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In Syria, a Decade of Death, Destruction, Displacement, Disease, Dread & Despair

Tue, 03/30/2021 - 08:24

Credit: UNICEF/Grove Hermansen

By Mark Lowcock*
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 30 2021 (IPS)

The conflict in Syria is now ten years old. A decade of death, destruction, displacement, disease, dread and despair. I have spoken to Syrians in many parts of the country in recent weeks.

They see no respite. And they are right: our latest humanitarian overview, which my office released last week, shows that needs are higher than ever.

We estimate that 13.4 million people across all parts of Syria require humanitarian aid. Twenty per cent more than last year. The deep economic decay from a decade of war has deepened further over the last year, not least as a result of the pandemic.

The Syrian pound fell to its lowest point ever against the dollar this month. Because food is imported, one consequence of that is that food prices are at unprecedented levels.

And a consequence of that is that more than 12 million people no longer have reliable access to food. And a consequence of that is growing hunger and malnutrition, especially among children.

UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore will tell you more about that.

Several doctors, in different parts of Syria, have told me they are seeing many cases of malnutrition, even among breastfed children, and that the situation is getting worse.

A displaced father of 11 children told me the other day that they have all dropped out of school to look for work to help feed the family.

My update today covers three main points. First, the protection of civilians; second, humanitarian access; and third, the assistance humanitarian organizations are providing across Syria.

Just over a week ago, at least 30 communities in northern Syria were attacked by artillery shells and air strikes.

Artillery shells hit Al Atareb Surgical Hospital, forcing it to be evacuated and closed.

Two boys, cousins, 10 and 12 years old, were among the patients killed. Five medical staff are among the injured. Two of them remain in critical condition.

Al Atareb Surgical Hospital, like many others, was built underground to escape attacks like this. It seems grotesque that hospitals, which are protected under international humanitarian law, should have to operate underground, but that is the reality in Syria.

Credit: UNFPA Syria

The location of the hospital was well known to the warring parties. The UN has supported it for several years. Its location was reported again to the parties on 1 March. This was obviously a deliberate attack, and you will all have seen the statement the Secretary-General issued.

As we speak, I am also, just in the last few minutes, hearing reports of a new air strike today in the area around Idleb city.

Moving on, I have expressed my concern to you before about increasing insecurity at the Al Hol camp. An MSF staff member there was killed while off-duty in their tent on 24 February.

Insecurity at Al Hol has now reached intolerable levels, threatening our ability to operate. Forty-one residents have been murdered since the beginning of the year.

The de facto authorities in the north-east are responsible for providing security in the camp. A major security operation, involving large numbers of military personnel, began in Al Hol yesterday, with the stated intention of restoring security in the camp.

The exercise has forced the suspension of many humanitarian services. Residents, including children, are being screened and their tents are being searched.

Security must be provided in a manner that does not endanger residents or violate their rights, and that does not restrict humanitarian access.

There are almost 40,000 foreign and Syrian children at Al Hol. More than 30,000 of them are less than 12 years old. It is entirely unacceptable that they remain in this unsafe environment. Countries of origin should take their nationals home.

My next point, is humanitarian access.

On 21 March, the same day as the attack on Al Atareb hospital, multiple air-to-surface missiles hit the road leading to Bab al-Hawa border crossing in northern Idleb.

Around 1,000 trucks of UN assistance cross through Bab al-Hawa every month, as authorized by the Security Council under resolution 2533.

One of the missiles struck a lot where trucks used for transporting humanitarian supplies were parked. Twenty-four trucks were destroyed or damaged.

The air strikes also started a fire in a nearby NGO warehouse storing food and other humanitarian supplies. A quarter of the stocks there, amounting to aid for over 4,000 people, were destroyed.

To put the impact of an attack like this into perspective, let me outline the extent to which people in north-west Syria depend upon cross-border aid.

There are apparently some misconceptions over the scale of the UN’s role. In one of your meetings earlier this year, it was suggested that the UN cross-border operation accounts for 10 per cent of the assistance. I was recently asked about that informally, and I said I thought the number was in fact around 40 per cent. When I reported that conversation to my staff, they said I had got the number wrong. “So it’s not 40 per cent?” I said. “No,” they said. “Well what is it then?” I said. “We think its’s nearer 50 per cent,” they said.

There are more than 4 million people in north-west Syria. We estimate that more than 75 per cent of them depend on aid to meet their basic needs. The cross-border operation reaches almost 85 per cent of these people every month.

The proportions vary depending on the type of assistance. For example, the UN provides the vast majority of emergency food assistance. Between 70 and 80 per cent of that is delivered by the World Food Programme.

The UN also, though, plays a major role in supporting others providing assistance. Many NGO operations rely, for example, on the UN for support in logistics, financing and procurement.

The UN cross-border operation is one of the most heavily scrutinized and monitored aid operations in the world. That is because the people paying for it – who are mostly Western and Gulf donors – have been clear that they will only do so if they are sure the resources are not being diverted to terrorist groups.

Because this programme is so well monitored and scrutinized, we know aid gets to the people it is supposed to.

Some people have suggested that aid must be being diverted, because otherwise we would not see the kind of malnutrition we now observe. That, too, is wrong. The reason there is so much malnutrition is that the cross-border operation is too small to prevent it. More money and more border crossings would address that.

People in north-west Syria know that the Security Council will shortly be deciding the future of the cross-border programme.

My office last week received a letter from women’s groups in Idleb. It said: “We are 130 Syrian women: teachers, engineers, doctors and housewives. We are all civilians who have lived a full decade in the war in all its detail. As women, mothers and those responsible for our families, we stand against stopping a cross-border resolution. We do not want our children to starve.”

We have also been continuing to try to seek agreement – as we have for more than a year – on cross-line deliveries to the north-west. I updated the Council again on that last month. The various parties have each recently described arrangements that they could go along with. But we have yet to find an approach everyone can agree. Discussions continue. While we deliver 1,000 trucks a month of aid cross border into the north-west, we have yet to see even a single truck, just one, cross line.

Let me turn now to the north-east. Cross-line humanitarian assistance to the north-east has scaled up, but needs still surpass our ability to address them.

We estimate that 1.8 million people require assistance in areas of north-east Syria outside of the control of the Government. Over 70 per cent of them are considered to be in extreme need – well above the national average.

Reputable aid organizations tell us that the availability and accessibility of health care in the north-east is insufficient. Few health issues are adequately addressed due to the limited functionality and capacity of health-care facilities, the lack of adequately trained medical staff, and shortages of essential medicines.

NGOs operating in the north-east report imminent stock-outs of critical medicines like insulin, and cardiovascular and antibacterial medicines in multiple facilities.

The UN was able to support the supply chain of medical supplies through Al Yaroubiya until the Security Council authorization to do that expired. Reputable organizations operating in the north-east tell us that neither cross-line support to health facilities nor increased cross-border shipments by NGOs have since proved a sufficient replacement.

Recent assessments in Deir-ez-Zor and Al Hassakeh show that only half of the pregnant women and new mothers in these camps are able to access obstetric or antenatal care.

Humanitarian organizations are making all efforts to bridge gaps.

The World Health Organization warns, however, that funding is a key constraint, as available resources will only cover 40 per cent of estimated health supply needs for north-east Syria for 2021.

At least nine NGO-supported health facilities will close in the coming months if additional funding is not secured.

Let me finally say a few words about the assistance we are delivering across Syria, in all parts of the country, notwithstanding the complexities and constraints I have just described.

The humanitarian operation currently reaches about 7.7 million people across the country every month. A significant increase in what we were doing last year. That is a reflection of the deterioration of the situation.

On March 30, the UN will be co-hosting the Brussels V Conference in support of Syria and neighbouring countries affected by the crisis.

Humanitarian organizations coordinated by the UN are seeking an estimated US$4.2 billion for the response inside Syria, to reach 12.3 million people in need. Another $5.8 billion is required for support to countries hosting Syrian refugees in the region.

Our ability to deliver aid and stave off an even worse situation for millions of civilians will depend on the political will and financial generosity of the international community, including the countries represented in this Council.

Now is not the moment to reduce humanitarian aid to Syria. We need more money, not less, if we are to avoid a further deterioration – the consequences of which could be dramatic and widespread.

* Mark Lowcock, UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, in his address to the UN Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria, 29 March 2021.

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Categories: Africa

IMF, World Bank Must Urgently Help Finance Developing Countries

Tue, 03/30/2021 - 07:58

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 30 2021 (IPS)

COVID-19 has set back the uneven progress of recent decades, directly causing more than two million deaths. The slowdown, due to the pandemic and policy responses, has pushed hundreds of millions more into poverty, hunger and worse, also deepening many inequalities.

Anis Chowdhury

Development setbacks
The outlook for developing countries is grim, with output losses of 5.7% in 2020. Compared to pre-pandemic trends, the expected 8.1% loss by end-2021 will be much worse than advanced countries dropping 4.7%.

COVID-19 has further set back progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As progress was largely ‘not on track’ even before the pandemic, developing countries will need much support to mitigate the new setbacks, let alone get back on track.

The extremely poor, defined by the World Bank as those with incomes under US$1.90/day, increased by 119–124 million in 2020, and are expected to rise by another 143-163 million in 2021.

Fiscal response constrained
Global fiscal efforts of close to US$14tn, plus low interest rates, liquidity injections and asset purchases by central banks, have helped. Nonetheless, the world economy will lose over US$22 trillion during 2020–2025 due to the pandemic.

Government responses have been much influenced by access to finance. Developed countries have accounted for four-fifths of total pandemic fiscal responses costing US$14tn. Rich countries have deployed the equivalent of a fifth of national income for fiscal efforts.

Meanwhile, emerging market economies spent only 5%, and low-income countries (LICs) a paltry 1.3% by mid-2020. In 2020, increased spending, despite reduced revenue, raised fiscal deficits of emerging market and middle-income countries (MICs) to 10.3%, and of LICs to 5.7%.

Government revenue has fallen due to lower output, commodity prices and longstanding Bank advice to cut taxes. Worse, they already face heavy debt burdens and onerous borrowing costs. Meanwhile, private finance dropped US$700bn in 2020.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Developing countries lost portfolio outflows of US$103bn in the first five months. Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to emerging and developing countries also fell 30–45% in 2020. Meanwhile, bilateral donors cut aid commitments by 36% between 2019 and 2020.

Meanwhile, the liquidity support, debt relief and finance available are woefully inadequate. These constrain LICs’ fiscal efforts, with many even cutting spending, worsening medium-term recovery prospects!

Debt burdens
In 2019, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) assessed half the LICs as being at high risk of, or already in debt distress – more than double the 2013 share. Debt in LICs rose to 65% of GDP in 2019 from 47% in 2010.

Thus, LICs began the pandemic with more debt relative to government revenue, larger deficits and higher borrowing costs than high-income countries. And now, greater fiscal deficits of US$2–3tn projected for 2021 imply more debt.

Debt composition has become riskier with more commercial borrowing, particularly with foreign currency bond issues far outpacing other financing sources, especially official development assistance (ODA) and multilateral lending.

More than half of LIC government debt is non-concessional, worsening its implications. External debt maturity periods have also decreased. Also, interest payments cost more than 12% of government revenue in 2018, compared to under 7% in 2010.

Riskier financial flows
Developing economies have increasingly had to borrow on commercial terms in transnational financial markets as international public finance flows and access to concessional resources have declined.

Low interest rates, due to unconventional monetary policies in developed countries, encouraged borrowing by developing countries, especially by upper MICs. But despite generally low interest rates internationally, LIC external debt rates have been rising.

Overall ODA flows – net of repayments of principal – from OECD countries fell in 2017 and 2018. Such flows have long fallen short of the financing needs of Agenda 2030 for the SDGs. Instead of giving 0.7% of their national income as ODA to developing countries, as long promised, actual ODA disbursed has yet to even reach half this level.

