Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Kawkab Al-Thaibani

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Feb 15 2021 (IPS)

The armed conflict in Yemen which has lasted six years, has killed and injured over thousands of civilians, displaced more than one million people and given rise to cholera outbreaks, medicine shortages and threats of famine. By the end of 2019, it is estimated that over 233,000 Yemenies have been killed as a result of fighting and the humanitarian crisis. With nearly two-thirds of its population requiring food assistance, Yemen is also experiencing the world’s worst food security crisis. The United Nations has called the humanitarian crisis in Yemen “the worst in the world”.

The conflict in Yemen has its roots in the failure of a political transition, when the 2011 uprising in Yemen forced then President Ali Abdullah Saleh out of power, ending his 33 years of rule in the country. With accusations of corruption and failed governance, and long standing unresolved conflict with the Houthi group who are based in the north of the country, Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to hand over power to his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. As President, Abdrabbuh Hadi struggled with corruption, unemployment and food insecurity in the country.

The armed Houthi group capitalized on popular discontent and consolidated their control over the governorate of Sa’da and neighbouring areas in the northern parts of Yemen. By September 2014, the Houthis had managed to extend territorial control by taking over a number of army and security positions in the capital Sana’a. In early 2015, President Hadi and the members of his government were forced to flee. By March 2015, at the request of President Hadi, a coalition of states led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) intervened with the aim of restoring the internationally recognized government back to power, marking the beginning of a full blown armed conflict in Yemen.

The Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi armed group that have been fighting since March 2015 have been responsible for an array of human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law and also likely to amount to war crimes.

Amnesty International has documented the Coalition’s use of six different types of cluster munitions, including US, UK, Brazilian-manufactured models in Sana’a, Hajjah, Amran and Sa’da governorates.

Women are always the most affected groups in wars, says Kawkab Al-Thaibani, former Director of Women4Yemen Network to IPS News. “Women not only have to survive the challenges of the war, but also carry extra packages of discrimination against them. It is tragic that women face violence at all levels, with no exception, war gives them zero protection,” Kawkab says.

Rights group Human Rights Watch in its World Report 2021 said in 2020, the Yemeni government, the Hourthi armed group, and the STC-affiliated Security Belt Forces “abused women and commiteed acts of gender-based violence, including sexual violence.”

“To rub salts in the wounds, the pandemic makes the lives of the Yemeni women a nightmare. The picture looks so dark and if this situation continues, women will disappear from public and private spears,” says Kawkab.

The rate of violence against women in Yemen was already very high in the context of the ongoing conflict – in 2017, UNFPA had recorded 2.6 million women and girls at risk of gender-based violence. With the added economic, health and social stressors of Covid-19, domestic violence cases are on the rise, UN Women said in its report.

“Yemeni women, peace activists and human rights activists have been doing a great job in handling this alarming situation, but the international community has to step up in supporting women’s cause,” says Kawkab, who has also been working on including women in the country’s peace building process.

The United Nations Security Council in 2000, adopted Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, reaffirming the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction. However, when it comes to Yemen, the Security Council has failed to reflect on the importance of gender dimensions, and push for women’s meaningful participation in any discussion regarding the current peace process.

“War is the face of toxic masculinity, and it will never give women space, because women are peace agents,” says Kawkab.

“The war in Yemen is the biggest challenge we are facing, but the lack of desire by the negotiators to include women in any talks, another challenge.

“The new government has zero presence of women and all parties have their own narrative of justifying this absence. On one hand it’s the Yemeni culture towards women, and on the other it’s simply the absence of women in the grassroots, women are absent from local council, they are absent from political parties, they are absent from empowering themselves through political training or political activism.

“Women are one of the most resilient groups in the society, they are unfettered by the disproportionate challenges they face, despite their work they are left completely out of peace negotiations,” says Kawkab.

Recently U.S. President Biden said that the Saudi-led war in Yemen “has to end”, and halted U.S. support for offensive military operations in Yemen and pledged, “America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.”

Greeting this move by the U.S. with cautious relief, Kawkab says, “I am not very optimistic about these measures because they are all politically motivated, and not towards ending the war, or providing Yemeni people with stability.

“As a woman pushing for peace, I know to gain true conciliation, we also need accountability and transitional justice. International experts who are affected by colonial mindset will not be able to achieve peace and stability in Yemen, because they too keep ignoring the true voices of peace, and that’s women.”

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

 

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The post Peace in Yemen, But not Without Women’s Role in Peacebuilding appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: Nepali Times

By Upasana Khadka
KATHMANDU, Feb 15 2021 (IPS)

A proposal by Nepal’s Immigration Department requiring consent from a guardian and local government for women under the age of 40 travelling to the Gulf or Africa has sparked public fury, and is taken as yet another proof of a misogynist, bungling bureaucracy. 

The Department made the recommendation to the Home Ministry on Wednesday, saying it was needed to curb the trafficking of Nepali women without labour permits, especially to the Gulf countries.

However, instead of clamping down on the ‘setting’ and collusion between recruiters, immigration officials and foreign-based agents to curb trafficking, the restrictions overlook womens’ agency in making decisions, their freedom to travel and work.

Teknarayan Poudel at the Immigration Department told Nepali Times that an earlier 2009 directive had to be amended because of “rampant misuse”. The following changes have been proposed:

1. Women travellers on visit visas need a travel insurance of at least Rs1.5 million
2. They will need to show a voucher/receipt as evidence for currency exchange
3. Women under 40 traveling for the first time to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries or Africa on their own are required to obtain permission from family members and the local ward.

It is the third proposal that has caused public outrage, and it ignores that in the past labour permits have been prone to misuse when unnecessarily restrictive, especially for women.

The reactive ban or restrictions on travel that disproportionately target women are lazy because the alternative requires stakeholders to be proactive, engage in bilateral discussions with destination country governments, have strong inter-agency coordination, hold complicit  immigrant officials accountable, ramp up action against traffickers, train and inform workers on safe practices, to look for safer, legal pathways, to create jobs at home, and clamp down on domestic violence

By not granting labour permits or approvals for household work abroad, women cross the open border to India, or use visit visas since that is their only way out. It is clear that curbing visit visas, instead of curbing trafficking of women workers, will just intensify irregular travel via India.

Poudel says public reaction to the proposal overlooks the criteria that it only applies to first time travellers to the Gulf and Africa. “It is the first-timers to the GCC who are most vulnerable to visit visa misuse that this proposed amendment is addressing,” he said.

But that does not take away the ludicrousness of the proposal. When reached, the Home Ministry refused to comment. The proposed changes are similar to recommendations in a recent report by an inter-agency taskforce under the Home Ministry to investigate the misuse of visit visas.

Nepali workers were bypassing cumbersome labour permits by travelling abroad on visit visas, and the Immigration Department had been severely criticised for another meaningless proposal to require all those on visit visas to have a minimum education qualifications and English speaking abilities.

Poudel dismissed this, saying, “It was one of the many options that were tabled, but it was never given much consideration.”

To be sure, the misuse of visit visas is a pressing problem because it has put many migrants, especially women, at risk. In addition to bypassing jobs and countries for which labour approvals are banned for safety reasons, visit visas are also misused by recruiters who want to circumvent legal safeguards or because there are delays in paperwork.

“Countries or sectors restricted for foreign employment owing to vulnerabilities are the most ripe for misuse of visit visas,” says Kumar Dahal of the Department of Foreign Employment. “We get calls from women in places like Syria that are banned for foreign employment. Stranded domestic workers from Kuwait call us in the worst imaginable situations. What they have in common is that they all left on visit visas.”

He said that although many workers go to the UAE on visit visas, it is also a transit to third countries. On Wednesday itself, the Nepal Embassy in Abu Dhabi released a notice asking Nepalis not to come to the UAE on visit visas for work because of an increase in cases of stranded migrants.

The latest proposed restriction on visit visas has its roots in Nepal’s labour migration system that requires workers to obtain approvals to work abroad. The government labour permit is like Nepal’s exit pass that signifies legal pre-departure procedures are followed.

The permits have their merits since they keep intermediaries and employers accountable, ensure that migrants travel with proper documents for authentic jobs, and they are enrolled in a contributory fund if something goes wrong.

However, the new proposal is reminiscent of past restrictions on women. Looking at the evolution of the clause on treatment of female migrants:

1985 The Foreign Employment Act prohibited recruiters from providing jobs to women and children without the consent of guardians.

1988 An amendment expanded this to include permission from guardians as well as His Majesty’s Government. ‘Guardian’ referred to the mother or father of an unmarried woman or husband of a married woman, or elder or younger brother aged 21 years or more of an unmarried woman living in the same family, or father-in-law or mother-in-law of a married woman.

2007 The Foreign Employment Act stated: No gender discrimination shall be made while sending workers for foreign employment pursuant to this Act. Provided that where an employer institution makes a demand for either male or female workers, nothing shall prevent the sending of workers for foreign employment according to that demand.

Shambhu Niroula, a legal adviser to the National Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA), says the non-discriminatory clause in the 2007 Act was a huge achievement. “It wasn’t just the non-discriminatory clause, there were also examples of positive discrimination to level the playing field like returning the costs of orientation fees to women migrants,” he says, adding that the proposed rules are regressive.

But directives such as the ban on domestic workers that are predominantly female contradict the non-discriminatory legal clauses, and the new proposed rule is a regressive addition impacting women.

The latest ban on domestic workers was put in place in 2017 after Parliament committee visited the Gulf in early 2020 and decided it was unsafe for domestic workers, regardless of gender. After a similar trip to the Gulf by a team led by Bimal Prasad Shrivastav, Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Industry, Commerce, Labour and Consumer Interest instructed the government to revisit the ban.

“We have recommended country specific policies for domestic workers abroad,” he said. The criteria include having a bilateral labour agreement, a separate domestic worker law, pre-departure training, equality of treatment between Nepalis and locals, and easy access to communicate with consular officials and families back home.

These preconditions were still deemed restrictive, but better than previous rules. However, Covid-19 derailed action. The pandemic itself impacted women workers abroad disproportionately, especially those who had traveled through India or on visit visas since they did not exist in government records and were ineligible for any support from Foreign Employment Welfare Fund.

There are also questions about the requirement that women need permission from the local ward before they can go abroad. They should instead be mobilised to help aspirants make informed decisions via counseling and information campaign. They also have the proximity advantage to monitor illicit activities.

The reactive ban or restrictions on travel that disproportionately target women are lazy because the alternative requires stakeholders to be proactive, engage in bilateral discussions with destination country governments, have strong inter-agency coordination, hold complicit  immigrant officials accountable, ramp up action against traffickers, train and inform workers on safe practices, to look for safer, legal pathways, to create jobs at home, and clamp down on domestic violence.

Instead, they have come up with bizarre policies with detrimental consequences that do not address the problem at hand, but have unintended but predictable consequences.

Nepalis reacting on social media to the proposal have questioned on what grounds is a ‘guardian’ eligible to grant permission for a woman to travel. ‘Why should men under 40 be spared from this provision?’ asked one. How will the consent from the guardian and local authority address trafficking, said another. What if the same guardian is the very source of domestic violence from which the woman is escaping for overseas work?

Even when such letters are not required, women are often harassed by immigration officials at the airport.

Because of the public reaction, it is likely that the Home Ministry will not move forward with the proposal. But it is a sad reminder that even decades later, we are even considering such archaic policies that were considered discriminatory and regressive even then.

Bijaya Shrestha, who heads AMKAS Nepal that supports returnee female migrants says, “In 1996 I wanted to make a passport to go to Japan and was asked to bring a similar letter from my guardian and when I told them I don’t have guardians, they said it could be my younger brother who was 21 years old. I was 30 then.”

The passport office was all right with a letter from her younger brother, but not from her 28-year-old younger sister. She adds, “I can’t believe we are back to the same debate against a nonsensical, discriminatory policy. How much longer must we fight against this?”

Up to 70% of women workers that AMKAS supports were forced to travel through irregular channels because of the travel restrictions.

Sarda Rai is a migrant who has worked in households in Dubai, Kuwait and Saudi. She is now back in her home in Morang, and says: “I left via India but used to return home through Kathmandu airport. The immigration officials gave me a hard time every time. I had to fight back and tell them either to lift the ban, to not issue us passports at all, or to give us jobs in Nepal. All that is still true.”

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

The post History of Female (Im)Mobility in Nepal appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Keenan Mundine outside The Block, an Aboriginal community social housing area where he grew up. Today, he is using his own lived experience of navigating the criminal justice system that helped change the trajectory of his life to devise creative and innovative solutions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) people so they can break free from the cycle of violence, police and prisons. Credit: Neena Bhandari /IPS

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, Feb 15 2021 (IPS)

Keenan Mundine grew up in the Aboriginal community social housing called The Block, infamous for poor living conditions, alcohol and drug use, and violence, in Sydney’s Redfern suburb. At the age of about seven, soon after losing his parents to drugs and suicide, he was separated from his siblings and placed in kinship care.

“I felt robbed of my childhood. I didn’t feel safe and it made me struggle with my living conditions and mental health. I couldn’t concentrate at school and got into lot of trouble. I spent sleepless nights contemplating what my situation would be if my parents were still alive. At the age of 14, I ended up on the streets and tried to work my way around it,” Mundine tells IPS.

Today, he is using his own lived experience of navigating the criminal justice system that helped change the trajectory of his life to devise creative and innovative solutions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) people so they can break free from the cycle of violence, police and prisons.

Indigenous ATSI people are globally the highest incarcerated people, making up 28 percent of the prison population even though they comprise only 3.3 percent of the total Australian population. Many are introduced to the criminal justice system at a young age, often incarcerated for trivial offences, and they remain in the system for life.

“Most children in prison come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and have already experienced violence, abuse, homelessness, and drug or alcohol abuse. A significant number of young Indigenous people in detention centres and prisons suffer from previously undiagnosed Foetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder. Criminalising their behaviour creates a vicious cycle of disadvantage,” Australian Medical Association President, Dr Omar Khorshid, tells IPS via email.

The Australian Government’s 2020 Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage (ODI) Report notes that over-representation of ATSI people in the criminal justice system is the result of a higher prevalence of the common risk factors for offending, which stem “in part from their experience of dispossession, forced removal and intergenerational trauma and racism – structural and systemic factors including laws, policies and practices that can unintentionally operate to their detriment”.

Between 2000 and 2019, the ATSI adult people’s imprisonment rate has increased 72 percent and in 2018-19, the ATSI youth detention rate was 22 times the rate for non-Indigenous youth, according to the ODI report.

Challenging Australia’s Indigenous incarceration record during its third Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Jan. 20, several UN member states urged Australia to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 years to 14 years.

