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Masooma Ranalvi is the founder of WeSpeakOut and has campaigned to end FGM/C.

By Mariya Salim
NEW DELHI, India, Jan 28 2021 (IPS)

Survivors of female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C), are determined to share their stories to end this practice – even though they face ostracisation by their communities.

Masooma Ranalvi, an FGM/C survivor and founder of ‘WeSpeakOut’, an organisation committed to eliminating FGM/C or khafd/khafz/khatna explains that FGM/C is practised by various communities in India but is prominently practised among the Dawoodi Bohras.

However, speaking out against the harmful practice has not been easy for Ranalvi and the many others who have dared to relive their childhood memory of being ‘cut’ and share it with the world to end it some-day.

“There is a culture of fear around this issue, a culture of silence. Many do not speak out as there are social boycotts against who do – unofficially declared but carried out by the community,” says Ranalvi in an exclusive interview with IPS.

“Twenty years ago, even burial rights after death would be denied to those who dared to differ and economic sanctions against families who did not comply and spoke out,” says Ranalvi, who has been a leading voice in pushing for a legal and social end to FGM/C in India and across the globe.

According to a study conducted by ‘WeSpeakOut’, of the two million people who belong to India’s Bohra community and its diaspora, nearly 75%-80% of Bohra women are subject to FGM/C.

Ranalvi is also a petitioner in the legal action initiated in 2017 by lawyer Sunita Tiwari.

Tiwari filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court of India seeking a ban on FGM/C among the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim Community. This practice, which has been the community’s best-kept secret and practised by many others worldwide, is increasingly being spoken about, especially by the survivors.

Mariya Taher is the co-founder of Sahiyo an organisation aimed at ending FGM/C across the globe.

FGM/C involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia or other injuries to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Religion, culture, and tradition are often cited as motives for those practising it. There are about 92 countries where FGM/C is practised out of which 51 countries have expressly prohibited it under their national laws in some form or another.

In Asia, however, there is not a single country which has a law enacted to prohibit the harmful practice.

Based in the United States, Mariya Taher has co-founded Sahiyo, a non-profit working to end the practice globally and among the Bohra Community. She is a survivor and has been active passing state-level legislation in Massachusetts against it.

“It took five years to do so, but this past August 2020, we were able to pass a law. I am currently working with a group in Connecticut to pass a state law there. In the U.S., while we have a federal law, we also need state legislation, only 39 states have laws against FGM/C at this point,” Taher told IPS.

Aarefa Johari, journalist and co-founder of Sahiyo, adds that “enacting legislation against FGM/C has to be preceded by, accompanied and after that followed by intense and robust community activism at the grassroots level. It needs education, awareness and dialogue.”

Aarefa Johari is a journalist and co-founder of Sahiyo

A survivor, she believes that though “a law against FGM/C is vital as a deterrent and as a means of making the State’s stance on the practice clear, laws alone cannot bring an end to deep-rooted social norms.” This would require a long-term commitment and legal intervention to change the community’s mindset, Johari says.

Since many within the various communities use religion to justify the practice, it is important to note that there has been extensive research and writing around the issue by Islamic scholars and others, based on Quranic texts and Hadith (a collection of traditions containing sayings and actions of Prophet Muhammad) which discredit the practice as Un-Islamic.

Karamah, Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, in a study published on FGM/C, concludes that FGM/C is a harmful practice that lacks religious mandate.

“The Qur’an does not provide a single verse or instance in which female khitan (FGM/C) is mentioned as obligatory or desirable. Furthermore, contrary to general belief, there is no single authentic hadith of the Prophet that requires female khitan.”

Ten-year-old Munira’s (name changed) aunt held her hand and took her to the basement of her empty house one Sunday evening promising to play a game with her. Little did Munira know the prize of this game, where she was asked to lie on a table with her underpants down and her lips sealed by her aunt to prevent her screams being heard, would end in her being scarred for life. She was ‘cut’ by a member of her family. This memory resonates with most survivors of the practice.

“It is never easy for anyone who has experienced some form of gender-based violence to share their story … My process took years, and it involved me first learning about it, then writing about it. The first thing I ever wrote was for the imagining equality project,” Taher says.

“It took many years after that project for me to get comfortable to share it on camera or to be interviewed by the media about my experience. But even as I grew comfortable, I experienced multiple forms of backlash.”

The impact on her immediate community meant that some of her relatives stopped speaking to her.

“Our movement (to end FGM/C) itself has faced backlash both publicly and privately from the community – we are trolled a lot online, there are attempts to constantly discredit the stories of survivors and silence those who speak up,” says Johari.

The trolling has not stopped the campaign to end FGM/C.

“It is important to emphasise that this is a sign of the importance of our work, and we get as much (or more) positive support from community members as we get negative brickbats,” Johari adds.

Many women and some community members against FGM/C sadly choose to remain silent in the interest of the ‘larger cause’, given the Islamophobic climate that exists.

Taher says that it is difficult not to see the intersection of oppressions when working on FGM/C, Islamophobia, unfortunately, being one of them.

“Particularly with the false assumption that only Muslims practice FGM/C. FGM/C is global … occurs in every continent in the world except Antarctica. And where FGM/C does occur in Islamic communities, it is a very small minority,” Taher says.

“The truth is FGM/C is a social norm justified in all sorts of ways – religion, health, social status, marriageability, tradition, culture, etc. This social norm was started before the advent of Islam and Christianity – meaning it pre-dates those religions. Yet, in doing this work today, speaking out against Islamophobia as well as xenophobia is vital when working on FGM/C.”

Ranalvi said the decision to turn to legal action only happened when all else had failed.

“We knocked at the doors of the courts when all attempts at dialogue with the clergy and leadership within the community failed. The support of enacted laws and of institutional bodies to give power to our resistance and enable us to take control over our bodies and help end this violation, is imperative,” adds Ranalvi.

As the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation on February 6th nears, it can only be hoped that FGM/C, a widely prevalent but dark secret that violates women’s human rights and practised by various communities across the world, ends.

Mariya Salim is a fellow at IPS UN Bureau

 

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By Anya Anya Schiffrin - Hannah Clifford - Allynn McInerney - Kylie Tumiatti and Léa Allirajah
Jan 27 2021 (IPS)

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists everywhere are feeling the consequences; job cuts, layoffs and closures have swept the world.

Philanthropists, journalism organizations, economists and governments have come up with solutions to address this financial devastation, some calling for greater collaboration among these groups. In a new report from Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, “Saving Journalism: A Vision for the Post-Covid World,” we analyzed initiatives around the world that hope to save the industry.
Our research noted renewed interest in government and Big Tech funding news and an emphasis on preserving what exists rather than starting up new outlets that may not survive.

To make sense of the proposed solutions, we broke them up into four categories, established by Luminate foundation’s managing director Nishant Lalwani: getting Big Tech to help pay for news, government subsidies and other kinds of support, new business models and philanthropic funding. A few solutions are outlined below:

1) Getting Big Tech companies to pay for news

Many of the people we spoke with feel strongly that it’s time to get big tech companies to substantially support journalism and to get governments involved in making that happen.

One pathbreaking example is the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission’s new media code that would force Google and Facebook to pay for news. Introduced to parliament in December, the law would require the tech companies to pay for news they use and force them into binding arbitration if they cannot agree on a price.

The law would also require the tech companies to notify news outlets before they change algorithms that affect audience traffic. If passed the law would create a more balanced relationship between news organizations and the platforms. Germany, Spain and France have, in the past, all tried to use copyright laws to get big tech to pay for news.

The difference here is that Australia is using competition law to change the balance of power between big tech and media companies. If it gets passed, then Australia will have accomplished something that the US has not succeeded in doing although there are efforts underway to get the tech companies to pay for news. These include Free Press’s 2019 proposal to tax microtargeted advertising and use the funds to pay for “civic journalism” and the bi-partisan Journalism Competition & Preservation Act which would allow publishers to band together when negotiating payments with Google and Facebook.

2) Public subsidies

We’re also seen renewed interest in government support for news including in Africa and the US which have traditionally been more wary of the dangers of public funding. Now journalists are looking wistfully at the countries that included funding for journalism as part of their broader Covid relief efforts. Norway, Denmark, Canada, Australia and Singapore stepped up with extra government funding and/or tax credits to support quality journalism and journalists during the pandemic. Australia’s government created an A$50 million (US$35.3 million) Public Interest News Gathering Fund in May to help maintain public-interest journalism in regional areas. And Norway (EFJ, 2020a) and Singapore have also provided subsidies to outlets and freelancers during Covid-19, with Norway allocating NK27 million (US$2.9 million) to media organizations that lost advertising income due to the virus. The government dedicated DKK180 million (US$28.3 million) to compensating outlets for lost advertising revenue between March and June in 2020.

All these ideas can and should be replicated in other parts of the world. In the U.S. there are a number of proposals for supporting news, including the Local Journalism Sustainability Act which was introduced in July 2020. The proposed law would provide federal tax credits to local media outlets for subscriptions, journalists’ compensation and advertising. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) has introduced a bill for a commission to study how to help local news. Advocates are hoping that some of these plans will be voted on in 2021.

In Kenya, journalist Mark Kapchanga argues that some endangered news outlets should receive financial assistance from the government but that the funds must be delivered in such a way that the outlets can safely maintain their independence, for instance, through the Media Council of Kenya.

3) New business models

Innovators are also looking to see what kinds of changes can be made to current business models so that quality journalism can be preserved in the future. In Southern Africa, Botswanan journalist Ntibinyane Ntibinyane is seeking funds for The Digital Transitions Project that would safeguard the survival of quality journalism outlets in Southern Africa and help them transition into the long term.

In the U.S., 6,700 local news outlets are owned by hedge funds, which is worrisome for many media professionals because these funds are not interested in supporting news long- term but in making short- term profit. Rather than waiting for them to be asset stripped and killed off, Steve Waldman, the former senior advisor to the chair of the Federal Communications Commission has been thinking about how these newspapers could be transformed and survive. In October 2020, Waldman launched A Replanting Strategy: Saving Local Newspapers Squeezed by Hedge Funds, proposing that these outlets be turned into non-profits or locally owned outlets, which is similar to proposals from Free Press and academic Victor Pickard.

4) Foundation funding
Foundation funding has sustained hundreds, if not thousands, of small start-ups around the world and in 2020 many organizations established emergency funds during the pandemic and were inundated with eager applicants. Google News Initiative funded outlets in Latin America, Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe and the US providing grants ranging from US$5,000 to US$30,000 to 5,300 newsrooms — selected from nearly 12,000 applicants. outlets applied to their Journalism Emergency Relief Fund.

Latin American governments have done little to support journalism so it’s mostly been foundations, Google and Facebook that have stepped in to help. Facebook and the International Center for Journalists provided US$2 million in grants for Latin American outlets to help them cover covid and also to survive. In Ecuador, two universities (Universidad San Francisco de Quito and Universidad UTE) teamed up with two media outlets, El Universo and Codigo Vidrio, to win a grant from the US government to counteract Disinformation and Misinformation in the Age of Covid.

Lessons Learned:

Each of the above categories offers some promise for providing more substantial and sustainable support for journalism in the future. However, none of these can stand on their own, especially as the pandemic worsens an already growing crisis. While philanthropic support has enabled hundreds, if not thousands, of media outlets around the world, more systemic support is needed.

The above examples offer some ideas. In addition, we’d like to see more donor coordination and government support aimed at keeping existing outlets alive and strengthening the local news ecosystem, rather than funding small startups that may wind up competing with each other. Our research suggests there is lots to be learned from countries around the world that provide government support for quality journalism and try to get big tech companies to help pay for news.

Dr. Anya Schiffrin is senior lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She wrote the report with her students: Hannah Clifford, Allynn McInerney, Kylie Tumiatti and Léa Allirajah. Further research was done by Chloe Oldham.

This article first appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review on January 13, 2021.

 

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The post “Saving Journalism: A Vision for the Post-Covid World” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

New Report Maps Ambitious Covid-era Efforts Around the World to Save Journalism

The post “Saving Journalism: A Vision for the Post-Covid World” appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Md Saimum Reza Talukder
Jan 27 2021 (IPS-Partners)

The World Health Organization (WHO) has adopted “leaving no one behind” and “equitable access to vaccines” as the basic principles for Covid-19 vaccination around the world. GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, has also set up “equitable and sustainable use of vaccines” and “leaving no one behind” as the core of their high-level strategy for worldwide immunisation. All these strategies are in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals. However, global vaccination is not just a mere strategy or goal. This relates to the right to healthcare, which is an integral part of the right to life and must be ensured irrespective of nationality, religion, race, creed or culture.

According to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), around 79.5 million people had been forced worldwide from their homes due to persecution, conflict and human rights violations as of mid-2020. That number includes 29.6 million refugees, 4.2 million asylum seekers and 45.7 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Around 34 million of this 79.5 million are children. Unfortunately, it is not clear who will ensure the Covid-19 vaccination of all these people. According to UNHCR in January 2021, “around 90 countries are currently developing national Covid-19 vaccination strategies and 51—or 57 per cent—have included refugees in their vaccination plans”. This trend reminds us that most of the UN member states are ignoring, if not denying, the responsibility to “respect”, “protect” and “promote” human rights principles as per the UN Charter towards refugees, IDPs and stateless people.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), “vaccine nationalism” has stood as a massive blow to the global vision for universal and equitable access to an affordable vaccine. Vaccine nationalism is when countries prioritise inoculating their own populations before others. Experts have already warned that this vaccine nationalism would prolong the Covid-19 pandemic by years. From the point of view of public health discourse, it is impossible to break or sustainably slow the transmission of the coronavirus unless a minimum of 70 percent of the population has acquired immunity. That is why the UNHCR believes that the exclusion of refugees, IDPs and stateless people from vaccination plans carries the risk of ongoing transmission in these populations, with spillovers into the global population. HRW also thinks that opaque vaccine deals could undermine a global recovery from the pandemic.