Although total financial resource flows (ODA, FDI, remittances) to least developed countries (LDCs) increased slightly, ODA remained well short of their needs, falling from 9.4% of LDCs’ GNI in 2003 to 4.3% in 2018. Meanwhile, FDI to LDCs dropped from 4.1% of their GNI in 2003 to 2.3% in 2018.

There has also been a shift away from ‘traditional’ creditors, including multilateral financial institutions and rich country Paris Club members. Some donor governments increasingly use aid to promote private business interests. ‘Blended finance’ was supposed to turn billions of aid dollars into trillions in development finance.

But the private finance actually mobilised has been modest, about US$20bn a year – well below the urgent spending needs of LICs and MICs, and less than a quarter of ODA in 2017. Such changes have further reduced recipient government policy discretion.

Inadequate support
The 2020 IMF cancellation of US$213.5m in debt service payments due from 25 eligible LICs was welcome. But the G20 debt service suspension initiative (DSSI) was grossly inadequate, merely kicking the can down the road. It did not cancel any debt, with interest continuing to accrue during the all-too-brief suspension period.

The G20 initiative hardly addressed urgent needs, while private creditors refused to cooperate. Only meant for LICs, it did not address problems facing MICs. Many MICs also face huge debt, with upper MICs alone having US$2.0–2.3tn in 2020–2021.

World Bank President David Malpass has expressed concerns that any change to normal debt servicing would negatively impact the Bank’s standing in financial markets, where it issues bonds to finance loans to MICs.

The Bank Group has made available US$160bn for the period April 2020 to June 2021, but moved too slowly with its Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF). By the time it paid out US$196m, the amount was deemed too small and contagion had spread.

Special Drawing Rights
Issuing US$650bn worth of new special drawing rights (SDRs) will augment the IMF’s US$1tn lending capacity, already inadequate before the pandemic. But US$650bn in SDRs is only half the new SDR1tn (US$1.37tn) The Financial Times considers necessary given the scale of the problem.

To help, rich countries could transfer unused SDRs to IMF special funds for LICs, such as the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) and the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT), or for development finance.

Similar arrangements can be made for the Bank. A World Bank version of the IMF’s CCRT could ensure uninterrupted debt servicing while providing relief to countries in need. Investors in Bank bonds would appreciate the distinction.

Hence, issuing SDRs and making other institutional reforms at the Spring meetings in April could enable much more Fund and Bank financial intermediation. These can greatly help finance urgently needed pandemic relief, recovery and reforms in developing countries.

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Categories: Africa

Gathering Dark Clouds: China, US, and a Rapidly Dividing World

Mon, 03/29/2021 - 14:07

By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Mar 29 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The China-US meeting in Alaska last week was an unmitigated disaster. It did not bridge any differences. On the contrary, it may have widened them. If the purpose of diplomacy is to keep the lines of dialogue and communications open through the understanding the protocols, traditions, and culture of the other side, this discussion provided little evidence of even a desire for success. The art of negotiation in the international arena provides a substantial lexicon of nuanced language to advance rewarding discourse. In Alaska, this lesson was ignored. Style and substance were in tatters. Repairs now seem an impossibility anytime soon.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

How did this come about? When President Joe Biden came into office, his natural proclivities were to take what his predecessor President Donald Trump had done, and do the opposite thing. But that strategy seemed fraught with political risks. That is because Trump had carried much of America with him in many of his actions, and the margin of the Democratic victory in the legislature, particularly in the Senate, is woefully thin. It is a fact of politics Biden cannot afford to dismiss. His toughness on China flows largely from this, though in all fairness, it is more than just pandering to the right. Presumably, his own convictions also plays a role. But as a result, he might run the risk of being thought of as “Trump Lite”. That would create an unenviable situation for him. The Trump base would see that as a justification of their own convictions,and hanker for more. Biden’s Democrat supporters in the lower middle class would lose out from the benefits of trade with China, just as affordable consumer-items, which they hoped would accompany the political change.

In any case, the Trump Team in Anchorage, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan received the tough brief from their boss, and carried it out to the T. Normally in such negotiations, the host uses the warmth of hospitality as a tool to obtain an advantage, but the Biden team seemed uninterested in this option. Instead, they began firing with hard munitions right at the start, and the Chinese, State Councillor Yang Jieche and Foreign Minister Wang Yi responded in kind, and then some. Both sides were playing to the domestic galleries. The US team was obviously seeking to use anti-Chinese sentiments as the glue to bind either side of the political aisle at home. The Chinese team had a gallery of one, President Xi Jinping, who did not deem it necessary to rein in his negotiators. The early reports of the conference must have led him to conclude that China must be shown as having come a long way since its negotiator in the Boxer Protocol of 1901, the ageing and by then weak,Li Hongzhang was made to secure peace through unequal treaties from eight western nations in lieu of huge indemnities. Indeed, a section of the Chinese media referenced that episode in its praise of the Yang-Wang duo, eulogizing their bold retorts to their American interlocutors.

Earlier on, because of the same reasons, there was not much comfort to be drawn from the two-hour phone-talk between Biden and the Chinese President Xi Jinping. In the past both had spent ample time together as Vice presidents of their respective countries. As a gesture, Biden scheduled the call to greet Xi for the Lunar New Year of the Ox, and it was well received. But Biden’s position was a repeat of what was made known publicly. It was focused on what the American’s perceive as China’s unfair trade practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and assertive action in the maritime region including towards Taiwan. Xi, in response also repeated the usual Chinese mantra: that most of the issues were internal affairs of China, and were related to Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity. Speaking to the media, Biden said he had told Xi that he would “work with China when it benefits the American people”. It was unclear as to why he had thought that would be a compelling reason for China to engage. Clearly it was not.

The truth was that China has concluded that America and the West were actually on the decline. It views its own rise as in consonance with Marxist -Leninist determinism which still frames China’s policy. The play of structural forces would impede the cooperation of a rising China with a declining America, except in clearly secular subjects as climate change which would bring win-win rewards for both. America, on the other hand, sees an adversarial relationship as a tool to deter the rise of China to a peer status, but agrees on the possibilities of cooperation on the common topic of Climate change. The problem is the relationship has soured so much that the political will to muster the wherewithal to engage even on climate change appears to be eroding. Interestingly one common historical paradigm, frequently, used by both sides is the syndrome in the Greek classics known as the “Thucydides trap”. The Greek philosopher by that name had warned that in those ancient times, when Athens grew strong, there was great fear in Sparta, and war became inevitable. But the current US apprehension is more that the Chinese may fancy themselves as being Rome to America’s Greece, the succeeding preponderant imperial power.

Biden’s relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia got off to a good start with a far more friendly the extension of the START treaty, despite Putin’s known preference for Trump over him. But then confronted with evidence suggesting possible Russian hacking the polls in support of Trump, Biden referred to Putin as a ‘” killer’’, who needed to be “punished”. Putin was not amused. He returned the compliment, recalled his Ambassador to Washington and dispatched his Foreign Minister, the sharp and cerebral Sergey Lavrov to China to strengthen bilateral ties. This Lavrov did by calling China a “true strategic partner and like-minded friend”, seeking to promote together “a constructive and unifying agenda”. An alliance between China and Russia seemed on the cards. To compound Biden’s woes, the North Korean leader Kim Jong- un, who obviously missed Trump in the White House, got his sister to urge Biden to keep his “stink” on his side of the Atlantic. Thereafter he warmed to Xi who called China-North Korean relations “common treasure”. The Biden Administration had sent messages to Kim for resumption of dialogue. Kim’s response seemed to be test-firing of two short-range missiles last weekend. Biden observed that ‘’nothing has changed””. That is very true. It is also true that any likely change may be for the worse. All this may have put paid to Biden’s attempts to reach out to North Korea through China’s help. China is now the only conduit to Kim. But for Biden to expect China’s assistance at this time seems a very unreal proposition.

The Biden Administration has had some success in getting the allies marshalled vis-à-vis China. It has energized the Quad, an informal group of security partners comprising the US, India, Japan and Australia. It has managed to get the European Union and Canada to agree with it on slapping sanctions on China on the issue of Human rights violation of the Uighur Muslims. China has reacted sharply to each of these developments. Beijing has responded with its own sanctions against the European Union. It seems to be in the process of forging an alliance with Russia and deepening ties with North Korea. It has created huge economic stakes for many countries in Asia and Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative. China has sought to couch its rivalry with its adversaries in terms of emerging Asia versus the past imperial powers of the West. In this rapidly dividing world, we can see the gathering of dark clouds of potential conflict. We have seen how in the past alliance-building of adversaries led nations to sleep- walk into the disastrous first Great War. It is true that history does not always repeat itself. Just as it also true that logic shows that similar causes tend to produce similar effects.

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is the Honorary Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, NUS. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President & Distinguished Fellow of Cosmos Foundation. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac @nus.edu.sg

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Categories: Africa

Why Rehabilitation is as Vital as Rescue for Child Trafficking Survivors

Mon, 03/29/2021 - 12:07

A survivor of child trafficking in Bihar, India. Extreme poverty, illiteracy and socio-economic inequalities are the main drivers of child trafficking for forced or bonded labour. [captured via videolink] Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Mar 29 2021 (IPS)

Twelve-year-old Babloo’s (Name changed) parents, who worked as daily wage agricultural labourers in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, were finding it difficult to feed their family of six. They had recently lost their eldest son to sudden illness, when a distant relative convinced them to send Babloo with him to work in a city. He promised to pay Rs 5000 ($70) a month, a significant amount for the impoverished family.

The relative took Babloo and his 14-year-old cousin from the village and handed them to a trafficker, who took them by rail to Jaipur, capital of the western Indian state of Rajasthan, nearly 1200 kilometre away from their home.

“We were locked in a small room. The windows were sealed and there was no natural light. There were 10 other children already there. We were made to grind glass stones and then stick the stone embellishments and beads on lac bangles from 6am till midnight everyday,” Babloo tells IPS via Zoom from his village in Nawada district in southern Bihar.

“If we slackened out of fatigue, exhaustion or illness, we were beaten with a wooden pole. We would cry in agony and fear for our lives. But we were so terror stricken that we didn’t attempt to escape,” adds Babloo, who was trafficked in 2018 and rescued after six months in 2019.

Extreme poverty, illiteracy and socio-economic inequalities are the main drivers of child trafficking for forced or bonded labour. Traffickers have been manipulating vulnerable rural families by using relatives or giving reference of a relative to gain their trust.

“There is only one breadwinner in some families with six to eight children. These families, seeking a better life, become easy targets of traffickers, who have started recruiting fewer than four children at a time to evade suspicion from authorities,” Kanhaiya Kumar Singh, Director of Tatvasi Samaj Nyas, a Bihar-based NGO, tells IPS via WhatsApp.

Children comprised one-third of the overall 48,478 detected victims of trafficking in 106 countries, according to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2020.

Though Bihar has formulated a comprehensive action plan, Astitva, for preventing and combating human trafficking and rehabilitation of the victims and survivors, similar fate awaited Ramu (name changed). He was trafficked at the age of 13 years in 2017 with another boy from his village and two others from a nearby village in Nalanda district (Bihar). They were also taken to Jaipur to work in a bangle-making sweatshop.

“We were always hungry because we were given limited food twice a day. If we requested to speak with our family, we were verbally abused and thrashed. I still get nightmares,” Ramu, who was rescued in 2018, tells IPS via Zoom from his village.

These children are amongst the fortunate ones to have been rescued by law enforcement agencies with the support of other government departments and civil society organisations, including the Child Labour Free Jaipur (CLFJ) initiative. CLFJ is a multi-stakeholder partnership, which has been working with the government, businesses, non-governmental organisations and local communities in Jaipur and Bihar to end child labour.

Almost 80 percent of trafficked children rescued from garment, handicrafts and jewellery sweatshops and factories of Jaipur, are from Bihar, one of the country’s poorer states. In 2019, 261 boys and 33 girls were rescued in Bihar and 636 boys and 17 girls were rescued in Rajasthan.

