US troops, but is struggling to contain the violence.

On May 17th, Burkina Faso’s foreign minister, Cherif Sy visited Sebba, the nearest town to Solhan. He told reporters, “We can say that the situation is favorable and peace has returned to Sebba.”

On Saturday Sebba’s hospital was overwhelmed by victims of the Solhan attacks.

In May, some twitter users complained such rhetoric could lead to a retaliation by terror groups, while others called for Sy’s resignation on Sunday. Analysts said the attack was a demonstration of force by terror groups.

IDPs travelling with their possessions along the road from Barsalogho to Kaya. Credit: Henry Wilkins

Lassane Sawadogo, executive secretary of the ruling People’s Movement for Progress Party, admits that more needs to be done to stem the violence. He told IPS, “We are faced with the phenomenon of insecurity which is observed over a large part of our territory. Since then, efforts have been made to overcome this phenomenon. But we must admit that these efforts are not bearing the expected fruits.”

The attack was carefully planned and coordinated. The armed group carried out a simultaneous attack on the nearby army base and placed IEDs on the road between it and Solhan in order to stop security forces responding to the massacre.

Mahamadou Sawadogo is a Burkinabe security analyst and former military police officer. He says the tactics used give clues as to which group carried out the attack. “According to the modus operandi, that could lead us to believe it’s ISGS. But it is an area of influence of JNIM as well,” he told IPS.

Sawadogo says he believes the attack is related to the recruitment of Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland, a civilian militia set up by the government in 2020 to assist the military in operations.

“Through this attack, the other message is that the VDPs have become a targeted group of these terrorist groups. This attack was partly made to discourage the VDPs, so that they do not continue to enlist and help [the military],” Sawadogo said.

Solhan, is also the site of an informal gold mine which terror groups frequently exploit for funding. Large numbers of children frequently work the sites.

On Sunday, fake news of further attacks in the vicinity of Solhan and beyond began to spread on social media and in local media outlets. The military were forced to release a communique to deny the attacks, while the editor of a local radio station owned by Burkina Faso’s foreign minister was sacked for disseminating fake news.

Apart from a statement on Twitter, the president, Roch Kabore, is yet to speak publicly about the attack. Three days of public mourning have been declared.

The humanitarian fallout from the attack is also likely to be significant, causing displacement of families fleeing the violence. 1.2 million people are already displaced in Burkina Faso.

A statement by the Norweigan Refugee Council said, “While each attack is measured by its death toll, there are more elusive counts to keep: the number of families forced into hurried escapes, or the number of weeks, months and years they will spend away from home. And let’s not forget what can’t be quantified at all: the trauma of children witnessing such horrifying violence.”

As three days of national mourning was declared, the streets of Ouagadougou took on a somber atmosphere. Citizens gave prayers for the families of the victims, but will no doubt be wondering what happens next as security continues to deteriorate.

 

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