It is to be mentioned that refugees, IDPs and stateless people are more vulnerable to the Covid-19 pandemic than others. According to UNHCR, more than 85 percent of refugees are hosted in low- and middle-income countries, where health systems have often been overwhelmed, with limited capacity to manage persons with severe Covid-19 complications. UNHCR also stated that refugees, forcibly displaced and the stateless are often unable to practice social distancing due to overcrowded living arrangements, and with inadequate access to information and health care services, they remain at a high risk of contracting the virus.

There are currently around 866,457 officially registered Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh (although the Bangladesh government terms them as FDMN or Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals), living in just 26 square kilometres of land in Cox’s Bazar, with poor access to clean water and other hygiene facilities. Other estimates suggest there are close to 1.1 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. According to the Rohingya Crisis Situation Report 29 by WHO from October 2020, the total number of confirmed Covid-19 patients amongst Rohingya refugees were 310. The report also suggested that nine refugees had died from Covid-19.

While it is good news that the transmission of coronavirus in the refugee camps has been kept under control, we must also remember that it is almost impossible to maintain physical distance in such an extremely overcrowded place like the Rohingya refugee camps. According to HRW, the internet shutdown and mobile phone restrictions in the camps have hindered humanitarian aid groups’ ability to provide emergency health services and rapidly coordinate essential preventive measures for the Covid-19 pandemic. We should not forget that as Myanmar does not recognise Rohingyas as its citizen, it has left them as stateless people and turned them into one of the most vulnerable populations in the world. The Rohingya face persistent public health risks, which are likely to be exacerbated by a pandemic. So far, there is no hope that Rohingya refugees would get Covid-19 vaccines from the Myanmar government. There are also no effective international efforts yet to pressurise Myanmar regarding vaccination of the Rohingyas. Nor we have seen any specific commitment from the international community regarding vaccination of the Rohingyas, although global immunisation should be the shared responsibility of all countries.

Bangladesh also has a responsibility towards Rohingya refugees because it has pledged to respect international law and the principles enunciated in the UN Charter, according to Article 25 of its Constitution. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had outlined the Bangladesh Preparedness and Response Plan for Covid-19 in July 2020. Although this national strategy recognised Rohingya refugees as a vulnerable population at increased risk of the rapid spread of Covid-19, Bangladesh is yet to declare a probable vaccination strategy and allocation for Rohingyas. According to a report in this daily, the COVAX programme led by the WHO and GAVI is supposed to give Bangladesh vaccines for 34 million people within 2021. However, it is not clear whether the GAVI would request the Bangladesh government to include Rohingyas in this vaccination programme or not.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a public health emergency which requires emergency medical supplies, including emergency access to vaccine. In the case of Syed Saifuddin Kamal and BLAST vs Bangladesh and others [Emergency Medical Services Case], the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh opined that failure to provide emergency medical services is a serious violation of the fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 27 (equality before law), Article 31 (protection of law) and Article 32 (right to life, liberty and security) of the Constitution. These constitutional safeguards should also be extended to Rohingya refugees by interpreting the “spirit of the law”. Thus, vaccine nationalism must not prevail over equality, human dignity and social justice, which are the founding principles of Bangladesh.

Md Saimum Reza Talukder teaches Cyber Law at BRAC University.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Apple farmers in Kashmir package their crops to send to a mandi or market yard. According to policy, wholesale transactions between farmers and traders must take place in a mandi, yet the market yards have become hubs of widespread corruption where a small group of sale agents have taken control. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, Jan 27 2021 (IPS)

“This road is my home now and it will decide my future,” Sukhvinder Singh, a 27-year old farmer from the Moga district of Punjab, tells IPS. Last November, weeks after the government of India passed three farm bills he felt were anti-farmer, Singh travelled to Singhu, a village near Delhi, to demand the laws be repealed. Since then, he has been living in a tent he shares with five other fellow farmer-protesters.

On Sunday night the temperature dipped to 7°Celsius but Singh’s voice sounded warm and loud, betraying the cold. “Its like spending another night in the field, guarding my wheat crops,” he says.

There are currently an estimated 300,000 farmers protesting at Singhu, which has now turned into a tent city.

Though mobilised by 32 different groups, the farmers are unified in their demand: a total repeal of all three new laws:

• the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act,
• the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, and
• the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act.

Farmers protests: Outburst of years of anger

The farmers’ protest on the edge of New Delhi started on Nov. 26, but this has been a movement years in the making.

According to food and farm experts, uncertain and erratic pricing, lack of access to the market, low returns, recurring losses and debt burdens have been part of an average farmer’s life across the country, including Punjab, for a very long time.

While a section of the experts think that the state must accept responsibility for the well-being of farmers and compensate them for their losses, the other section believes that the government should just embrace and promote a free market policy with minimal interventions and regulations over the agriculture market.

The government interventions have, till now, included Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) — a system where the states announced MSP for 22 crops before their sowing seasons. This also included the procurement of grains and pulses from farmers by the government to run its subsidised food distribution to the poor (PDS system), the regulation of wholesale trade with farmers, control of stocks with traders, and control of exports and imports.

However, the new farm policies have sided with the free-market policy advocates and adopted exactly the opposite of what farmers want: strict enforcement of the MSP and greater intervention by the government in the procurement and wholesale trade. 

“Indian farmers have been protesting for years, but the country failed to take notice. For example, in recent years, we have seen milk farmers pouring pails of milk on the streets and vegetable farmers have crushed their fresh produce under bulldozers – all in a way to protest the volatile and erratic pricing that forced them to suffer huge losses,” Kavitha Kuruganti, a well-known activist and farm expert from Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture or ASHA-Kisan Swaraj network, a national network of organisations working on food, farmers and freedom, tells IPS.

“But every time, the protest ended with a verbal assurance by the government or a piece of paper saying their grievances would be looked into,” says Kuruganti.

Sandhya Mohite, a marginal cotton farmer in Maharashtra state’s suicide-affected Yavatmal region. Cotton is one of the crops where Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) system has worked but now, according to the country’s new farm laws, farmers will be no longer guaranteed a minimum price on produce. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

What farmers want vs what they are offered

In India, the wholesale purchase of produce from farmers is regulated by the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act 2003. According to the policy, wholesale transactions between farmers and traders must take place in a mandi — a designated market yard.The sale of produce under public scrutiny brought a level of protection from being cheated on weights and measures and price. There are hundreds of such mandis across the country, which are governed by an elected body of APMC authority. 

However, over time, the market yards have become hubs of widespread corruption where a small group of sale agents have taken control and influenced APMC officials with their economic power and ties to major political parties. Unable to stand up to these price fixers, the farmers have had no option other than to play along and bear the losses.

The government acknowledges the cartelisation and, as a solution, is allowing alternate channels such as privately-managed market places which can compete with the regulated APMC mandis for the farmer’s produce.

In addition, farmers will be able to sell directly to consumers. Large buyers, such as firms engaged in food processing, large scale retail or exports can also bypass the wholesale markets altogether and buy directly from farmers.

These ideas were first recommended by the Swaminathan Commission – an experts’ committee tasked by the government in 2004 to finding solutions to problems faced by farmers.

However, the Swaminathan Commission also recommended a higher MSP and protective regulations for farmers while doing contract farming for large private traders. But the new laws do not include either of these recommendations.

The farmers now fear that since the MSP is no longer mandatory, they will be forced to accept any price large firms offer. Food crop growers also argue that they cannot even transport their produce to the nearest market yard without incurring losses. And they question how can they reach and sell at markets faraway.

The big player scare

In December 2020, even as their protests gathered steam, farmers across Punjab pulled down hundreds of mobile towers belonging to Reliance Jio Infocomm — India’s largest cellular service network. The protesters targeted the network after it was rumoured that large corporations like Reliance industries, along with Adani group, would be entering the contract farming business, potentially pushing independent farmers out of their livelihoods. After over 1,500 Jio telecom towers were damaged, the company finally approached the court and also clarified in a statement that it had no farm business plans. But the fear lingers.

Harmandeep Singh, a farmer from Tarn Tarn, Punjab tells IPS: “Today they are saying there are no plans. But tomorrow it may change. These companies are so rich, they can buy any amount of land and push us out of the business. Who will stop them?”

However, the entry of big corporations in agriculture happened well before a more corporate-friendly Modi government came in power, Subramaniam Kannaiyan, General Secretary of South Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers Movements (SICCFM), tells IPS.

“In 2011, the then Congress Government had allowed 100 percent foreign investment in several sectors of agriculture, so the corporates have been there for a long time already. In fact, since we joined World Trade Organisation (WTO), opening up of the markets has become inevitable. However, there should be a balance and ways to support and protect the local, small farmers and for that the APMC should play a stronger role, not be done away with,” says Kannaiyan, who is also a member of the global small farmers movement La Via Campesina.

No takers for a 3rd party role

On Jan. 12, the Supreme Court of India formed  a 4-member committee to hold talks between the government and the farmers to resolve the protests over the farm laws. But the farmers were quick to reject the committee and refused to be part of it.

“When there is a dialogue underway between the government and the protesting farmers, there is absolutely no need for the Supreme Court to take on a mediatory role given that neither the government nor the union leaders have approached the Supreme Court and said, ‘please resolve this,” says Kuruganti, who is also a member of the 41-member farmers delegation that has been holding the talks with the government.

So far, there have been 11 rounds of dialogues which centre around not just ‘techno-legal’ issues but also on policy directions and policy implications — “areas where the Supreme Court has no role to play,” Kuruganti says, explaining why the farmers do not see any merit in joining the review committee.

“The problem today is, except for Punjab and Haryana, there is no large farmers union anywhere else in this country,” says Kannaiyan of SICCFM.

“This is why a movement of this magnitude can be led only by farmers from those states. But we stand by them strongly in solidarity.”

Digging their heels deeper

Yesterday, Jan. 26, India celebrated its Republic Day – the day the country’s constitution came into effect. The celebration usually includes a token display of the country’s military might by parading its nation’s defence weaponry.

But this week, the nation witnessed a different parade: a 100-km long tractor rally by the protester farmers. The government tried to prevent the rally by getting a court order and some of states also banned sale of fuel to tractors, but this failed to dissuade the farmers who were determined to carry out the rally. Many vowed to only return home after the 3 farm bills have been repealed.

Yesterday, thousands of protesting farmers marched to New Delhi’s historic Red Fort.

There were skirmishes between police and a small number of protesters, but the majority of protesters were peaceful. Police reportedly dispersed the crowd with tear gas and one protester died after a tractor overturned and fell on him.

“The government is trying to show the world that it has done a great job by building weapons. Now we want to tell the world that a country that a country is not made great by making weapons but by respecting its farmers and by restoring its economic lifeline – the agriculture which is not happening right now,” Mandeep Kaur, a woman farmer with small land holding from  Punjab’s Ludhiana who has travelled to Singhu several times during the past two months to join the protests, tells IPS.

Indeed, the Food Sustainability Index, developed by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranks India 4th overall, behind Colombia and China, in a ranking middle income countries’ sustainability and greatest progress towards meeting environmental, societal and economic key performance indicators for agriculture.

On Jan. 22, after the 11th round of discussions, the government offered to delay the implementation of the farm laws for 12 to 18 months – allowing farmers the additional time to prepare themselves for the future.  However, as the farmers refused to settle for anything less than a full repeal of the legislation, the government declined to announce dates for further discussions. 

The impasse has failed to move the farmers from their stance, but some are asking the government to not make it a show of ego.

“Accepting the demands of the farmers and repealing the farm laws should not be seen as a victory of the farmers or the loss of the government; it should be seen as a victory of democracy,” Kuruganthi says.

Meanwhile, farmers from several states including Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Kerala and Telangana have lent their support to the protest movement.

And today, Jan. 27, a day after the Republic Day protest, Kuruganthi says “the protest movement will continue peacefully”.

 

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The post 60 Days on, India’s Biggest Farmers’ Protest Shows No Sign of Weakening appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Yesterday, Jan. 26, India celebrated its Republic Day. But it was marked by scenes of farmers driving their tractors in convoy and marching to New Delhi's historic Red Fort. IPS senior correspondent STELLA PAUL unpacks the issues behind India's farmers' protests.

The post 60 Days on, India’s Biggest Farmers’ Protest Shows No Sign of Weakening appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jan 27 2021 (IPS)

Occasionally some of us might suffer from a feeling of maximal overload, overwhelmed by COVID-19 and the reign of Donald Trump. It can maybe be conceived as far too euro-centric to be concerned about the disastrous situation in the U.S., with media stuffed to the brim by news about Donald Trump while the global environmental crisis is steadily getting worse and war, injustices and famine continue to agonize people in places like Darfur, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria.