“In 2019, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child had recommended 14 years as the minimum age of criminal responsibility. The Australian Government must now do what is right and introduce legislation to raise the age, so children aged 10 to 13 years are not sent to prison as recommended by the national RaiseTheAge Campaign Alliance,” Australian Lawyers for Human Rights president, Kerry Weste, tells IPS via email. 

“Despite the fact that indigenous children represent only six percent of young people in Australia, they comprise 57 percent of those in youth detention, and an alarming 78 percent of 10- to 13-year-old children detained,” says Weste.  

The treatment these children have been subjected to could amount to a violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which Australia has ratified.

Carly Stanley, who grew up in a large Aboriginal community in inner-west Sydney suburbs, recalls accompanying her grandmother to visit her uncle in prison and cousins in police cells. She accepted that this was normal because everyone in the community had someone behind bars. Although Stanley had a supportive family, she experienced trauma during her childhood. She dropped out of school and engaged in criminal activity and drug use, but she was fortunate not to ever have been in trouble for it. 

“It is only when I got older and did a course in Aboriginal studies, learning the history of my people, did I realise that this situation was specific to our community,” Stanley, who worked for many years for government and non-governmental organisations, tells IPS. She realised that the processes and the structures in place didn’t take into consideration Aboriginal peoples’ cultural, social, economic, emotional, health and wellbeing into account. 

“I tried to make changes as a senior officer inside the departments I worked for, but I realised very quickly that that wasn’t going to happen. It ignited my passion to help my people and get better outcomes for them through community-led solutions,” says Stanley, who along with Mundine established Deadly Connections, a grassroots Indigenous organisation.  

Through Deadly Connections, Mundine says, “We have been able to implement direct interventions from a culturally responsive perspective to get our people social justice and participate in the economy. The government and institutions have many employment accreditation courses, but it is a big challenge to find a job when you have a criminal record.” 

Research indicates that time in a juvenile justice centre is the most significant factor in increasing the odds of reoffending. On Jun. 30, 2019, 78 percent of ATSI adult prisoners had a known prior imprisonment, compared with 50 percent of non-Indigenous prisoners. Over the period 2000-01 to 2018-19, 55 percent of ATSI young people in sentenced supervision had more than one supervised sentence, compared to 34 percent for non-Indigenous young people, according to the 2020 ODI report.

“Simple reforms such as decriminalising public drunkenness, ending punitive bail laws and taking other steps to reduce the number of people held on remand can significantly impact Indigenous over-incarceration rates in Australia,” Weste tells IPS. 

While the large majority of ATSI adults in prison are male, the rate of female imprisonment is increasing more rapidly. Structural factors related to sentencing laws appear to be contributing to this increase, with 40 percent of all female prisoners being unsentenced (on remand) at Jun. 30, 2019, up from 37 percent a year earlier.

“Australia is in the midst of a mass imprisonment crisis, with the number of women in our prisons skyrocketing by 64 percent in the last 10 years. Too often, discriminatory laws and excessive police powers form a toxic combination that results in more and more women – and ATSI women in particular – being separated from their families and funnelled into the prison system,” Monique Hurley, Senior Lawyer, Human Rights Law Centre, tells IPS via email.

“Governments across Australia must act now to remove laws that disproportionately and unfairly criminalise women,” says Hurley.

Since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which had found that ‘too many Aboriginal people are in custody too often’, Australia has lost 455 Indigenous people in custody — 295 in prison, 156 in police custody or custody-related operations and four in juvenile detention, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology’s Deaths in custody in Australia 2018-19 Statistical Report.

“Throwing people behind bars is outdated and ineffective. Governments must invest in strengthening communities and tackling the drivers of crimes – that means affordable housing, adequate social security payments so people can afford basic necessities, community-driven programs to keep young people engaged at school, strengthen culture and drive employment and mental health and wellbeing programmes,” Sophie Trevitt, Executive Officer of Change the Record, a national Aboriginal-led justice coalition of legal, health and family violence prevention experts, tells IPS via email. 

Australia has spent AUD one billion in 2019-20 on detention-based supervision, community-based supervision and group conferencing. The cost of detention-based supervision was AUD 584.5 million, accounting for the majority of this expenditure.

As Cheryl Axleby, co-chair of Change the Record, tells IPS via email, “Only by empowering and strengthening our communities – and directing funding away from a broken and harmful prison system – will we create safer and more equal communities for everyone.”

The new National Agreement on Closing the Gap includes targets for reducing the rates of adult incarceration by at least 15 percent and youth detention by at least 30 percent by 2031.

“The Indigenous Advancement Strategy Safety and Wellbeing Programme includes investing in adult and youth ‘through-care’ services, which provide intensive case management to those in prison or detention, starting pre-release and continuing post-release to address the underlying causes of offending and prevent reoffending,” according to a spokesperson for Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt.

But Stanley says, “The measures in place are only tokenistic. However, a lot more people, especially the younger generation, are realising that a change is needed.”

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The post Why Australia’s Indigenous People are the Highest Incarcerated Globally appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Shashi Tharoor

By External Source
Feb 15 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Celebrated Indian writer, Member of Parliament and former diplomat Shashi Tharoor in a conversation with The Daily Star Editor and Publisher Mahfuz Anam on the occasion of the newspaper’s 30th anniversary yesterday spoke eloquently on media freedom, regional politics and democracy on a virtual platform.

Mahfuz Anam: Let me start with what appears to be a duality of your current life as a writer and as a politician — the former being more of a moral, ethical and value based world to the latter being more of compromise and the need to be practical. How do you navigate between being an author and a politician?

Shashi Tharoor: It’s not easy at all. I have had to make choices between the demands of both. They are essentially the reactions of the same person seeing the world that provokes in him the wish to describe, the wish to act upon. There is the world of decisions versus the world of observations or conclusions essentially relating to the same world. When I see something and think this is something I want to write about, this is also something I want to do something about. That is when the two worlds can overlap. My politics takes precedence over everything else because a couple of million people have elected me to represent them in the national parliament. There is, however, always a part of me that never forgets that I was a writer.

The enduring value will be that and not the politics.

Mahfuz Anam: There is however this contradiction between the moral height of being a literary person versus the sometimes quite dirty level of politics. In our region, sometimes politics is known to be horse-training. How do you live in these two worlds?

Shashi Tharoor: It does not always have to be, but there are often compromises. There is always a contradiction between an individual with his own convictions who belongs to a party with its own policies. There is no guarantee that your convictions will be the same as that of your party. I have a duty towards my party and its policies, but I also have a duty as an individual, so what I tend to do is, I stay loyal to the party’s choices but I do not allow myself to say things I do not believe. If the party takes a decision that I’m in profound disagreement with, I will either explain the party’s stance without myself advocating it, or I go silent. There have been a number of instances where I have chosen silence rather than to break ranks with my party because by doing so, I will damage the people with whom I’m working. I am not prepared to compromise beyond that. I believe my intellectual and moral integrity is what I can bring to the world as politics and if I start tarnishing that by selling that short, then in the end of the day it seems to me that I may as well not be in politics because you can get any number of cookie-cutter political figures who will do and say what they are told for temporary gain.

Mahfuz Anam: What is your overall view about the state of media freedom in South Asia?

Shashi Tharoor: The truth is our press freedom across South Asia has a number of challenges. On the one hand, it is not as bad as the most pessimistic will describe it to be. Even in the military rule of Pakistan, there were relatively courageous journalists writing. In Bangladesh, The Daily Star and Prothom Alo have flourished quite effectively in spite of challenges. In India even though much of the media is accused of complicity, of having sold out, of having compromised, there are still people in the media who have nonetheless been able to stand up for what they believe in. They can be minor websites, but the truth is somewhere being told, if you know how to look for it. It is a mixed bag. While it is true that we all in South Asia have governments who would not encourage criticism, it is also true that in the media, there are enough journalists who believe in their mission and have courage.

Mahfuz Anam: Why do our governments always feel so hostile towards the free press?

Shashi Tharoor: Our countries are flawed and fragile in spite of being democracies. Each government has felt a certain level of insecurity for certain reasons which is why they want a sympathetic narrative towards what they believe to be their good efforts to how they run the country and if that narrative is not available they undermine the ones providing the narrative, and want to silence them. By definition, press freedom has to be antagonistic because the role of the press is adversarial. This is a conceptual element in much of Western journalism. Because the press abets the public in holding the government accountable, their job is to question the government, be cynical about the government’s claims. The adversarial stance is built into press freedom. Many of us feel that that is part of our conviction as independent commentators. You are obliged to be critical in a context where the government distrusts your criticism.

Then there are these populist cult leaders who believe that they are the voice of the people, so who are these unelected journalists to pull them down? They believe that you are actually betraying the people if you attack them.

Mahfuz Anam: You are a writer, columnist and now a politician. Do you feel differently about the press/media when you are wearing different hats? As a politician do you see us differently than as you see us as a writer? Did you feel differently towards the media when you were a minister in 2009?

Shashi Tharoor: First of all, the existing media culture in India was generally an accepting one. That the media would attack me, I took that as the price one paid to be in politics. I never thought of the media as something that could be cajoled, threatened, intimidated or silenced. I took media criticism seriously and accepted their rights to criticise me.

What is different in the last few years is that the new people in power do not share that set of assumptions. They have an attitude suggesting you are with us, or against us. They have not hesitated to use many of the resources at the command of a majority government. In the case of the BJP, if they felt that an editor who wrote an unfriendly piece should lose his job, or the proprietor will get a tax raid, they can carry it out. I know I am not officially supposed to say that happened, but that is the kind of thing that can happen, and that some would say has happened.

You have in India a populist leader who has direct rapport with the populace and contempt for the media because he simply doesn’t need it. He enjoys unmediated access to popular masses, because the creation of social media meant that you can bypass traditional media. His party is extremely skilled at manipulating social media, and then he can treat the traditional media as irrelevant. He is the first prime minister who has never held a press conference in India, and taken unscripted questions. Every question is vetted in advance. To him it is simply theatre — it is not an exercise in being accountable to an independent mind. That does not interest him at all.

Mahfuz Anam: How do you view this development of social media and the traditional media being bypassed?

Shashi Tharoor: I view it with concern but also inevitability. The reach of social media is something you have to appreciate. Eighty percent of the Indian electorate is connected to the internet via their mobile phones. I have witnessed the astonishing growth of social media and its ability to transform. We are seeing for example that Mr Modi has made it compulsory for every minister in his cabinet to have a Twitter account, but not made it compulsory for them to hold press conferences. That is the difference. The mainstream press is now secondary in the government’s approach. What is concerning about this is that social media is devoid of filters. Anyone is basically as authentic a voice as the most professional journalist. There is no editorial control and fact-checking. There are now independent fact-checking websites but they have a fraction of the audience that the original fake story has. This means that those who want their narrative to be believed can reinforce it without any accountability to the actual truth. You can also get pliant traditional media to translate your social media messages.

Mahfuz Anam: We now have the Digital Security Act to control the digital space which very severely controls what somebody is posting. What is the legal framework in India?

Shashi Tharoor: As chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, I can say that what we have is a rule going back to the 19th century which desperately needs updating. The Indian Telegraph Act 1885 governs much of telecommunications in the country. The time is ripe for a serious rethinking. The anxiety that many people have is that will the rethinking take place if it is under a government that is not terribly committed to press freedom.

There are a lot of Indians who are comfortable with modern technology. The government will struggle to control technology. There has already been backlash against Twitter’s refusal to shut down certain accounts that issued tweets that the government deemed unacceptable, and the government asked them to shut them down, and Twitter following its own codes, did not shut them down, saying that having reviewed them, the company felt that it wasn’t keeping with its own laws. Whereupon the government said who are you to decide what India’s laws permit. We are telling you shut those accounts, and if you don’t, you will be punished. They might be a private company but they are working in a public space — they have social and political obligations. These are challenging questions that are being debated around the world, but there is no clear answer.

The original balance of power between the Legislative, the Judicial and the Executive branches of the state, or the concept of check and balance has enormously shifted towards the Executive. In the hands of charismatic, popular and effective leaders this shift has further intensified. This has greatly reduced the accountability of the governments.

Mahfuz Anam: What’s your view? Is there a role of the media here?

Shashi Tharoor: We are caught up in a dangerous climate in our politics. Ideas of nationalism have come which say that challenging the elected majority, elected government is somehow anti-national. When you are saying that I am just doing my job as a journalist, and the government wants to put me in jail for it, the government can say “I have the right to do what I want because the people have voted for me. Who are you?” They are citing democracy to undermine democratic practices.

In India, many of our media houses are owned by people with other business interests. It is very easy for the media to subserve the business interests, and those business interest’s vulnerabilities to be used against the media. It is very easy to pick up the phone and call the owner if the editor goes out of line.

Mahfuz Anam: Where is democracy going?

Shashi Tharoor: In a bad direction. Surveillance increased last year since more and more things had to be done online. Even something as basic as trying to protect the health of the population by getting people to download an app that sees who they were in contact with, can be used for surveillance. All of this technology has abetted those who want to undermine democracy. When this technology first came into development, we all saw this as empowering. Technology was supposed to give voices to the voiceless. It seemed to be a democratising element. Today this seems to be an undemocratic development.

Mahfuz Anam: As a parliamentarian, are you able to play your constitutionally prescribed role?

Shashi Tharoor: Yes and no. I do have the right to speak. Obviously, when the government has a decisive majority it is not obliged to listen. But at least the parliament gives us space to express our views, which can then have a second life on social media, and so far that has not been stopped. But the difficulty with our democratic institutions in India today, is that it is a sobering matter to realise how easily it can be abridged. We have a fervent nationalism that extols every Indian achievement, real or imagined, such that the mildest protest is labelled anti-national or even seditious. I have five different sedition cases against me because of a Tweet, and I have to go to five different states to plead innocence. Almost every independent institution has been hollowed out and made into an instrument to be used for the government’s dominance. Political freedom has ceased to be a virtue. Conformity is what the government prefers. Dissenting voices are somehow seen as less fitting in this nationalism.

Mahfuz Anam: The re-emergence of religion in our politics is something that is true for the whole South Asia, Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Hinduism in India and Islam in Pakistan. Bangladesh is also seeing a similar rise. As a “thought leader” what do you think is our way forward? Why in 2021 does religion get revived?

Shashi Tharoor: Pakistan was founded on the assumption that people of a certain religion must have a separate country to live in. India rejected that. In the Indian context, it didn’t matter what your religion was, you had the same rights. Now I find that this is being questioned. A question was asked in the parliament when the constitution was being hammered out, stating should India not be a Hindu country. This was debated and rejected by our founding fathers and mothers. It was considered impolite to spread communal messages in society. That has changed. In addition to that, you have a genuine problem because we have constructed a nation with 16 percent Muslim minority and remained largely free of any existential issues because that minority has felt safe.

