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By External Source
Dec 4 2020 (IPS)

Vaccine hesitancy is a severe threat to global health, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The term refers to the delay in acceptance or the refusal of vaccines, despite the availability of vaccination services. It’s a serious risk to the people who aren’t getting vaccinated as well as the wider community.

Vaccine hesitancy is not new. There have been some sceptics ever since vaccination began. Soon after Dr Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine in 1796, rumours started spreading that cow heads would erupt from the bodies of people who received the vaccine.

But the issue is particularly urgent now in efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

Delays and refusals of vaccination for COVID-19 – or any other vaccine-preventable disease – would prevent communities from reaching thresholds of coverage necessary for herd immunity. Community transmission of COVID-19 would continue, keeping the pandemic alive

Preliminary results from four clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines suggest that they are highly effective in preventing COVID-19 infection. This is promising. But the mere existence of vaccines is not enough. People would need to accept and take the vaccines in sufficient numbers to interrupt the transmission of COVID-19 infection.

A recent survey shows that a substantial proportion of people may refuse or delay taking a COVID-19 vaccine. It’s important to understand why.

Social media has spread a lot of anti-vaccination misinformation over the last 20 years. We recently evaluated the effect of social media on vaccine hesitancy globally.

We saw that in countries where social media is used to organise offline action, more people tend to believe that vaccinations are unsafe. We also found that foreign disinformation campaigns online are associated with both a drop in vaccination coverage over time and an increase in negative discussion of vaccines on social media.

Delays and refusals of vaccination for COVID-19 – or any other vaccine-preventable disease – would prevent communities from reaching thresholds of coverage necessary for herd immunity. Community transmission of COVID-19 would continue, keeping the pandemic alive.

 

Research design

We measured social media usage in two ways. Firstly, we assessed the use of any social media platforms by the public to organise offline political action of any kind. Secondly, we measured the level of negatively oriented discourse about vaccines on social media using all geocoded tweets in the world from 2018 to 2019. Geocoded tweets generate an indication of place either from contextual clues or from the global position of the device. We also measured the level of foreign-sourced coordinated disinformation (that is, intentional misinformation) on social media in each country, using Digital Society Project indicators.

Intentional pushing of anti-vaccination propaganda has been traced to pseudo-state actors affiliated with Russia as part of general efforts to disrupt trust in experts and authorities throughout the western world.

We measured vaccine hesitancy using the percentage of the public per country who feel that vaccines are unsafe, using Wellcome Global Monitor indicators for 137 countries. We also used annual vaccination coverage data from the World Health Organisation for 166 countries.

Our purpose was to evaluate whether social media organisation and foreign disinformation were associated with increases in vaccine hesitancy and actual levels of vaccination.

Numerous studies of single countries and populations have found that anti-vaccination propaganda has increased vaccine hesitancy. Our study aimed to quantify this effect around the world.

 

Results

We found that the use of social media to organise offline action is strongly associated with the perception that vaccinations are unsafe. This perception escalates as more organisation occurs on social media. In addition, foreign disinformation online is strongly associated with both an increase in negative discussion of vaccines on social media and a decline in vaccination coverage over time.

We used a five-point scale to measure how much foreign governments disseminate false information in a country. It ranged from “Never or almost never” to “Extremely often”. A one-point shift upwards on this scale was associated with a 15% increase in negative tweets about vaccines and a two percentage point decrease in the average vaccination coverage year over year.

Social media allows for easy mass public communication. This makes it easy to share fringe opinions and disinformation widely. Since any opinion can be presented as fact, it’s more difficult for individuals to be informed about issues. Truth is lost in noise. It’s hard to tell whether something is an established fact.

The creation of doubt is particularly harmful when it comes to vaccination, because uncertainty causes vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy has resulted in many of the measles outbreaks in Europe and North America from 2018 to 2020.

In 2003, widespread rumours about polio vaccines intensified vaccine hesitancy in Nigeria. This led to a boycott of polio vaccination in parts of the country. The result was a five-fold increase in cases of polio in the country between 2003 and 2006. The boycott also contributed to polio epidemics across three continents.

 

Recommendations

Our study suggests that combating social media disinformation regarding vaccines is critical to reversing the growth in vaccine hesitancy around the world. These findings are especially salient in the context of the current pandemic, given that COVID-19 vaccines will require deployment globally to billions of people. Policymakers need to begin planning now for ways to work against the patterns found in this study.