First Lady Melania Trump decorates Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Nevertheless, what happened in Washington on 6th of January indicates that something has gone outrageously wrong. The ongoing catastrophe which, among other things, was crowned with the triumph of the media product Donald Trump did not disappear with his election loss. People who fell victims to lies spread by irresponsible, shallow and hate mongering media are still among us, not only in the U.S., but all over the planet. Let me, for the sake of simplicity, focus on the situation in the U. S.. How could so many individuals put their trust in a narcissistic, manipulative and blatantly ignorant world leader? A man able to seduce some of his admirers to storm their nation’s popularly elected legislature while claiming they did so in the name of “democracy”.

One starting-point for a search for the roots of the U.S. anti-democratic movement could be the open wounds left by the U.S. Civil War, when the Congress in 1871 adopted the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, extending civil and legal protection to former slaves, while prohibiting any member of the federation from disenfranchising voters “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This did not hinder several state legislatures from continuing to deny former slaves their legal rights and terrorize black citizens for exercising their rights to vote, running for public office, and serving on juries. In response, Congress passed a series of Enforcement Acts and empowered the American president to use military force to protect African Americans, something several U.S. citizens perceived as an infringement of their rights and came to consider the Federal Government as a means to introduce “socialism” to control the life of every citizen.

After World War I, opponents to “socialism” rose to prominence, while black veterans demanded equal rights and labour unions became emboldened by European demands for social justice and the Russian revolution. For example, mine workers demand for higher wages and better working conditions culminated in violent and lethal clashes, like the Herrin Massacre in 1922 and the so called Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, the largest armed uprising since the Civil War.

Lynchings reached their height by the beginning of last century and during the 1920’s, primarily targeting African-Americans and other ethnic minorities. In 1921, mobs of white citizens, several of them provided with weapons by city officials, attacked black residents in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, destroying more than 35 square blocks of the district, known as the wealthiest black community in the U.S.. Afterwards, 6,000 black residents were interned and the official death toll was determined as 36 “dead Negroes”.

The white supremacist hate group Ku Klux Klan grew after 1920 and flourished nationwide. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15 percent of the nation’s population, approximately 4 to 5 million men.

In the 1930s, the Federal Government of Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt answered to the Great Depression by establishing business regulations, a basic social safety net, and a government-funded infrastructure. Measures that were met with fierce opposition from wealthy business- and industry owners, as well as right-wing politicians. A resistance that may be exemplified by an often quoted paragraph in a letter written by Senator Henry Hatfield when Roosevelt in 1932 had won the elections and introduced his New Deal:

This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty. The ordinary citizen is thus reduced to the status of a robot. The president has not only signed the death warrant of capitalism.

Such opinions are now commonplace in the U.S., and not the least shared by its now former president, claimed author of The Art of the Deal, which actually was entirely ghost-written. This wealthy businessman supports a view that a Government actively supporting well-being for all its citizens undermines American liberty by redistributing tax dollars from hard-working men and women to those eager for handouts, i.e. minority groups who in junction with “crooked” politicians are opposed to “Making America Great Again”. Again? This probably means combatting any government intending to guarantee equal rights, justice and well-being and accuse it of “bringing socialism to America”. The motto of “Making America Great Again”, may with a historic hindsight mean an intention to force any U.S. Government back to the form it had in the 1920s, when unquestioned privileges were enjoyed by a white elite, while social injustice and racism reigned almost unabated.

Such intentions became more feasible after 1987, when the so called Fairness Doctrine ended. This doctrine meant that a Federal Communications Commission policy required public media channels to base their stories on fact and present both sides of an issue. When this doctrine was abolished the scene was set for talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh (who last year was awarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom) and his equivalents at the cable television news network Fox News, to spread a message that their ideal nation now is threatened by “socialism”. A covert, and occasionally quite open, message indicating that hard-working white men who take care of their wives and children are constrained and discriminated by Big Government, which is taxing them to give benefits to lazy people of colour and Feminazis. “Liberals” undermine the nation’ s morals and destroy “family values”, aided and abetted by lawmakers busy with the construction of a ruthless System that sucks tax dollars.

In 1993, federal officers stormed the centre of a religious cult stockpiling weapons in a compound in Waco, Texas. Seventy-six people died. Rush Limbaugh stoked his listeners’ anger with reports of Big Government murdering U.S. citizens, making much of the idea that a group of Christians had been killed on orders from Attorney General Janet Reno, an “unfeminine” Government official.

Talk show host Alex Jones warned that Reno’s “murder” of people at Waco was part of Big Government’s plan to impose martial law and take the guns away from “law-abiding” citizens. An army veteran, Timothy McVeigh, decided that “we have to shed blood to reform the current system.” On April 19, 1995, a date chosen to honour the Waco stand-off, McVeigh set off a bomb in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children at a day care centre, and wounding more than 800 people.

For the past four years, Trump and his enablers have insisted that current unrest is caused by Islamist terrorists, anarchists and radicalised immigrants, this in spite of the fact the Department of Homeland Security has declared that the biggest threat to the Nation’s stability and security comes from groups believing that their liberties are being “taken away by the perceived unconstitutional or otherwise illegitimate actions of government officials, or law enforcement.” Anti-government protesters who currently are joined by white supremacists and other affiliated groups. People, who after storming the seat of the United States Congress and legislative branch of the U.S. federal government, were called “patriots” by the then President Donald J. Trump, who furthermore stated “I love you”.

This is what happens when racial hatred, misogyny and chauvinism are not only ignored but even supported by the highest authority of a nation. In the name of global justice we can no longer ignore the hatred that has been brewing in the U.S.. Persons who for their own benefit have added fuel to the fire must be held accountable. Lack of space forbids me to present a long list of places where an unwillingness to address issues such as inequality and increasing violence have caused immense human suffering. I sincerely hope that the Congress, the Senate, the President and the people of the United States will be able to once and for all put a definite halt to this dangerous rise of chauvinism and bring to justice those who with their lies have instigated the rise of home-grown terrorism and lured mentally fragile people to embrace Qanon and similar, deranged conspiracy theories

Sources: Perliger, Arie (2020) American Zealots: Inside Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press. Wade, Wyn Craig (1987) The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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

 

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A profound shock to our societies and economies, the COVID-19 pandemic underscores society’s reliance on women both on the front line and at home, while simultaneously exposing structural inequalities across every sphere. Responding to the pandemic is not just about rectifying long-standing inequalities, but also about building a resilient world in the interest of everyone with women at the centre of recovery. Credit: United Nations

By Constanza Tabbush
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 27 2021 (IPS)

With over 90 million confirmed cases and 1.9 million deaths globally, and a second wave sweeping into 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to hold the world hostage.

Less visible and talked about is how its social and economic fallout is hitting women hard – and often harder than men. The latest data shows that the pandemic is poised to push 47 million women and girls into extreme poverty, increasing the total number of women and girls living in extreme poverty to 435 million.

The projections also show that this number will not revert to pre-pandemic levels until 2030. To recover from this crisis, decisive government action is imperative to safeguard the rights and needs of women and girls.

As governments around the world scramble to protect jobs, pass fiscal stimulus packages and social protection measures, how can policymakers ensure that their COVID-19 responses work for women and girls, whose needs, priorities and voices are chronically absent from the data and analysis that shapes policies?

Recently, UN Women and UNDP launched the COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker, a real-time database that includes more than 2,500 policy measures across 206 countries indicating how governments are responding to the pandemic from a gender equality perspective.

This rich repository of policy data – covering measures on violence against women, women’s economic security and unpaid care – is now providing evidence-based guidance to policymakers about gender-sensitive response measures that protect the lives, jobs and wellbeing of both women and men.

Throughout 2021, UN Women and UNDP will deliver periodic updates of the Gender Tracker, as well as incorporate new data on women’s leadership in the COVID-19 response.

Constanza Tabbush, Research Specialist at UN Women. Credit: Felicitas Rossi

Here are five key lessons emerging from the Gender Tracker, with a focus on social protection and labour market policies:

1. Put women’s needs at the centre of the socioeconomic response

The Gender Tracker shows that countries around the world mounted extraordinary social protection and jobs responses to the pandemic in 2020. However, although women are facing higher job and income losses than men, only ten per cent of the 1,310 social protection and job measures taken so far explicitly aim to strengthen women’s economic security.

Cash transfers and food aid that directly target or prioritise women are among the most common measures. Yet this social assistance targeting women is often small-scale, temporary and offers minimal benefits to women in need.

This is especially worrying because the economic uncertainty triggered by the pandemic is far from over and forecasts predict female poverty is likely to increase. In 2021, it is expected there will be 118 women in poverty for every 100 poor men globally.

Curbing the rise of poverty among women needs robust and interconnected social protection measures from the government that safeguards them from risks and vulnerabilities from childhood to old age.

2. Prolong COVID-related emergency measures benefiting women

Policymakers will need to sustain, scale up and replicate existing measures supporting women’s economic security in 2021. So far, most social protection programmes have not lasted through the duration of lockdowns or the longer-term economic downturn, often leaving beneficiaries high and dry after a few months.

Early in 2020, cash transfers and food assistance were key to women’s livelihood security. Most of the schemes were short-lived, lasting an average of 3.3 months.

In Togo, for instance, the innovative three-month emergency coronavirus cash transfer programme (Novissi) targeting informal workers included larger benefits for women, but has now been discontinued.

Togo is not the exception, but the rule. Emerging evidence suggests that out of 429 cash programmes, only 32 were extended for an additional period.

3. Extend assistance to informal workers to prevent more women from falling into poverty

In many developing countries, women work mostly in the informal economy – in areas such as domestic work, market trading or agriculture – and are often vulnerable to poverty and fall through the cracks of existing welfare systems.

Sustaining and scaling up the extension of social protection to informal workers in 2021 is vital in supporting women and their families economically.

Last year, countries including Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Morocco, the Philippines and South Africa, launched new cash transfer programmes targeting informal workers, some of which provided extra benefits for women.

The emergency cash transfer in Brazil stands out for doubling benefit levels for women heads of households, providing them with approximately USD 215 per month (versus USD 107 for other beneficiaries).

Its positive impacts added political momentum to parliamentary and civil society initiatives for a basic income programme in the country. If improved, these temporary measures can thereby provide a stepping stone to more permanent solutions for women in the informal economy.

4. Improve access to paid leave and childcare services so that women can hold on to their jobs and return to work

Since the onset of the pandemic, women’s share of the unpaid work of cleaning, cooking and childcare has increased, contributing to an exodus of women from the labour force.

Alarmingly, only 60 out of 206 countries have taken steps to address unpaid care demands, by expanding paid family leaves or flexible work arrangements. Support for public childcare services – which are critical for women to hold on to their jobs – has been minimal.

Despite this, a handful of inspiring countries, including Costa Rica, Australia and Canada, declared childcare services essential. For instance, the Government of Canada recently announced major new investments in childcare services as part of its economic recovery plan.

It is not too late for policymakers to promote swift actions to counter the heavy toll the pandemic is having on women’s labour force participation. Failure to do so may leave women with permanent scars from the economic crisis catalysed by the pandemic.

5. Invest in social protection systems now to build resilient societies

The COVID-19 pandemic will not be the last shock our societies endure, and decision-makers are already looking for ways to buffer or prevent future blows. The time to invest in strengthening national social protection systems is now.

Countries that invested in their social protection systems before the pandemic were better prepared to quickly scale up or adapt cash transfers in response to the crisis, with positive ripple-effects for women.

High-income countries in Europe, for instance, relied heavily on their well-developed social insurance systems. Meanwhile, middle-, and some low-income countries (like Argentina, Bolivia, Egypt and South Africa) were also among the 39 countries that quickly rolled out cash transfers with direct benefits to women.

However, in the absence of comprehensive systems, other countries struggled to put in place an adequate response. Every economic crisis further erodes the little resources the most vulnerable have, widening gender and social inequalities.

Only by investing in universal social protection systems now, can we ensure that this or future crises do not deepen women’s disadvantage, and that that disadvantage does not pass on from one generation to the next.

Source: UN Women

 

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Excerpt:

Constanza Tabbush is a Research Specialist at UN Women. She co-authored the latest edition of UN Women’s flagship report, Progress of the World’s Women, and has published extensively on gender, social movements and social policy. Constanza has a PhD in Sociology from the University of London, and prior to joining UN Women, worked as a Research Associate at the National Research Council in Argentina.

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Forest on the island of Dominica. With 54% support, the conservation of forests was the most popular climate action policy selected by participants in the Peoples’ Climate Vote. It was the world's largest climate change public poll. Credit: IPS/Alison Kentish

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 27 2021 (IPS)

Between October and December 2020, something was different for people playing popular video games like Words with Friends, Angry Birds and Subway Surfers. Instead of a traditional 30-second ad, gamers across the world were invited to participate in a climate change survey. It was an unconventional way of polling that gave University of Oxford researchers an opportunity to tap into the 2.7 billion user-strong gaming market and produce the world’s largest climate change public opinion poll.

The results of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-commissioned Peoples’ Climate Vote were released on January 27. They show that 64 percent of people view climate change as a global emergency, even in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results included over 1.2 million people in 50 countries, which cover more than half of the world’s population.

“Mobile gaming networks can not only reach a lot of people, they can engage different kinds of people in a diverse group of countries,” said Professor Stephan Fisher of the University of Oxford Department of Sociology. “The Peoples’ Climate Vote has delivered a treasure trove of data on public opinion that we’ve never seen before. Recognition of the climate emergency is much more widespread than previously thought.”