If you start demonising that minority, accuse them of acting as agents of a hostile neighbour — if you take 15 percent of your population and say you are a traitor unless you prove otherwise…our survival and success depends on our ability to maintain cohesion. It is the secret to our development. There is something very fundamentally wrong with the communal approach in our society. This communal virus has to be inoculated against. For the first time, politically we have a discourse coming from the people in the establishment that is virulently hostile to certain minorities.

There is a perception assiduously cultivated by rhetoricians from the ruling party that a lot of Indian governance was about appeasement of minorities that must be shed for a more belligerent, assertive Hinduism. People who are the vehicles of that belief are very intolerant of dissent. Critics are routinely urged by ministers to go to Pakistan — the mere choice of the destination itself is supposed to point to their traitorism. The use of polarising along communal lines in order to win a seat is today’s successful tactic by the ruling party. In order to consolidate the vote of the majority, they are othering the minority. The narrative of polarisation is in fertile ground because some people can absorb the fears of certain majorities. This is undermining the biggest strength of democracy which is to bring people of different identities together. The most tranquil places in the world are where there are no minorities but that is not the solution. Part of the arch of democracy is learning to live with people unlike yourself.

Mahfuz Anam: As a neighbor, we look with trepidation at the tension between China and India. We would want both the giants to grow with peace and prosperity and then share that prosperity with the rest of the region, but it seems they are going towards an arms race, if not conflicts. Diverting resources from poverty alleviation does worry us as neighbours. Any comments?

Shashi Tharoor: Yes, we in India thought it was good for us and for the region to have good amicable relations, to keep differences on the border on the back burner while developing trade and economic cooperation and other kinds of cooperation, including on the international platform. Our trade went up from $200 million in 1991 to $100 billion a year ago. We were absolutely prepared to ignore our differences. Yes, we could not agree on our border, but we said it didn’t matter. We will concentrate on the prosperity of our people and both should benefit. It is for us a mystery that China has abandoned that approach and is belligerently flexing its muscles on its own borders within its own country and in Asia. There are horrific stories of mistreatment of Uighur Muslims, assertion over Hong Kong with new security law, intimidation in Taiwan etc, and worst of all, in my point of view, the belligerents on our border . They have taken a large chunk of Bhutan already, they are trying to capture territory on the line of control in India, which is actually a disputed border but neither side believed it should be settled by military force. They have used military force and killed 20 of our soldiers. That is unacceptable. No self-respecting country will accept that. Frankly, the opposition is united with the government on this issue. We cannot accept what China has done unprovoked. We have absolutely no reason to believe that there was any provocation. It clearly seems to be a strategic move by the Chinese to dominate the junction of two rivers for purely military strategic advancements. The Indian soldiers were on the way and they killed them. We should ask China why you are doing this.

Mahfuz Anam: There is a specific question on the Rohingyas in Bangladesh. India has a very good relationship with Myanmar, but we think our relationship is closer and more important. We found India hedging its bet way too much, trying to be on both sides of the fence, which has disappointed us.

Shashi Tharoor: It has disappointed me too in the opposition and I’ve said so in parliament. There is unfortunately, to be very blunt, certain bigotry at play here articulating the policy on the Rohingya. The ruling party unfortunately communalised the issue of the Rohingya as you know they are Muslims and the Burmese government is largely Buddhist. The Burmese government, especially in the days when the problem erupted, I knew revered civilians like Aung San Suu Kyi were seen as pro-Indians, so India did not want to antagonise Burma. Myanmar also has natural gas and fuel, and India has trade relations with Myanmar. Moreover, Burma has the capacity to be a nuisance to India as they once were when they were fomenting insurrection, by giving refuge to the insurgent groups, giving them arms and channeling Chinese money. So, they did not want that to happen again. So, there was a hard-headed decision thinking why would we show sympathy to the Muslim refugees and jeopardise our relationship? That’s an excessively cynical kind of decision. Still India in normal ways offered refuge to the Rohingya but they have been harassed quite a bit and I am sorry to say that the government has returned some Rohingyas which I find quite unacceptable.

Mahfuz Anam: How does the media speak to the power if power defines what is the truth, controls the flow of information, and it is in a position to term what is fake news?

Shashi Tharoor: We see this in India where criticism in the media is deemed as being out of touch of the people in reality. The press is hopelessly dismissed as biased, and sold out. I am afraid that contempt is used very often by the government to undermine and dismiss the press. In that atmosphere, how do you speak to the power? I think you have to have the courage if you want to run the risks. Some of the most courageous journalism in India is done by digital websites that practically own no property, have no printing press and have only a few employees and use a lot of freelancers, and are often financed by foundations or non-profits or by subscriptions. They are the ones who are the most courageous, because you have very few vulnerabilities, whereas mainstream media invested millions of rupees and also have business interests. So, standing up, speaking truth to power, depends entirely to the extent of your vulnerabilities to reprisals. Many of the small independent operations are harassed, have cases and sedition charges filed [against them]. Very often, the courageous lawyers represent them without charges. All of these issues will show in many ways that courage of our democracy to stand up for rights, but by no means, one can be complacent about it. This is a battle that is worth waging, but is a battle that can be lost. I wish you the courage and strength in waging the battle in your own country as we are doing in ours.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Excerpt:

Shashi Tharoor observes while in conversation with Mahfuz Anam on The Daily Star’s 30th anniversary

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Sixteen-year-old Fethiye fled war in Iran – and the likelihood of child marriage – to Turkey. Credit: UNFPA Turkey

By External Source
BELGRADE, Serbia / LAGHMAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan / ESKİŞEHİR, Turkey , Feb 15 2021 (IPS)

How much is a girl worth? If you are Maja, the answer is a chicken, a six-pack of beer and 100 euros.

That is how much her family, living in a Roma settlement in Serbia, received in exchange for her hand “in marriage.” She was 11 years old at the time. “They benefited maybe a month from it, and I was left with a problem for my whole life,” Maja, now 18, said.

“My three sisters didn’t do much better. One gave birth when she turned 13. They were not sold, but they ran away from our mother at an early age. I was the only one who was sold.”

According to a 2019 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, nearly 56 per cent of women aged 20-24 in Roma settlements in Serbia were married before the age of 18, while almost 16 percent were married before 15.

And in a 2017 study on migrant women in Serbia conducted by UNFPA and partner NGO Atina, 52 percent of participants could not choose when and to whom they would marry. The average age of girls entering marriage was 17.5 years old; the youngest was seven.

One participant explained how partners are chosen: “How can you, as a girl, know who would be a good partner? This is on your family to decide.”

For child brides everywhere, the consequences are devastatingly predictable: their educations grind to a halt, stifling their ability to earn an income and continuing the cycle of poverty.

They can suffer complications – even death – due to pregnancies and births their young bodies are not ready to handle; they are more vulnerable to gender-based violence; and they may develop mental health disorders that may lead to suicidal tendencies.

To be clear: None of this is a result of a decision she made, not over her body, her present or her future.

Horror, then hope

At 15, Zulaikha*, in Afghanistan, was enjoying school and wanted to become a doctor. But her poverty-stricken family arranged her marriage to an older man nearly twice her age. Despite her protests and the fact that the intended bridegroom was unemployed, she was forced to marry against her will.

Almost immediately, Zulaikha was no longer permitted to attend classes. Zulaikha’s husband began taking out his anger and frustration on her. He beat her almost daily, and in fall 2019, she went to the provincial hospital in Laghman Province for a fractured eye socket and damaged back.

In the emergency ward, she was identified as a victim of gender-based violence. At the hospital’s family protection centre, and through the family response unit, both established by UNFPA, Zulaikha received psychosocial and legal support, as well as skills-training.

Her husband was ultimately convicted for abuse and sentenced to six months in prison. “No girl should be stopped from what she dreams,” she said. “This is the right of every girl: To decide her future.”

Regaining self-confidence

If Fethiye, 16, and her family had not fled to Turkey from Iraq in 2017, she would be a wife and school dropout by now. “In our culture, girls get married at an early age,” she said.

“This is very common, especially if the girl is out of school.” She grew up in a world in which girls were denied equal access to education, and were often forced by families and communities to stay at home.

When the family arrived in Turkey, “the first months were so difficult. I didn’t speak or write the language,” she recalled. “My family felt insecure and didn’t even let us go outside. They didn’t even plan to send us back to school.”

Then they were connected to a UNFPA-run women and girls safe space, which held an orientation for refugees and migrants. “A ray of hope arose, but after was beyond that I imagined,” she said. The centre convinced her parents that Fethiye should continue her studies without being a wife to anyone.

“My parents trusted the centre and acknowledged that their services were beneficial, if not life-changing. I not only learned how to speak Turkish but started courses to finish secondary school remotely. I have attended theatre and archery courses and made many friends. I have gained my self-confidence back.”

Today, Zulaikha is 17 and runs a tailoring business, training other women so they, too, can become financially independent. Fethiye dreams of attending university and working in a field that allows her to help others.

And for Maja, who escaped her traumatic past at 14 with the help of Atina, the future looks brighter than it ever has. “The most important thing in life is to have peace and freedom. All the rest will come,” she said. “After everything that happened to me, I know I can manage only if I am free.”

*Name changed to protect identity

Source: UN Population Fund (UNFPA)

 

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Marcia Julio Vilanculos, pictured here in this dated photo with her baby, was one of the participants of a digital literacy training course at Ideario innovation hub, Maputo, Mozambique a few years ago. Only 6.8 percent of all Mozambican women, with or without owning a cellphone, use the internet. Questions remain about the possibility of a successful transition to a digital economy in a world where there’s a glaring digital divide -- one that has become even more pronounced under the pandemic. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 12 2021 (IPS)

It is crucial to ensure that any transition to a digital economy has mechanisms in place that are non-digital to avoid “double exclusion”, according to Shahrashoub Razavi, director of the social protection department at the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Razavi spoke with IPS following an ILO panel addressing the issue of social protection and the transition to a green and digital economy — a side-event of the ongoing United Nations 59th session of the Commission for Social Development (CSocD).

Razavi moderated Wednesday’s “Social protection floors for a just transition to the green and digital economy” panel, which hosted social protection advisers and labour directors from different countries.

An important topic during the panel was how social protection systems could have helped societies cope better with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Social protection floors can reduce vulnerabilities and it can protect those impacted by a digital and green transformation,” Adrian Hauri, the deputy permanent representative of Switzerland to the UN, said during the opening remarks.

Aileen O’Donovan, the social protection policy lead at Irish Aid, pointed out that there has been a massive rise of social protection responses under the pandemic. More specifically, 209 countries implemented or announced 1,596 social protection measures by end of November 2020. 

“It’s critical now more than ever to invest in social protection systems,” she added.

O’Donovan further highlighted the importance of taking into account the most vulnerable communities when discussing social protection systems — especially those affected by climate change.

“Our commitment is really around reaching those furthest behind and we know that those who are most vulnerable are also vulnerable to the impact of climate change,” she said. “So it’s really critical to ensure that social protections are effectively designed to take into [account] mitigating climate impact and supporting adaptations.” 

O’Donovan concluded by saying it was important to make use of the current momentum.

“The momentum is really behind social protection systems, so it’s really about — how do we take this further and sustain this momentum to build much more resilient communities?” she asked.

But questions remain about the possibility of a successful transition to a digital economy in a world where there’s a glaring digital divide — one that has become even more pronounced under the pandemic.

“The digital gaps are concerning and if social protection transfers rely entirely on digital mechanisms then they are likely to exclude those without adequate access to such technologies,” Razavi told IPS when addressing these concerns. “It is important therefore that non-digital mechanisms are also available for those who would otherwise face a double exclusion (ie those without adequate digital literacy and access to the internet, mobile phones, etc).”

Ambassador Valérie Berset Bircher, a member of the labour directorate at the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs, told IPS that the pandemic affected workers differently, based on social protection systems in place in different countries.

“For countries like Switzerland (high-income countries), which have a longstanding social protection system in place, we were able to extend the system to cover more categories of workers and to extend the duration of the protection,” she said. “But of course in other parts of the world, countries were not able to invest sufficiently in stimulus packages and therefore were not able to protect jobs and wages.”

At the panel talk, she highlighted the need for a “human-centred approach to the future of the world” — one that would prioritise investing in job skills and social protection, and making sure all workers are protected and can benefit from changes in the labour market.

Bircher, who is also the head of the Swiss delegation to the current session of the CSocD, elaborated what the “human-centred approach” entails.

“It means investing in the institutions of the labour market and adopting policies that promote an enabling environment for sustainable enterprises, economic growth and decent work for all,” she said. “Our main objective is to ensure the highest possible participation in the workforce and a good quality of employment, including in the digital age.”

She highlighted the importance of designing a social safety net that would be accessible to everyone, and added that flexible labour market regulation, well-functioning social partnership, and active labour market policies would be crucial for structural change.

But some challenges remain to be addressed.

“Going forward, a big question is how effectively they can turn these temporary measures into proper programmes anchored in policies and laws and backed by adequate financing,” Razavi told IPS. “This is a big challenge in the context of major economic disruptions and falling taxes and other government revenues.”

Despite these questions, Razavi says the social protection responses are “a silver lining” to the crisis. 

“If there was a silver lining to the crisis, it was the way in which it mobilised governments to put together social protection responses, sometimes from scratch with no existing systems and programmes,” she said.

Related Articles

• COVID-19: The Digital Divide Grows Wider Amid Global Lockdown
• ‘Women Not Speaking at the Same Table as Men’ Means a Widening Digital Gender Gap in Africa

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By External Source
Feb 12 2021 (IPS-Partners)

“Working in Science, like any other career, is fit for women too… Just go for it, nobody can stop you”, Valérie Allain, Senior Fisheries Scientist at the Pacific Community (SPC).

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Kisa Project Manager, Hadija Hassan, records the Tanzania-based GLAMI’s first radio program, about Personal Leadership, at the studio. Courtesy: AfricAid/GLAMI

By Jessica Love
DENVER, Colorado, Feb 12 2021 (IPS)

Last fall, a 45-year-old father of four named Moses turned on the radio at his home in Arusha, Tanzania. Searching for his favorite station, he heard the introduction to a program about girls that he would later describe as ‘ear-catching.’ He wanted to know what would come next.

He had stumbled upon “Safari ya Binti” (A Girl’s Journey), a pilot radio program created by GLAMI (Girls Livelihood and Mentorship Initiative), a Tanzanian NGO that runs extracurricular mentoring programs for secondary school girls.