The findings demonstrate that public outreach and public education about the importance of vaccination will not be enough to ensure optimal uptake of COVID-19 vaccines. Governments should hold social media companies accountable by mandating them to remove false anti-vaccination content, regardless of its source.

The key to countering online misinformation is its removal by social media platforms. Presentation of arguments against blatant misinformation paradoxically reinforces the misinformation, because arguing against it gives it legitimacy.

Steven Lloyd Wilson, Assistant Professor of Politics, Brandeis University and Charles Shey Wiysonge, Director, Cochrane South Africa, South African Medical Research Council

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

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Credit: Unsplash / David Clode

By Ifeanyi Nsofor and Lolo Cynthia
ABUJA, Dec 4 2020 (IPS)

Every year, the global 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence begins on November 25 and ends December 10. The theme of this year’s activism is “Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect!”

The 16 Days is very important this year. Data from several countries show rising cases of gender-based violence due to city lockdowns which have placed victims and oppressors in close proximity. A report by Voice of America shows that COVID-19 is increasing the incidence of gender-based violence in the U.S.; Russia; Mexico; and Malawi.

The situation in Nigeria is not different – a COVID-19 lockdown leads to an increase in sexual and gender violence, according to investigations by the Pulitzer Centre. Sadly, the United Nations documentedmore than 3600 cases of rapes during the COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria.

The work of the Women’s Crisis Centre in Umuaka community, southeast Nigeria, reveals new information on gender-based violence and factors which perpetuate these brutal acts. In her role as the Program Manager at the Women Crisis Centre, Lolo conducted focus group discussions to learn the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors around violence against women.

Women leaders said that mothers choose to sell their daughters into marriages because they are full-time housewives who are unable to financially take care of their children. They also view the act as a show of love and concern – means one less mouth to feed and the married daughter even contributes to the upkeep of her siblings

The result shows abuse of cultural practices, use of child marriage as a means to escape poverty, and husbands’ use of threat of divorce to perpetuate violence against women. Indeed, it is clear that violence against women and girls continued during and after the COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria.

One topic that came up was around masquerades which are a very important part of the Igbo culture for men as they are regarded as an extension of Igbo ancestors. Even during COVID-19 restrictions, such festivals continued occurring in villages.

During them, females are forbidden from so much as looking masquerades in the face while the men are given the liberty to dance, flog, and demand money from the observers. Some young men who wear the masquerade costumes use its sacred nature to intimidate females who had previously refused their advances.

‘I was flogged and cut with a cutlass by one of the masquerades. He threatened me a few days before the festival because I refused his sexual advances… He told me that he would deal with me in due time… My body was heavily bruised’, said one focus group participant.

Much of the violence relayed during the focus group is related to poverty as Nigeria is the world’s poverty capital. Eighty-seven million Nigerians live in extreme poverty. The difficulty for families to care for their children pushes them to give away their daughters as minors in marriages.

Women leaders said that mothers choose to sell their daughters into marriages because they are full-time housewives who are unable to financially take care of their children. They also view the act as a show of love and concern – means one less mouth to feed and the married daughter even contributes to the upkeep of her siblings. Shockingly men are absolved from being complicit in this act. Instead, girls and their mothers are to blame by community members.

‘These small small girls – 13 and 14 year old’s……..they are so spoilt nowadays. All they want is money and fancy things. I see them on motorcycles with these 19-year old boys. They are always rubbing each other in public”, said one focus group participant.

At Umuaka Village, the pride of a woman is her husband. Indeed, marital status dictates how she is treated in the community. Women leaders said domestic violence cases are “resolved” at homes because if the victim reports to the police, she is viewed as bringing shame to her family.

‘You can see a woman with bruises in the station today reporting her husband …when the husband is arrested, he threatens to divorce her and she immediately drops the case’, said a police officer in the focus group.

‘The men are afraid of the law and their crimes, so they know what to say to make the women powerless… because she knows that men are scarce. Who wants to be divorced or have a husband in prison because his wife sent him there? It’s a big shame’, the police officer explained further.

These acts of violence should not be allowed to continue, even if some people seem resigned to them. These are four ways the Women Crisis Centre is intervening to reduce the incidence of violence against women based on the focus group findings:

First, government and civil society organisations must begin to engage with the traditional leaders at Umuaka to remove flogging as part of Owoh masquerade celebrations. Victims of violence should be encouraged to report to authorities when their rights are violated.