“Children rescued from Jaipur are repatriated to Bihar, where we help them reintegrate in their community with measures such as, enrolling them in school, providing them vocational training, helping them with access to victim compensation and government entitlements, and assisting them and their families to pursue legal cases against the traffickers,” says Abhijit De, Programme Advisor for CLFJ based in Patna (Bihar).

These boys are now part of CLFJ’s Survivors’ Collective, which meets twice a month. “We provide them with skills and training to become advocates for anti-trafficking in their own communities,” De tells IPS via Zoom.

A survivor of child trafficking. Traffickers have been manipulating vulnerable rural families by using relatives or giving references from a relative to gain their trust. [captured via videolink] Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

Ramu, who is studying in Year 8, wants to be a policeman. “I want to protect my family and villagers from criminals, especially traffickers, so no child has to experience the torture that I did,” he tells IPS via Zoom. His fellow survivor, Babloo, who has been enrolled in Year 5, wants to become a doctor. “Our village only has a dispensary. The hospital is too far away and many people die for want of proper medical care,” he tells IPS via Zoom.

Another survivor, sixteen-year-old Veer (name changed), who was also freed from a workshop in Jaipur, wants to be a farmer. “We don’t have enough to eat that is why we are easily deceived by traffickers. I want to study agriculture and improve crop production,” he tells IPS via Zoom from his village in Nalanda district.

“If these children can receive their [state] compensation amounts as soon as possible or within six months of being rescued, it would fast track their rehabilitation and further reduce re-trafficking. Now we have less than two percent re-trafficking rate amongst this survivors’ group,” De tells IPS via Zoom.

“Time lag in receiving compensation has been a major challenge,” agrees Sanjay Kumar, Chairperson of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), Nalanda District. CWC is the statutory body tasked with dealing with children in need of care and protection.

Seventeen-year-old Ali (Name changed), who was trafficked in 2019 from Katihar district (Bihar), was escorted by CLFJ to Jaipur to provide testimony in a court case against the trafficker. “It was terrifying to come face-to-face with the trafficker. He kept making signs, telling us not to say anything against him in court,” he tells IPS via Zoom from his village. Now courts are pioneering the use of video testimony by child survivors of trafficking to provide them effective protection from potential intimidation or retaliation.

“There have been six convictions against child traffickers, four with life sentences between August 2019 and December 2020 in Jaipur. These convictions really send a strong message to deter the traffickers, and it helps everyone to see that child exploitation is no longer accepted and tolerated,” Ginny Baumann, Senior Program Manager with The Freedom Fund, tells IPS via WhatsApp.

In 2019, 27 traffickers were chargesheeted, [A charge-sheet is a final report prepared by the investigation or law enforcement agencies for proving the accusation of a crime in a court of law] by the police in Bihar, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

“The biggest problem is that cases can take several years to be decided. It puts survivors, their families and civil society assisting them in the prosecution of traffickers at grave risk. We have formed voluntary Community Vigilance Committees, which alert villagers if they see anyone suspicious looking for soft targets to traffic,” says Singh via WhatsApp.

According to the NCRB’s Crime in India 2019 Snapshot, there were 2,914 children out of a total of 6,616 victims reported to have been trafficked. In Bihar, 180 people trafficked were for forced labour, 59 for domestic servitude and 50 for sexual exploitation and prostitution.

“Many boys trafficked for labour may sometimes also be sexually abused,” Priti Patkar, co-founder of Prerana Anti-Trafficking Centre in Mumbai, tells IPS via WhatsApp.

The UNODC’s 2018 findings confirm the 15-year trend of changing age and sex composition of detected victims. The share of children has increased to over 30 per cent of detected victims and the share of boys detected has risen significantly when compared to girls globally.

PM Nair, a career Indian Police Service officer and a national expert on human trafficking, emphasises the need for agencies – the police, the CWC, the district administration, the caregivers, and NGOs – in destination states to converge and liaise with the corresponding agencies in the source state, where the children have been returned.

“This lack of liaison has created a mess and it is impeding progress in stemming child trafficking,” Nair, who is currently with the Indian Police Foundation, tells IPS via WhatApp. “The post-rescue care is grossly inadequate and insensitive.”

“The Anti-Human Trafficking Units [an integrated taskforce of personnel from police and other departments, and the NGOs, in districts], together with Anti-Human Trafficking Clubs set up in the colleges across the country, Panchayats Against Human Trafficking [grassroots democratic institutions], and the NGOs including the Childline has the potential to be a dominant force against human predators and therefore all concerned must strengthen them and help the mission to end human slavery,” Nair adds.

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.

The post Why Rehabilitation is as Vital as Rescue for Child Trafficking Survivors appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Arab Region Counts Cost of Devastating COVID-19 Pandemic

Mon, 03/29/2021 - 11:25

Delegates at the hybrid conference held virtually in Beirut, Lebanon. The conference discussed the impact of COVID-19 the regions’ ICPD25 commitments. Credit: APDA

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Mar 29 2021 (IPS)

More than eight million people moved onto the poverty line in the Arab region, a conference of Arab and Asian parliamentarians heard.

The hybrid conference, held simultaneously in Beirut, Lebanon, and via video conferencing to delegates in Asia and the Arab region, was a follow up on earlier discussions on the regions’ ICPD25 Commitments.

Dr Luay Shabaneh, Regional Director, UNFPA ASRO, said research showed that women were impacted more than other groups – especially as they made up 70% of front-line workers. Women’s health and reproductive rights needed to be high on the agenda because the pandemic’s mortality rate was higher for women. He called on parliamentarians to take care of reproductive health and rights, ensure laws to punish perpetrators of gender-based violence were enacted, and finance for programmes was available.

“Every two hours, a woman dies while giving birth in Yemen,” Shabaneh said. During a recent visit to the country, he met a divorced woman who was 14 years old and a grandmother of 27. Her husband and her mother-in-law abused the grandmother until she decided to leave.

“These case histories were not unusual in the Arab and Asian region,” he said and needed addressing.

Other delegates at the conference, organised by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the Forum of Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development (FAPPD), agreed. The conference heard that in the Arab world, female circumcision impacted 55% of girls aged between 15 and 19 years old, and one in five girls marry before there are 18. The diversion of resources and attention away from ICPD25 commitments impacted child marriages and female circumcisions – with estimates that 13 million child marriages and two million female circumcisions could have been prevented.

Teruhiko Mashiko, a Japanese MP and member of APDA Board of Directors and Vice-Chair of the Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population addresses a hybrid conference of parliamentarians from Arab and Asian countries on impact of COVID-19 the regions’ ICPD25 commitments. Credit: APDA

Teruhiko Mashiko, a member of the Parliament from Japan, member of APDA Board of Directors and Vice-Chair of the Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP), reminded delegates the means to fight against pandemic were being developed. It was crucial, however, to keep an eye on population issues to achieve sustainable development. More than 115 million people had been affected by COVID-19, and more than 2.5 million people died globally. However, tens of millions of unwanted children were born every year.

Minister Plenipotentiary Tarek El-Nabulsi, representative of the League of Arab States, said a report on the region had shown the dire implications of COVID-19 and the need to prioritise the ICPD and Sustainable Development 2030 plan.

“The report estimated 1.7 million jobs would be lost in the region, and the middle class would decline,” El-Nabulsi said. “Eight million people could move down onto the poverty line.”

Moving education onto digital platforms had not benefited the poor who did not have access to technology, and it also disadvantaged people with visual and audio disabilities.

Minister El-Nabulsi said the Arab League had arranged a meeting of high-level officials to enhance national initiatives to control COVID-19 and its impact on vulnerable people. A 15-point plan was set up to reduce its impact on women and girls, protect women, and support and protect pregnant women. The social sector segment also launched an initiative to protect women in refugee camps and women under occupation.

With the support of the UNFPA, an education campaign to confront the coronavirus under the hashtag #COVID-19TalkAboutYourStory was launched.

El-Nabulsi was one of several delegates who expressed concern over the refugees. The refugees in the region placed a heavy burden on the states because it was crucial to extend healthcare services to refugees and displaced.

Asem Araji, an MP from Lebanon, said 1.5 million displaced Syrian refugees and Palestinian people would need vaccinations. He said this should be international responsibility and not just the responsibility of Lebanon.

The impact of the pandemic on education was high on the agenda of the parliamentarians’ concerns. Elyas Hankash, an MP in Lebanon, said the COVID-19 lockdowns had a social, psychological, and physical impact on the youth.

“Unemployment and the lack of prospects had impacted their psychological health,” he said. This led some to drugs and others to depression.

The disruption to education was a disaster, especially as many youths could not connect to the internet and could not participate in the online educational offerings—this resulted in school dropouts.

Lebanon’s economy was fragile, and many young people work in the informal sector, lacking worker protection.

Forty-one percent of the country’s youth had been negatively affected. Unemployment increased when many businesses closed.

He called on other countries in the region to assist – this was a burden that needed to be shared.

Hankash said that while $50,000 had been set aside for youth development, what was needed was a proper plan, including a cheaper housing plan.

Pierre Bou Assi, an MP in Lebanon, expressed concern that the pandemic’s solution – the vaccine programme was problematic as there was no equality of access between countries. He too feared with two years of education lost, “a generation of children was sacrificed”.

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Categories: Africa

Bangladesh Welcomes a New High Yielding Biofortified Zinc Rice

Mon, 03/29/2021 - 10:30

Credit: HavestPlus

By Nuhara Syeda
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Mar 29 2021 (IPS)

The Bangladesh National Seed Board has approved the release of the newest biofortified zinc rice variety in the country: the BRRI dhan100. This latest zinc rice variety was developed by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI). HarvestPlus assists BRRI in crop development and breeder seed production of biofortified zinc rice.

According to the Director General of BRRI, Dr Muhammad Shahjahan Kabir, it was momentous to release the 100thvariety- BRRI dhan100- during Mujib Year—declared to celebrate the centennial birth anniversary of the founding leader of Bangladesh, Bangobondhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The Government of Bangladesh has declared the year 2020-21 as Mujib Year starting from March 2020 until December 2021.

This new zinc rice variety has zinc content of 25.6 milligrams per kilogram rice. The rice is slender and non-sticky when cooked, in comparison to previous zinc rice varieties. The average yield is 7.7 metric tons per hectare after trials were conducted in 10 locations across the country.

The life span of this variety is 148 days and is approved for cultivation in boro season, which is the dry season for irrigated rice crop planted from December to early February and harvested between April and June.

Dr. Kabir said: “’BRRI dhan100’ has a higher yield than that of BRRI dhan29 and the lifespan is similar to that of BRRI dhan28, which is a reflection of our long-standing aspirations. BRRI dhan29 is one of the popular mega non-biofortified variety.”

He added: “Our plan is to make this variety popular with the farmers very soon to increase production on the one hand and provide nutrition on the other.”

BRRI dhan100 has the farmers’ preferred trait of high yield and consumers’ preferred trait of slender grain and non-sticky. The other zinc rice varieties for boro season are BRRI dhan74 which has a medium-bold grain with high yield, and BRRI dhan84 with medium-slender grain. Rice is a staple in Bangladesh.

Agriculture Secretary Mesbahul Islam, president of the National Seed Board, said: “Hopefully, it will be a popular variety. Most of the calories, proteins, and minerals in the diet of the poor people of the country come from rice. Rice is easily available to them.”

Harvestplus will be conducting demonstration and awareness-creation activities for farmers for this variety and ultimately promote it for commercialization.

Zinc deficiency contributes to stunting and a loss of appetite, lowers immunity, and increases the risk of diarrheal disease and respiratory infections. About 36 percent of children under five in Bangladesh do not get enough zinc in their diet.

According to the World Bank, Bangladesh loses over USD 700 million annually in GDP to the human and productivity impacts of vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

HarvestPlus improves nutrition and public health in Bangladesh by promoting biofortified rice that can provide more zinc in the diet. HarvestPlus has been working with the BRRI and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to develop zinc rice since 2004.