The survey is unprecedented in both scale and diversity. It includes respondents from wealthy nations and Least Developed Countries, land locked nations and small island developing states. It also spans gender, education levels and age groups – including youth under the age of 18, a key demographic typically unable to vote in regular elections.

According to the results, 69 percent of these young people classify climate change as an emergency. There was not much difference between age groups however, with 65 percent of respondents aged 18-35 holding that view, while 66 percent of people aged 36-59 and 58 percent of people over 60 stating that they too, believe that climate change is a global emergency.

“People are very nervous, very scared. They are seeing wildfires in Australia and California. They are seeing category five storms in the Caribbean. They are seeing flooding in southeast Asia and they are looking around and saying ‘this is a real problem, we have to do something about this,’ UNDP’s Strategic Advisor on Climate Change and Head of Climate Promise, Cassie Flynn told a virtual press briefing.

The UNDP official pointed to a ‘groundswell of support for ambitious climate action’ by survey respondents, who were asked to select what policies they would like to see their governments prioritise. Conservation of forest and land led the climate solutions at 54 percent, followed by investment in renewable energy (53 percent), the implementation of climate friendly farming techniques (52 percent) and rolling out of green businesses and jobs (50 percent). As countries around the world develop their pledges as part of the Paris Climate Agreement, Flynn says the UNDP will work with them to ensure the voice of the people is articulated in those plans. 

“The idea was that the decisions that governments are making now, whether on COVID-19 or climate, that people would be able to have a voice at the table, because these decisions will influence so many generations to come, that this is a way of bringing those voices forward,” she said.

The results showed that the leading driver of a respondent’s view of climate change is education. In every country, those with post-secondary education demanded action; with Least Developed Countries like Bhutan tying with Japan at 82 percent of respondents saying governments must act now to tackle the crisis.

Along gender lines, at 4 percent, the divide was small overall, but wide on a national level in countries like Australia, Canada and the United States, where more women and girls believe the world is in a climate emergency than their male counterparts. The opposite is true for Nigeria.

The researchers say for several governments, this is the first time they will have access to extensive, analysed data on public views on climate change and policy prescriptions.

In terms of limitations, the survey organisers say for the next phase of the survey, there must be efforts to bridge the digital divide. While this survey bucked tradition and embraced technology in polling, it left out a few key constituencies, including smaller countries and rural communities without the bandwidth and tools to participate in the survey.

2021 is seen as a crucial year for action on climate and biodiversity. One of the highlights is expected to be the UN Climate Conference scheduled for Glasgow, UK. UNDP officials say world leaders have to make unprecedented decisions that will affect ‘every person on this planet and every generation to come.’

With the results of the world’s largest climate change public opinion poll now available, they say not only has more than half the world stated its belief that climate change is a global emergency, citizens from over 50 countries have made it clear to their leaders just how they want them to solve tackle the issue.”

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The post What World’s Largest Climate Change Public Opinion Poll Says appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

A University of Oxford/UNDP initiative, the survey results span 50 countries, which cover more than half of the world’s population.

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Secretary-General António Guterres (left) discusses the State of the Planet with Professor Maureen Raymo at Columbia University in New York City. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Antonio Guterres
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 26 2021 (IPS)

We begin this year with a heightened awareness of the importance of resilience. The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that we cannot afford to ignore known risks.

Climate disruption is a risk we are well aware of. The science has never been clearer.

We are facing a climate emergency.

We are already witnessing unprecedented climate extremes and volatility, affecting lives and livelihoods on all continents.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, there have been more than 11,000 disasters due to weather, climate and water-related hazards over the past 50 years at a cost of some $3.6 trillion US dollars.

Extreme weather and climate-related hazards have also killed more than 410,000 people in the past decade, the vast majority in low and lower middle-income countries. That is why I have called for a breakthrough on adaptation and resilience.

We need the trillions of taxpayers’ dollars funding the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic to jump-start the low-carbon, high-resilience future we need.

But recovery cannot only be for the developed world. We must expand the provision of liquidity and debt relief instruments to developing and middle-income countries that lack the resources to relaunch their economies in a sustainable and inclusive way.

I see five priorities to guarantee adaptation and resilience.

First, donor countries and multilateral, regional and national development banks need to significantly increase the volume and predictability of their finance for adaptation and resilience.

The recent United Nations Environment Programme Adaptation Gap Report calculates annual adaptation costs in developing countries alone to be in the range of $70 billion US dollars.

These figures are likely to reach $140 or eventually up to 300 billion US dollars in 2030 and the range between $280 and 500 billion in 2050. But huge gaps remain on financing for adaptation in developing countries.

That is why I have called for 50 per cent of the total share of climate finance provided by all developed countries and multilateral development banks to be allocated to adaptation and resilience in developing countries. Adaptation cannot be the neglected half of the climate equation.

The African Development Bank set the bar in 2019 by allocating over half of its climate finance to adaptation. I urge all donors and multilateral development banks to commit to this goal by COP26 and deliver on it at least by 2024.

I welcome today’s commitment by Prime Minister Mark Rutte on behalf of the Government of the Netherlands. Let us remember that developed countries must meet the commitments made in the Paris Agreement to mobilize $100 billion US dollars a year from private and public sources for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.

Second, all budget allocations and investment decisions need to be climate-resilient.

Climate risk must be embedded in all procurement processes, particularly for infrastructure. Developing countries must receive the necessary support and the tools to achieve this. The United Nations system is ready to support this effort worldwide.

Third, we need to significantly scale-up existing catastrophe-triggered financial instruments such as the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility and the African Risk Capacity.

I also call on donors, the multilateral development banks and private finance institutions to work with vulnerable countries on developing new instruments with innovation to incentivize investments in resilience building.

For every dollar invested in climate resilient infrastructure, six dollars can be saved, as Prime Minister Mark Rutte just said.

Fourth, we need to ease access to finance, especially for the most vulnerable, and expand debt relief initiatives. The share for Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States in total climate finance remains small, representing only 14 per cent and 2 per cent of flows respectively.

These countries stand on the frontline of the climate crisis, yet, due to size and capacity constraints, they face significant challenges in accessing climate finance to build resilience.

There must be a collective effort to remove these obstacles.

Finally, we need to support regional adaptation and resilience initiatives.

This would allow, for example, debt-for-adaptation swaps, for example for the Caribbean or the Pacific Islands, and provide much needed liquidity to vulnerable countries in dire need.

Support for adaptation and resilience is a moral, economic and social imperative.

Today, one person in three is still not adequately covered by early warning systems, and risk-informed early approaches are not at the scale required.

As illustrated by the Global Commission on Adaptation, just 24 hours warning of a coming storm or heatwave can cut the ensuing damage by 30 per cent. We need to work together to ensure full global coverage by early warning systems to help minimize these losses.

We have the tools, skills and opportunity to deliver “more, faster and better” adaptation actions. I hope this summit helps to secure the breakthrough on adaptation and resilience that is needed and that it leads to ambitious outcomes at COP 26.

Let us live up to our responsibilities and jointly change course towards a sustainable, fair and resilient future.

 

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Excerpt:

Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in an address to the Climate Adaptation Summit

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By Shafi Bhuiyan
TORONTO, Canada, Jan 26 2021 (IPS)

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages. The main focus of the SDGs is to improve equity to meet the needs of women, children and disadvantaged populations in particular.

Shafi Bhuiyan PhD

Traditionally, a mother nurtures a family through care, support, and love. Hence, the health of a family starts with the health of the mother. Maternal health is often overlooked in many countries, focusing only on treating complications when deemed ‘necessary’. However, contrary to that, maternal health care needs to cover all the aspects of a mother’s health, starting from pre-pregnancy to post-pregnancy extending into childcare.

Globally, the Maternal and Child Health MCH Handbook International Committee’s implementation research established that the MCH handbook is an innovative home-based record that integrates information about maternal and child health into one booklet, including pregnancy, labour, immunization, breastfeeding, nutrition, child growth and development, and diseases. As such, it has proven to be an effective tool in promoting and protecting the health of mothers and children. MCH handbooks are often the only health care guides that facilitate equitable access to primary health care. The handbook will thus help to break the stigma of seeking health care for women and empower women to make informed decisions about their own health and pregnancy.

The handbook was first introduced in Japan in 1948, along with other public health interventions. The handbook has helped Japan become the country with the second-lowest infant mortality rate in the world. Nevertheless, Japan is still identifying new perspectives and potential to use the MCH handbook for early detection of diseases in children (autism, neurodevelopmental disorders) and the evaluation of risks for obesity, cardiovascular, endocrine diseases, and mental illness.

The MCH handbook has been adopted in over 42 developed and developing countries worldwide, and has proven its efficacy in enhancing maternal and child healthcare. Mothers with MCH handbooks have been observed as being more knowledgeable of proper antenatal care, good nutritional choices during pregnancy, and possess increased awareness of the importance of immunization. Also, content of the MCH handbook is flexible and easy to edit according to the country’s culture and socio economic status.

The MCH handbook helps service providers and users to understand what comprehensive MCH services entail. With its two-way interface, the handbook also provides mothers with an opportunity to collaborate with healthcare providers. It enables mothers to document their health concerns, symptoms, and timelines to monitor their health progress over time. Simultaneously, it allows healthcare providers to keep records of health services accessed by mothers. This reciprocal exchange of information between the healthcare provider and mothers increases both the provider’s capacity to monitor health status and the patient’s capacity to understand when to seek medical care.

The handbook is recognized for its simplicity, cost-effectiveness, ease of implementation and the aggregation of multiple health knowledge tools and health records. Its simplistic user interface has also demonstrated a huge impact on economic and research value.

Even before the emergence of COVID-19, high-quality and timely maternal healthcare services were unavailable, inaccessible, or unaffordable for millions of women. Now with public health restrictions, there is an excessive burden on the healthcare system. This limits the access to care and negatively impacts women’s and children’s health. As a result, many expecting mothers are likely to end up receiving less than adequate care throughout their pregnancy.

Disruption of essential services might lead to disproportionately greater perinatal losses in areas with high maternal and neonatal mortality, reductions in breastfeeding prevalence and an increase in the number of unvaccinated and under-vaccinated children. All these factors exacerbate the existing inequities in accessing healthcare services. However, the MCH handbook could promote a continuum of care for maternal and child health and bridge the existing gap even during the pandemic. Utilizing the handbook [digital or paper books] also ensures invisible mothers and children become visible. It helps strengthen the healthcare system by allowing women to become active participants in their healthcare.

Globally, the MCH handbook has been used in many countries for over two decades. There are now efforts to develop a digital MCH handbook application, thereby ensuring safe delivery and MCH services locally and globally. The MCH handbook digital application is expected to help reduce delays in decision-making at the family level, as well as delays in arranging quality services at the facility level.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasize improving health equity so that ‘No One is Left Behind’. Pilot implementation research from multiple countries has demonstrated that the MCH Handbook is a useful tool for extending the knowledge for better access to quality primary health care, that is affordable and equitable. It could also support the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and promote effective maternal and child health programs. Thus, the MCH handbook provides a platform to improve universal access to health-care services, strengthen human health security and reduce the “unmet need” for the most unprivileged population.

Dr. Shafi Bhuiyan is an award-winning professor and an internationally recognized–academic/professional leader in global health. He is a co-creator of Pilot Masters of Sciences program at U of T, and a co-founder & academic director of the Internationally Trained Medical Doctors Bridging Program at Ryerson University. Dr. Bhuiyan currently serves as the Chair, Board of Directors, Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research and a visiting Professor, Bangladesh University of Health Sciences.

 

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Credit: United Nations

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 26 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations has warned that the devastating socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be felt for years to come unless smart investments in economic, societal and climate resilience ensure a robust and sustainable recovery of the global economy.

In 2020, the world economy shrank by 4.3 per cent, over two and half times more than during the global financial crisis of 2009. The modest recovery of 4.7 per cent expected in 2021 would barely offset the losses of 2020, says the latest World Economic Situation and Prospects.

The report underscores that sustained recovery from the pandemic will depend not only on the size of the stimulus measures, and the quick rollout of vaccines, but also on the quality and efficacy of these measures to build resilience against future shocks.

“We are facing the worst health and economic crisis in 90 years. As we mourn the growing death toll, we must remember that the choices we make now will determine our collective future,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who remotely addressed the Davos Agenda event on January 25.

“Let’s invest in an inclusive and sustainable future driven by smart policies, impactful investments, and a strong and effective multilateral system that places people at the heart of all socio-economic efforts.”

Developed economies, projected to see a 4 per cent output growth in 2021, shrank the most in 2020, by 5.6 per cent, due to economic shutdowns and subsequent waves of the pandemic, increasing the risk of premature austerity measures that would only derail recovery efforts globally. Developing countries saw a less severe contraction at 2.5 per cent, with an expected rebound of 5.7 per cent in 2021, according to the estimates presented in the report.

Key Areas of Impact

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs says that 131 million more people were pushed into poverty in 2020, many of them women, children and people from marginalized communities. The pandemic has adversely affected women and girls disproportionately, exposing them to increased risk of economic devastation, poverty, violence and illiteracy.

Women make up more than 50 per cent of the workforce in high-risk labour and service intensive sectors, such as retail, hospitality and tourism – areas hardest hit by the lockdown. Many of them have limited or no access to social protection.