Second, ensure women are economically empowered and can earn their wages. Already, Women Crisis Centre is providing unconditional cash grants for women to start their own businesses.  In addition, they are taught financial literacy with a focus on how to save and open their personal bank accounts, as most of the women rely on their children or husband’s bank account.

Third, it takes a community to prevent violence against women. Therefore, the Women Crisis Centre is already working with traditional leaders, churches and the private sector to educate women of their rights and how to seek redress when their rights are violated.

Fourth, engage with the Umuaka community to consider girl-child education as a form of poverty alleviation. Every girl-child must be enrolled in school.

COVID-19 has worsened violence against women and girls. It also provides a good opportunity to push for reforms to end it. Talking to the community directly can provide guidance on where to start.

 

Dr. Ifeanyi M. Nsofor, is a medical doctor, a graduate of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the CEO of EpiAFRIC and Director of Policy and Advocacy at Nigeria Health Watch. He is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University, a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a 2006 International Ford Fellow. 

Lolo Cynthia is a Nigerian Sexuality and Reproductive educator who advocates for sexually empowered and liberated women and men through sex-education and access to contraceptives. She is the founder of LoloTalks and Program Manager at the Women Crisis Centre.

 

The post Nigerian Focus Group Reveals Why Ending Gender-Based Violence is Necessary appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A 9-year-old girl plays on a seesaw in a new inclusive playground built in her school in Za’atri Refugee Camp in Jordan. Credit: UNICEF/Christopher Herwig

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Dec 4 2020 (IPS)

The 13th session of the Conference of States Parties (COSP) that was initially supposed to be held in New York back in June recently wrapped up with the final session coinciding with the International Day of People with Disabilities, whose theme, this year was on the issue of building back better inclusively.

In the context of Covid -19, this means creating accessible and sustainable post pandemic pathways of self-realization and prosperity for persons with disabilities. More than what it is normally thought, disabilities are not really isolated conditions affecting the few but rather the opposite.

Millions of people worldwide have their lives adversely impacted by them, often with ailments that are apparently invisible, if you think, for example, to all of us suffering of mental health.

The COSP therefore is very important for many of us and is undoubtedly the premier annual event centered on disabilities.

Its focus this year was on three related topics: inclusive job markets, the need to address the needs of older persons with disabilities and the promotion of inclusive environments for the full implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

These are big topics that should be find appropriate space on the major news outlets but instead the same COSP is just an “expert” meeting, a niche forum that is very far from receiving the due coverage that it really deserves.

At the moment of writing, no major news outlets have been reporting about it and neither other “powerful” organizations with global outreach seemed to care about it.

For example, on the main homepage of the influential World Economic Forum, I found a vast array of issues from the need to have leadership and trust to fight corruption to an op-ed piece by Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan about leading by doing in climate action.

Yes quite understandably climate change is big for the World Economic Forum together with a focus on work diversity, a consequence of Black Lives Matter protests. Unfortunately, I could not find anything about disabilities.

The problem is the inability to connect the threads of social problems affecting the world.

For example, it is a huge missed opportunity not linking the ongoing debate on how to make working places more diverse and inclusive of minority groups to the wider debate on the rights of persons with disabilities to employment and job security.

After all a global job market that is truly inclusive refers to wide opportunities for all members of minority groups, not just those who are more vocal and loud.

The idea of building back better that normally refers to more sustainable and eco-friendly solutions, from more environmentally friendly means of transportations to more efficient and cleaner energies, is set to play a determinant role if we want to achieve net zero emissions in the decades ahead.

While the 13th COSP focused on its last day on inclusive reconstruction and more accessible environment for persons with disabilities, there is an urgent need to link the rethinking of urban places with the overall prominence disability rights should receive in this global “building back better” movement.

It is not just about redesigning urban spaces that are fully accessible while being eco-friendly and it is not only about better approaches to have more persons with disabilities in the work places everywhere, from developed nations to those still developing.

We need instead to frame one comprehensive and holistic strategy, from transportations to energies to jobs to affordable housing that is truly inclusive for all citizens, especially members of minority groups that have been so far often excluded from the economic gains of this world economic order.

Connecting the dots is the only way to really provide persons with disabilities and, very importantly, members of other vulnerable groups, with the opportunities to have fulfilling and meaningful lives.