In a culture that too often reinforces the narrative that girls are weak, less important than boys, and that being confident and determined is rude, GLAMI is working to upend this narrative. Matching girls with university-educated Tanzanian female mentors, GLAMI shows their scholars they have the power to write their own futures – and then they teach the skills needed to do just that.

As a result, girls enrolled in these mentoring programs are more likely to graduate secondary school, attend university, and create positive change in their communities.

Safari ya Binti provided a way for mentors and scholars to connect when in-person sessions had been scaled back due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Airing weekly on Saturdays for four months, GLAMI mentors presented lessons that aligned with themes in their core curriculum, such as personal leadership, resilience, study skills, and community leadership.

The father of one son and three daughters, the radio programming was of deep interest to Moses. “The fact that a lot of girls drop out of school because of pregnancy, which is disappointing to us as parents, got me thinking that girls are weak and dependent, and that there is nothing they can do better than taking care of a family.”

Listening to Safari ya Binti, Moses heard inspiring female presenters and he heard girls asking smart questions. This was a program his entire family should hear, he decided, and so they all began to gather weekly to listen together.

Courtesy: AfricAid/GLAMI

“I came to realize that girls are capable of doing what boys can do, there is no limit to what they can do. I noticed this by listening to the girl’s testimonies on the sessions,” he said.

He wasn’t the only one to experience this shift in attitude. GLAMI found that a number of other focus group respondents also experienced significant changes in the way they viewed their daughters, and in the way girls viewed themselves.

“I had doubts that women can be leaders but right now I am beginning to believe that girls are born leaders. I even begin to see that my wife is capable of making huge decisions for the family’s well-being,” shared Balongo, the father of a GLAMI scholar, who listened to the radio show.

Nengarivo, who is enrolled in GLAMI’s mentoring program, shared: “There were times after the school opened when I thought that the world was coming to an end. Coronavirus was a threat, and I had a lot of dreams that I wanted to achieve, but an outbreak of Corona made me lose a lot of hopes given the fact that [GLAMI] mentors were visiting us only twice a month, unlike the usual timetable.

But when Safari ya Binti came I was really motivated to start afresh and have my hopes again. …I consider myself a change maker and I believe that I am a leader, I am not afraid of taking any action to save my community.”

This year, United Nations’ World Radio Day celebrates evolution, innovation, and connection at a time when radio has presented perhaps one of the most important lifelines in recent memory. But for so many organizations, radio presented opportunity.

Radio inspired creative approaches like Safari ya Binti. Radio enabled organizations to stay connected to the communities they serve from a safe distance. And radio allowed the chance to reach wider audiences with messages that inspired, informed, and changed attitudes.

The only downside of radio? Lillian, the mother of one girl enrolled in GLAMI programming put it best:
“I just wish that everything that was discussed could be repeated so as the new listeners could learn everything.”

The link to a promotional video created for the program: https://youtu.be/z8yAyh3qlY0

 

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Excerpt:

The United Nations will commemorate World Radio Day on Feb. 13

 
Jessica Love is the Executive Director of AfricAid, which supports robust, locally-led mentorship initiatives that cultivate confidence, improve academic and health outcomes, and promote socially-responsible leadership skills. Learn more at AfricAid.org.

The post In Tanzania, a Radio Programme for Girls Yields Unexpected Results appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Member of Parliament Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn. Credit: Kate Chappell

By Kate Chappell
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Feb 12 2021 (IPS)

It was a joyful, tearful celebration in the early morning hours of Dec. 30, 2020 for countless Argentinians when they heard the news: the senate had legalized terminations up to 14 weeks of pregnancy. Prior to this, activists have said that more than 3,000 women died of botched, illegal abortions since 1983. And across the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, this renewed sense of optimism was compounded after President Joe Biden rescinded what is known as the “global gag rule,” which essentially denied funding to international non-profit organizations that provided abortion counseling or referrals.

Now, women and campaigners across LAC are hopeful that these developments will spur lawmakers to consider decriminalizing abortion in their countries, sparing women their lives, economic well-being, dignity and access to a range of options to make the best choice for their reproductive and overall health.

The LAC region has some of the most restrictive legislation in the world.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a health policy and research organization based in New York, between 2010 and 2014, 6.5 million induced abortions were performed every year. In this region, 97% of women live in countries with restrictive abortion legislation, yet 46% of an estimated 14 million unintended pregnancies end in abortion. About 60% of those were considered to be “unsafe.”

When asked if there is a sense of hope that Argentina’s legislation will spur change in the rest of the region, Tonni Brodber, Representative UN Women, Multi Country Office Caribbean, says there are encouraging signs. “I hope so. Right now we are in the middle of a pandemic, people are struggling with recovery and trying to manage day-to-day life in a pandemic, but there is a lot of support for what has happened within the spaces of women’s organizations.” She added that it “is a difficult conversation, so it will be debated for a long time,” adding that human rights should be centred and stakeholders should focus on the lessons learned from Ireland and other countries, as well as on empathy and shared goals. She noted that Jamaica like all CARICOM countries is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, Article 16 of which speaks to the right to reproductive freedom.

(CEDAW (article 16) guarantees women equal rights in deciding “freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights.” CEDAW (article 10) also specifies that women’s right to education includes “access to specific educational information to help to ensure the health and well-being of families, including information and advice on family planning.”)

In Jamaica, where abortion is criminalized by a possible life sentence with or without hard labour (except to save a woman’s life or preserve her mental and physical well-being) Brodber says it is a hopeful sign that both male and female leaders are prioritizing the issue. “It can be motivational for a lot of persons who may feel that these issues are not prioritized.” Several MPs, including one male, have voiced support for repealing the legislation.

Jamaicans have been debating this issue for decades without resolution, and like Argentina and Ireland, faces strong opposition to any less restrictive legislation from the Church. This is similarly the case across the region.

Barbados, Belize, St. Vincent and the Grenadines allow abortion to save a woman’s life as well as mental health and socio-economic well-being. Cuba, Guyana, Uruguay and Peurto Rico all allow abortion without restrictions. It is still not permitted for any reason in six countries, while nine others only allow it for the purpose of saving a woman’s life, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn is state minister in the ministry of Health and Wellness for the majority Jamaica Labour Party. In 2018, she tabled a motion to repeal the legislation that criminalizes termination. It has been debated at the committee level, but the motion died on the order paper with the dissolution of parliament last September for an election. Cuthbert-Flynn says she is working at the policy level to advance the issue again. In the meantime, women are still suffering, she says. “These are the women showing up with complications from a botched abortion,” she says. “I think us as parliamentarians need to understand our role and debate laws even if it is going to cause controversy.”

Natalie Campbell Rodriques, a Senator for the majority Jamaica Labour Party, concurs.

“Personally, my own views are that this is something we should bring to the table to the debate, especially for women, our bodies being policed is not something that sits well with me,” she says.

Unsafe abortions are the third leading cause of maternal mortality in Jamaica, and according to estimates, anywhere from 6,000 to 22,000 women a year terminate a pregnancy. While it appears nobody has received any jail time, at least one doctor has been arrested for performing a termination on a 12-year-old girl.

While the UNFPA does not promote abortion, it seeks to decriminalize it, prioritize family planning efforts, and to handle the consequences of unsafe abortions, efforts that are all centred on a common understanding of human rights that has been enshrined in several treaties and agreements.

“I think we have to be honest this is not a straight cut and dry issue,” says the UNFPA’s Brodber. “It is a difficult conversation, so it will be debated for a long time. We are still not prioritizing yet the same common understanding of human rights and women’s rights in particular,” she says, adding that Jamaica is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, which highlights the right to reproductive freedom.

The implications of the restrictive legislations have many consequences, from the stigmatization of the women who terminate their pregnancies, to the financial and emotional costs, to the potential health risks. The legislation also disproportionately affects poor and rural women, who do not have the same access as their wealthy counterparts in urban areas.

Over the past several years, a Jamaican activist has been collecting stories from women who have had an abortion. One of these women describes having two abortions, one in 2015 and one in 2107.

“I went the bandoloo way and as expected I almost died… The pain I felt that night I could have push my head through a grill and not feel it. That was the worst night of my life,” the woman writes.

These are the stories that bring the issue to life, beyond the numbers, and a report released on Feb. 4 makes clear the reality.

Leanne Levers, director of advocacy at the Caribbean Policy and Research Institute, which just released the European Union-funded report called “The Cost of Unequal Access to Safe Abortion in Jamaica,” says that the legislation has dire consequences: “People are having abortions regardless of the legality, and they are being done in a way that is unsafe and have serious health and social complications for women, children and wider society, which comes at an economic cost.”

CAPRI’s report made three major recommendations, including a secret conscience vote to decriminalize abortion and make it legal upon request; the access to abortion by minors without parental consent and publicly funded abortions.

The report, which aims to clear away the rhetoric and provide people with evidence-based research upon which to make decisions, also found there is a cost of US$1.4 million in lost economic output to care for women who have had unsafe abortions. One of Cuthbert-Flynn’s constituents died of a botched abortion, and she has pledged to continue to try to enact change.

“I am a parliamentarian, so first my role as a parliamentarian is to make laws and enact laws. That is my first job, and so if I am not willing to do that, and look at laws enacted in 1864, then I am not sure why I am there.”

For her part, Cuthbert Flynn feels hopeful that Argentina’s legislation can help to spark change, but she says people need to make their voices heard, especially in light of a very vocal lobby against decriminalization from groups representing Jamaica’s churches. She says she has had some threats on social media, but none to her person.

“I think civil society needs to come up and speak out, with the church speaking out. We are hearing more and more voices out there, but they need to do like Argentina. People really came out and rallied for this, and tried to make it happen. I was shocked with them and Ireland to see a society that was Catholic (change legislation). It took the people to really come out and galvanize.”

Women’s rights activist Nadeen Spence says that threats from the church to march in protest of abortion and vote out supportive politicians are irrelevant.

“I’m not even concerned with the church, I’m concerned with what I see as the laziness of our politicians.”

Elsewhere in the region, Dominican Republic shares the distinction with Jamaica of the most restrictive legislation in the world.

Abortion is completely illegal, and women who induce abortions can be jailed for up to two years, while medical providers face up to 20 years. Selene Soto, senior attorney at Women’s Link Worldwide, an NGO that focuses on human rights, says Argentina’s recent legislation “We think that in general, that has had an impact, because these issues are important, and they are still on agenda because of what happened in Argentina,” she says. Activists in the Dominican Republic are lobbying for, at the minimum, an inclusion of three exceptions in which the ban on abortion could be lifted: rape, the life of the mother is in danger and the fetus is not viable. “We think that a total ban or restriction is against human rights standards that have been very well established by several international mechanisms,” says Soto.

 

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By Thalif Deen
NEW YORK, Feb 11 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations, created in 1945 following the devastation caused by World War II, was mandated with one central mission: the maintenance of international peace and security.

But the 76-year-old Organization and its affiliated bodies – including the 193-member General Assembly and the 15-member Security Council— take decisions mostly by open voting, and few, by secret ballot.

But the seriousness of the UN’s far-reaching mandate has been tempered by occasional moments of levity which have rocked the Glass House by the East River— with laughter.

The UN is a rich source of anecdotes—both real and apocryphal– in which the General Assembly (UNGA), the UN’s highest policy-making body, takes center stage, along with the Security Council (UNSC) as a political sidekick.

When UN ambassadors and delegates congregate in the cavernous General Assembly hall at voting time, they have one of three options: either vote for, against, or abstain.

The most intriguing, however, is a fourth option: to be suddenly struck with an urge to rush to the toilet. The frantic attempt to leave your seat vacant — and consequently be counted as “absent”– takes place whenever the issue is politically-sensitive.

When delegates are unable to vote with their conscience– don’t want to incur the wrath of mostly Western aid donors or are taken unawares with no specific instructions from their capitals– they flee their seats.

At a lunch for reporters in his town house bordering Park Avenue in Manhattan, (“this was once owned by Gucci, now owned by Fulci”), Ambassador Francesco Paolo Fulci, an Italian envoy with a sharp sense of humor, described the fourth option as the “toilet factor” in UN voting.

And he jokingly suggested that the only way to resolve the problem is to install portable toilets in the back of the General Assembly hall so that delegates can still cast their votes while contemplating on their toilet seats. But for obvious reasons, there were no takers.

The UN General Assembly in session. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

Regrettably, the voting habits at the UN were not recorded when the world body commemorated the “International Year of Sanitation” in 2008, highlighting the fact that roughly 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to toilets or basic sanitation.

Not surprisingly, UN delegates were excluded from that collective head count because the Secretariat never ran out of toilets. But the joke lingered on.

In most instances, the various regional groups and coalitions—including the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Group of 77, the Latin American and Caribbean States, the African Union (AU) and the Western European and Others (WEOG)— take decisions behind closed doors ahead of voting.

But even though the “herd mentality” continues in most UN voting, there are rare occasions of an unscheduled vote taking delegates by surprise.

In the 1970s and 80s, the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), founded in Belgrade in 1961, was one of the largest and most powerful political coalitions at the UN led by countries such as Yugoslavia, India, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Zambia, Cuba and Sri Lanka.

As a general rule, all 116 countries vote in unison on General Assembly resolutions rarely breaking ranks.

A Sri Lankan ambassador once recounted a message transmitted from his Foreign Ministry in Colombo – primarily directed at newly-arrived delegates which read— “If you are faced with an unscheduled surprise vote, and do not have any instructions from the Foreign Ministry, look to the right to see how Yugoslavia is voting and look to the left to see how India is voting. If both ambassadors are seen bolting from their seats, just follow them to the toilet”.

But NAM was a political power house in the 1970s and 80s. Still, when Sri Lankan President J.R. Jayewardene (JRJ) inherited the chairmanship in February 1978, he was skeptical of NAM which was known to be politically independent, with no strong links to either of the world’s two superpowers at that time, namely the US and the Soviet Union, who were engaged in a longstanding and bitter Cold War.

In an interview with an American news reporter, JRJ downgraded the political myth about “non-alignment” when he infamously declared there were only two “non-aligned countries” in the world: the US and the Soviet Union. All other countries, he argued, were politically aligned either with the US or the Soviets.

The quote was apparently off- the-record and not-for attribution, but the reporter couldn’t resist the temptation of running with it.

In September 1979, when JRJ handed over the chairmanship of NAM to Cuba at a summit meeting in Havana, the Western world and the mainstream media never accepted the fact that a strong pro-Soviet ally like Havana could ever be a “non-aligned” country.

As a result, right throughout Cuba’s chairmanship of NAM (1979-1983), the New York Times, perhaps as part of its editorial policy, never wavered describing NAM as a “so called Non-Aligned Movement” in every news story published in the paper. The “so called” label was dropped only when India took over the chairmanship of NAM in 1983.