Massive and timely stimulus measures, amounting to US$12.7 trillion, prevented a total collapse of the world economy and averted a Great Depression. However, stark disparity in the size of the stimulus packages rolled out by developed and developing countries will put them on different trajectories of recovery, highlights the report.

The stimulus spending per capita by the developed countries has been nearly 580 times higher than those of the least developed countries (LDCs) although the average per capita income of the developed countries has been only 30 times higher than that of the LDCs.

The drastic disparity underscores the need for greater international solidarity and support, including debt relief, for the most vulnerable group of countries.

Moreover, financing these stimulus packages entailed the largest peacetime borrowing, increasing public debt globally by 15 per cent. This massive rise in debt will unduly burden future generations unless a significant part is channelled into productive and sustainable investment, and to stimulate growth.

According to the report, global trade shrank by an estimated 7.6 per cent in 2020 against the backdrop of massive disruptions in global supply chains and tourism flows. Lingering trade tensions between major economies and stalemates in multilateral trade negotiations were already constraining global trade before the pandemic.

“The current crisis reiterates the importance to revitalize the rule-based multilateral trading system to put the world economy on the trajectory of a robust and resilient recovery,” said the Under-Secretary-General of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), Liu Zhenmin. “We must make global trade resilient to shocks to ensure trade remains the engine of growth for the developing countries.”

The report highlights opportunities for developing countries if they can prioritize investments that advance human development, embrace innovation and technology, and strengthen infrastructure, including creating resilient supply chains.

Stressing the importance of stimulating investments, the report shows that while the majority of the stimulus spending went into protecting jobs and supporting current consumption, it also fuelled asset price bubbles worldwide, with stock market indices reaching new highs during the past several months.

“The depth and severity of the unprecedented crisis foreshadows a slow and painful recovery,” said UN Chief Economist and Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development Elliott Harris.

“As we step into a long recovery phase with the roll out of the vaccines against COVID-19, we need to start boosting longer-term investments that chart the path toward a more resilient recovery – accompanied by a fiscal stance that avoids premature austerity and a redefined debt sustainability framework, universal social protection schemes, and an accelerated transition to the green economy.”

An unprecedented crisis – one that has killed more than 2 million people, uprooted many more lives, forced families into poverty, exacerbated income and wealth inequality between communities, disrupted international trade and paralyzed the global economy – needs an extraordinary response.

Ultimately, the report underscores the importance of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals – the blueprint for a fair, peaceful and resilient world.

“Promoting inclusive and equitable growth, reducing inequality and enhancing environmental sustainability is the best plan we have to recover from this crisis and safeguard the world against future crises. Building resilience must guide every aspect of the recovery and we will find women playing critical roles as champions of resilience,” added Maria-Francesca Spatolisano, UN DESA’s Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Inter-Agency Affairs.

Source: UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)

 

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A woman stands outside a yurt in Ger District, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. There is power plant nearby but the government says it aims to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Courtesy: CC BY-SA 4.0/Nathalie Daoust

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Jan 26 2021 (IPS)

Climate warming is believed to have taken place at some of the fastest rates in the world in Mongolia, raising the country’s average temperatures by 2.24°C between 1940 and 2015, with the last decade being the warmest of the past 76 years.

In the Gobi Desert, the occurrence of dust storms increased from 18 to 57 days between 1960 to 2007, and in 2000 almost half a million people were affected by drought. The north-eastern Asian country’s northern region is expected to become more arid over this century as annual precipitation decreased by 7 percent over the past 76 year despite an increase in winter rains. In addition to the drying landscape, changes in water availability is a serious, growing concern.

“Around 90 percent of the annual precipitation is now lost to evapotranspiration. Livestock feed is increasingly falling short (in the steppes),” Dr. Batjargal Zamba, Mongolia’s National United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) focal point, told IPS via Skype from Ulaanbaatar.

Traditional livelihoods bear the brunt of changing climate

Between 1999 and 2002, and again between 2009 and 2010, Mongolia was hit by a series of extremely harsh winters or dzuds that resulted in the death of around 10 million of an estimated 44 million livestock population. The extreme cold and coating of icy snow can prevent animals from getting to their pasture and causes mass deaths. Nearly 70 percent rangeland pastures are degraded, according to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

This is a major push factor for the huge migration of traditional herders of camels, yaks, goats, and sheep into Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city on the banks of the Tuul River in the north-central portion of the country. Urban availability of better health, education and market facilities add to the rural migration.

Nearly half of Mongolia’s 3.2 million people reside in its capital, and the city is facing uncontrollable air pollution, making climate impacts worse. Ulaanbaatar, like other Mongolian cities, has air pollution concentrations — mostly from coal burning to heat homes  — almost six times higher than the recommended World Health Organisation (WHO) air quality guidelines.

In traditionally dry Mongolia, flash floods have become a new feature. As warmer air has a higher capacity to carry moisture in the form of water vapour, global warming is already causing extreme rainfall events. In summer, Mongolia’s 2.24°C higher temperature is melting the snow faster, thawing the permafrost, so much so that it is not just the vast Gobi Desert in the south which is affected, but devastating flash floods have reached Ulaanbaatar, destroying roads and houses on its way, according to Zamba. 

These natural hazards occurring from shifts in climate dynamics frequently affect Mongolia with high loss and damage to agriculture and livestock sectors, hampering poverty reduction efforts, causing economic shock, and contributing to unsustainable rural to urban migration. With a per capita income of $4,295, Mongolia was ranked 106th globally, according to the World Bank.

Mongolia steps up climate control with international partnerships

According to Mongolia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism, the government has been undertaking a number of measures, which include:

• National Climate Change Programme (2011),
• Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (2015),
• Green Development Policy (2015), 
• Sustainable Development Vision 2030 (2016), and
• the newly-approved Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).

The central element for implementing the Paris Agreement are the NDCs of each of the 196 Parties to the climate convention. NDCs are national climate plans highlighting climate actions, related targets, policies and measures governments aims to implement in response to climate change and as a contribution to global climate action.

Mongolia is engaged closely with international efforts to mitigate climate change and its impacts. It is one of the 63 countries that is being supported by the Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP), an initiative of the NDC Partnership (NDCP) with financial and technical assistance not only to submit enhanced NDCs but to also fast-track their implementation.

Mongolia’s NDCs, outlining and communicating their government’s post-2020 climate actions, was approved in November 2019. In it, Mongolia intends to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 22.7 percent by 2030, compared to the business-as-usual scenario. This goal excludes land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF). To reduce emissions, it will focus on the energy sector, namely energy production, energy consumption and transmission loss. In the non-energy sector it will focus on agriculture, industry, and waste-to-energy.

Adaptation in the livelihoods sector, especially in nature-based solutions to water conservation, is also highlighted in the NDCs.

“In addition, if mitigation measures such as carbon capture and sequestration; waste-to-energy, technologies, which are few with developing nations are implemented under international financial mechanism and technical support, Mongolia could achieve a 27.2 percent reduction in total national GHG emissions,” Zamba told IPS.

“This would include capture of methane gas from coal mining, waste-to-energy conversion particularly utilising Ulaanbaatar city’s massive waste dumps. Additionally, greening the steppe region, which covers more than three-fourths of the national territory, increasing forest cover would build up a substantial carbon sink [to increase] carbon removal and reduction in total, to as high as 40.9 percent,” asserted Zamba. Siberian larches and cedars, spruces, pines, and firs with deciduous trees birches, aspens, and poplars cover Mongolia’s northern mountain slopes.

After Mongolia’s new national government came to power in June 2020, the drive to mitigate climate change has been increased via an inter-sectoral integrated climate action plan involving as many as nine ministries. 

The CAEP has also helped on various fronts, making Mongolia’s climate actions more robust and inter-sectoral. Under the CAEP, the Mongolian government has partnered with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), among other institutions over the course of 2020 and 2021, according to ministry sources.

“The CAEP has facilitated to integrate NDC implementation into our national action plans and strategies. Mongolia aspires to reach net-zero emission by 2050,” Zamba said.

Enkhbat Altangerel, Director-General of Mongolia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism, told IPS via email: “Mongolia has joined the NDC Partnership in 2017 and since has been an active member. A number of significant achievements were attained within the frame of the cooperation, such as a partnership plan which was developed and approved, NDC Partners’ online and coordination platform was established. This was a pioneering measure in the field and currently the platform functions as the main NDC coordination and tracking mechanism at the national level.” 

Private sector engagement is essential and prioritised in the implementation of climate policies said Altangerel. Already two private sector commercial banks, XacBank and the Trade and Development Bank, are designated as Accredited Entities for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and are able to disburse GCF-provided green loans to large solar projects. The government has also proposed a Mongolian Green Finance Corporation in cooperation with GCF, which will become the main national green financing body.

Implementing the 2019 NDC till 2030, inclusive of mitigation and adaptation plans, is calculated to cost $11.5 billion, Zamba told IPS.

A yurt in Mongolia with a solar panel that provides electricity and also connects the satellite tv. Courtesy: CC By 2.0/Niek van Son

Speeding towards renewable energy in the Land of Eternal Blue Sky

With between 220 and 260 clear, sunny days each year, Mongolia is called the Land of the Eternal Blue Sky. The country’s combined wind and solar power potential is estimated by the ADB to be equivalent of 2,600 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity or 5,457 terawatt-hours of clean electricity generation per year. The amount is enough to meet the country’s energy demand of around 1.2GW as of 2018 and allow it to still export the remaining, yet currently Mongolia’s coal-dependent energy sector emits two-thirds of its GHG. Coal being cheap and plentiful, coal-fired thermal power plants accounted for a total of 96.1 percent of the total electricity supply in 2015.

But that’s about to change.

“The most emitting sectors are energy and agriculture,” admits Altangerel, “but renewable energy is where our key mitigation achievements are, so far.”

From a current renewable mix of 20 percent share in total electricity generation dominated by wind and solar, with hydro and geothermal, it is targeting a total 1,356 MW or triple the current installed capacity by 2030.

To reduce dirty power generation, Mongolia will also install its first large-scale advanced battery energy storage system in partnership with ADB, facilitated by CAEP. Renewable is also set to provide urban heating in Mongolia’s bitter winter where coal, wood and even rubber tyres are used by the urban poor.

Facilitating private sector partnerships

The private sector engagement is essential in implementation of climate actions said Altangerel.

“We are not asking the private sector to help; we are coercing them. With incentives of course!” Zamba half-jokingly adds. In developing economies public-private partnerships (PPP) are essential, with governments being resource constrained.

The government has prioritised cooperation with the private sector in implementing the NDCs and relevant policies.

After XacBank, one of Mongolia’s large commercial financial institutions in 2019 became the first private sector Accredited Entity for GCF, the bank disburses GCF-provided green loans to large solar projects. The Trade and Development Bank is the second bank to be designated Accredited Entity for GCF. Mongolia has also proposed a Mongolian Green Finance Corporation in cooperation with GCF which will become the main green financing national body.

“Considering the efficiency and rapid process of the CAEP programme, our government is further planning to extend its collaboration with NDC Partnership at sectoral level for the implementation of sector-specific NDC targets and activities,” Altangerel told IPS.

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 26 2021 (IPS)

Current development fads fetishize data, ostensibly for ‘evidence-based policy-making’: if not measured, it will not matter. So, forget about getting financial resources for your work, programmes and projects, no matter how beneficial, significant or desperately needed.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Measure for measure
Agencies, funds, programmes and others lobby and fight for attention by showcasing their own policy agendas, ostensible achievements and potential. Many believe that the more indicators they get endorsed by the ‘international community’, the more financial support they can expect to secure.

Collecting enough national data to properly monitor progress on the Sustainable Development Goals is expensive. Data collection costs, typically borne by the countries themselves, have been estimated at minimally over three times total official development assistance (ODA).

Remember aid declined after the US-Soviet Cold War, and again following the 2008-9 global financial crisis. More recently, much more ODA is earmarked to ‘support’ private investments from donor countries.

With data demands growing, more pressure to measure has led to either over- or under-stating both problems and progress, sometimes with no dishonest intent. ‘Errors’ can easily be explained away as statistics from poor countries are notoriously unreliable.

Political, bureaucratic and funding considerations limit the willingness to admit that reported data are suspect for fear this may reflect poorly on those responsible. And once baseline statistics have been established, similar considerations compel subsequent ‘consistency’ or ‘conformity’ in reporting.

And when problems have to be acknowledged, ‘double-speak’ may be the result. Organisations may then start reporting some statistics to the public, with other data used, typically confidentially, for ‘in-house’ operational purposes.

Money, money, money
Economists generally prefer and even demand the use of money-metric measures. The rationale often is that no other meaningful measure is available. Many believe that showing ostensible costs and benefits is more likely to raise needed funding. Using either exchange rates or purchasing power parity (PPP) has been much debated. Some advocate even more convenient measures such as the prices of a standard McDonald’s hamburger in different countries.

Money-metrics imply that estimated economic losses due to, say, smoking or non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including obesity, tend to be far greater in richer countries, owing to the much higher incomes lost or foregone as well as costs incurred.

Development discourse changes
The four UN Development Decades after 1960 sought to accelerate economic progress and improve social wellbeing. Unsurprisingly, for decades, there have been various debates in the development discourse on measuring progress.

The rise of neoliberal economic thinking, claiming to free markets, has instead mainly strengthened and extended private property rights. Rejecting Keynesian and development economics, both associated with state intervention, neoliberalism’s influence peaked around the turn of the century.