In 2013, BRRI succeeded in developing and releasing the first biofortified zinc rice variety in the world, BRRI dhan62, through HarvestPlus support.

HarvestPlus has been working on the promotion and distribution of zinc rice, reaching more than 24,54,000 Bangladeshi households directly since 2013 through its core program and three main projects: the Enhancing Nutrition Services to Improve Maternal & Child Health (ENRICH) Project (2016-2020); the Bangladesh Initiative to Enhance Nutrition Security and Governance (BIeNGS) Project (2018-2022); and the Commercialisation of Biofortified Crops (CBC) Program (2019-2022).

*CGIAR is a global agriculture research partnership for a food secure future. Its science is carried out by its 15 research centers in collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations

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Excerpt:

Nuhara Syeda is with HarvestPlus, which is part of the CGIAR* Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH).

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Categories: Africa

Nobel Economist and 100 Experts Condemn Corporate Action against Argentina and Bolivia after Rollback of Failed Pension Privatization

Mon, 03/29/2021 - 08:10

The World Bank, an organization that aims to end poverty, hosts the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) where corporations are suing Argentina and Bolivia over pensions.

By Joseph Stiglitz, Juan Somavia, Jeffrey Sachs, Jose Antonio Ocampo and 100 experts
NEW YORK, Mar 29 2021 (IPS)

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Juan Somavia, Jeffrey Sachs, Jose Antonio Ocampo and more than 100 high-level development experts have issued a statement protesting insurance corporations suing Argentina and Bolivia over the reversal of their failed pension privatizations at closed sessions of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of the World Bank. If Argentina and Bolivia lose the disputes, it means that impoverished citizens and elderly pensioners will have to compensate wealthy financial corporations. Read their letter:

“We the undersigned —economists, social security and development experts— strongly condemn and oppose the cases:

Metlife Insurance vs. Argentina

BBVA Bank vs. Bolivia

NN Insurance International vs. Argentina

Private insurance corporations are suing Argentina and Bolivia for loss of potential profits as a result of the reversal of privatization of pension programs.

Financial corporations started administering the pensions of Argentinians in 1993 and of Bolivians in 1996. Argentina and Bolivia are among only 30 countries (of the world’s 192) that experimented with privatization of their pension systems. Today, the majority of these countries are reversing the privatization of pensions. In accordance, the Government of Argentina returned to a public pension system in 2008 and Bolivia in 2009.

Pension policy is not about securing profits for private insurance corporations. Pension systems exist to provide income security in old age—to ensure that older persons retire with adequate pensions.

It is the duty of the governments of Argentina and Bolivia to best ensure the welfare of their citizens. In 2008-09, this involved reinstating a public pension system. They did not act alone; other governments also reversed pension privatization because of demonstrated inadequacies/failures in the private pension system:

The governments of Argentina and Bolivia took legitimate decisions in the interest of their citizens that must be respected, as part of a country’s sovereignty. It is reprehensible that investment treaty arbitration allows corporations to initiate dispute settlements against governments —and ultimately people— in order to continue profiting.

We also oppose the lack of transparency of the process at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). While corporations may argue that procedural protections are needed, these cases affect the lives of millions of Argentinians and Bolivians. They must be open and transparent.

If Argentina and Bolivia lose the disputes, it means that their citizens —ordinary people who have had to suffer low pensions because of the privatization— will now have to pay millions of dollars to wealthy financial corporations.

These legal cases should serve as a warning for the majority of countries of the world that have not privatized mandatory pensions but may have pressures to do so: On top of suffering lower pensions, more old-age poverty, and high fiscal costs, you may be sued by the private insurance administrators. We hope that other countries are dissuaded from pension privatization by this corporate attack on government’s right to set policy to promote the welfare of their citizens, an attack made in pursuit of profit and at the expense of impoverished citizens and elderly pensioners.

1 In Argentina, coverage rates for men fell from 46% (in 1993, prior to the reform) to 35% (in 2002) and for women to only 31%; in Bolivia, they stagnated.
2 In Bolivia, after privatization, the replacement rate fell to 20% of the average salary during working life; this is far below ILO international standards.
3 In Bolivia, the proportion of elderly women receiving a contributory pension fell from 23.7% in 1995 to 12.8% in 2007 as a result of privatization.
4 In Argentina, initial estimations put the cost at 0.2% of GDP; later the World Bank increased the cost estimate to 3.6% of GDP, 18 times the original estimate; in Bolivia, the actual transition costs of the reform were 2.5 times the initial projections.
5 In Argentina, administration costs jumped from 6.6% of contributions in 1990 before privatization to 50.8% in 2002; in Bolivia, from 8.6% in 1992 to 18.1% in 2002 after privatization.

This letter has been signed by more than 100 high-level economists and social security/development experts. See the full list of signatories here.

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Categories: Africa

After the Ever Given: What the Ship Wedged in the Suez Canal Means for Global Trade

Fri, 03/26/2021 - 17:43

Suez Canal Authority.

By External Source
Mar 26 2021 (IPS)

In the early hours of March 23, the container ship Ever Given was blown off course by high winds on its way through the Suez Canal. At 400 metres long, the Ever Given is longer than the canal is wide, and the ship became wedged firmly in both banks, completely blocking traffic.

Dredgers, excavators and tug boats are working frantically to free the ship, but the operation may take weeks, according to the head of one of the rescue teams. About 10% of the world’s maritime trade passes through the canal, which allows ships to shorten the trip between Europe or the American east coast and Asia by thousands of kilometres, saving a week or more of travel time.

Coming on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, this event has highlighted the fragility of global supply chains – and is likely to accelerate changes in the world economy that were already under way

Around 50 ships a day pass through the canal under normal circumstances, split almost equally between dry bulk carriers, container carriers (like the Ever Given) and tankers. As the blockage continues, some shipping lines are considering diverting ships around Africa rather than wait for it to clear.

Coming on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, this event has highlighted the fragility of global supply chains – and is likely to accelerate changes in the world economy that were already under way.

Good news for oil tankers

The blockage is disrupting important energy trades, but probably not dramatically as there are alternative routes and sources should the blockage last a long time.

About 600,000 barrels of crude oil are shipped from the Middle East to Europe and the United States via the Suez Canal every day, while about 850,000 barrels a day are shipped from the Atlantic Basin to Asia also via the Suez Canal. While the SUMED pipeline, which runs parallel to the Suez Canal, will enable some crude to continue to flow between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, European and North American refiners will want to replace Middle East oil with oil from sources that don’t usually pass through the canal. Similarly, Asian refiners will want to replace North Sea crude oil.

Interest is growing in shipping crude oil around the Cape of Good Hope, which adds seven to ten days to the shipping time from the Middle East to Europe and North America, increasing the demand for ultra large crude carriers.

While the rerouting of crude oil is unlikely to have much effect on oil prices generally, as inventory levels are currently high, this comes at an opportune moment for crude oil tanker owners, as the charter rates for such ships have been rock bottom due to the depressed global demand for oil and the aftereffects of pandemic lockdowns. Owners of tankers carrying refined oil or LNG can expect a similar increase in demand for their ships and therefore charter rates.

A reminder of supply chain fragility

For commodities such as oil, LNG, coal and iron ore, there is a world demand and a world supply which must balance. However, one source can often be substituted by another. This means the blockage of the Suez Canal will affect the spot price of commodities locally and the charter rates for the ships that carry them, but the trade will continue.

It’s a different story for products carried by container ships like the Ever Given. These products tend to be highly differentiated and more difficult to substitute. The blockage of the Suez Canal will undoubtedly cause shortages of specific products around the world, either because they don’t arrive at their destinations on time or because manufacturers run short of key inputs or components.

Shortages will remind manufacturers of the fragility of global supply chains, and they may look at how to reduce their dependency on specific sources, particularly those that are distant and rely on container shipping.

Global supply chains are already shrinking

Advances in technology associated with digitisation and automation are making manufacturers less dependent on large skilled workforces found only in certain parts of the world. Production is becoming more mobile and therefore able to locate closer to the markets served.

More mobile production, along with the continued miniaturisation of some products (for example, flat screen TVs becoming ever flatter) and the advancing digitisation of things like books and manuals, is gradually shrinking global supply chains and reducing freight-kilometres, measured in terms of value or volume. Major disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the blockage of the Suez Canal can only hasten this development.

This trend predates the pandemic and the current blockage. It can be seen in a number called the world seaborne trade-to-GDP multiplier, which measures how much of the world’s economic activity depends on shipping.

After the global financial crisis of 2008-09, this number fell below 1% on average. This tells us that a 1% increase in world GDP now leads to a less than 1% increase in world seaborne trade.

Who will pay the price?

The cost of the disruption caused by the blockage of the Suez Canal will weigh heavily with the insurers of the Ever Given. The ship is owned by Japanese firm Shoei Kisen Kaisha and chartered to the Taiwanese line Evergreen. The hull and machinery are insured on the Japanese marine insurance market, but at the moment damage to the ship appears to be minimal.

The major costs are loss of earnings by the Suez Canal Authority while the canal is closed to traffic, and losses incurred by the owners of the cargo in the many ships held up by the blockage. Depending on how long the blockage lasts, these may lead to huge insurance claims. Third party claims are covered by the London P&I Club, which is reinsured by the International Group of P&I Clubs.

In the long term, however, the blockage may be a good thing. If it offers a further nudge to shorten supply chains, the benefits to the global economy and environment will surely outweigh the cost to the insurers.

Michael Bell, Professor of Ports and Maritime Logistics, University of Sydney

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

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Categories: Africa

Maquila Female Workers in Their Own Words: Fighting COVID and Labor Abuse

Fri, 03/26/2021 - 16:56

To Enrique González Rojo (1928-2021), friend, comrade in many struggles, admirable poet, and Marxist thinker

By Saul Escobar Toledo
MEXICO CITY, Mar 26 2021 (IPS)

A compilation of testimonies collected by Blanca Velázquez Díaz and published by the Ebert Foundation (available at: http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/mexiko/17328.pdf) offers an account of the harsh reality by which some workers of the maquila industry in the Mexican state of Morelos have gone through over these last twelve months. Their words reflect, undoubtedly, similar experiences of millions of workers in different parts of the country.

Saul Escobar Toledo

The author explains the interviews were conducted by phone in mid-2020; the workers´ ages range from 20 to 40 years; their level of education is elementary and middle school; they come from the countryside or small urban communities where there are few chances to get a job, so they move to the larger cities of the State of Morelos, where the maquiladoras are set to produce for major brands belonging to international consortia.

Their working conditions were already very unfavorable: in the textile sector and specifically in the branch of clothing and footwear, working days exceed eight hours a day, time in which they are permanently seated in non-designed chairs ergonomically, supporting extremely high temperatures in closed places with little ventilation.

The spread of COVID-19 made matters worse. Mainly, the bosses of the maquilas in Morelos did not respect the official recommendations and opted for the dismissal of their employees or cut half of the wages they received weekly.

For example, a worker identified as Lili said, “The company is paying me 280 pesos (14 dollars) a week …” while another, Anita says, “I am now working cleaning houses, the truth is that $ 400 pesos (20 dollars) the factory is giving me now is not enough”. Other interviewees indicated that they have received half of their salary.