Employment is so central in this equation and consequentially, only after achieving it, persons with disabilities and their “invisible” peers will become equal actors in the post pandemic order.

Some examples of disconnected approaches. In relation to better urban patterns, the global network of major global cities, C40 has leading a progressive agenda to reinvent urban spaces but again, accessibility and inclusion of persons with disabilities is not on their radar.

Also, within the United Nations, the New Urban Agenda is promising for its holistic inclusiveness that covers also the economic sphere but again we need major efforts to connecting the dots, including such agenda with broader development priorities, rather than keeping such strategy as standing alone framework in an already very fragmented development agenda.

The Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, should help in this tactical exercise to frame and organize issues according to different priorities and agendas, linking together issues that only apparently seems disconnected.

How many of us are really aware of the New Urban Agenda? How many times did you read about it in the last 6 to 8 months?

As per Joan Clos I Matheu, the former Executive Director of UN Habitat, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development, Habitat III held in Quito in 2016 from where the New Urban Agenda stems from, we were supposed to moving towards “a new sustainable urban paradigm” back then.

Four years forwards, only the most devastating pandemic of the century is forcing us to rethink our priorities and the way we want to live.

Yet no matter how inclusive urban spaces will be, real inclusion will only happen when minority groups without much a voice on world stage, will be able to reclaim their rights to participation and economic prosperity.

Inclusion is only one and multifaceted, let’s not forget it. That’s why events like COSP should have a much stronger visibility on the world stage. That’s why International Disability Alliance should be supported to establish new partnerships with influential business and other lobbying organizations across the sectors.

Disability, after all, should not be just an “UN agenda” targeting diplomats and experts.

For example, the World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society is a unique initiative that should be better resourced and highlighted 365 days a year, not just occasionally.

All of us interested and engaged in the disability sector, we need better public relations and better connections with the international media.

That’s why Maria Soledad Cisternas Reyes, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Disability and Accessibility and Professor Gerard Quinn, the recently appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities have their work cut out.

For them to succeed and become visible, they will need support, extensive resources to raise the issues of persons with disabilities on the global stage.

The goal is to make the next COSP a truly big deal for the world.

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

 

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The post Persons With Disabilities Among Worst Affected by Coronavirus appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

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

 
The UN commemorated International Day of Persons with Disabilities December 3.. In his message for the Day, the Secretary-General noted that when crises such as COVID-19 grip communities, persons with disabilities are among the worst affected.

 

The post Persons With Disabilities Among Worst Affected by Coronavirus appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A young boy cooks food at his home in Masunduza, Mbabane, Eswatini. Experts say the current food system does not promote or produce healthy diets. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Dec 3 2020 (IPS)

As the world accelerates towards achieving the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, it is time to replace the current broken food system. With only a decade left to reach the deadline, evidence shows that the way food is produced, processed and transported is not only destructive to the environment but it is also leaving millions behind.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) The State of Food and Nutrition in the World 2019 report, over 820 million people across the world are hungry. In the meantime, the World Health Organisation states that in 2016, 1.9 billion adults were overweight and, of these, 650 million were obese.

Moreover, in 2005 the agriculture sector accounted for more than half of the global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic showed that an already fragile system was not resilient as more people were left hungry as lockdowns imposed by governments across the globe exposed a system that relies on transporting food for several miles across the world.

Farmers in African countries grow what they do not eat and eat what they do not grow. Eswatini, for instance, does not grow enough maize to feed its 1.1 million people but it exports tonnes of sugarcane to Europe each year. It does not help that more than a billion tonnes of food are wasted globally each year.

As experts observed during the one-day Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork summit hosted by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN), on Dec. 1, the food system is incapable of taking the world to the promised land – Zero Hunger by 2030.

This is because despite the lack of access for many people and the negative impact agriculture has on the environment, most of the available food is not healthy.

According to Jeffrey Sachs, professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University and director of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the world needs a new food economy.

“Food is overly processed with too much sugar added to it, leading to unhealthy diets,” said Sachs. He blamed this on companies who are obsessed with profit to the point of feeding people with “highly addictive” processed foods and poor regulation by governments to ensure a change of behaviour.

Sachs said while diets will differ based on cultural context but, generally, healthy diets have more fruits and vegetables and are based more on plant protein rather than animal protein.