The so-called ‘Washington Consensus’ of US federal institutions from the 1980s also involved the Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, both headquartered in the American capital.

In 2000, the UN Secretariat drafted the Millennium Declaration. This, in turn, became the basis for the Millennium Development Goals which gave primacy to halving the number of poor. After all, who would object to reducing poverty. The poor were defined with reference to a poverty line, somewhat arbitrarily defined by the Bank.

Poverty fetish
Presuming money income to be a universal yardstick of wellbeing, this poverty measure has been challenged on various grounds. Most in poorer developing countries sense that much nuance and variation are lost in such measures, not only for poverty, but also for, say, hunger.

Anyone familiar with the varying significance, over time, of cash incomes and prices in most countries will be uncomfortable with such singular measures. But they are nonetheless much publicised and have implied continued progress until the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rejection of such singular poverty measures has led to multi-dimensional poverty indicators, typically to meet ‘basic needs’. While such ‘dashboard’ statistics offer more nuance, the continued desire for a single metric has led to the development, promotion and popularisation of composite indicators.

Worse, this has been typically accompanied by problematic ranking exercises using such composite indicators. Many have become obsessed with such ranking, instead of the underlying socio-economic processes and actual progress.

Blind neglect
Improving such metrics has thus become an end in itself, with little debate over such one-dimensional means of measuring progress. The consequent ‘tunnel vision’ has meant ignoring other measures and indicators of wellbeing.

In recent decades, instead of subsistence agriculture, cash crops have been promoted. Yet, all too many children of cash-poor subsistence farmers are nutritionally better fed and healthier than the offspring of monetarily better off cash crop or ‘commercial’ farmers.

Meanwhile, as cash incomes rise, those with diet-related NCDs have been growing. While life expectancy has risen in much of the world, healthy life expectancy has progressed less as ill health increasingly haunts the sunset years of longer lives.

Be careful what you wish for
Meanwhile, as poor countries get limited help in their efforts to adjust to global warming, rich countries’ focus on supporting mitigation efforts has included, inter alia, promoting ‘no-till agriculture’. Thus attributing greenhouse gas emissions implies corresponding mitigation efforts via greater herbicide use.

Maximising carbon sequestration in unploughed farm topsoil requires more reliance on typically toxic, if not carcinogenic pesticides, especially herbicides. But addressing global warming should not be at the expense of sustainable agriculture.

Similarly, imposing global carbon taxation will raise the price of, and reduce access to electricity for the ‘energy-poor’, who comprise a fifth of the world’s population. Rich countries subsidising affordable renewable energy for poor countries and people would resolve this dilemma.

Following the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, the UN proposed a Global Green New Deal (GGND) which included such cross-subsidisation by rich countries of sustainable development progress elsewhere.

The 2009 London G20 summit succeeded in raising more than the trillion dollars targeted. But the resources mainly went to strengthening the IMF, rather than for the GGND proposal. Thus, the finance fetish blocked a chance to revive world economic growth, with sustainable development gains for all.

 

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Mozn Hassan

By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

Ten years ago on this day, January 25, one of the biggest revolutions in the world took place in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, as protestors poured into the streets chanting slogans of “Bread, Freedom and Social Justice”, demanding one of the region’s longest-serving and autocratic President Hosni Mubarak to step down. Three weeks later, on February 11th, Mubarak stepped down as president, leaving the Egyptian military in control of the country.

Amnesty International in a statement said, several female protestors at Tahrir Square were taken into military custody on March 9th, 2011 – the day after International Women’s Day – and subjected to grave torture, including being beaten, prodded with electric shock batons, subjected to strip searches and forced to submit to ‘virginity tests’ and threatened with prostitution.

Major General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), said that “‘virginity tests’ had been carried out on female detainees in March to “protect” the army against possible allegations of rape”.

When the administrative court issued a ruling against this practise and called it illegal, a military court acquitted the physician who performed these tests, sending out a clear message of impunity.

A decade after the January 25th Revolution in Egypt, the country continues to thrive on this culture of impunity. A 2013 United Nations study found that nearly all Egyptian women – 99 percent of those surveyed has been victims of sexual harassment. Egypt has continued to deny accusations of these grave human rights violations and sexual violence. In 2020, Rights groups estimated some 60,000 detainees in Egypt are political prisoners, including activist, journalists and lawyers

Mozn Hassan, one of Egypt’s most outspoken voices on human rights, founder and Executive Director of Nazra for Feminist Studies has been working on building an Egyptian feminist movement and support women human rights defenders through legal and psychological intervention in the country much before the Egyptial revolution took place in 2011.

Nazra for Feminist Studies was established in 2005 in Cairo, where it continued building the feminist movement in Egypt and the MENA region.“We are losing everyday, but the feminist movement in Egypt is not a failed movement,” says Mozn Hassan to IPS News.

“Being an independent feminist voice can cost you a lot, targeting by state actors, asset freeze, travel ban, charges of supporting women to have “irreponsible liberty”, or facing threats of charges that could bring you to life time in prisons, are just a few examples,” said Mozn.

Since June 2016 a travel ban has been imposed on Mozn Hassan, following previous incidents of jucidial harassment against Nazra for Feminist Studies, including summons in relation to foreign funding case. In January 2017, Cairo Criminal Court ruled to freeze assets of Mozn Hassan and her non-government organization Nazra for Feminist Studies. Last year in July 2020, the Criminal Court of North Cairo rejected the appeal of the travel ban, later postponing the review of a request to cancel this ban.

“What is happening to Nazra is a clear example of how patriarchal and conserverative individuals cannot accept feminism and feminist acts. I am only one amongst other human rights defenders who has been charged for supporting women to have ‘irresponsible liberty’.

“We have seen different types of pain, loss and grief. We saw systematic sexual assaults; we are seeing friends celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution in jail in the time of Covid-19. At the same time, we are also seeing women’s movements struggling and fighting to have rights, something that has never happened in the Egyptian constitution,” says Mozn.

In November 2019 United Nations member countries at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the Human Rights Council in Geneva criticised Egypts human rights crisis and called on to end torture and ill-treatment, investigate crimes comitted by security forces, allow non governmental organizations and activists to work independently, and protect human rights while countering terrorism.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and several UN experts have repeatedly condemned abuses in Egypt. Several countries have also urged Egypt to make serious measures to halt violations against women.

“Being an activist is hard, being a feminist is harder and being a person who is not part of a social gang, even harder in Egypt. It really is a choice,” says Mozn.

A decade after the revolution in Egypt that overthrew the long-time dictator, what followed the country was economic collapse, job losses, deteriorating human rights conditions, brutal military dictatorship, failing public healthcare systems, and extreme poverty. The committee to Protect Journalists ranked Egypt third, behind China and Turkey, in detaining journalists.

The only way to continue is to understand why we are doing what we do, to continue believing in what is right, says Mozn. “We are gaining support from people, there are small changes but without the process of freedom and democracy in place, the costs will always be higher than gains. We need a holistic vision compiled with political will to move forward.”

“Solidarity is the secret that makes us continue doing our work, and heal from those who want to stop us. Solidarity has been the key aspect of our resilience at Nazra and for me personally as well,” says Mozn.

Sania Farooqui 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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Women ragpickers in Delhi scavenging through a pile of refuse for recyclable material. Credit: Dharmendra Yadav/IPS

By Daud Khan and Leila Yasmine Khan
AMSTERDAM/ROME, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

Developing countries as a group have been growing faster than developed countries for several decades. As a result the ratio between average incomes between the two sets of countries – albeit still very large – has been shrinking.  This is good news. The other piece of good news is that over this period the number of people living in extreme poverty has also been dropping – from 1.9 billion in 1990 to about 650 million in recent years.  China has recently declared an end to extreme poverty. 

The bad news is that much of increased income and wealth in many developing countries has been concentrated at the top with relatively little going to the poor.  This includes big, fast growing countries such as China and India. 

As a result the bulk of the population in developing countries is living in a society where income inequality is increasing.  This matters for two reasons:  

• Firstly, that the increase in average GDP in the developing countries is not translating as fast as it should into generalised well-being indictors such as such as higher education, real wages, average height and life expectancy. This is very disappointing.  
• Secondly, people are not as happy as they could be.  After all happiness is impacted not just by how much they earn and consume, but also about their place in society and how they stand compared to others. The widening gap between the poor and the rich in many countries creates a sense of depravation and injustice. This makes them highly susceptible to political turbulence and instability, both of which have a high cost in terms of economic performance and wellbeing.

Is the increase in inequality an inevitable part of the development process, or at least of the early stages of growth?  Is it true that one “cannot redistribute poverty”? Is it true that rich tend to save and invest more and therefore some concentration of income and wealth is necessary to generate higher growth? Is it true that only a rich and privileged business class has the confidence and appetite for risk and innovation that is a prerequisite for development?  There is strong evidence that the answer to all the above questions is a “NO”. Growth and development can go hand in hand with reduced inequality and better living standards for the poor.

Developing countries are very much on their own in charting out a pathway out of the current situation of inequality and poverty. The developed countries that used to be on the forefront of well balanced growth have for some time abandoned this role

Historic evidence comes from Western Europe which during the early part of the last century, managed to increase wellbeing indicators in line with, or sometimes even faster, than GDP growth.

To some extent this was due to technical innovations such as those in preventive and curative medicines, but a lot had to do with improved social services in health and education, opening up to trade, social protection programmes, and increasing civil rights, particularly to minorities and vulnerable groups.

More recently, experience in several Latin America countries show how more democracy and strong social welfare programmes can reduce inequality and improve the lives of the poor. 

The need to address inequality has been made more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic.  The past year has exacerbated inequality by increasing unemployment, cutting workers’ wages and hitting the poorest and most vulnerable communities. 

Weak social safety nets and poor public health systems have left the poor in a dramatic situation. COVID-19 has particularly hit women who have reduced access to health services and jobs. There has been a sharp increase in domestic violence against women and girls. 

Given this worsening situation, can anything be done to make growth more equitable?  Most certainly – in fact there are several things that can be done and they fall into two broad categories – more “pro-poor” growth, and well-designed social welfare programmes.  

One of the most important pro-poor policies relates to macro-economic stability. It is often not appreciated how vulnerable the poor are to inflation, recessions, overvalued exchange rates and high interest rates.  Keeping these key macro–economic variables under control is imperative. It is not going to be easy as Governments battle the COVID crisis but has to be done. 

The other major element of a pro-poor growth strategy is increasing access for the poor to the essential prerequisites for a productive life.  These include improved infrastructure that meet the needs of the poor such as clean water and sanitation, as well as improved electricity and transport services. 

Equally important are better access to health and education; and to physical and financial assets, in particular credit and land in both rural and urban areas.  Of increasingly importance is access to digital services which are an essential prerequisite to accessing new technologies and productivity growth.

Finally, it is essential that developing countries work together to maintain an open trading system which allows them to produce in line with their endowments and skill levels.  

Clearly not all the poor will be able to take advantage of the improved opportunities created by pro-poor growth.  Factors that exclude them include geographical isolation, gender bias, disabilities, ethnicity or sometimes pure and simple bad luck where things “just don’t work out”.  

Currently only a fraction of the population of developing countries has access to comprehensive social protections programmes and safety nets.  This needs to increase dramatically – not as a form of charity but as a form of social responsibility.    

Unfortunately developing countries are very much on their own in charting out a pathway out of the current situation of inequality and poverty. The developed countries that used to be on the forefront of well balanced growth have for some time abandoned this role.  

Income inequality in the developed world also started increasing in the 1980s. This happened not only in highly market oriented economies such as the USA, but also in historically egalitarian countries such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

And this is not just as a result of technical or market-driven changes that favour for example the “tech-giants”, but also reflects policy choices such as reduced taxes for the richest.  

The tendency for Governments in developed countries to favour the rich was exacerbated during the 2008 financial crisis where vast amounts of public money were provided in the form of support to the financial institutions and large-scale industrial enterprises considered “too big to be allowed to fail”. 

Early indications are that something similar may happen with the post-COVID recovery effort. Substantial amounts of public funds may end up going to large firms – rather than to the poor – which may exacerbate the trends towards rising inequality. 

In the coming decades, the developing countries have a historical chance not only to closing the gap in terms of average incomes gap with developed countries, but also improving the quality of this growth. 

 

Daud Khan works as consultant and advisor for various Governments and international agencies. He has degrees in Economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology. He lives partly in Italy and partly in Pakistan

Leila Yasmine Khan is an independent writer and editor based in the Netherlands. She has Master’s degrees in Philosophy and one in Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric – both from the University of Amsterdam – as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of Rome (Roma Tre). She provided research and editorial support. 

 

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By PRESS RELEASE
GENEVA, Jan 25 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the Global Education Cluster (GEC), the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), Switzerland, UNICEF, the University of Geneva, UNESCO and UNHCR are delighted to announce the launch of the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies.

The Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies is an ambitious commitment towards the realisation of the right to education for crisis-affected and displaced children and youth and comes at a time of unprecedented humanitarian needs. Of the world’s approximately 257 million primary and secondary school-age children out of school, 127 million live in countries affected by emergencies. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this situation. We are witnessing a global crisis in which children and youth are at heightened risk of losing years of education.