Vicky: “Getting only half the salary the situation is bad, what am I going to do with only $ 400 pesos a week? that’s tough for me, and the company has us on hold, no one knows when I will get back to work … ”

Some more, a little luckier, affirmed that “From April 3 they sent us to rest with a base salary, which is really very little, 833 pesos (41 dollars) a week …”

There were also cases in which the workers decided to stop working so as not to get infected, and were fired:

Brenda: “… the company chose me to continue working on contingency days, but I saw that several colleagues went home sick with symptoms of COVID-19 and that was why I decided not to expose myself to the Coronavirus, my supervisor was terribly angry with me for making that decision, but I was sure that what I had decided was the right thing to do, to stay home and protect myself. Now I am fired, I was no longer called. ”

Almost all confessed going through a very tense emotional situation:

Justina: “Well, personally in the mental sphere I want to take things easy, but it is a bit impossible when I watch television or social networks, since they are flooded with what is happening in the pandemic and with bad news. They have been very outrageous at the time of reporting, I think that’s why, so sometimes I can’t get to sleep … ”

Finally, the workers were questioned about government aid. All answered they did not receive any support from the federal, state, or municipal governments:

María: ” No, at least nothing to me, I only remember that once the assistant of the mayor of the municipality (Emiliano Zapata) was distributing pantries, but they had a cost …”

Vicky: “Oops! nothing, not a glass of water …! ”

Anita: “The truth is, nothing, at least not even a pantry has arrived here in my neighborhood. ”

The author of the compilation concludes that, according to the testimonies collected,

“The more important consequences (observed) were unjustified dismissals … during these months of health emergency. The major concern of workers is how to generate an income … since the current employment situation looks increasingly difficult. Their mental and emotional health is in constant tension…, especially due to the low economic resources to support their families; besides, they are fearful about the possible spread of COVID-19 when they must exit their homes and go to the streets looking for an (extra) income … Add to this situation the double and triple work burden. Home education of their minor sons and daughters is generating many more hours of work for them. The care, especially of children, continues to fall primarily on women, just because they are females, with multiple responsibilities and little or no help from their partners, a situation that has led to stress, worry, anxiety, and insecurity, to mention some consequences ”

Another important piece of information refers to the behavior of the unions. According to the testimonies collected, Blanca Velázquez assures that in normal times the unions do not defend their affiliates; neither they have done in times of pandemic since they abided unashamedly business decisions and left the worker abandoned to their fate.

Finally, the text calls our attention about the almost total absence of the Mexican State in this situation, particularly the federal government. Rightly concludes the author of this collection, that:

“The social programs that the federal government has promoted for particular sectors, especially vulnerable ones, should be expanded for the workers laid off or when the bosses did not comply with the full payment of wages. We believe that programs for people who were laid off should be promoted immediately or, failing that, (legislate) unemployment insurance to alleviate this serious situation and train those who require it to be able to be employed in other trades or professions”.

Millions of wage earners have been deprived of any help and it has had a high social cost and become an obstacle to economic recovery. It is difficult to understand the reasons that led the government to this oversight. Perhaps they expected companies would pay total wages or that layoffs could be resolved quickly. However, it was likely that they did not, as indeed happened, due to the behavior of many companies in the past decades, as they have constantly violated labor laws and promoted lack of representative trade unions, especially in industry of maquila.

The absence of a worker protection policy during the pandemic seems to be due rather to an economic project based on budget cuts and austere public spending that does not admit emergency measures. The testimonies collected in the book show the unfortunate effects of these decisions. Waiting for the US economy to be the main factor in the recovery may be successful in the coming months. However, it will not correct the damage done to working class families. Nor will boost employment if it is not accompanied by other measures, such as unemployment insurance and promotion of domestic production and consumption.

The words of grief and pain shown in this publication are a very expressive testimony of what the Government of the Republic could have done (as in other countries and even in Mexico City) but refused to do.

Saul Escobar Toledo, Economist, Professor at Department of Contemporary Studies in INAH (National Institute oh Anthropology and History, México) and President of the Board of the Institute of Workers Studies “Rafael Galvan”, a non-profit organization. His recent work : “Subcontracting: a study of change in labor relations” will be published soon by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Mexico City.
saulescobar.blogspot.com

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Excerpt:

To Enrique González Rojo (1928-2021), friend, comrade in many struggles, admirable poet, and Marxist thinker

The post Maquila Female Workers in Their Own Words: Fighting COVID and Labor Abuse appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

A Country with too Many Victims and Few Shelters

Fri, 03/26/2021 - 11:28

By Rosi Orozco
MEXICO CITY, Mar 26 2021 (IPS)

In March 2014, Noemi N. took her own life inside a refuge camp in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, where up until now there are no specialized shelters for victims of human trafficking.

Noemi N hung herself with a shower curtain around her neck after being rescued from a migrant smuggler who took her to be sold in the US without any personal documents. She was only 8 years old.

Rosi Orozco

Her death started a news wave about the victim shelters in Mexico where the most conservative figures indicate 120,000 new human exploitation victims each year, mainly girls and women.

The Mexican criminals who lead this racketeering are as varied as they are dangerous. They compose of 47 groups, ranging from entire families dedicated to sexual exploitation to the most powerful cartel in the world, Jalisco Nueva Generación, considered as the most important touristic destinations encouraging sexual tourism.

The criminals create a spike in victims, while the country suffers a shortage of safe places where the victims can be protected, can seek justice and start a new life. Only four Mexican states have a government specialized shelter.

These government buildings often run with a limited budget and reduced staff capacity who work extra hours to attend to the 1% of victims who manage to flee from their captors and survive to tell their story.

The rest of the Mexican shelters —about 10— are administrated by non-governmental organizations that go to enormous lengths to keep them open and staffed through donations and lotteries.

Comisión Unidos Vs Trata and Fundación Camino a Casa are pioneering civil organizations in the creation of these safe spaces. Their shelters have housed more than 300 survivors since 2007 and they do not rely on governmental funds.

In Mexico, the last three federal administrations have been held by three different political parties: the conservative Acción Nacional, the centrist Revolucionario Institucional, and the leftist Morena.

Due to these political changes, an economic model that requires money from the government would make shelters dependent on each election campaign.

Only the independence of political power guarantees that these safe spaces remain open every day of every year, regardless of any events including the elections.

However, that freedom has its costs. Sometimes very high costs. For example, human rights defenders who run shelters never know exactly how much they will be able to raise each year and whether that money will be enough to cover the basic needs.

Each survivor requires an investment of about $ 900 per month for food, clothing, legal services, medical and psychological fees, school assistance and some recreation or fun.

Also, other costs vary according to each victim: Comisión Unidos Vs. Trata and the NGO Alas Abiertas have arranged free reconstructive surgeries for Zunduri, tortured at a dry cleaners; the purchase of two vehicles so that Erika and Estrella, forced into prostitution, could have an income by driving taxis; or the salary for one of the best activists in the world, Karla, who survived more than 43 thousand rapes since she was 12 years old.

And, of course, there is the safety issue. A shelter is the last barrier between a victim and a perpetrator. It is where a victim recovers, gets healthy, empowered, speaks up and decides to start a judicial investigation against her perpetrator.

That is why shelters are targeted by organized crime. Criminals locate the houses, watch over them, stalk those who go in and come out of there, chase up to the courts and send death threats expecting that the walls that protect their victims are pulled down or demolished.

The risk also extends to the legal field of those who manage the shelters. These are places where users have a high chance of committing suicide, physically assaulting the staff who care for them… even sexually assaulting other survivors.

These are complex, but also wonderful spaces. Without the shelters, it would be impossible to have more than a thousand sentences against human traffickers, especially in Mexico City and the State of Mexico, where authorities have done an extraordinary job keeping shelters open, despite the difficulties and repeated violence.

This month, the Secretary of the Interior of the Mexican government, Olga Sánchez Cordero, made a historic announcement: the current government will seek greater ties with civil society shelters to advance in the defense of human rights.

The frequent visits from the government to oversee the daily operations of these shelters give hope and open a new chapter in the cooperation between authorities and activists.

For this reason, millions of us dream of opening a shelter in each entity of the country, due to its incalculable value for a country that yearns for peace and justice.

The author is a human rights activist who opened the first shelter for girls and teenagers rescued from sexual commercial exploitation in Mexico. She has published five books on preventing human trafficking; she is the elected Representative of GSN Global Sustainability Network in Latin America.

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Categories: Africa

A Look at Colombian Coffee Prices One Year on From the Stabilization Fund

Fri, 03/26/2021 - 08:15

A day in the life of a coffee grower during harvest season. Credit: Those Coffee People

By Jennifer Poole*
MEDELLIN, Colombia, Mar 26 2021 (IPS)

It’s been just over a year since the Colombian government launched its landmark price stabilization fund. With a budget of $64 million, the fund was designed to provide a hedge against low prices by subsidizing farmers during periods when prices dropped below production costs.

The reason for its introduction was due to the torrid times the nation’s producers had been through during the latter half of the last decade, where wholesale prices regularly dropped below the cost of production. So the fact the fund launched just as COVID-19 was beginning its stranglehold on the global economy was pure luck. But as luck goes, a government underwriting your industry just as the economy comes to a grinding halt is pretty fortunate.

However, far from the stabilization fund needing to be triggered almost as soon as it was launched, in order to mitigate the fallout of COVID-19 – the last 12 months have been a bumper year for Colombian coffee producers. The reasons for this are paradoxically partly due to COVID and partly due to other unforeseen circumstances.

The Coffee Price Stabilization Fund in Context

Although Colombia is the world’s third-biggest coffee producer, production is extremely fragmented. The traditional family-owned smallholdings, known as fincas, have remained virtually intact since the birth of the industry. This has resulted in more than half a million privately owned coffee-producing fincas in the country, with approximately four million Colombians relying on these for their livelihoods.

Most of these fincas don’t produce enough to sell directly to buyers, so they instead sell their beans to the growers-union, the Federacion Nacional de Cafereros de Colombia (FNC). The FNC offer growers a floating internal buy-rate, determined by global wholesale prices, and then sell the produce on international markets.

The problem has been that the floating buy rate offered by the FNC dropped below the cost of production numerous times between 2016 and 2019, with prices falling to their lowest in nearly a decade in the 2018-19 harvest. This meant growers were selling at a loss, with many abandoning the industry altogether.

The Internal Buy Rate Since the Onset of the Pandemic

The FNC floating buy rate had been trending upwards since the middle of 2019 as price recovery took hold after the nadir of the 2018-19 harvest. However, as the below graph shows, the buy rate exploded in March 2020, just as the pandemic took hold, with the price increasing to COP 1,143,193 (USD $319), a 29% increase versus January 2020. And while the price has fluctuated since then, it’s remained extremely buoyant.

To put this into a broader context, the value of coffee production in 2020 was USD $2.52 billion, which equates to a 25% increase on the 2019 figure of USD $2.01 billion.

Graph data courtesy of the FNC’s “coffee prices, area and production” report

The price spike was partly due to the complete collapse in demand for oil in March 2020. With Colombia being an oil-producing nation, the Colombian peso suffered a near 20% drop in value versus the dollar. And with the FNC collecting payments from buyers in dollars, it was able to arbitrage this difference and pass on much of the increased value to growers.

To add to this, Colombia also gained an advantage against its nearby coffee-producing competitors, such as Brazil, which suffered from excessive rain and little solar light in the first trimester of 2020, meaning the country’s coffee harvest was badly affected. There were also fewer coffee exports from Central America due to low manual labor availability. All of these factors created a supply squeeze, both real and feared, which helped to sustain higher prices.

Production and Export Volumes

Colombia wasn’t completely spared some of the inclement weather suffered by its neighbors over the last 12 months. Delayed starts to the rainy seasons as well as the ever-present danger of the broca bettle made a bit of a dent in total production, being 4% down YoY.

Graph data courtesy of the FNC’s “coffee prices, area and production” report

However, a more noticeable impact has been the reduction in export volume over the last 12 months, as global demand reduced slightly during the pandemic. According to the FNC, Colombian coffee exports fell by 8% last year, dropping from 13.7 million 60kg bags in 2019 to 12.5 million 60kg bags in 2020.

Within this context, the fact the value of coffee production grew by 25% YoY in 2020, in spite of the fact export volume fell by 8%, shows just how significant this price rally has been for the nation’s smallholders.

Looking Ahead

Despite the historically high FNC buy rate, this is no reason for producers to become complacent. A unique once-in-a-generation set of circumstances conspired to push prices up to new highs, and for the time being, at least, keep them there.

A worry is that this unexpected bonanza being enjoyed by growers could disincentivize many from making the switch to higher-value specialty crops, which is a key development objective of the FNC. Switching from commercial grade to specialty comes with plenty of risks, which are compounded during a pandemic. And all the while, the FNC is offering record prices for regular commercial-grade crops.