“Changing the food system is a complex challenge, but the first step is to know where we want to go, and that’s toward a healthy diet produced with sustainable agriculture,” said Sachs.

While many of the speakers during the event lamented a broken system, Chris Barrett, professor and co-editor-in-chief of Food Policy at Cornell University, said it is not all gloom and doom. He said the system has been phenomenally successful in 2020 such that the world is seeing a record high cereal harvesting despite the pandemic and climate change. He also said about 5 billion people will have access to affordable healthy diets this year.

“How do we combat the challenges while acknowledging the successes?” he asked.

As other speakers noted, it is a system that was designed many years ago and it has served its purpose. The current cracks to the system are a sign that it needs to be replaced with one that is compatible with the “new normal”.    

While technological advancement and innovations are part of the proposed solutions to change the system, policy formulation and education for behavioural change are equally important. Protecting the rights of the marginalised such as indigenous people and ensuring that they have access to land are part of the game-changers.   

Elly Schlein, the Vice President Emilia-Romagna, Italy, observed that political will and resources are needed to create the right incentives to change the system.

A timely discussion as the world gears for the U.N 2021 Food Systems Summit which the U.N Secretary-General, António Guterres, will host on November 30 to December 04. The objectives of the U.N. Summit are:

• Ensuring access to safe and nutritious food for all 
• Shifting to sustainable consumption patterns
• Boosting nature-positive production at sufficient scale 
• Advancing equitable livelihoods and value distribution 
• Building resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress

The Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork summit produced five recommendations for the U.N. meeting, which Dr Agnes Kalibata, the Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit, gladly accepted. She said the summit presents an opportunity to evaluate progress towards 2030 and shift things around to ensure that the SDGs are met.

A decade is enough to shift things around as suggested by Guido Barilla, the Barilla Group and BCFN Foundation chair. He said only doubters would want to languish in their comfort zone claiming a decade is too short to change the status quo.

While bringing issues to the table and discussing them during a summit it important, the real test is in the implementation of strategies that such meetings produce.

 

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The United Nations is conducting a 16-day social media campaign from 25 November to 10 December 2020 for its 2020 Campaign: 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. The 16 Days of Activism is a worldwide campaign calling for the elimination of all forms of gender-based violence (GBV). Credit: UN Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA)

By Renata H. Dalaqua
GENEVA, Dec 3 2020 (IPS)

“What does the Women, Peace and Security Agenda have to do with arms control and disarmament?”.

Under varying formulations, this question keeps coming up whenever someone refers to the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda as a basis for ensuring that women’s voices and their specific security needs were taken into account in multilateral arms control discussions.

Even for those supportive of bringing gender equality concerns to disarmament fora, the linkages between WPS and arms control were not always clear. To tackle this, UNIDIR’s Gender and Disarmament programme initiated a nine-month research project that resulted in Connecting the Dots, a report that outlines the interconnections between arms control and the WPS Agenda and sets out concrete ideas for further dialogue and collaboration among distinct policy communities.

Shared goals

The WPS Agenda and arms control and disarmament share the broader goal of preventing and reducing armed violence. The current trend towards gender-responsive arms control is strengthening these synergies, highlighting the importance of women’s meaningful participation in discussions related to weapons.

At the core of landmark Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace and Security is the assertion of women’s right to participate in decisions related to war and peace.

Likewise, that resolution acknowledges that conflict affects women and girls differently to men and, therefore, crisis management, humanitarian and development responses need to take account of the specific needs of women and girls.

Renata H. Dalaqua

Since SCR 1325 (2000), the Security Council has adopted ten resolutions on WPS, collectively forming the basis for what is often referred to as the WPS Agenda. It is commonly defined as having four interconnected pillars:

• • Meaningful

participation

• of women in decision-making processes at all levels and in all aspects of international security;

 

• •

Prevention

• of violence against women and girls and of any violation of their rights;

 

• •

Protection

• of women and girls from all forms of violence and from any violation of their rights;

 

• •

Relief and Recovery

, that is, ensuring that the voices and concerns of women and girls are accounted for when creating the structural conditions necessary for sustainable peace.

Arms control and disarmament measures can strengthen all those pillars, effectively helping to implement the WPS Agenda. Despite these convergences, multilateral processes on WPS have rarely addressed the governance of weapons.

For its part, initiatives in the field of arms control and disarmament to improve women’s participation and tackle gendered impacts of weapons have not been framed explicitly in connection with the WPS Agenda.