The urgent need to respond effectively to the education needs of the world’s most vulnerable children and youth is why the co-signatories pledged at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum to making Geneva the Global Hub for Education in Emergencies. The members will work together towards three main goals:

• Growing demand for change: The Hub is a catalyst for partners to come together to increase their prevention and response to education needs in emergencies. It will strengthen policy and integrated approaches across the humanitarian, development, migration and peace spectrum, as well as with other sectors such as health and climate, to better prioritise and deliver quality, inclusive education in emergencies for crisis-affected children and youth through the increased collaboration of International Geneva actors and beyond, including linking up with other relevant initiatives.
• Inspiring commitment: Bringing together the Geneva strategic community of committed thought leaders will inspire political will and influence agenda setting so that governments and partners see education as a top priority before, during and after emergencies and in protracted crises.
• Boosting country-level impact: All children and youth affected by armed conflicts, violence, disasters, epidemics and forced displacement must have their right to a quality education realised. The Hub aims at boosting the country-level impact of education in emergencies preparedness measures and responses through better data, evidence on what works and innovative research and solutions that support the delivery of safe and quality education while building resilient education systems.

Overall, the Hub will be a catalyst to accelerate progress towards SDG 4 in crises and displacement contexts and help realise the commitments set out in the Global Compact for Refugees.

About the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies

Humanitarian crises, conflict and displacement deny millions of children and youth their right to education. Of the world’s approximately 257 million primary and secondary school-age children out of school, 127 million live in countries affected by emergencies. Nearly 30% of the world’s primary and secondary school-age children and youth live in crisis-affected countries. However, prior to the COVID19 pandemic, they accounted for almost half of all out-of-school children. The situation is even starker at primary level: in 2019, less than one-third of primary-school-age children resided in crisis-affected countries, but almost three-quarters of those out of school resided in these countries.

That is why at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum, Switzerland pledged to promote Geneva a Global Hub for Education in Emergencies to leverage the Geneva international community by convening actors and creating synergies for joint action so that all crisis-affected and displaced children and youth have their right to education fulfilled, respected and protected. The pledge was co-signed by Education Cannot Wait, the Global Education Cluster, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies, UNICEF, the University of Geneva, UNESCO and UNHCR.

The Geneva Global Hub focuses on school-aged children and youth, meaning access and completion of quality pre-primary, primary and secondary education, including non-formal educational pathways and transition to the formal national education system, in line with SDG 4.1. and 4.2. The Hub is also involved in research and evidence-creation for education in emergencies and data. Furthermore, the Hub’s focus includes all crisis-affected and displaced children and youth, regardless of their status (i.e. refugee, host community, internally displaced children and youth, as well as those affected by conflict, violence, disaster and epidemics).

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By Michelle Belisle
NOUMEA, New Caledonia, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

In 2019, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 January as International Day of Education, in celebration of the role of education for peace and development. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4 challenges all nations to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by the year 2030. As we think about this in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emerging post-COVID-19 environment, what does inclusive and equitable education look like and how do we ensure that lifelong learning opportunities are benefitted by all?

EQAP Director Michelle Belise

Pacific Island Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA) results have provided us with rich data that identifies trends in literacy and numeracy for primary school students in the region. The PILNA data in recent cycles have also provided additional insights that speak to learning more broadly in terms of the learning skills that primary students are developing. PILNA 2018 data indicates that problem-solving and critical thinking skills are a challenge for many students in the Pacific region. For example, over 70% of year 6 students struggled with questions that required interpretation and reasoning in numeracy. Similarly, over 50% of students were unable to provide an explanation for their responses to questions in literacy that asked them to interpret what they had read or to make a decision or support an opinion, based on their reading.

At the senior secondary level, student results for the South Pacific Form Seven Certificate (SPFSC) have shown similar trends in recent years. Higher-order questions requiring students to apply their knowledge and problem solve in subjects across the spectrum, but particularly in the sciences and maths, are challenging. Students are generally able to respond to questions by applying recall or direct application of skills and knowledge, but struggle when asked to inter-relate multiple concepts, to address real-world situations or to extend their thinking into a more abstract use of skills and knowledge.

“…traditional education has frequently focused on problems that already have solutions…”

How do we equip learners for the demands of lifelong learning in an ever more rapidly changing world? Traditional education has focused on skills and facts, the kind of education many of us have experienced and the kind of education that has long been a staple of formal education systems around the world. It has frequently focused on problems that already have solutions and in supporting students in getting to those solutions. In recent years there has been increasing recognition that if learning is a lifelong effort, education needs to provide learners with skills that will allow them to solve problems that don’t yet have solutions.

Learning in the twenty-first century should be less focused on facts and figures, which are far more readily available than was the case in past centuries. Instead, education for lifelong learning must emphasise the importance of critical thinking, problem solving, reasoning, analysis, interpretation, synthesizing information, as well as collaboration and digital literacy skills. Gaining these skills, however, involves different ways of engaging in learning that are often not as readily available in large classrooms or in settings where students are not encouraged, or perhaps even overtly discouraged, from questioning what the teacher is saying. The efforts to develop the many skills needed by learners are complicated by the added challenge of disruptions to learning caused by the pandemic and efforts to fill the gaps with distance learning and virtual gatherings.

As we navigate the COVID crisis, we have a unique opportunity to reset standards in education, by providing the tools to ensure future generations embrace critical thinking both here in the Pacific, and globally.

Michelle Belisle Director, Educational Quality and Assessment Programme Pacific Community (SPC)

 

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A former United Nations staff member, a UN volunteer in New York city, shows medical supplies that were donated to fight COVID-19. Credit: United Nations/Robert Macpherson

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 25 2021 (IPS)

After the pioneer Global Technical Meeting on Volunteerism last July, a recently-held on-line follow up helped gathering new insights from experts and practitioners from the world on how to move forward with positioning volunteering at the center of development agenda.

The main outcome of the July’s forum, jointly organized by UNV and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, was a new blueprint, the global Call for Action, aimed at boosting and reinvigorating the role volunteerism in promoting a better, more equal and more sustainable world.

We have now a new strategic approach that can truly leverage the power of volunteering by focusing on innovation, inclusion and informal actions, the latter a big breakthrough that recognizes how deeply ingrained the foundations of volunteerism are in so many societies and cultures, especially in less economically developed nations.

There is now also a new momentum to break away with a silos approach that saw volunteering as an “add on” in an already packed development agenda.

Instead, its complementarity role together with balancing local and informal traditions while embracing social innovation, including data driven new technologies, is now going to shape a new volunteering paradigm.

It also recognizes it as a tool for personal and professional development that could benefit those excluded from the benefits of the globalization, for example youth out of the job market and out of education as well as other disenfranchised citizens.

Thanks to the online follow conversation enabled by UNV, we know that on the grounds there are many best practices and such forums help establishing a global community of volunteerism promoters that can learn from each other and move forward the agenda.

Among the insights, many developing countries normally considered as “laggers” are instead pioneers in policies, legislation and institutions focused on volunteerism.

For example, Nigeria, also thanks to the active role of the civil society, has developed a very interesting blueprint to promote volunteerism across the country.

In Togo there is a specific law enacted in 2011 regulating volunteerism and since 2014 the National Agency for Volunteering in Togo, ANVT, is the national enabler of volunteering action within the country.

Always in Western Africa, Sierra Leone has a network of volunteering promoting agencies while Kenya has a national volunteering policy and a national volunteering service program directly promoted by the President of the country.

Young volunteers clean garbage from the Yamuna River banks in India. Credit: UNDP India/Sudhanshu Malhotra

In the Asia Pacific region, the Philippines has one of the strongest volunteering “infrastructures” while Nepal, another country rich in local forms of self-help, is also working on a volunteering policy.

Yet despite these positive stories, volunteering keeps being sidelined and struggles to gain the deserved “notoriety” within the development agenda.

The fact that the Global Technical Meeting was entitled “Re-imagining Volunteerism” is itself heartening because, after all, with the new Decade of Action started, we really need to double our efforts to re-vitalize volunteerism not just as a tool for a better and more effective policy making that is able to involve and engage the citizens, but also as a way of living to be embraced by more and more people.

In a way volunteering or the BIG V as I like to call it, should become a new norm, a new way of living that should be literally become a natural component of our lives.

It is not going to be easy but we have to give a big try not only at policy level but also at grassroots levels, better recognizing what already exists while also conquering new grounds, making volunteerism more attractive and appealing for those who never embraced it in life.

Locally, Alice Chadwick and Bianca Fadel in a paper for the International Association for Volunteer Effort, IAVE, that in the past 6 months held a series of important online discussions, highlight how “community volunteering should not be a means of delivering externally defined agendas, but rather should start from the premise that community-based volunteers are already designing and delivering responses to challenges based upon their community’s priorities and in turn building their own resilience”

They call this approach “supportive solidarity” in which external forms of help, including formal volunteering, strengthen rather than erase localized forms of community centered development.
Galina Bodrenekova, a pioneer of volunteerism in Russia, highlights the importance of volunteering centers that could be run by local NGOs but also by local youth clubs.

Affordability and cost-effectiveness indeed are going to play a big part if we want to expand such local infrastructures to be able to attract, together with new online platforms, new volunteers.

Involving and engaging learning institutions at all the levels is going to be paramount: while universities could do much more to promote a culture of altruism and solidarity, primary and secondary schools have a big role to play as well.

Now we need more awareness, visibility and willingness to do more.

We also need more resources.

Certainly, UNV and the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement have a huge task ahead and hopefully they will receive the much-needed support from the international community to scale up their operations and help making volunteering becoming a natural choice for the majority of world citizens.

Partnerships are going to be key as recognized by the global Call for Action: locally, nationally and internationally, we need more collaborations, we need more synergies and a stronger and better marketing “plan” to attract more people to service.

While harnessing the traditions already on the ground, we need big corporates to step up their game.

Many of them already promote corporate volunteerism but we need to do more to create a global enabling system to strengthen volunteerism everywhere.

The national volunteering awards, often supported by UNV globally, should become the “grand finale” of months of joint activities implemented by networks, formal and informal as well, engaging local actors eager to promote volunteerism.

Perhaps we need some global icons to help leveraging volunteerism as one of the best mechanisms to achieve the SDGs and ensure a more resilient and sustainable planet.

There is no challenge faced by the planet Earth that cannot be addressed by also tapping into volunteers’ skills and creativity.

The ongoing climate action activism is one of the best expressions of this force in action.
Perhaps we need partnerships with national and global social media companies that are now in need to mend many of their practices.

Maybe we could partner with global broadcasters to showcase every 5th of December, the International Volunteer Day, the global best practices and engage the masses.

At policy level, we need to make stronger the case of volunteerism.

If we want to achieve the SDGs, we need more volunteers not to play the role of substitutes of the governments but rather be there on the ground as their allies.

This would be one of the best ways to do what in jargon is called “localizing” the SDGs.

Negotiations are going on to decide the format of the 2021 High Level Political Forum where members of the United Nations will voluntarily disclose their national efforts to achieve the SDGs.

There will be a whopping 44 nations, some of them presenting their results and future plans for the first time while others doing it for a second or even third time.

Would it make sense to make it mandatory in these Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) as these presentations are called, to embed the contributions of volunteerism in their overall efforts?
Some nations are already doing it but without being given the due credit and recognition.

To make the Decade of Action a truly success, we need to have stronger volunteerism enabling and promoting systems everywhere, locally and globally.

It is truly the time to be bold and innovative.

E-mail: simone_engage@yahoo.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-galimberti-4b899a3/

 

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Simone Galimberti is Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

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Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide, which will soon be relocated to a new memorial site to preserve them. Jacqueline Murekatete, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and founder and President of the Genocide Survivors Foundation (GSF). highlighted the importance of centring these discussions on genocide around survivors. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

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

Women and young girls are disproportionately affected by conflict and genocide, and that is why they should be a central part of conversations on the issue, according to Jacqueline Murekatete, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and founder and President of the Genocide Survivors Foundation (GSF).

“Survivors need to be invited to the table to share their testimonies,” Murekatete told IPS. “When people hear personal stories they’re more likely to want to get involved. It makes a huge difference to have their testimony.”

It’s also crucial for the narrative to distinguish between women survivors and survivors who are young girls in order to highlight the nuances of how young girls are affected when they are subject to sexual violence at a tender age, she said.

“I have friends who were raped at the age of nine. A nine-year-old child being raped and some of them being infected with HIV/AIDS means their whole life can be ruined. Raising awareness about the fact that it’s not just women, it’s also little girls, really elevates what genocide is. When you see children who are nine or ten, being gang-raped — it’s another level of violence, of evil that needs to be brought to light,” Murekatete said.

Jacqueline Murekatete. Courtesy: Genocide Survivors Foundation (GSF)

Murekatete spoke with IPS following a U.N. panel on “Women and Genocide” last week. The panel specifically highlighted the issue of how women were impacted during the Holocaust — where between 1941 and 1945 Nazis systematically murdered over 6 million Jewish men, women and children — and the Rwandan genocide of 1994 — where in just 100 day over 800,000 people, ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were murdered.

Dr. Sarah Cushman, Director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation at Northwestern University, discussed the issue of gender and the Holocaust.

“Gender has been a part of Holocaust studies from the start,” she said. “Early explorations centred on the notions of a German crisis of masculinity – scholars saw this as a response to World War I.”

This supposed threat to their masculinity was “fertile soil for the emergence of a masculinist bellicose revival in the form of the Nazi party, and the person of Adolf Hitler,” she added.