So while it’s impossible to predict when prices may fall to below production costs, recent history tells us we shouldn’t write this off at any point. Add to that the unpredictability of climate change and the longtail impact of COVID which will impact markets in ways not yet foreseen.

And when it comes to the growers themselves, there are still barriers to their economic security in rural areas of Colombia to take into account — such as a lack of connectivity and food insecurity — which mean that if the market situation changes in the near future, they have very little to fall back on, and the price stabilization fund will be needed. But with this novel mechanism remaining untested, its ability to provide a much-needed safety need remains unproven.

*Based in Medellin, Colombia, Jennifer Poole spends her time traveling to remote towns and villages in search of the best specialty coffee the country has to offer. She is an international economist with work experience in North America, South America, East Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East. She received her MBA from IDRAC Ecole Superieure de Commerce in Lyon, France and is heading Those Coffee People’s international business development.

The post A Look at Colombian Coffee Prices One Year on From the Stabilization Fund appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is the co-founder of Colombian specialty green coffee supplier Those Coffee People.

The post A Look at Colombian Coffee Prices One Year on From the Stabilization Fund appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Humanitarian & Food Aid Can Never be Enough to Manage Cascading Disasters

Thu, 03/25/2021 - 14:31

World Food Programme Deputy Executive Director Amir Abdullah says that no matter how much improvement is made in food production, it will all be futile unless the issue of water security is addressed. He said humanitarian and food aid can never be enough to manage cascading climate shocks. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 2021 (IPS)

The intersection of crisis, climate change and COVID-19 has resulted in a “rapid rise in hunger”, according to United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Deputy Executive Director Amir Abdullah.

He was speaking at the “Building Food and Water Security in an Era of Climate Shocks” event organised by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). The meeting featured representatives from other UN bodies, farmers’ associations and startups working on water security and agriculture around the world.

Abdullah highlighted the numerous disasters that hit globally last year while the world was in the middle of the pandemic: destructive heat waves, wildfires, floods, storms, and locust outbreaks.

“Humanitarian aid can never be enough to manage these cascading shocks that keep breaking down food systems and pushing people into food and water crises,” he said.

He added that no matter how much improvement is made in food production, it will all be futile unless the issue of water security is addressed.

“We can deliver food assistance but if farmers don’t have adequate access to water resources for food production, people will just continue being hungry,” he said. “And if people don’t have access to clean water, they can’t retain the nutrition they need even if we provide them with food assistance.”

Betty Chinyamunyamu, CEO of the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi, said the past decade has witnessed an “onset of weather crises” which have made it extremely difficult for farmers to plan their sales.

“Increased incidences of new pests, diseases and unpredictable weather patterns make it more difficult for farmers to plan their farm enterprises. So when they’re not sure whether they are going to have a flood or whether they are going to have drought, it becomes very difficult to engage in initiatives that would otherwise be very rewarding for them,” Chinyamunyamu said.

“That unpredictability of weather is really making agriculture less profitable for the farmers,” she added.

Cherrie Atilano, CEO and President of AGREA, which works to ensure fair trade in sustainable agriculture in the Philippines, brought up the importance of collaboration between the private and public sector. She pointed to an example that worked in the Philippines at the beginning of the pandemic.

Just a few days after the first lockdown, many farmers were left wondering where to take their produce, as their mobility had suddenly been restricted, she said. At the same time, in Manila, the country’s capital with a population of more than 12 million, people scrambled for groceries as supermarkets shelves were empty.

Her team addressed this by contacting the agriculture ministry asking for farmers’ access to work to be restored so long as they maintained COVID-19 protocols.

Meanwhile, Chinyamunyamu shared the role that digital platforms and innovative technology played during the crisis, especially in giving access to marginalised groups.

The lockdown was especially disruptive for the farmers in Malawi, because it came at a time which was the “only marketing season” for them, she said. Chinyamunyamu explained that farmers were able to address this challenge through innovative approaches, including using digital technology such as mobile phones

Farmers were able to share information with each other on markets, as well as developments about COVID-19 by communicating via mobile phone. This was especially important for marginalised groups because it established an important way to reach vulnerable communities.

“Even though women still have less access than men to mobile phones, if a woman has a mobile phone, it’s theirs — they have control over the usage,” she said. “So if you pass on information to women through mobile phones, that’s information that goes directly to them.”

However, concerns remain about what lies ahead.

“In the coming decades, many regions around the world are expected to experience increased water scarcity driven by climate change and exacerbated by increasing competition for water resources,” Abdullah said.

“The battle for water will be one of the next ‘great challenges,’” he added.

Samir Ibrahim, co-founder of SunCulture, a startup for solar-powered generators and water pumps in Africa, shared his experience working with innovative technology on the continent.

He pointed out that new ways for the allocation of funds was crucial for the sustenance of such projects.

“What is important for the ‘newness’ is not necessarily new technologies,” he said. “What we’ve seen is that emerging markets were solving problems that have been solved in other parts of the world.”

He said that while their company did not invent solar irrigation, it was “the first to commercialise in Africa”.

“While technology is incredibly important, we had to do a lot of innovation on battery storage,” he added.

The post Humanitarian & Food Aid Can Never be Enough to Manage Cascading Disasters appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

„We will overcome it“: Experiences of the impact of COVID-19 in Suva, Fiji

Thu, 03/25/2021 - 10:30

By External Source
Mar 25 2021 (IPS-Partners)

This short video explores the experiences of COVID-19 in Fiji’s capital, Suva, by University students. The participants reflect on the impact of the virus in the Pacific nation, where themes such as the emotional implications of COVID as well as its effects on the economy, food security, resilience and more are discussed.

They remind us that despite all the negativity that the virus has brought, one has to be hopeful and resilient about the future.

The participants, all students at the University of the South Pacific, are Salote Nasolo (postgraduate student in climate change), Ratu Simione Matanitobua (undergraduate student in land management) and Peni Turagabaleti (postgraduate student in land management).

The video was shot and edited by Tom Vierus / Pacific Media House, and the interviews were conducted by Gregoire Randin.

www.pacificmediahouse.com
www.tomvierus.com

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

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Categories: Africa

Debt Moratoria in the Next Pandemic: Be Prepared, and Be Fair

Thu, 03/25/2021 - 07:15

Credit: Temilade Adelaja via Communication for Development Ltd/CGAP, Washington DC

By Elisabeth Rhyne* and Eric Duflos*
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 25 2021 (IPS)

Imagine it is 2025 and that, unfortunately, another pandemic is sweeping the world. Much like in the 2020 crisis, borrowers have seen their livelihoods upended and are struggling to repay loans.

One of the questions before policy makers amid this new crisis is whether to extend moratoria to distressed borrowers. In search of answers, they reflect on the world’s experience with the COVID-19 pandemic and whether moratoria were part of the solution. These policy makers conclude that they did some things right in 2020.

Just days into COVID-19 lockdowns, bank regulators in more than 115 countries granted special permission for financial services providers (FSPs) to extend moratoria to millions of borrowers, especially those with small business and consumer loans. These moratoria were the next best thing to cash in the wallet for borrowers who had lost their jobs or seen their business revenue plummet.

For lower-income countries, whose governments could ill afford welfare payments, moratoria became an important form of economic relief. And by relaxing provisioning on paused loans, these special moratoria also shored up FSPs’ balance sheets and prevented panic in financial systems.

Through the moratoria, the world’s economies put the shock-absorbing capacity of financial systems to good use.

But these policy makers also see that moratoria could have worked better in some respects. So, in 2025, as the world once again turns to moratoria, they are determined to learn the lessons of the past and make moratoria work even better. What do they do differently?

Fair burden sharing

As public health authorities shutter the economy to stop the new pandemic, advocates for lower-income people are already calling on policy makers to spread the economic burden among those better able to bear it.

Policy makers know that moratoria on small loans (as well as evictions and mortgages) will shift some economic pain from lower-income families and small businesses onto banks and landlords — at least, temporarily.

But they recall that, in 2020, FSPs shifted the pain back to small borrowers by allowing interest to accrue and compound during moratoria. Ultimately, borrowers paid to pause their loans – often dearly.

Back in 2020, policy makers debated whether to shift some of the long-term burden of accrued and compounding interest away from borrowers, but it was difficult for them to find a workable solution.

In India, after much debate in the Supreme Court over who should pay this additional interest, the government found a remedy when it agreed to pay banks the compounding portion of borrowers’ interest incurred during moratoria. Implicitly, this decision made moratoria part of the government’s overall pandemic response while affirming the right of the banks to charge fully for delayed payments.

Fortunately, in 2025, several governments have included special provisions in their catastrophe protocols that pledge government funding for a portion of the interest that small loans accrue during moratoria.

This pledge helps to ensure policies intended to help low-income people don’t end up harming them. It has the added benefit of providing banks with a small amount of liquidity during the moratoria period.

Moratoria will also be fairer this time around because policy makers have universally agreed that borrowers should have the right to choose whether to accept or reject a moratorium offer. This was not always the case in 2020.

In some countries, regulators — anxious to prevent panic — and FSPs — wishing to avoid tedious case-by-case administration — promulgated blanket moratoria, even before obtaining agreement from borrowers.

However, some borrowers preferred to keep paying to avoid extra interest charges. In response to push back from borrowers on unilateral moratoria, authorities in Peru affirmed consumers’ right to unwind unwanted moratoria. Today, following this example, regulators the world over require FSPs to notify borrowers of moratoria offers and present them with the option to refuse.

Policy makers have also anticipated the challenge of maintaining borrowers’ standing with credit bureaus. When borrowers accept moratoria during a national emergency, it should not hurt their creditworthiness.

In 2020, there was confusion over how banks should report restructured loans to credit bureaus, how credit bureaus were to incorporate these loans into credit scores, and how new lenders were to use the information.

In India, FSPs simply didn’t report many loans for several months. Eventually, those problems were sorted out. Now, in 2025, credit bureaus follow well-understood protocols for handling loans in moratoria during emergencies.

Preparedness

The emergency protocols that the world’s banking authorities and FSPs put in place after the COVID-19 pandemic also address operational continuity and communications.

Back in 2020, economic lockdowns prevented in-person interactions between lenders and borrowers and often led to breakdowns in communication. In Uganda, loan officers could not meet with customers in the field, and transport restrictions prevented adequate staffing of branches and even call centers. FSPs transacting mainly in cash were caught especially flat-footed.

Thankfully, this problem is behind us now. The pandemic accelerated FSPs’ digitization plans across the world, and record numbers of borrowers started using mobile technology. FSPs serving lower-income customers now routinely communicate and transact digitally.

They have also upgraded their internal systems to handle the irregular schedules of loans in moratoria. And the expansion of digital infrastructure during and after COVID-19 now allows staff to work from home.

Consumer protection

As financial regulators and supervisors prepare for the new moratoria in 2025, they are better equipped to mitigate some of the consumer risks that appeared in 2020. They now use market monitoring tools, such as suptech, consumer phone surveys and mystery shopping, to assess consumer risks in real time. They can quickly spot issues such as abusive collections practices.

Nevertheless, both financial authorities and FSPs have learned from the previous crisis that ensuring good communication and transparency will be challenging. Moratoria are unfamiliar concepts, and the math is complicated.

Learning from 2020, when poor communication led to misunderstandings, mistakes and abuse, regulators have already issued consumer protection rules to ensure the public fully understands moratoria offers and their consequences.

Additionally, communications now flow not just to customers, but also from them. Policy makers are widely using tools that give consumers a collective voice and reveal what they are experiencing.

Several regulators have put consultative bodies in place to have a regular dialogue with consumers, and consumer associations regularly convey issues to them. Such tools proved useful in 2020.

In Peru, for example, the consumer protection agency INDECOPI listened systematically to customers and alerted regulators and FSPs to emerging abuses so that they could respond quickly.