When “non-alignment” was a political buzz word and NAM was in full swing, a UN diplomat once recounted the economic progress in Yugoslavia which had produced the Yugo, a small hatchback that arrived in United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

According to a report in the New York Times, the Yugo was said to be the first car from a Communist country to reach the American market. Equipped with front-wheel drive and a 55-horsepower engine, it sold at a base price of about $3,990, one of the cheapest in the market.

But when scores of cars kept breaking down in the streets of New York, the Yugo was dubbed “an unaligned car from a non-aligned country.” A political twist perhaps planted by the American automobile industry.

The only thing missing was a bumper sticker which should have read: “The parts falling off this car were made of the finest Yugoslav steel” (a parody of a quote once attributed to a motorist with his broken-down British-made car).

The book is available on Amazon. The link follows:

https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

  

The post Where do UN Diplomats Hide During Politically-Sensitive Voting? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

(Excerpts from a just-published book “No Comment – and Don’t Quote me on That”, a collection of political anecdotes reflecting over 40 years of reporting from the United Nations*)

The post Where do UN Diplomats Hide During Politically-Sensitive Voting? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A health worker at a local health centre in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, prepares a vaccine injection. The dispatch of millions of COVID-19 vaccines to Africa started in February. Credit: UNICEF/Sibylle Desjardins

By Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
GENEVA, Feb 11 2021 (IPS)

WHO and UNICEF have a long, deep and very special relationship. Neither of us could do what we do without the other.

UNICEF’s success is WHO’s success, and we are proud to be your partner on so many issues: Ebola, polio, maternal health, nutrition, infection prevention and control, primary health care – the list is long.

Never has our partnership been more important than it is now. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our world in ways we could never have imagined when it started just over a year ago.

It’s sobering to think that on this day 12 months ago, more than 3000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported to WHO. Yesterday, 3000 cases were reported every 15 minutes. The pandemic has held a mirror up to our world. It has shown humanity at its best and worst.

It has exposed and exploited the fault lines, inequalities, injustices and contradictions of our world, within and between countries. The pandemic has also become a child emergency, with children bearing both its direct and indirect consequences.

Children may be at lower risk of severe disease and death from COVID-19, but they have suffered many of the most severe social and economic consequences, and will bear a large burden of the long-term fallout.

Many children have missed out on months of schooling, and have been exposed to a greater risk of violence. Girls are especially at risk in places where they may never go back to school, as they approach the age when they will go to work or be married.

Since the beginning, UNICEF has been, and will continue to be, an indispensable partner in ensuring that children are a primary consideration in the global response to COVID-19.

Together, we have engaged, empowered and communicated with communities about the risks of COVID-19 and how to stay safe; We have developed joint guidance for the prevention and control of COVID-19 in schools;

We’ve supported health workers with improved infection prevention and control, and we’ve supported them to deliver better care and psycho-social support for patients, their families and communities; We’ve procured and delivered essential supplies;

We’ve provided the joint analytics that are key to an effective pandemic response; We’ve supported countries to maintain essential health services, including in humanitarian settings;

And through the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator and COVAX, we are poised for the largest vaccination campaign in history. Vaccines are the shot in the arm we all need, literally and metaphorically.

But we must also remember that vaccines will complement, not replace, the proven public health measures that countries around the world have used successfully to prevent and contain widespread transmission.

As governments, institutions and individuals, we all have a role to play in stopping this pandemic with the tools we have. The pandemic will subside, but the inequalities that preceded it will still be there.

There’s no vaccine for climate change, poverty or malnutrition. None of these challenges can be met by a single agency. Let me outline three areas in which the partnership between WHO and UNICEF, bilaterally and through the Global Action Plan on Health and Well-Being for All, must become even deeper and stronger as we work together to support countries to respond, recover and rebuild.

First, as we support countries to respond to the pandemic, we must ensure that all people and communities enjoy equitable access to life-saving vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics – rich and poor, urban and rural, citizen and refugee.

A year ago, we were defenceless against this virus. Now we can detect it with rapid diagnostic tests, we can treat it with dexamethasone and oxygen, and we can prevent it with vaccines. The urgency, ambition and resources with which vaccines have been developed must be matched by the same urgency, ambition and resources to distribute them fairly.

UNICEF has played a vital role in procuring vaccines and preparing countries to deploy them rapidly once they receive them. Together, we have supported 124 countries to perform readiness assessments for vaccination.

But we face significant challenges. More than 130 million doses of vaccine have now been deployed globally, but 75% of them have been in only ten countries that account for 60% of global GDP.

Meanwhile, almost 130 countries, with 2.5 billion people, have yet to administer a single dose. Many of these countries are also struggling to secure the resources for testing, personal protective equipment, oxygen, and medicines.

I have issued a call to action to ensure that by World Health Day on the 7th of April, vaccination of health workers is underway in all countries. UNICEF can play a key role in meeting that challenge. As a trusted advocate, you can use your voice and experience in communities to build acceptance of vaccines;

You can deploy your unparalleled logistics and supply capacities to deliver vaccines to the last mile; You can negotiate the best deals for the communities you serve; And you can mobilize your networks of National Committees to resource this historic effort to save lives and livelihoods.

Second, as we support countries to recover from the pandemic, we must support them to maintain essential health services, including routine immunization for children. The pandemic has shown that we can only meet the major crises of our time with a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach.

In the same way, the challenges of child development can only be met with a multi-sectoral approach that addresses their access to services, their mental health and well-being, their nutrition, their risk factors for developing NCDs later in life, their educational outcomes, their chances on employment, and their need to be protected from violence.

And third, as we support countries to rebuild from the pandemic, we must invest in primary health care. The pandemic has given us a brutal reminder of the importance of primary health care, as the eyes and ears of every health system, and the foundation of universal health coverage.

Ultimately, our fight is not against a single virus. Our fight is against the inequalities that leave children in some countries exposed to deadly diseases that are easily prevented in others; Our fight is against the inequalities that mean women and their babies die during childbirth in some countries because of complications that are easily prevented in others;

And our fight is to ensure that health is no longer a commodity or a luxury item, but a fundamental human right, and the foundation of the safer, fairer and more sustainable world we all want.

History will not judge us solely by how we ended the COVID-19 pandemic, but what we learned, what we changed, and the future we left our children.

*WHO Director-General in his opening remarks before the UNICEF Executive Board

 

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The post COVID-19 Pandemic has Shown Humanity at its Best– & at its Worst appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is Director-General of the World Health Organization*

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The rugged landscape of Tigray, Ethiopia’s most northern region, stretches away to the north and into Eritrea. The Tigray Region has been rocked by conflict since November 2020, when forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front clashed with federal soldiers over the autonomy of the region and the composition of the federal government. (File photo) Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

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

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has called for unimpeded access to all parts of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region, to locate an estimated 20,000 unaccounted for refugees and assess damage to its Hitsaats Camp which was looted and set alight in early January.

“3,000 of the refugees have been relocated or have been able to move themselves to camps in southern Tigray, but that leaves possibly as many as 20,000 completely unaccounted for and that’s the real problem. We don’t know where those people are,” Jeremy Taylor, NRC’s head of Advocacy, Media and Communications for East Africa and Yemen Region, told IPS. He added that according to satellite imagery, NRC believes that the camps were empty at the time of the looting and burning.

The NRC’s Shimelba and Hitsaats camps provided shelter and food for about 25,000 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers. The Tigray Region has been rocked by conflict since November 2020, when forces loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front clashed with federal soldiers over the autonomy of the region and the composition of the federal government. Recent satellite imagery received by the NRC shows the camp among buildings looted and burned between Jan. 5 and 8. A school and a health clinic were also damaged.

Operations at the NRC camps stopped in November, at the start of the conflict. The camps house education facilities including eight classrooms, child friendly spaces and Youth Education Pack Centre which provides instruction in literacy and life skills for children separated from their parents. The interruption in services to the displaced coincided with a blackout of the Tigray Region. Telecoms services were cut and roads were blocked.

The NRC has condemned the destruction of its buildings, stating that the “rampage of burning and looting by armed men deepens an already dire crisis for millions of people”. It has called on the government and donor nations to investigate the destruction and hold perpetrators to account.

Taylor said NRC employees fled to their villages and some later travelled to urban areas to send word about the dire situation in Tigray.

“For three months that region has been completely blocked off from the world. The reports that have trickled out speak to extensive violence, extensive conflict and extensive impact on civilians,” he said.

The NRC says three months since the start of the conflict, fighting and tough bureaucratic challenges are impending humanitarian access into Tigray and rendering independent verification of the fate of refugees and facilities impossible.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Feb. 6 that it had struck an access deal with the Abiy Ahmed government that would boost transportation capacity and ensure strengthened partnership with the authorities to deliver humanitarian assistance into Tigray.

“WFP has also agreed to provide emergency food relief assistance to up to 1 million people in Tigray and launch a blanket supplementary feeding intervention to assist up to 875,000 nutritionally vulnerable children and pregnant and lactating mothers,” the statement added.

In Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) says that for three months Ethiopia’s Tigray Region has been completely blocked off from the world. The reports that have trickled out speak to extensive violence, extensive conflict and extensive impact on civilians, the humanitarian agency says. (File photo) Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Acknowledging that the food and nutrition security situation is “especially challenging,” the WFP called for “strong partnership between the government and the entire humanitarian community” to quickly heighten response to the humanitarian needs. The NRC says, a good start would be unfettered access to the area for aid agencies.

“Some aid has got in, but it is a trickle of it. It has been patchwork and it has only reached certain parts of the Region – mostly main towns and main roads controlled by the government. It is not being sustained,” said Taylor.

The NRC has welcomed the WFP’s statement, but says while it is indicative of progress, some major challenges remain.

“Until we are able to access all parts of Tigray, until we are able to access the areas where the camps were we just will not be able to know what happened to them and we will not know the full extent of the damage to our facilities because satellite imagery can only show so much,” said Taylor.

The NRC says for Tigray, a response that aligns with the scale and breadth of the crisis has not started. Taylor says humanitarian aid work would require an assessment to people’s location and their needs. For now, the NRC is not able to do that.

“What is needed is complete access to all parts of the region to bring in supplies and people. The real issue here is what happened to the people and that is our main concern.”

Related Articles

• Q & A: Escalating Tensions in Ethiopia adds to Tenuous Refugee Setting

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Healthier food options are relatively expensive and unaffordable in low- and middle-income countries. This influences people to steer away from healthier options. . Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By External Source
Feb 10 2021 (IPS)

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on people with obesity and noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes. The pandemic has underlined the importance of the food environment and healthy food intake. It has shown the urgent need for effective policies to make sure that everyone can get enough nutritious food – and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

In Africa, nearly 70% of diabetes cases are undiagnosed. Of these, 90% are type 2 diabetes cases. Obesity is a key risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes. Between 1975 and 2016, southern Africa saw the world’s highest proportional increase in child and adolescent obesity – an alarming 400% per decade.

Ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks contribute to rising rates of obesity and diet-related diseases. Unhealthy, processed foods are now frequently consumed in low- and middle-income countries. This is largely due to the low prices, food types, availability and marketing strategies employed by large corporations.

A shift in the food system is urgently required. Interventions to achieve this must include policies that promote healthier food choices. These include imposing taxes on food that is high in sugar, salt or saturated fat (unhealthy fat); regulating food labels; and restricting marketing of unhealthy products. Policies must also support people in making healthier food choices, for example through subsidies

Healthier food options are relatively expensive and unaffordable in low- and middle-income countries. This influences people to steer away from healthier options. Companies market these convenient, palatable, yet unhealthy foods aggressively, and aim their marketing at children. It’s not always possible to choose healthier products, especially in rural areas.

Supplying ultra-processed products is very profitable for the companies concerned. These products have low production input requirements, a high retail value and an extended shelf life. Often the responsibility for preventing noncommunicable disease is put on individuals. But the corporate food industry creates a food environment that gives rise to obesity.

COVID-19 has brought new urgency to the need to repair food systems that put profits before public health.

A recent report by the organisation Global Health Advocacy Incubator highlights how food and beverage corporations used the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to promote their ultra-processed foods to vulnerable populations around the world.

The report includes over 280 examples from 18 countries of the food industry undermining healthy food policy efforts. This was done through lobbying to classify (unhealthy) ultra-processed foodstuffs as “essential products” during the pandemic.

They also improved their brand image through providing financial and other support to needy communities, frontline workers, food banks, and small businesses while still marketing unhealthy products and pushing against healthy food policies.

A shift in the food systems is urgently required. Interventions to achieve this must include policies that promote healthier food choices. These include imposing taxes on food that is high in sugar, salt or saturated fat (unhealthy fat); regulating food labels; and restricting marketing of unhealthy products. Policies must also support people in making healthier food choices, for example through subsidies.

 

Healthy food policies to consider

Globally, there has been a push for healthy food policies to curb the obesity pandemic. African countries have been slow to adopt policies like these.

But South Africa introduced a Health Promotion Levy in 2018. It aims to give manufacturers an incentive to reduce the sugar content of drinks. It also seeks to discourage excessive consumption by increasing the price of these products. Mexico imposed a tax on sugar sweetened drinks in 2014.

This has resulted in a 6% reduction in purchases of sugary drinks and replacement with untaxed beverages (predominantly plain water) – specifically among lower income households who likely have poorer health outcomes.

The implementation of the tax is an acknowledgement that corporates have manufactured conditions that cultivate malconsumption resulting in poor nutrition and noncommunicable disease.

Governments should also introduce labelling that helps consumers to identify food with high quantities of salt, saturated fat or sugar. Chile introduced a set of linked policies, including warning labels and marketing controls. The result was that companies reformulated products to improve their health profiles.

But taxes and labelling interventions won’t be enough to stem the tide of obesity and noncommunicable diseases. Food policies must also make healthy food more accessible.

Subsidies can lower the price of healthy foods. This will help put healthy food within reach of poorer people. Prices can be changed through a combination of taxes on unhealthy products and subsidies on healthier alternatives.

In Finland, a subsidy of milk protein rather than milk fat resulted in more consumption of low fat milk and a reduction of cardiovascular diseases over time. A fruit and vegetable subsidy in the US Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children led to increased – and sustained – fruit and vegetable intake.

 

The way forward

The best policies are those that create positive changes in the food, social and information environments. A policy cannot be adopted in isolation; for the biggest impact they need to be part of a set of mutually reinforcing and supporting actions. Chile is one country that has taken steps like this to create an enabling environment.

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa should regulate the food industry better to protect against industry interference that harms the population. Policies that restrict marketing to children, provide clear labelling and tax unhealthy foodstuffs should be the start. The revenue raised from these taxes could be used to subsidise the cost of healthy foods.