Misconceptions

How do we explain this disconnect? UNIDIR found two misconceptions that hinder the integration of WPS and arms control.

First, is the belief that gender relates primarily or even exclusively to women and girls. This is not the case. Gender is a broad construct that refers to the roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society at a given time considers appropriate or a “norm” for women and men, for girls and boys, and for non-binary or gender-fluid people.

Gender norms are socially constructed differences – as opposed to biological differences (sex) – and they function as social rules of behaviour, setting out what is desirable and possible to do as a man or a woman in a given context.

Gender points to a relational view of male, female, and trans categories as contextually and relationally defined. Thus, the way women interact with issues of weapons and armed conflict cannot be addressed by focusing only on women.

For this conversation to be effective, men and masculinities must be part of the Agenda. Moreover, as long as gender-related debates are considered “women’s issues”, their reach will be limited and progress towards the integration of gender perspectives into arms control and disarmament will be slow.

The second misconception is that WPS resolutions only apply to conflict or post-conflict situations and, thus, would not be relevant to multilateral arms control processes, which tend to be seen as instruments negotiated by and for societies considered to be at peace.

But this is not true, as many of the WPS-related activities are relevant in peacetime as well, especially those that deal with prevention of violence in general and of violence against women and girls. Femicides, in which weapons play a role, are particularly visible in areas or countries that are otherwise relatively peaceful.

Moving forward

As the WPS Agenda enters its third decade, states and civil society actors are looking for ways to strengthen its implementation. UNIDIR’s research offers several recommendations to contribute to those efforts.

• • Go beyond merely adding women. Efforts should be taken to ensure that women, men and persons of other gender identities affected by armed violence can meaningfully participate in arms control and disarmament. This could take participation to the next level, overcoming the simplistic notion that gender equates to women.

 

• • In addition to small arms control, the goals of prevention and protection should inform multilateral processes on cybersecurity. After all, online gender-based violence (GBV) is a serious issue and it can turn into armed violence, as we have seen in attacks perpetrated by the so-called

incels

• .

 

• • Lessons learned from gender-sensitive victim assistance in mine action should be applied to protocols and agreements dealing with weapons of mass destruction. In view of sex-specific and

gendered effects of chemical, biological

and nuclear weapons, a gender-responsive approach to assistance under WMD treaties could help states and their populations to become more resilient and recover more rapidly.

Ultimately, the WPS Agenda provides a practical structure for the comprehensive integration of gender perspectives across the whole range of arms control and disarmament processes. Bringing these policy areas closer should be of equal interest to both arms control practitioners as well as WPS advocates.

This piece presents findings from a larger research project. The author is grateful to Dr. Renata Dwan and Dr. Henri Myrttinen for their contribution and insights.

The opinions articulated above represent the views of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Leadership Network (ELN) or any of the ELN’s members. The ELN’s aim is to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address pressing foreign, defence, and security challenges.

 

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The post Lost in Translation? Understanding Relevance of Women, Peace & Security in Arms Control & Disarmament appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Renata H. Dalaqua is Programme Lead for Gender & Disarmament at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR)

 
At the core of landmark Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace and Security is the assertion of women’s right to participate in decisions related to war and peace.

 

The post Lost in Translation? Understanding Relevance of Women, Peace & Security in Arms Control & Disarmament appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Pablo Vieira Samper
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 3 2020 (IPS)

For those of us in the international climate action community, 2020 isn’t ending the way we expected when we rang in the new year. Even before 2020 dawned, countries were hard at work planning for their first updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), in line with the Paris Agreement’s five-year NDC revision cycle. NDCs are official statements, prepared by countries themselves, outlining the commitments they are making to reduce national emissions and adapt to climate change’s impacts. They are at the heart of putting the Paris Agreement into practice and pursuing action on a global scale.

Pablo Vieira Samper

We were thrown a curveball, however, as an unexpected and devastating global pandemic shifted national priorities toward public health and economic recovery. And even though we faced one of the hottest years on record—in which the impacts of climate change were seen and experienced in wildfires, floods, hurricanes, droughts, and other adverse events—countries’ domestic agendas were forced to deal with pandemic-related topics.