Agility

The COVID-19 pandemic lasted much longer than anyone foresaw, and unanticipated implementation challenges arose. If policy makers learned one thing, was is that you can never anticipate all the ways an emergency will unfold.

Accordingly, the countries that were best prepared for the next pandemic were those that had established channels for authorities and FSPs to work together to respond to evolving conditions.

Source: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) is a global partnership of more than 30 leading development organizations that works to advance the lives of poor people through financial inclusion.

*Elisabeth is the former managing director of the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion. She is a visiting fellow at the Financial Access Initiative and a consultant at CGAP.

*Eric Duflos, Senior Financial Sector Specialist, leads CGAP’s work on consumer protection, from policy, industry and customer perspectives, ensuring that financial services have positive outcomes for customers.

The post Debt Moratoria in the Next Pandemic: Be Prepared, and Be Fair appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Centering Equity: A Vision for Global Health in 2021

Wed, 03/24/2021 - 14:45

COVID-19 has amplified the omission of disabled people. Credit: Bigstock

By Shubha Nagesh and Sara Rotenberg
DEHRADUN, India/OXFORD, UK, Mar 24 2021 (IPS)

2020 will be remembered as the year that changed the world, as COVID-19 spared no country, no community, and no person. As the pandemic continues in 2021, there is recognition that some groups are impacted more than others, not just by the virus itself, but also by the socio-economic and access inequities exacerbated by global shutdowns. Globally, countries, and organisations are seeking to build back better and address inequities.

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, highlighted that we have ignored inequality for too long, putting the poor at greater risk during the pandemic.

UK-based studies corroborate this: people in affluent areas are 50x less likely to die from COVID-19, while people of black ethnicity and disabled people are 4 and 3 times more likely to die from COVID 19, respectively.

Only 0.5% of international development funding goes towards disability-inclusive programs. despite the fact that people with disabilities make up 15% of the world’s population

A third of 18-24 year olds have lost their job–twice the rate of working age adults. The disproportionate impacts on women include reduced reproductive health rights; increased unpaid care responsibilities; more domestic violence; and a record decrease in women leaving the workforce. Together, these trends threaten global gains on equity and inclusion.

India exemplifies the challenges and inequities so many in low- and middle-income countries faced during the pandemic. India’s poor have been hit the hardest in everything from the disease itself to the economic and social impacts of national lockdowns.

Scores of migrants walked hundreds of kilometres to their villages, exemplifying how people in the informal sector lost their jobs, livelihood, and homes. Public and private healthcare facilities tried to support COVID-19 patients, but reports question the accessibility and equity of the services for the poor. Economically, experts expect that millions of people in India will become impoverished due to the pandemic.

For global health more broadly, the pandemic has threatened to drive back progress made in recent decades and highlighted how we neglected calls for health systems strengthening in recent years. Yet, we see opportunities and calls to ‘build back better’, the global health community must first ask itself “What is wrong with Global Health?” so we avoid these systemic issues and build a more inclusive world.

The reality is that many things went wrong within global health prior to 2020. To date, we have seen certain groups forgotten in the global health space. For instance, only 0.5% of international development funding goes towards disability-inclusive programs. Even less of this goes directly to global health, despite the fact that people with disabilities make up 15% of the world’s population. COVID-19 has amplified the omission of disabled people.

For example, India’s COVID-19 tracker, Aarogya Setu App, public health guidance, and testing sites have remained inaccessible for disabled people. In lockdowns, disabled people also had difficulties accessing essential food, information, medicines, and supplies.

We suggest three ways to address access inequalities in Global Health:

Underrepresented and marginalized groups need better, authentic representation. Global health organizations must continually ask themselves who is not represented or reached in their programs, and actively take steps to fix it. Involving advocates and activists from the very beginning will include the needs of at-risk populations and enhancing acceptance, inclusion and belonging.

Global health needs better, timely, factual, and accessible communication. Creating accessible and acceptable communication strategies and messages that are deployed to reach even the most remote areas is key to ensuring global health connects everyone.

Act in solidarity. Governments, civil society, and international organisations need to come together to distribute resources proportionately to need. Distributive justice can ensure greater security for all–whether that is for health, income, employment–which ultimately impacts our collective ability to weather catastrophes, like pandemics.

COVID-19 has been a pivotal moment and offers a unique opportunity to build back a better, more equitable, healthier world. However, without an explicit focus on inequity, we risk leaving out those who global health has forgotten, despite our moral obligation and duty to protect.

In 2020, we showed that anything is possible with political will, dedicated funding, and global action. In 2021, we need a paradigm shift in our approach to global health so that it captures those who most need it. We must apply what we have learned from collective action for COVID-19 to the greatest challenges facing our society: inequity. By addressing this, we ensure that global health is truly accessible to all.

All views expressed are personal reflections

Shubha Nagesh is a medical doctor and a global health consultant based in Dehradun, India. She strives to make Childhood Disability a global health priority.

Sara Rotenberg is a Rhodes Scholar and DPhil Student in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.

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Categories: Africa

After the Fire: Rebuilding of Rohingya Camp a Race Against Time Ahead of Monsoon Season

Wed, 03/24/2021 - 11:27

By IPS Correspondent
DHAKA , Mar 24 2021 (IPS)

The building that was once the largest health centre in the Kutupalong refugee camp, serving some 55,000 Rohingya refugees 24/7, is now a burnt, distorted shell after a massive fire spread through the Cox’s Bazar camp in Bangladesh this week.

And as the tens of thousands of affected Rohingya return to the empty pieces of land that where once their homes, the need to rebuild — both the health facility and their homes — has added impetus because of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the coming monsoon season.

At least 11 people were killed and more than 45,000 Rohingya refugees were been displaced by a massive fire that caused “catastrophic damage” as it spread through the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, the largest refugee camp in the world.

“Tragically, reports from the camps indicate that at least 11 people are said to have lost their lives in the fire and more than 500 others have been injured. Around 400 people are unaccounted for,” the Inter Sector Coordination Group, a group of humanitarian partners said in a statement.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), more than 10,000 shelters were damaged in the fire and the agency’s largest health centre in the camp was destroyed.

“The loss of the 24/7 health centre, which served more than 55,000 people in the last year, now further complicates the challenge of responding to COVID-19,” IOM said in a statement.

It is not clear how the fire started, but according to a World Food Programme report the massive fire broke out in the Kutupalong mega camp on Monday around 3pm local time and spread to three neighbouring camps.

“The fire that raged through the camps only slowed once it reached the main roads, slopes, canals and rice fields. It has since subsided, but not before consuming essential facilities, shelters and the personal belongings of tens of thousands of people,” IOM said.

IOM, which managed 3 of the affected sites, noted that “the fire affected at least 66 percent of the populations the four affected camps”.

With the monsoon season approaching, IOM says it is critical to rebuild the shelters as quickly as possible. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

More than 10,000 refugee shelters were damaged when a devastating fire broke out in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya camp, Bangladesh. Some 45,000 Rohingya refugees have been displaced as a result. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

The building that was once the largest health centre in the Kutupalong refugee camp, serving some 55,000 Rohingya refugees 24/7 is now a burnt, distorted shell after a massive fire spread through the Cox’s Bazar camp on Monday, Mar. 22. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

Emergency shelter kits that included blankets and other essentials that were distributed by aid agencies to Rohingya refugees. The WFP said it provided 62,000 hot lunches and hot dinners on Tuesday, Mar. 23. Credit: IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al

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Categories: Africa

Hope & Numbers: What will it take to Tip the Scales on Climate Action?

Wed, 03/24/2021 - 07:58

The UN says global temperature rise could lead to more frequent and more intense extreme weather events, such as prolonged droughts or devastating floods. Nations are “nowhere close” to the level of action needed to fight global warming, according to a UN climate action report released February 2021. The study urged countries to adopt stronger and more ambitious plans to reach the Paris Agreement goals, and limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, by the end of the century. Credit: WFP/Matteo Cosorich

By Naomi Goodman
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, Mar 24 2021 (IPS)

We should be well on the way to solving the climate crisis by now.

According to the Paris Agreement, last year should have been the year that all countries presented their commitments to cut carbon emissions for limiting global climate heating to within 1.5oC of pre-industrial levels.

A quarter of the way into 2021, we’ve well and truly passed the original Paris Agreement deadline. We are still awaiting submission of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from some of the most politically and scientifically significant global emitters, climate action further delayed by a devastating global pandemic.

It’s a crisis on top of a crisis. The impacts of the climate crisis are already being felt, and the most vulnerable are the nations that also lack the resilience to weather the storm. Millions of people have already lost their lives to the climate emergency, and it’s mostly happening in the global south.

The picture is incredibly grim. The most recent UNFCCC synthesis report concluded that the contributions presented in 2020, from countries representing around 30% of global emissions, would amount to just a 1% reduction of CO2, instead of the minimal 15% needed from these countries by 2030 to get 1.5oC aligned.

70% of the world’s emissions will be addressed in NDCs yet to be presented ahead of the Glasgow COP26 in November, and we have little idea what we can expect to see.

The two biggest emitters, China and the US, are set to share their NDC targets in the coming months. Their ambition, or lack of ambition, will directly impact our wellbeing for decades to come. What we really need is for these two players to work together with a common purpose, leveraging their diplomatic influence in support of a strong and inclusive multilateral process.

There is always room for hope. China already took the world by surprise with its 2060 carbon neutrality target announcement on the occasion of the UNGA in New York last September, and a promise to peak emissions before 2030. Biden came to power with a strong climate mandate and has pledged that the US will become carbon neutral by 2050.

Solar panels in Tahala – Documentation of a solar energy project in the remote southern village of Tahala, Souss-Massa-Drâa region, Morocco. Credit: Zakaria Wakrim / Greenpeace

But why not hope further? It’s not enough to have long term international pledges without short term domestic measures. China’s NDC could also define the necessary constraints on fossil fuel-based GDP growth. A halt on all new coal infrastructure would enable Beijing to bring that emissions peak forward to 2025, aligning with the 1.5oC Paris goals.

China’s latest five-year plans did not indicate such a concrete decarbonisation pathway, but it could still be achieved. The US would also need to deliver hard policy measures in support of the clean energy transition rhetoric.

In reality, we need to see a 70% emission reduction target from the US by 2030, against 2005 levels, with some observers indicating a figure of 63% or more would be feasible in the context of Biden’s razor thin majority. Whatever the headline number, a credible set of short term domestic measures, executive orders and policy proposals must be offered in support.

We need to see substantial action on the ground from both China and the US, prioritising absolute emission reductions at source, with a meaningful timeline for the managed decline of fossil fuel production alongside a just transition for workers and communities both at home and abroad.

This is a global emergency, it is not just about the US and China, in fact, all countries need to up their ambition. Japan, South Korea and New Zealand need to improve upon the inadequate pledges they’ve so far offered. We are especially calling out Brazil with deforestation rates at their highest in a decade and ever worsening devastation from Amazon forest fires, effectively reducing the ambition of its previous commitment from five years ago, and Australia, whose NDC demonstrated a flatlining of ambition despite multiple of its major ecosystems facing collapse including the Great Barrier Reef.

One of the fundamental values of the UN system is that it has put nations on an equal footing irrespective of their standing; one country, one vote, allows vulnerable nations to be equally heard.

The Paris Agreement cemented the notion of shared responsibility across all nations, but the fact remains that those who had the biggest hand in causing the climate emergency are the countries who need to step up now and deliver the most to solve it.

Many global south countries are suffering the toughest economic consequences from the pandemic, and so we need even stronger leadership from governments that can afford to show ambition.

The EU and the UK, whose NDCs are upgraded but still underwhelming, need to leverage their diplomatic weight and set the example with greater ambition. What is pledged now will either lead us to a future of relative security, or set us on a pathway to uncertainty and danger, where the combination of ecosystem degradation and increasingly damaging weather cycles will have devastating impacts well beyond our conceivable capacity to cope.