Rina Swart, Professor, University of the Western Cape; Makoma Bopape, Lecturer in Department of Human Nutrition and Dietetic, University of Limpopo, and Tamryn Frank, Researcher, University of the Western Cape

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

The post Food Systems Need to Change to Promote Healthy Choices and Combat Obesity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Feb 10 2021 (IPS-Partners)

“As we enter 2021, education must be at the core of pandemic response and recovery efforts,” says António Gutteres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, in his interview with Education Cannot Wait (ECW) for this monthly issue, reminding us that “upholding our pledge to leave no one behind starts with education.”

Yasmine Sherif

Indeed, without making inclusive, quality education a priority in the COVID-19 response and recovery for those left furthest behind in armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters, we will see a continued exacerbation of inequalities and a deepened global learning crisis, all while ongoing forced displacement and migration lead to an unprecedented number of children and youth losing access to their inherent human right of an education.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further impacted the marginalization of girls and boys in contexts already affected by crisis, while wealthier children in stable countries have more easily been able to sustain their learning using remote technologies. However, today, a staggering 2.2 billion children globally, or 2/3 of children and youth under the age of 25, do not have access to internet at home, preventing them from accessing online learning during school closures. Today, only 6% of children in low-income countries have access to internet at home compared to 87% in high income countries, while only 5% of children and young people in West and Central Africa have access to internet compared to 33% globally. These figures reveal the stark reality of the huge digital divide in a long-standing learning crisis.

As a result of COVID-19, the learning crisis is now plunging to new depths. During our ECW mission to Burkina Faso in January 2021, we stood face to face with the naked reality of this learning crisis: teachers without the technology and internet access needed, alongside internally displaced and refugee children and youth with no possibility to access remote learning. Their eyes hollow, their hope fading away.

“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else,” Leonardo da Vinci once said. Education sits at the very heart of all Sustainable Development Goals. Without an inclusive quality education, the world will also drift further away from achieving gender equality, ending poverty, ensuring decent work and economic growth, and from achieving peace, justice and strong institutions – in both conflict- and crisis-affected countries that need it the most to build back better.

In 2016, well before COVID-19, over 600 million girls and boys, including adolescents, were estimated to not be reaching minimum proficiency levels in reading and math. Pre-COVID-19, an estimated 53% of girls and boys in low- and middle-income countries could not read proficiently by age 10. Today, these figures are growing as countries in crisis are falling into the dark abyss of abandonment by the international community – unless it makes bold and morally courageous moves to show unprecedented solidarity and humanity.

The intensification of armed conflicts and climate-induced disasters, forced displacement and migration will deprive millions of children and youth from accessing their right to a quality education. There were 18.8 million climate-related displacements in 2017. The combined and related effects of climate change and conflict are now causing unprecedented rates of displacement. Before COVID-19, refugee children were already twice as likely to be out of school than non-refugee children. Only 31% of refugee children were enrolled at the secondary level, and just 27% of girls.

“Without resolute political commitment by global leaders, as well as additional resources for Education Cannot Wait, and its UN and civil society partners, millions of girls and boys may never return to school. Investing in the education of these vulnerable children and youth is an investment in peace, prosperity and resilience for generations to come – and a priority for the United Nations,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told Education Cannot Wait in his interview for this newsletter.

Education Cannot Wait, and its UN and civil society partners are investing in their education and we do so together with host governments, local communities, strategic donors, UN and civil society partners and the private sector. In just four years since ECW’s creation, nearly 4 million children have received quality education in some of the most violent wars and most challenging refugee and forced displacement contexts, while another 10 million children benefited from our rapid response to provide remote learning as a result of COVID-19 in 2020.

However, with more funding many more crisis-affected children and youth can be reached. Our biggest challenge is the availability of funds to deliver on the ground through the well-established coordination structure of the United Nations that enables host-governments, local communities, UN agencies and civil society to efficiently mobilize and expand their operations.

It is precisely this coordination structure and collaborative togetherness that have enabled Education Cannot Wait to operate with humanitarian speed in delivering quality, inclusive education across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus through the ‘whole of child-approach’, while giving due consideration to crucial crisis-related factors, such as mental-health and psycho-social services, protection, reaching 60% girls in ECW joint programming and paying special attention to children with disabilities and other marginalized children and youth in emergencies and protracted crisis.

By working through the United Nations’ established coordination structure on both the humanitarian and development sides and bringing these together with our strategic donors, Education Cannot Wait’s investments are implemented through coordination, collaboration and joint programming, wherein each actor contributes with their added value to collective outcomes. In doing so, the New Way of Working is put in action and contributes to real learning outcomes, while reinforcing the Grand Bargain, as local communities are empowered along with national government ministries.

A catalyst and facilitator, the Education Cannot Wait Global Fund offers an example of a rapidly growing and results-driven UN entity (hosted by UNICEF), that has reduced bureaucracy to strengthen accountability in support of multilateral and national efforts under the UN umbrella, where all dots are connected – coming together in a powerful commitment for those left furthest behind.

When realizing that we are ‘stronger together,’ we also become worthy of bringing hope and delivering immediate and sustainable results – or, as the UN Secretary-General António Gutteres concludes his interview with Education Cannot Wait: “We can move from an ‘annus horribilis’ to make 2021 an ‘annus possibilitatis’ – a year of possibility and hope. We must make it happen – together.”

 

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The post We Must Make It Happen – Together! appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

The post We Must Make It Happen – Together! appeared first on Inter Press Service.

For a long time – and too long for the North Korean government – the issue of North Korea and its nuclear programme has been pushed into the background on the international stage. With the swearing-in of Joe Biden as president, however, it will be on the agenda sooner or later. Credit: UN photo

By Herbert Wulf
DUISBURG, Germany, Feb 10 2021 (IPS)

How long can Kim Jong-un wait patiently? After a euphoric start, the Trump administration ultimately proved to be a bitter disappointment for the North Korean regime.

During the meetings between Trump and Kim Jong-un, there was grandiose talk of an imminent deal to de-nuclearize the Korean peninsula. In the negotiations that followed, it quickly became apparent that the two heads of state had simply brushed over the practical problems and fundamental differences of the American-North Korean rapprochement.

For at least two years since then, there has been radio silence. After four years of erratic policy, Pyongyang is waiting to see what the Biden government’s position will be on North Korea. But it cannot expect to receive a quick answer from Washington.

While Biden has years of foreign policy experience, his administration’s first priorities are domestic: dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, the devastating economic slump, deep social divisions, the fight against racism and the consequences of the Capitol riot on 6 January.

It is therefore not unlikely that North Korea – in a manner we’ve seen in the past – will provocatively launch missiles and test nuclear warheads, continue to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, spark conflict at the inner-Korean border and insult politicians in Seoul and Washington.

With such actions teetering at the brink, the North Korean government has often tried to attract international attention – with the aim of overcoming the economically damaging isolation of the country and easing the sanctions that have been imposed.

Three approaches to North Korea

For a long time – and too long for the North Korean government – the issue of North Korea and its nuclear programme has been pushed into the background on the international stage. With the swearing-in of Joe Biden as president, however, it will be on the agenda sooner or later.

Herbert Wulf

It is not yet clear how the new US administration will act. Observers are speculating about three different, in some cases mutually exclusive, approaches that the Biden administration could use to address the instability and danger posed by North Korea.

First, the denuclearization paradigm: its advocates argue that North Korea must make preliminary efforts – that is, scale back or at least freeze parts of its nuclear and missile programme – before negotiations can be conducted and sanctions can be eased or lifted.

In the long term, the goal is complete nuclear disarmament. Maintaining pressure and coercive measures, then, is absolutely necessary to persuade the North Korean government to adopt such a policy.

At the same time, this thinking also emphasises military cooperation with American allies South Korea and Japan. In the past, however, maximalist positions have not been able to divert North Korea from its course – not least because China and Russia in particular have only half-heartedly supported the isolation of North Korea.

In North Korea, unrest and impatience are on the rise. The Kim regime no longer wants to be treated as an international pariah.

The second approach provides for gradual nuclear disarmament with a simultaneous easing of economic sanctions. This paradigm reflects that the North Korean regime views its nuclear programme as life insurance and is unwilling to take preliminary steps in arms control or disarmament.

It acknowledges, but does not accept, that North Korea makes policy by means of nuclear weapons. At the heart of this second strategy are reciprocity and simultaneity. Measures would need to be taken to freeze certain nuclear facilities in North Korea while providing humanitarian or economic assistance from the US and other countries, as envisioned in the June 2018 meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore and the February 2019 meeting in Hanoi.

As we know, the second summit in Hanoi was broken off prematurely because of irreconcilable differences. But that does not mean that such a strategy is doomed to fail from the outset.

According to its proponents, a process that is gradually set in motion would be mutually beneficial and would initiate a process of détente step by step. If appropriate confidence-building measures take effect, the tricky situation in Korea could be resolved, as was the case between the East and West in Europe in the 1980s.

The third possible variant is based on maintaining strategic stability – being patient in the name of stability and not to tamper with existing conditions. To put it in a less positive way: ‘Wait and see while doing nothing.’

This was the policy followed by the Obama administration. At the same time, the US attempted to build up international pressure. However, during the eight years of Obama, North Korea succeeded in expanding and modernizing its missile and nuclear programme.

The risks of Biden’s ‘wait and see’ approach

It is not unlikely that the Biden government will again adopt this paradigm. As Vice President, Biden supported this North Korea policy. For the new administration, this would have the advantage of not having to decide on a new policy model – at least initially, as the policy of waiting and doing nothing has implicitly continued for the past two years.

No serious negotiations have since taken place. An additional advantage for Biden would be that he would not have to immediately act in all of the crucial political areas at the same time, and this would allow him to pursue his domestic political priorities.

The big disadvantage, however – as past experience shows – is that the North Korean government will presumably not stand by idly. In all likelihood, it will push forward its missile and nuclear programme with all available means. Relying on its own military means –nuclear weapons first and foremost – is a high priority for the regime.

In North Korea, unrest and impatience are on the rise. The Kim regime no longer wants to be treated as an international pariah. It has only now publicly acknowledged the need for economic reform.

Effective reforms will require an end to isolation and at least an easing of sanctions. Negotiating on an equal footing with Donald Trump was an important symbolic act for Kim Jong-un at the time. It was celebrated accordingly in Pyongyang, even if it ultimately did not lead to the desired change in foreign policy relations.

There is reason to fear that for now, North Korea will not be a top priority in Washington’s foreign policy, nor will negotiations that pursue a strategy of gradual disarmament and rapprochement. Meanwhile, Pyongyang may begin to lose patience. But further missile launches and nuclear tests would spoil the chances for a long-term North Korean policy for the US.

 

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Excerpt:

Herbert Wulf was Director of the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), from its beginning in 1994 until 2001. He is currently a Senior Fellow at BICC and an Adjunct Senior Researcher at the Institute for Development and Peace, University of Duisburg/Essen where he was previously a Deputy Director.

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This year marks South Sudan's tenth independence anniversary (file photo). A new report by the International Crisis Group says that in order to ensure lasting peace the country needs wider power-sharing and decentralisation of government. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Feb 10 2021 (IPS)

The threat of a full-blown civil war in South Sudan remains unless the country’s leaders can broaden power sharing, warns a new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) released almost year into the country’s formation of a government of national unity.

The report titled “Toward a Viable Future for South Sudan” formulates a stark conclusion. Almost a decade after its 2011 independence from Sudan, “South Sudan – the world’s newest country – needs a reset, if not a redo.”

“Our argument is that South Sudan is so fragile and faces so many challenges and is so diverse that we think the only way to govern South Sudan peacefully is through radical consensus as a form of power sharing and government,” Alan Boswell, ICG’s Senior Analyst for South Sudan and one of the authors of the report, told IPS.

The report urged South Sudanese elite, religious leaders and civil society to rethink the country’s system of governance and create a political system that would work for one of Africa’s most diverse nations with more than 60 different ethnic groups.

Upcoming elections, which could possibly be set for 2022, as well as the country’s “winner-take-all” political system which “ill suits a country that requires consensus among major blocs to avert cyclical power struggles,” could inflame tensions, said the report released today, Feb. 10.

“Incentives for post-election violence will be acute. South Sudan’s highly centralised power structure and political economy raises the election’s stakes, since there are limited consolation prizes especially if [President Salva] Kiir continues to flout the constitution by refusing to devolve oil revenues and removing powerful governors by decree,” the report said. South Sudan has the third-largest oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa, which generates the majority of the government’s wealth.

South Sudan gained independent after Africa’s longest civil war, which lasted from 1956 to 1972 and then again from 1983 to independence. But two years later, in 2013, the nation descended into civil war after  Kiir fired his cabinet and accused his vice president, Riek Machar, of being behind a plot to oust him.

Majoritarian democracy proved itself to not be a successful model for South Sudan.

“We make the argument that although South Sudan has structured itself along with many other states around the world as a majoritarian democracy, where in theory they go to polls and whoever the majority picks rules. That in practice in South Sudan’s context is likely a recipe for many groups feeling shut out of power, and a recipe for the ongoing power struggles that have already killed 100,000s of South Sudanese,” Boswell said.

In September 2018, all sides signed the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS), which included a power sharing agreement. The government of national unity was formed almost a year ago, at the end of February 2020, as part of the conditions of the agreement.

Boswell urged South Sudanese elites and the country’s external partners to support the country and “go back to the drawing board” and think “how they create the political system that works for them rather than copying political systems from other places that might not be as appropriate.”

Boswell said in order to prevent more conflict, the ICG called for pre- and post-election power sharing. “In order to prevent more conflict South Sudan really needs a very broad, inclusive power sharing before, during and after the vote. What you don’t want is a situation where the election is seen as a path by the one party to defeat another party,” Boswell said.

The report cited examples of rotational power sharing that could “encourage multi-ethnic alliances or mean losers of elections feel they have a shot at the presidency next time around,” the report stated.

For example, Nigeria — where through informal agreement the country rotates its presidency between the Muslim north and the Christian south; and Tanzania — where the presidency is rotated between a Muslim and Christian every decade.

Additional recommendations included, among others:

• Setting aside prominent positions in the national government for electoral runners-up as a way of guaranteeing them positions of influence to prevent them from taking up arms.
• Having regional leaders broker pre-election dialogue, to extract assurances from losing parties in order to lower the stakes as well as guaranteeing in advance another broad-based unity government.
• A system where power can be shared more equitably at the centre.
• Agree to designate the first vice president position, for the presidential runner-up, while allocating at least one other vice presidential position to the next most successful contestant.