“I don’t necessarily think they were trying to preserve ‘the gender hierarchy’ per se, but rather they sought to reestablish Germany as a masculine nation among other nations,” Cushman told IPS. “They viewed the ‘Jewish influence’ as creating a liberalistic, soft, effeminate and ineffective democracy. They aimed to put an end to that (among other things).”

Cushman was joined by Sarah E. Brown, Executive Director of the Centre for Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Education at Brookdale Community College, who spoke on the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The genocide left thousands of orphans like Murekatete, who lost her family at the age of nine. Murekatete currently runs GSF to make sure other survivors have a safe haven to process their trauma.

Excerpts of the full interview below.

The gates of World War II concentration camp, Auschwitz. Approximately 1.1 million people — of whom 960,000 were Jewish — were killed in the biggest extermination camp from World War II. Photo by Jean Carlo Emer on Unsplash

Inter Press Service (IPS): Can you share how you realised as a woman, there are different implications of a genocide for you?

Jacqueline Murekatete (JM): I was nine when the genocide happened. I was a young girl, not a woman. Growing up in the aftermath of the genocide, and now as I work with genocide survivors, I have spoken with so many girls and women who have suffered so much because of their gender. During a genocide, every member of the targeted group suffers but women and girls have a higher level of suffering in that most of them are always victims of sexual violence.

During the Rwandan genocide, rape wasn’t just a random act. The Hutu extremists actually got on the radio to encourage Hutu men to make sure they rape Tutsi women and Tutsi girls before they killed them.

IPS: Sarah Brown said at the talk Hutu men ‘deliberately impregnated’ Tutsi women to make sure there are ‘Hutu children’ and also knowingly passed on HIV/AIDS. Can you speak to that?

JM: There have been women who were infected by Hutu men knowingly, who told the women they were going to die a very, very slow death. Many of these women contracted HIV/AIDS during the genocide. Although it’s been more than 25 years, the consequences of the genocide are still a daily reality for them. Some say they can’t forget because they still take pills everyday for HIV/AIDS.

Many say, everyday they look at their child and she/he looks like their rapist. So for these women, everyday is a reminder of what they suffered and they are still living with the physical and mental consequences of the genocide.

The relationship between these moms and their children was and remains very complicated. Many gave up their children for adoption because everyday was a reminder of what happened to them. Meanwhile, in some cases, these children were the only relatives these women had because the women or the girls’ families had been killed.

IPS: Sarah Brown also said women were given more leadership roles following the genocide, and the Rwandan government removed a bunch of laws that made women second-class citizens. Are women’s rights in Rwanda better after the genocide?

JM: This partly happened out of necessity. In many villages, sometimes you’d find that there were so many men that had been killed that women would end up taking roles that they had never taken on before.

This led to a cultural shift in women doing more work and having more leadership roles — including in politics. As women came into positions of power, a lot of women’s rights got better. For example, women couldn’t own property in Rwanda, and that has changed; and domestic violence is addressed with more access to services.

IPS: Can you elaborate on why it’s crucial for survivors to be present — and highlighted — at talks about genocides?

JM: I always highlight the importance of including people who are the actual survivors in conversations, for them to come and share their stories. I always say, we cannot be here debating about people’s lives who are not at the table, it’s just wrong. There is progress being made, but there’s still a long way to go in making sure that the voices that need to be at the table are actually at the table.

Related Articles

• Survivors Recall the Horrors of Auschwitz

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By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jan 23 2021 (IPS)

Looking back upon 2020, we all bear the scars of a devastating year; none so much as girls and boys around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education for over 1.6 billion children and youth globally and continues to do so. It has also deepened socio-economic inequities and heightened insecurities around the world, further impacting the lives of girls and boys everywhere. Ongoing, protracted conflicts, forced displacement and the worsening climate crisis were no less forgiving.

Yasmine Sherif

2020 was, in short, a brutal year for the world’s children and youth – most markedly upon the 75 million children and youth whose education had already been disrupted by emergencies and protracted crises, and who are now doubly-hit by COVID-19 – and the impacts continue to this day. It is crucial that we take a moment to reflect upon and mark the International Day of Education on 24 January 2021. It is exactly now that we need to reinforce our commitment to education as the crucial tool to carve a path forward for all the world’s children and their futures, as was hammered home to me again on my recent trips to Burkina Faso and Lebanon – both reeling from multiple crises.

Conflict and insecurity have driven a million people from their homes in Burkina Faso in recent years. Educational facilities have been targeted, teachers and students have been attacked and school closures due to attacks doubled from 2017 to 2019, disrupting the education of more than 400,000 children.

Teachers and students in Kaya, the fifth-largest city in Burkina Faso, where many displaced families have fled to from insecurity and violence, showed me their tragic, challenging reality last week. Schools severely lacked infrastructure to house students, teaching materials were missing, and water and sanitation were non-existent. Some classrooms have tripled in size, now holding over a hundred pupils each.

On top of this, the pandemic resulted in the closure of all schools for several months in 2020. Currently, there are more than 2.6 million children out of school and in the six most severely affected regions of Burkina Faso, the primary school completion rate is only 29%.

Yet even in these ill-equipped and overcrowded schools, hope and positivity have not been extinguished and are being kept alive by teachers, workers and the irrepressible enthusiasm of the students themselves. Rodrigue Sawodogo, a nine-year-old boy displaced by conflict, told me, “I would like to become a policeman to save my country, because I want everyone to live in peace.”

The crisis in Burkina Faso and in the whole Central Sahel region is among the fastest deteriorating in the world. We can either watch and do nothing at all to help give a chance to children like Rodrigue to achieve their dreams, or we can actually act right now, by investing in children and adolescents to empower them to achieve their full potential and to become positive change agents for their communities.

Education Cannot Wait – the global fund dedicated to education in emergencies and protracted crises — in partnership with the Government of Burkina Faso, UNICEF and Enfants du Monde, has launched a multi-year programme that aims to provide education to 800,000 children and adolescents in crisis-affected regions in the country. ECW is providing an initial $11.1 million for three years of seed funding. But that is not enough. We are calling on public and private donors to raise a further $48 million to reach every vulnerable child.

Just a few weeks before my visit to Burkina Faso, I also travelled to Lebanon in December 2020 to review the education crises the country is facing and to advocate globally for more funds to facilitate access to education for all. Lebanon hosts the largest proportion of refugees per capita of the local population in the world. Since 1948 it has been home to a large Palestinian refugee community, while more than one million Syrians have crossed the border since 2011.

Compounding economic, health and political crises are putting over a million children and youth at risk in Lebanon. According to ECW’s 2019 Annual Results Report, over 630,000 Syrian children and 447,400 vulnerable Lebanese children faced challenges accessing education.

The banking system has collapsed and more than half the country is living in poverty, according to a 2019 report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. And that was before COVID-19 deepened the economic recession and before Beirut’s port was ripped apart by a catastrophic explosion in August, killing 200 people, leaving 300,000 homeless and damaging 140 schools. Within a month of the blast, ECW approved a $1.5 million emergency fund to rapidly rehabilitate 40 schools and to support 30,000 girls and boys to resume learning.

During this latest mission, ECW worked alongside the Lebanese government, local NGOs and United Nations partners to establish multi-year resilience programmes in Lebanon. These aim to bridge the gap between short-term humanitarian responses and longer-term development interventions. A similar multi-year resilience programme for the education sector is about to be launched for Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Education is a development sector and it requires sustained investments to save millions of girls from early marriage, early childbirth and boys from joining armed terror groups.

To do so, Education Cannot Wait needs the funds required to fully fund these multi-year programmes. We are urgently appealing to public and private sector donors to help close the funding gap to provide inclusive, quality education to both internally displaced, refugee children and to vulnerable host communities.

Our past does not define our future. The violence, insecurities and crises that have defined 2020 will only inspire us to do more, to act quicker and to build a stronger and more resilient foundation. On this International Day of Education, we hope you can take a moment to reflect upon how education has impacted your life. Are you ready to share your privilege with others less fortunate?

We encourage you to think about the millions of children in multiple crises and how we all share a responsibility to help. We have all been affected by the pandemic. We share a common humanity and a common human experience. Let us serve the most vulnerable – crisis-affected children and youth – and let us be there for them when they most need us. Let our moral choices be translated into financial support. Let’s make Sustainable Development Goal 4 a reality for all those left furthest behind.

The author is Director, Education Cannot Wait

 

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Cancels Canadian Tar Sands Pipeline Keystone XL

By Stephen Leahy
Jan 22 2021 (IPS)

I wasn’t going to stop for the school bus stuck in the mud outside of Fort McMurray, Alberta in the heart of the Canada’s tar sands industry but my kids insisted. It had been raining most of the week and the grassy field was soaked and slick. We stopped and got out and looked at the 12,000 kilogram bus uselessly spinning its wheels, digging deeper into the mud. Someone got the driver to stop, essentially saying you’re making a bad problem worse.

Stephen Leahy

No one had a vehicle large enough to tow or push the bus which would have likely become mired as well. A few other people came by, and collectively, we came up with ideas. I thought it an impossible task for a handful of people barely able to stand in the muck ourselves. A few trials, some planks of wood and a gleeful bouncing up and down inside the back of the bus produced the unexpected result of freeing the vehicle.

I was surprised we’d done it and by my own feelings of intense satisfaction at what we strangers had collectively accomplished. By not making a bad problem worse, we figured out a way to solve it together.

Keystone XL would have added 110 millions tons of CO2

President Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL (KXL) oil pipeline is an example of not making a really bad problem worse. The Need-to-Know here is that KXL would have added up to 110 million tons of climate-heating CO2 into the atmosphere every year for at least 50 years a study in journal Nature Climate Change reported in 2014. That’s country-sized emissions — enough to put it on the list of the top 35 worst carbon-polluting countries in the world, as I wrote in Vice at that time.

I first learned of KXL more than ten years ago and ended up writing a dozen articles about it, including how Canada’s spy agencies were monitoring KXL protestors as potential threats to national security. The 36-inch diameter pipe was intended to pump 830,000 barrels of bitumen per day from the Alberta tar sands down to US Gulf Coast for refining. Calgary-based TransCanada Pipelines, now renamed TC Energy, originally claimed the pipeline was needed for US energy security, but environmentalists said it was to be refined into diesel and exported to Europe. An interesting Need-to-Know today is that the US doesn’t need the oil and Europe doesn’t want dirty diesel. In fact, Europe bought nearly 1.4 million electric vehicles in 2020, more than any other country in the world.

Here’s where things got interesting in 2020

TC Energy began pipeline construction in Alberta after Jason Kenney’s provincial government agreed in March 2020 to fund the first year of construction with a C$1.5 billion investment. Kenney also guaranteed C$6 billion worth of loans, all as part of an effort to jump-start the northern portion of project ahead of the US Presidential election. Last summer about 90 kilometres of pipeline was built in Alberta.*

As expected on Inauguration Day President Biden signed an executive order rescinding KXL permits. Expect Jason Kenney to scream loud and long. Although it’s really Albertans who should be screaming about the blatant waste of their tax money on the long predicted cancellation of the project.

The last thing an escalating climate crisis needs is to increase fossil fuel infrastructure. That’s a clear case of making a very bad problem much worse. To repeat another Need-to-Know: The 2015 Paris climate agreement means all countries agreed to phase out fossil fuel use. That’s essential in order to keep climate change under 2 degrees C.

Instead of wasting $1.5 billion on the doomed KXL pipeline, Alberta’s Kenney should have used that public money to help workers in the oil industry with re-training and financial support during the required phase down of the industry.

A Need-to-Know is that the fossil fuel industry is not a major employer in Canada or most countries. It’s a capital intensive sector, not job intensive. Less than 1% of Canada’s workforce are employed in those industries in total. A 20-year phase out of Canada’s fossil fuel sector is entirely doable and would not disrupt the economy, said economist Jim Stanford in a new report.

Undeniable: fossil fuels will disappear

A 20-year phase out would reduce fossil employment by about 8,500 positions per year—as many as Canada usually creates every 10 days. The industry already shed twice that number of jobs in 2020 due to poor oil prices and pandemic-induced recession. Most of those jobs aren’t coming back. Stanford, who heads the Vancouver-based Centre for Future Work said:

“It is now undeniable: fossil fuels will disappear from most uses in the foreseeable future.”

The industry and it’s supporters will continue to deny the undeniable, making a bad situation worse. For example the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims the cancellation of KXL “….will put thousands of Americans out of work…” The very influential US Chamber has been a long-time denier of climate change and played a key role in getting former President Trump to pull the US out of the Paris agreement.

Continuing to deny the undeniable is why many once-prosperous past societies collapsed anthropologists report in a new study: “When Good Governments Go Bad”. In studying 30 different societies they concluded that collapse could very likely have been avoided but citizens relied on their leaders to act in societies’ best interests. Instead, leaders protected their own interests, and those of the elite in society.

Let’s not continue to repeat past mistakes.

*Note: In 2012 KXL was split into two projects with a southern leg from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf Coast and northern leg from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska. Construction for much of the southern leg was completed in 2014.

Stephen Leahy is an award-winning environmental journalist and author based in Canada. He was lead international science and environment correspondent at IPS and now publishes Need to Know: Science and Insight, a free weekly bulletin bringing fresh ideas and perspective on the pandemic, and existential crisis of climate change and unravelling of nature’s life supports.

 

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