Big emitting countries must recognise the significance of this moment and open up space for genuine, long-lasting cooperation, delivering on the spirit of equity as well as the substance of the Paris Agreement: support for finance and adaptation, as well as substantial, improved emission reduction targets which tackle real problems and transformational industrial shifts in good faith.

Every person on this planet deserves a healthy future, clean air and water, food security, and sustainable resilient cities. We need COP26 to give business a clear direction and a level playing field for bringing about the change that needs to happen now to protect our planet for the safety and future of all generations. If governments do not act to solve this crisis their citizens will make them act.

We are calling on leaders to follow the numbers and recognise the urgency of the climate crisis. The world is already at 1.06-1.25oC of climate heating; every decimal point of avoided heating now is critical to our survival on this planet. We’re in a desperate existential emergency but there is still hope.

The post Hope & Numbers: What will it take to Tip the Scales on Climate Action? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

The writer is International Climate Political Advisor at Greenpeace International

The post Hope & Numbers: What will it take to Tip the Scales on Climate Action? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Tech Savvy Youth with High Social-Emotional Skills Succeed in Agriculture – Study Shows

Tue, 03/23/2021 - 13:45

New research suggests that socio-emotional and digital skills are linked to the increased agribusiness skills of youth. Photo: CC by 2.0/iHub

By Abdulrahman Olagunju
IBADAAN, Nigeria, Mar 23 2021 (IPS)

Saheed Babajide, a young animal production graduate and a manager at a national milk production company in Iseyin, Nigeria, is a beneficiary of the government’s youth agriculture intervention programme. But he feels he received almost no training during the three years he participated.

“We thought we will go through rigorous trainings in our various fields in agriculture, but to our surprise we were just given a training manual merely containing little or nothing about specific agricultural training as a training guide throughout the three years of engagement,” says Babajide of his time during the “N-power AGRO programme”.

The “N-power AGRO programme” was launched in 2016 as a national social investment programme designed to create jobs and empower Nigerians aged 18 to 35.

“Relatively no training was given about our fields, talk less of trainings on critical skills needed to thrive in the 21st Century [such as digital skill and socio-emotional skills]. After our first meeting, many people left to continue their hustle and bustle while they receive their salaries,” he added.

The government pays participating youths salaries during their training. But because of the poor monitoring system, those beneficiaries who left their place of assignment before the programme ended still received these salaries. Babajide admitted that the same happened when he left his place of assignment before the programme ended.

Nigeria, with over 200 million people, is Africa’s most populous country with the continent’s largest youth population. And about 34 percent of its total population is in need of employment.

But to Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), developing agriculture is key to addressing the urgent challenges of food insecurity, poverty and youth unemployment on the continent.

“Developing agriculture is key to addressing these challenges. Youth brings energy and innovation to the mix, but these qualities can be best channelled by young Africans themselves carrying out results-based research in agribusiness and rural development involving young people. Youth engagement is key,” Sanginga said in an opinion editorial.

According to Nigerian Bureau of Statistics(NBS) Q2 report 2020, “about 55.4 percent of the employable youths are still unemployed”. It is uncertain how the COVID-19 pandemic affects these figures.

While the government has set up various initiatives to address the issue of unemployment and food security, one study into the N-power AGRO programme showed that over the years the impact or performance of the programme was minimal.

Dr Khadijat Amolegbe, a lecturer at Department of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management, University of Ilorin, Nigeria, conducted a study into another government programme exploring the skills needed to motivate youth to participate in the agricultural sector.

Amolegbe conducted a randomised controlled experiment on Nigerian youth enrolled in the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) — a programme set up by the Nigerian government in 1973 to involve graduates in nation building and development. She measured the youth’s motivation to engage in the agricultural sector by evaluating the following;

their intention to start an agribusiness venture;
their intention to register a business name; and
their intention to save towards starting an agribusiness venture.

Amolegbe is a an awardee of the Enhancing Capacity to Apply Research Evidence (CARE) In Policy for Youth Engagement in Agribusiness and Rural Economic Activities in Africa project, funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and implemented by IITA.

Amolegbe’s IITA-CARE study revealed that the youth need training beyond basic agricultural skills. According to the research study, “socio-emotional and digital skills, also known as the 21st Century skills are indispensable, not only to motivate youths into agriculture but also help them thrive and survive the new and emerging challenges”.

“We realised that efforts made to motivate youths to participate in the agricultural sector have not yielded tangible results because they focus on basic agribusiness skills. However, youths need other skills that can help them strive the new and emerging challenges because of the risks and uncertainties in the agricultural sector and the changing nature of work around the world,” Amolegbe told IPS.

Sami Hassan is a recent graduate who is currently part of the NYSC. During the service year, graduates are engaged in various programmes designed to facilitate self-reliance among youth and to reduce unemployment.

“We were introduced to the basic skills involved in any field of our choice, but we’re expected to go into the nitty gritty of the technical skill ourselves,” Hassan said. He explained that while digital skills was offered as a course, its application in specific fields such as agriculture were not expanded upon.

Amolegbe told IPS that although the effect of digital skills in motivating youth engagement in agriculture is still ambiguous, youth with high socio-emotional and digital skills have high agribusiness test scores. This, she said, suggests that socio-emotional and digital skills are linked to increased agribusiness skills.

“With basic knowledge of agribusiness, individuals that receive socio-emotional skills training have positive significant probability of engaging in the agricultural sector than individuals that have receive both socio-emotional skills and digital skills training,” she said.

Among other recommendations, Amolegbe suggested that socio-emotional and digital skills training should be included in interventions targeted at motivating youth to participate in the agricultural sector.

“This will stimulate innovation, increase productivity and also help them prepare to counter the new and emerging challenges along the agricultural value chain,” she added.

The IFAD-sponsored study, which is part of several others carried out by young researchers under the CARE project in 10 countries across Africa, proposed that there should be an investment in digitalising the agricultural sector in Nigeria to enable youth with digital skills engage the sector.

“Input supplies should go beyond basic inputs like seeds and fertilisers, we should also encourage the use of digital tools across the agricultural value chain,” Amolegbe added.

Veronica Valentine, the Executive Director of FarmAgric Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that seeks to empower farmers and efficiently equip them with all the necessary tools to thrive in an evolving society, said the findings from the study gave a great insight into the challenges the youth have entering agriculture.

“Although our training modules at FarmAgric (which we give young farmers) are designed to sort of accommodate digital skills in order to help them in their agribusiness, especially in a digitalised world of today, we find the study very useful and hope government could implement this into their training modules in order to meet the demands of young people looking forward to venture into agriculture,” she said.

The post Tech Savvy Youth with High Social-Emotional Skills Succeed in Agriculture – Study Shows appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

End Vaccine Apartheid Before Millions More Die

Tue, 03/23/2021 - 06:43

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 23 2021 (IPS)

At least 85 poor countries will not have significant access to coronavirus vaccines before 2023. Unfortunately, a year’s delay will cause an estimated 2.5 million avoidable deaths in low and lower-middle income countries. As the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General has put it, the world is at the brink of a catastrophic moral failure.

Anis Chowdhury

Vaccine apartheid
The EU, US, UK, Switzerland, Canada and their allies continue to block the developing country proposal to temporarily suspend the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement to enable greatly increased, affordable supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, drugs, tests and equipment.

Meanwhile, 6.4 billion of the 12.5 billion vaccine doses the main producers plan to produce in 2021 have already been pre-ordered, mostly by these countries, with 13% of the global population.

Thirty two European and other rich countries also have options to order more, while Australia and Canada have already secured supplies enough for five times their populations. Poor countries, often charged higher prices, simply cannot compete.

Big Pharma has also refused to join the voluntary knowledge sharing and patent pooling COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) initiative under WHO auspices. Thomas Cueni, International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) Director General, snubbed the launch, claiming he was “too busy”.

Pfizer’s CEO dismissed C-TAP as “nonsense” and “dangerous”, while the AstraZeneca CEO insisted, “IP is a fundamental part of our industry”. Such attitudes help explain some problems of alternative vaccine distribution arrangements such as COVAX. According to its own board, there is a high chance that COVAX could fail.

Suppressing vaccine access
Despite knowing that many developing countries have much idle capacity, Cueni falsely claims the waiver “would do nothing to expand access to vaccines or to boost global manufacturing capacity”, and would jeopardise innovation and vaccine research.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Big Pharma claims manufacturing vaccines via compulsory licensing or a TRIPS waiver “would undermine innovation and raise the risk of unsafe viruses”. US Big Pharma representatives wrote to President Biden earlier this month claiming likewise.

Both Salk and Sabin made their polio vaccine discoveries patent-free, while many contemporary vaccine researchers are against Big Pharma’s greedy conduct only rewarding IP holders regardless of the varied, but crucial contributions of others.

Big Pharma’s price gouging
Vaccine companies require contract prices be kept secret. In return for discounts, the EU agreed to keep prices confidential. Nonetheless, some negotiated prices were inadvertently revealed, with a UNICEF chart listing prices from various sources.

Reputedly the cheapest vaccine available, Oxford-Astra Zeneca’s is sold to EU members for around US$2 each. Although trials were done in South Africa, it still pays more than twice as much, while Uganda, even poorer, pays over four times as much!

US negotiated bulk prices, for Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, are much higher, at US$15.25–19.50 per dose in several contracts, yielding 60–80% profit margins! Moderna will charge the rest of the world US$25–37 per dose.

Hypocrisy
Quite understandably, most developed countries opposing temporary TRIPS suspension have provisions in their own IP laws to suspend patent protection in the national interest and for public health emergencies.

Canada, Germany, France and others have recently strengthened their patent laws to issue compulsory licences for COVID-19 vaccines and drugs. European Council President Charles Michel announced that the EU could adopt “urgent measures” by invoking emergency provisions in its treaties.

Similarly, in the US, 28 US Code sec. 1498 (a) allows the government to make or use any invention without the patentee’s permission. To handle emergencies, the 1977 UK Patents Act (section 55) allows the government to sell a patented product, including specific drugs, medicines or medical devices, without the patentee’s consent.

When avian flu threatened early this century, the US was the only country in the world to issue compulsory licences to US manufacturers to produce Tamiflu to protect its entire population of over 300 million. The drugs were not used as the virus was not brought over either Pacific or Atlantic Oceans.

Biden must act
By helping developing countries expand vaccine manufacturing capacity and access existing capacity, US President Biden can earn much world appreciation overnight. US law and precedence enables such a unilateral initiative.

The Bayh-Dole Act allows the US government to require the owner or exclusive licensee of a patent, created with federal funding, to grant a third party a licence to an invention. Moderna received about US$2.5 billion from Operation Warp Speed, which dispensed over US$10 billion.

Moderna was founded in 2010 by university researchers with support from a venture capitalist. It has focused on mRNA technology, building on earlier work by University of Pennsylvania scientists with National Institutes for Health (NIH) funding.

The vaccine developer also used technology for previous coronavirus vaccines developed by the NIH. The NIH also provided extensive logistical support, overseeing clinical trials for tens of thousands. Moderna has already announced it will not enforce its patents during the pandemic.

Thus, POTUS has the needed leverage. The Bayh-Dole Act applies to Moderna’s vaccine, enabling the Biden administration to act independently and decisively against vaccine apartheid.

Sharing knowledge crucial
Developing countries not only need to have the right to produce vaccines, but also the requisite technical knowledge and information. Hence, the Biden administration should also support C-TAP, as recommended by Dr Anthony Fauci.

When the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) was in similar trouble, the Obama administration came forward to put US-owned patents into the pool while encouraging drug companies to help improve developing countries’ access to medicines.

President Biden knows that early US support was critical for the MPP’s eventual success. It dramatically increased production and lowered prices of medicines for HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis C and other infectious diseases in developing countries.

The post End Vaccine Apartheid Before Millions More Die appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Reduce Water Use Withouth Giving up the Pleasure of Food

Mon, 03/22/2021 - 19:02

By External Source
Mar 22 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The post Reduce Water Use Withouth Giving up the Pleasure of Food appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

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