More than four million South Sudanese have been displaced across the region and within their own country in one of Africa’s largest displacement crises (file photo). Credit: Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin/IPS

Life for South Sudanese remains a harsh reality of food insecurity and continued conflict.

Last September, Yasmin Sooka Chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said in a statement that the implementation of key areas of the revitalised agreement had stalled. “While the COVID-19 pandemic can take some of the blame, the lack of progress poses a threat to the peace process,” she said, noting the the escalation in violence in Central Equatoria, Jonglei, Lakes, Unity, Western Bahr el-Ghazal, and Warrap States, and the Greater Pibor Administrative Area.

“A breakdown in the ceasefire with armed groups in the Equatorias has fuelled the violence and already displaced thousands of South Sudanese civilians,” she said in a statement to the Human Rights Commission.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), “more than four million South Sudanese have been displaced across the region and within their own country in one of Africa’s largest displacement crises”. Of the four million displaced, UNHCR notes that there are almost 2,3 million refugees and asylum seekers, with the largest number in Uganda (over 890,000), followed closely by Sudan (736,700), followed by Ethiopia, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Last December, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that almost half — 5.8 million — of the country’s 11 million people were acutely food insecure. “In 2020, communities were hit hard by the triple shock of intensified conflict and sub-national violence, a second consecutive year of major flooding, and the impacts of COVID-19. Some 1.6 million people remained internally displaced and another 2.2 million as refugees in the region,” OCHA said in its 2021 Humanitarian Needs Overview for South Sudan.

Meanwhile, the ICG report also noted that development partners, fatigued by years of conflict resolution had “no clear plan for finding peace, despite the substantial sums still devoted to humanitarian aid.”

There was also widespread cynicism among donors, Boswell said. “They have lost any vision of what a peaceful South Sudan could look like and how to help get it there,” he said.

He cautioned this was not very sustainable.

“If there is not a vision or a plan that both South Sudanese and both donors can look upon and push towards where the country is heading and what a peaceful situation looks like then we fear that donors would gradually, as they have been, pull more and more out of South Sudan and start doing the bare minimum of just keeping people alive,” Boswell said.

South Sudanese have lost a lot of hope in their country, because they have lost faith in their leaders after seeing them act in ways that are clearly selfish, Boswell said.

One example of this is the large-scale corruption within the country.

According to Transparency International, in 2012 Kiir accused at least 75 government and ex-government officials of embezzling $4 billion of public funds and in a public statement urged for the money to be returned. Only $60 million was reportedly returned to a bank account in Kenya.

Last September, during her statement to the Human Rights Commission, Sooka cautioned that “lives are being destroyed by financial corruption on an epic scale” in South Sudan.

She referred to a recent report to parliament by South Sudan’s National Revenue Authority that had shown “that approximately $300 million have been “lost” in the last three months alone”.

“At one end of the spectrum, South Sudan’s political elites are fighting for control of the country’s oil and mineral resources, in the process stealing their people’s future. At the other, the soldiers in this conflict over resources are offered the chance to abduct and rape women in lieu of salaries,” Sooka had said.

Despite the challenges faced by South Sudan, the country’s diversity remains a strength.

“Europe is not necessarily weaker, in fact a lot of people argue that they are in fact stronger, because of their diversity … So our point is that South Sudanese need to look at what they are constituent-wise and the elites — if they are serious about building their country and not just looting its resources — should think about how to forge a settlement that works for its parts,” Boswell told IPS.

 

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The work crunch due to COVID-19 has put pressure on labour rights, with workers having to do as their companies demand, or lose their jobs. Picture courtesy: Flickr.

By Aaditeshwar Seth
NEW DELHI, Feb 9 2021 (IPS)

As the Indian economy officially heads into a recession and news of layoffs and unemployment reaches us with increasing frequency, we at Gram Vaani turned to workers to hear their side of the story. Industrial sector workers, largely engaged in the automotive and garments factories in the Gurgaon-Manesar belt, spoke to us about the turn that their lives have taken due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Most of them—being migrant workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh—were forced to return to their homes during the lockdown under distressing circumstances. Having remained out of work for several months, they ultimately had no choice but to come back.

The media reported companies sending chartered buses and paying for flight tickets to bring their workers back when the lockdown was eased. It briefly seemed that workers would finally be in a valued position, now that companies were honouring their worth.

However, increasingly, workers have reported that the opposite is happening, with exploitation and inequality getting institutionalised.

 

Post-lockdown working conditions look bleak

Of the 372 migrant workers we surveyed during October-November 2020, through our voice-based community media platform Saajha Manch, 60 percent reported that they were out of work. Of the remaining, 65 percent reported that they were getting only erratic work, for hardly three to four days in a week. Companies have no new orders, our volunteers told us, and are shutting down one branch after the next.

Due to this work crunch in both the automotive and the garments sectors, there is pressure on workers to do as the company says, else forsake their jobs. More than 50 percent workers reported that their workload has increased tremendously

Up until August 2020, it seemed that companies needed workers desperately to complete their pending orders. Not enough work is available now, and companies ask the workers to go on leave for a few days, then give another day of work. Anil, a worker who returned to Gurgaon from his village around this time says he has been walking from company to company, looking for work. “Just another few days,” he says, “If I don’t find anything then I will go back.”

Due to this work crunch in both the automotive and the garments sectors, there is pressure on workers to do as the company says, else forsake their jobs. More than 50 percent workers reported that their workload has increased tremendously.

Working hours have increased as well, but most workers in the automotive sector are only paid for overtime at the regular wage rate. Conditions in the garments sector are worse, where 37 percent of workers reported that they worked longer hours, but were only paid for their regular eight hours. “If you don’t like it then you can leave, is what the employers tell us,” they reported.

Employers are said to also use other means to hold workers back, such as withholding their pending wages, or threatening to block their Provident Fund (PF) withdrawals. Whether this is happening because companies are struggling to meet their bottom lines, or because they are using this opportunity to increase their margins, it is the workers who are suffering.

There has also been a strong shift to piece-rate work and of outsourcing to local fabricators. A seasoned worker, Harsh explained that companies prefer to outsource now (without bothering to do quality checks), as it helps them save on overheads, forsake giving Diwali bonuses to workers, and meet social security compliances.

Fabricators engage workers on a piece-rate basis and pay in cash. Workers prefer this these days, so that they can get immediate cash in hand and do not have to contribute part of their wages to mandatory social security systems such as the PF.

Piece-rates have also reduced. Earlier, workers were paid INR 10 per piece but now they are only paid INR 8. A worker from Bihar, currently in Ahmedabad, explained that they are not able to protest because they have no bargaining power—once they arrive in the cities they have to agree to whatever work they get because they have rent to pay.

 

Social security is elusive

Without enough income opportunities available back home either, many workers have wanted to withdraw funds from their PF. The government announced during the lockdown that workers could withdraw up to 75 percent of their PF, or three months of wages, whichever is lower, from their accounts.

By the end of August, a massive amount of INR 39,400 crores had been withdrawn, with 79 percent of the PF contributors having incomes below INR 15,000 per month. However, we found that this is really an underestimate. Of the workers we surveyed who were out of work, 53 percent wanted to withdraw their PF but failed, and another 30 percent either did not have PF or were not aware that they had an account.

Even among those who had managed to find some kind of work, 35 percent were unable to withdraw funds. The reasons in almost every case were to do with broken systems and procedures.

Mehtab told our community manager, Varun, that he had not been able to withdraw anything because the spelling of his name on the PF account did not match his name on his Aadhaar card. With Akbar, there was a mismatch in his date of joining.

Workers also told us that at times, the HR in many companies are also complicit, deliberately making mistakes and then charging a commission to fix them. Staff at the PF office are not cooperative either, people said. They are made to visit again and again while foregoing their wages, or are asked to fill forms online even though many workers are not tech savvy or literate enough.

Consequently, PF shops run by agents have proliferated to help workers navigate the system, but complaints of fraud are also regularly heard about them. Currently, PF has an unclaimed balance of INR 42,000 crores and an social audit is needed to explain this, given the difficulties that workers face in being able to claim their PF.

Saddled with these issues in not being able to access money which is theirs, most workers naturally perceive PF to be a burden, as reported in a 2016 study by Nagaparaju and Sharma from IIM Indore. Seventy percent of workers prefer receiving cash instead of contributing part of their salary to PF, it found.

They do not foresee themselves utilising these funds in their old-age, especially in the current circumstances. Many prefer to work on piece-rate where they can decline having to make PF contributions. This is not ideal, as acknowledged by Shanti, working in Tiruppur, since regular salaried employment, where wages come directly to their bank accounts, helps them build a good credit score to avail loans.

According to labour rights expert Professor KR Shyam Sundar, other than issues with providing reliable social security, India has not been strong on giving unemployment benefits to workers either. This continued with the announcement of an unemployment allowance for Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) holders. Like PF, ESI is a mandatory social security scheme that both employers and employees contribute to—primarily for health insurance benefits.

The allowance announced as part of the scheme is however riddled with unrealistic conditions that makes it almost non-applicable: The workers should have been in insurable employment since at least two years, and should have contributed for 78 days in the period preceding unemployment. The first condition immediately brings down the eligible poor.

The second condition of 78 days is meant to restrict the eligibility to workers who had been working since at least three months before they lost their jobs, but companies are known to avoid regularisation of workers as a workaround to the law by laying them off at a steady frequency.

 

No chances of redress

With so much stacked against them, are any redressal avenues available to workers? Justice delivery for labour has only worsened over the years, with a growing number of pending cases. Additionally, many workers told us that they do not consider the laws to be of any use to them, neither the old ones, nor the new labour code that was recently passed.

A worker from Uttar Pradesh, Rajesh, says, “Laws were around even earlier but didn’t work, we had to walk back home and we will have to walk back again.” Another worker Prashant adds, “It is difficult for us to put documents together and take leave to go to the labour court, we can’t use the laws.”

Even if workers do go to the labour court, Manish reports that due to under-staffing at the office, workers have to stand in long lines with severe overcrowding to get their work done. To bring law closer to the workers, better functioning workplace committees, worker participation in management, and helplines and violation reporting through simple technological systems like Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is needed.

This is so that irrespective of whether anybody has a smartphone or internet access, they are able to get guidance on how to proceed without having to forego their wages in their search for justice.

 

So, is there any hope for labourers? 

Instead of trying to secure rights for workers, states such as Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh tried to suspend labour laws to spur recovery during the slowdown. Thankfully, more sense prevailed at the Supreme Court. But the new labour code, passed without any due deliberation, continues to be employer-sided and makes it harder for workers to seek redress and protest against injustice and exploitation.

The reason behind these changes in the labour code is not hard to understand. A neoliberal state strives to maintain a balance between keeping wages, working conditions, and social security at a bare minimum to avoid protest, but never high enough that it can give a strong bargaining power to workers and reduce the competitiveness for Indian companies in today’s globalised markets.

This has been apparent throughout the lockdown, where few benefits really reached workers. Social welfare such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) and cash transfers under schemes like PM-KISAN and Jan Dhan fell short as well. Fallback options, such as MGNREGA, that have the potential to retain migrant workers at their home locations and thereby strengthen the collective power of workers in the labour market, have been plagued with operational issues.

Serving as a basic floor wage, MGNREGA is known to have pushed higher wages for agricultural work in rural areas. Similarly, PDS is known to have led to a lowering of labour supply and consequently higher wages. In the current pandemic, a better functioning MGNREGA that paid higher wages could have led to a similar effect of securing higher wages in the cities by reducing the labour supply of migrant workers, but this has not come to pass. As a result, the workers had no option but to come back to work under even more exploitative conditions.

Consequently, the already frayed bonds between employers and workers are getting even weaker. The recent violence by workers at Wistron’s iPhone factory to protest against labour violations don’t come as a surprise. Workers are increasingly beginning to view their employers and contractors with suspicion, warning one another to take everything in writing, to first get their pending wages before agreeing to anything else, and share malpractice information with each other.

The need for workers to unite has been recognised by the workers too, with emerging solidarity between contract and permanent workers. But with the new laws being created to weaken the power of unions and collective action, it seems likely that we will see more spontaneous action by the workers to make themselves heard.

 

Aaditeshwar Seth is the co-founder of Gram Vaani

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

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Amidst post-election violence in the Central African Republic (CAR), more than 200,000 people have fled for their own safety, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said in January 2021. Conflict and violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) continue to be all too frequent across the country. Since 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has worked to curb the consequences of these clashes. Credit: UNHCR/Ghislaine Nentobo

By Bruce Biber
BANGUI, Central African Republic, Feb 9 2021 (IPS)

Last October, an ICRC medical team helped a woman deliver a baby boy in the bush on their way to a health center we support in Grévaï, a small town in the north-central region of CAR. On her way to the market, by foot, the woman went into labour and only by chance did not have to go through it alone, surviving along with her baby.

That same year, my colleagues at the main hospital in Nana-Grébizi prefecture surrounding the town of Kaga-Bandoro helped a young couple deliver triplets – a moment of joy but also one that made the father cry, concerned about how to feed his family of now seven children. Our team at the hospital’s nutritional unit, where we help treat malnourished children, already knew they would see the three baby boys again before long.

Our doctor there also told me about premature babies who had to be revived several times during their first days before their health eventually stabilised.

These stories are just a glimpse into what people here face every day when it comes to accessing basic goods and services, such as food and health care. These things cannot be taken for granted. The local health workers at the Kaga-Bandoro hospital and the nearby health centers in Grévaï and Ouandago are doing the best they can with the limited resources they have.

But the needs remain enormous and working conditions remain difficult due to insecurity, making it hard to recruit and retain personnel, allowing impunity and criminality to reign and hampering development of proper infrastructure.

The crisis in CAR is a neglected one, receiving little attention despite the humanitarian consequences it has triggered since the outbreak of civil war around 2013. More than half of the country’s 4.9 million inhabitants live in desperate need, making it one of the worst, but most poorly known, humanitarian crises in the world. Sporadic violence is pervasive.

Security conditions are volatile. Armed groups maintain a presence throughout the country, and acts of criminality, such as armed burglaries, are reportedly widespread. Communal tensions – related to resource competition between farming and pastural communities, for instance – give rise to violence.

It has been two years since the signature of the latest peace agreement in February 2019 between the government and 14 armed groups. These groups control some 70 percent of the country. And as CAR struggles with post-electoral violence, conflict, insecurity, and criminality, the compounding impact of climate change and COVID-19 are making a bad situation even worse.

For weeks now, the country has been experiencing a new period of violence between a coalition of six armed groups who have launched an offensive to disrupt the presidential elections and take the capital Bangui. Before this latest violent outbreak, one in four Central Africans had been forced to flee their homes – living on the streets, struggling for survival in the bush, or sheltering in displacement and refugee camps.

Some of them had started returning home, but this violent outbreak has made that impossible, forcing even more people to flee. Many people have had to abandon everything and start over several times in the last few years. Over years of crisis, many of our Central African colleagues at the ICRC have also been displaced, lost their homes and loved ones, and carry memories that will never fade. I truly hope they don’t have to go through that again.

The widespread violence in CAR continues to have a serious impact on people’s lives. Citizens’ homes and livelihoods, such as crops and livestock, have been looted or destroyed. Access to safe drinking water is difficult in many places due to insecurity or lack of proper water infrastructure. A mother I met lost her baby because of unsafe drinking water – another loss that could have been prevented. Not least, sexual violence related to this insecurity is underreported, affecting mostly women and girls who work in the fields, go fishing, search for firewood, or fetch water for their families.

Violence in general is frequent, leaving generations with physical and mental scars. In Nana-Grébizi, our mental health team works with displaced children who have experienced violence as well as with survivors of sexual violence. They try to help them learn to live with their trauma that is almost impossible to forget.

CAR also remains one of the most dangerous countries for humanitarians, making it difficult to access certain areas and communities, due to widespread instability, crime, and the range of armed groups. The more actors, the more difficult it is to build structured dialogue and to obtain reliable security guarantees.

During the rainy season, some areas are also unreachable by road for months, and transport infrastructure remains underdeveloped in many places. During the ongoing clashes last year, the ICRC’s office in Bouar, in the Nana-Mambéré prefecture in western CAR, was raided, forcing us to drastically reduce our activities in the region until security in the town could be restored. Such attacks only punish the local communities, depriving them of desperately needed help.

In the wake of the peace agreement, violence briefly declined in the country. However, since September 2019, this trend has reversed, with recent clashes only making it worse. For sustainable results, authorities and their partners should address insecurity and impunity in the long run.

Insecurity is a scourge that prevents Central Africans from helping themselves and moving forward with their lives. It hampers the ability of the ICRC and other organisations to assist in these efforts.

To curb the worst of the violence, and in support to the Central African authorities, the ICRC continues to engage with the Central African armed and security forces, armed groups, and international forces to raise awareness of their obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law.

The ICRC is also stepping up its support of the Kaga-Bandoro hospital and nearby health centers in Nana-Grébizi, alongside partners from CAR’s Ministry of Health and the World Bank. This complementarity between political, humanitarian, and development actors is key for the country to move towards peace, prosperity, and dignity. The people of CAR have paid the price of this crisis for too long.

This article is part of the “Forgotten Conflicts” series by the International Committee of the Red Cross in partnership with AIIA, highlighting the serious and often overlooked humanitarian consequences of armed conflicts and other situations of violence.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

 

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The post Forgotten Conflicts 2021: When Will the Crisis in the Central African Republic End? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Bruce Biber is Head of the ICRC Delegation in the Central African Republic.

The post Forgotten Conflicts 2021: When Will the Crisis in the Central African Republic End? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

When Palestine made history as Chair of the Group of 77 in 2019. The current chair is the Republic of Guinea. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 9 2021 (IPS)

When the 134-member Group of 77, the largest single coalition of developing countries, was trying to strike a hard bargain in its negotiations with Western nations years ago, one of its envoys famously declared: “You have the numbers. We have the money.”

But that implicit threat– signifying the power of the purse– did not deter the G77 from playing a key role in helping shape the UN’s socio-economic agenda, including sustainable development, environmental protection, universal health care, South-South cooperation, eradication of extreme poverty and hunger—all of them culminating largely in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 and targeted for a 2030 deadline.

The People’s Republic of China, the world’s second largest economy after the US, has remained an integral part– and a strong supporter– of the G77, going back to the historic 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.

At that summit meeting – which marked a battle between the West and the global South over funding to promote development while protecting the environment — a G77 delegate told his colleagues in a closed-door gathering: ”We have to confront them with an iron fist cloaked in a velvet glove.”

The G77’s strength in numbers—with over two-thirds of the UN’s 193-member states —provides it with an unparalleled political clout ranking ahead of the Non-Aligned Movement (with 120 members), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (57), the Asian Group (55), the African Group (54), the Latin American and Caribbean Group (33) the European Union (27) and the Eastern European Group (23).

https://www.un.org/dgacm/en/content/regional-groups

While the G77 focused on achieving sustainable development, NAM pursued the hard-core politics of the global South, including human rights, neo-colonialism, international security, military conflicts and UN peacekeeping.

Speaking from Beijing, Dr Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to China, told IPS that while many countries in the Western camp have tended to dismiss the G77 and China as irrelevant to contemporary economic/political developments, the Group has provided the platform for developing countries to make a profound input to contemporary global economic policy formulation.

In its heyday, he pointed out, the G77 and China contributed significantly to the development of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and the Law of the Sea regulatory framework.

“Today, the Law of the Sea Convention is considered to be the Constitution of the oceans and seas,” said Dr Kohona, a one-time Chief of the UN Treaty Section and a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

More recently, he noted, its influence on the Rio Process, the conventions on Climate Change, Biological Diversity, Hazardous Wastes, Ozone, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been seminal.

He said the G77’s influence on global policy development in these major areas of importance to humanity remain undiminished and cannot be underestimated.

“These global rules are now impacting on policy formulation in the Bretton Woods institutions as well”, he added.

The role played by individual intellectual giants from the developing world in highlighting the G77 and China needs to be acknowledged, he argued.

“Today China has assumed a lead role in addressing the challenge of climate change affecting the very survival of humanity,” he declared.

Mourad Ahmia, Executive Secretary of the G77, told IPS the integral role played by the Group in economic diplomacy and projecting the development interests of the global South is a testimony to its continued relevance in the ongoing global development dialogue.

When it was established on Jun. 15, 1964, the signing nations of the well-known “Joint Declaration of Seventy-Seven Countries” formed the largest intergovernmental organisation of developing countries in the United Nations to articulate and promote their collective interests and common development agenda.

Since the First Ministerial meeting of the G-77 held in Algeria in October 1967, and the adoption of the “Charter of Algiers”, he pointed out, the Group of 77 laid down the institutional mechanisms and structures that have contributed to shaping the international development agenda and changing the landscape of the global South.

Over the years, he said, the Group has gained an increasing role in the determination and conduct of international relations through global negotiations on major North-South and development issues.

The G-77 adheres to the principle that nations, big and small, deserve an equal voice in world affairs… Today the Group remains linked by common geography and shared history of struggle for liberation, freedom and South-South solidarity, said Ahmia.

The Group has a presence worldwide at U.N. centres in New York, Geneva, Nairobi, Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Washington D.C., and is actively involved in ongoing negotiations on a wide range of global issues including climate change, poverty eradication, migration, trade, and the law of the sea.

The G-77 remains the only viable and operational mechanism in multilateral economic diplomacy within the U.N system. The growing membership is proof of its enduring strength.

http://www.g77.org/doc/

Chakravarthi Raghavan, the former Chief Editor of the Geneva-based SUNS, told IPS since its founding in 1964, the G77 came into being, along with the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), as an organ of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and brought about several changes for the better in the international economic system.

With UNCTAD came the scope for “alternate view” to “liberal/neoliberal economics and Generalized System of Preferences (GSP schemes) – – “True, they are voluntary, not mandatory.”

The principle of non-reciprocity, and Special & Differential treatment in trade relations with developed countries (initially non-binding, Part IV of GATT-1947, but contractual for developing countries after 1994 Marrakesh Agreement for WTO) that the US now is trying to eliminate as part of its proposals for “WTO Reform”, said Raghavan a. former Editor-in-Chief of Press Trust of India,

The Jamaica accord (following the collapse of international money and finance system with (former US President Richard) Nixon’s repudiation of dollar-gold convertibility at $35 an ounce) – and Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

The G77 also created the concept of “development” as against the original IMF Bretton Woods concept of “Reconstruction and Development” for war-ravaged economies of Europe, said Raghavan, winner of the 1997 G77/UN Development Programme (UNDP) Award.

In the immediate post-war order, the major Industrialized countries decided on policy (with US holding a veto on most decisions) that others were forced to accept. Now there is at least an attempt at dialogue (from G7 to G20).

Initially, said Raghavan, the G77 concerned itself only with economic issues; the much earlier NAM dealt with political and security issues.

But gradually, individual G77 members, brought their political and security issues and alliances with Great Powers, to influence the G77 decision-making. This has resulted in weakening the G77 positions and influence in international economic matters, declared Raghavan.

The writer is a former editor of the Journal of the Group of 77

  

The post The West vs the Global South: You Have the Numbers. We Have the Money appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Feb 9 2021 (IPS)

Refusal to temporarily suspend several World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property (IP) provisions to enable much faster and broader progress in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic should be grounds for International Criminal Court prosecution for genocide.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Making life-saving vaccines, medicines and equipment available, freely or affordably, has been crucial for containing the spread of many infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, polio and smallpox.

Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine, insisted that it remain patent free. Asked who owned the patent 65 years ago, he replied, “The people I would say. There is no patent. You might as well ask, could you patent the sun?”

Intellectual property induced scarcity
However, cross-border enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRs) is relatively recent. The 1994 WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) greatly strengthened and extended IP transnationally. IPRs have effectively denied access to patented formulas and processes except to the highest bidders.

Recognising the extent of the pandemic threat, vaccine developers expect to be very profitable, thanks to national and transnational IP laws. Thus, IP has distorted research priorities and discouraged cooperation and knowledge sharing, so essential to progress.

As COVID-19 infections and deaths continue to rise alarmingly, rich countries are falling out among themselves, fighting for access to vaccine supplies, as IP profits take precedence over lives and livelihoods.

‘Vaccine nationalism’ involves cut-throat contests responding to scarcity due to limited output. Facing vaccine wars, multilateral arrangements, such as Covax, have not adequately addressed current challenges.

Vaccine nationalism has also meant that among the rich, the powerful – Trump’s US – came first. Consequently, most developing countries and most of their people will have to wait longer than necessary for vaccines, while the powerful and better off secure prior access, regardless of need or urgency.

Lethal combination
This lethal combination of IP and vaccine warfare is responsible for more avoidable losses of both lives and livelihoods. Developing nations, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, have been left far behind, even in most programmes for COVID-19 prevention, containment, treatment and vaccination.

Anis Chowdhury

The deadly duo are unnecessarily delaying the end of the pandemic, causing avoidable infections, deaths and related setbacks. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General (DG) Tedros warns “the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure…the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries”.

He advises that “the international community cannot allow a handful of companies to dictate the terms or the timeframe for ending the pandemic”; “vaccine nationalism combined with a restrictive approach to vaccine production is in fact more likely to prolong the pandemic … tantamount to medical malpractice on a global scale”.

While over 39 million vaccine doses had been given in 49 richer countries, only 25 doses had reached one poor country! At current rates, more than 85 poor countries will not have significant access before the end of 2023! In 70 lower income countries, only one in ten will be vaccinated.

Of the 7.2 billion confirmed sales of COVID-19 vaccine doses, 4.2 billion have gone to the wealthiest nations. With only 16% of the world’s population, high income countries have secured 60% of available doses. Meanwhile, the African Union has only procured 670 million for the continent’s 1.3 billion people.

Public health exception
Following strong advocacy led by South African President Mandela, a 2001 WTO Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health affirmed countries’ right to protect public health by enabling access to medicines, even without a health emergency.

Although TRIPS now allows such government public health efforts, developing countries remain constrained by compulsory licensing’s complex rules, procedures and conditions. Threats and inducements by transnational corporations and their governments limit its use.

Hence, use of compulsory licensing by developing countries has been largely limited to several more independent middle-income countries and HIV/AIDS medicines.

TRIPS waiver
The TRIPS waiver proposal to the WTO – led by South Africa and India – seeks temporary suspension of several TRIPS provisions to greatly scale up production of and access to COVID-19 vaccines, medicines and equipment to contain the contagion.

The Trump administration, the European Union (EU) and their allies have so far blocked the waiver proposal, although its measures are allowed by their own national laws. Some rich countries even increased such provisions with the pandemic.

South African TRIPS negotiator Mustaqeem Da Gama has debunked the waiver opponents’ claim that even if “approved tomorrow, there are no companies in the developing world that can produce any number of products relevant to COVID-19, including mRNA vaccines”.

In fact, the Serum Institute of India is acknowledged as the only facility in the world with the mass vaccine production capacity to rapidly greatly scale up output. Furthermore, 72 of the 154 vaccines ‘pre-qualified’ by the WHO are already being manufactured in developing countries.

Such production in developing countries is subject to very restrictive IP regulations and licensing agreements with stringent conditions. Hence, existing capacity in India, China, Brazil, Cuba, Thailand, Senegal and Indonesia, among others, remains underutilised, primarily due to such legal barriers.

IP main barrier
Despite growing support for the waiver, the proposal was rejected by the TRIPS Council on 4th February. The EU insists that IP will “ensure the publication and dissemination of research results, when otherwise they will remain secret”.

But everyone knows the IP system discourages, rather than encourages cooperation and sharing, both essential for accelerating progress. Although IP requires sharing research results, no vaccine developer has done so yet. Nonetheless, waiver opponents insist the system is working well.

Rich countries opposing the waiver have quietly, even secretly bought up vaccines. Even as the EU has lost vaccine wars despite furthering pharmaceutical company interests, it has claimed the moral high ground as a major Covax donor. The recent EU export authorisation scheme, restricting exports, is bound to trigger retaliatory restrictions by others.

Incredibly, rich countries opposed to the TRIPS waiver proposal, particularly the EU, now want WTO members to instead accept its trade and health initiative for further trade liberalisation and removal of export restrictions –to address a problem of its own making!

Biden can still lead
The Biden administration has shown renewed commitment to multilateralism by rejoining the WHO, but still needs to offer leadership beyond funding the ineffective Covax scheme and lifting Trump’s embargo on exports of vaccines, vital medicines and equipment.

One ‘people’s vaccine’ proposal involves sharing research results in return for public financing. This can affordably, quickly and greatly scale up generic production, enabling ‘vaccines for all’ in the world at little additional cost.

As rich country governments have already spent to accelerate vaccine development, they can make this happen. As vaccine developers do not expect to profit much from the poor, this will benefit many at little added expense.

Depriving and delaying vaccines for those with less means has to be seen for what it is. Such avoidable behaviour is, frankly, nothing less than genocidal, for causing many people to die needlessly for IP profit.

At the forthcoming 23 February TRIPS Council meeting, US President Biden can secure consensus support for the waiver proposal, thus providing the Rooseveltian leadership internationally that he seems to be emulating in the US.

 

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