Still, the imperative to act has not disappeared. In fact, it is more critical than ever. Fortunately, while work to support and enable countries to increase ambition in their enhanced NDCs was delayed in some cases, it was not derailed. The work has had to forge ahead through significant and unforeseen obstacles, but it has continued. And the NDC Partnership has played a significant role in keeping action on the agenda and keeping results within reach.

The NDC Partnership is a global coalition of countries and institutions collaborating to drive transformational climate action through sustainable development. While nations signal their Paris Agreement commitments with NDCs, the NDC Partnership brings together countries, institutions, and resources in new ways to accelerate implementation and enhance ambition over time.

We have seen significant progress in the implementation of national climate commitments during the four years since we were founded to support developing countries in achieving their commitments under the Paris Agreement. We grew to more than 180 members, including developed and developing countries as well as major international institutions and non-state actors. We mobilized and disbursed more than a billion dollars through multiple member-managed NDC financing facilities. And through an innovative Climate Action Enhancement Package launched just a year ago, a total of 65 countries now receive support to enhance NDC quality and raise climate ambition. A great deal of this work was accomplished despite the challenges of a global pandemic.

Our success was made possible by the impressive commitment of our members and their shared conviction that by working together, we can be more than the sum of our parts. And as we finalize our second work program to guide us from 2021-2025, we aim to build on our early successes to drive still more ambitious action on climate change and sustainable development. While countries are finalizing their five-year NDC revisions, our second Work Program will support the transition from planning to implementation, and once again into planning for higher ambition. And it comes as we face a stark reality, that global action on climate change still lags well behind what is needed.

More effectively engaging youth in climate action is one way the Partnership has driven ahead with bringing a whole-of-society approach when developing and implementing climate solutions. In our first years, 17 countries requested support related to youth engagement. As a result, our Steering Committee called for a Youth Task Force (YTF).

Despite the pandemic, the YTF led a consultative process this year with youth from around the world to identify priorities and obstacles for youth engagement in climate action and make recommendations for the Partnership to meaningfully engage youth. Moving forward, as we implement the Youth Engagement Plan (YEP), youth will have a seat at the table with processes, projects, capacity, and engagement mechanisms all built specifically with this audience in mind.

While COVID-19 presents monumental challenges, it also presents opportunities to integrate green recovery as countries rebuild their economies. In June, the Partnership launched an Economic Advisory Initiative to deploy economic advisors to prepare green recovery plans and packages in response to COVID-19. Our drive to put climate at the heart of COVID-19 recovery plans is driven by country needs captured in our survey of 68 developing countries at the onset of the pandemic. Our unique coordinating role and responsiveness means we have already deployed advisors to planning and finance ministries in 33 countries, with support from 13 of its members. A virtual Thematic Expert Group and a Green Recovery Network have also been established to enhance the economic advisory support and facilitate ongoing learning. This level of responsiveness and coordinated support is exactly what we need to keep climate action relevant and in sync with the global state of affairs. Five years after the Paris Agreement’s signing, actions like these are keeping it alive.

This month, at our Annual Members Forum, Costa Rica and the Netherlands pass the torch to the NDC Partnership’s new Co-Chairs, Jamaica and the United Kingdom. While there is much to be proud of as we reflect on progress made in this year and the past four years, we still face major challenges. We, as a Partnership and an international community, are grateful for Costa Rica and the Netherlands’ leadership over the past two years. They have set a high bar, but with Jamaica and the U.K. taking the helm, our record of strong, decisive, and forward-looking leadership is all but guaranteed to continue.

The challenges we face are great, but we are up to the task.

 

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Credit: Nepali Times.

By Sonia Awale
KATHMANDU, Dec 2 2020 (IPS)

The global pandemic hijacked 2020 and reset priorities, but countries now need to regroup and renew their commitment to cap global warming at well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, as agreed in Paris in 2015.

On 12 December, it will be the fifth anniversary of the signing of the landmark climate accord when 196 countries, including Nepal, will be presenting their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce the impact of the climate crisis.

NDCs are voluntary commitments by countries to reduce their carbon footprints, but there are fears that a world in the throes of a Covid-19 induced economic crisis will follow through on past commitments—even as scientists warn that the earth is warming much more rapidly than forecast five years ago in Paris.

The Himalaya is literally a hotspot because the mountains are warming faster than the global average. But activists say Nepal’s own ‘Enhanced NDC’ does not go far enough in mitigating carbon emissions, or adapting to the impact of the climate emergency.

The Himalaya is literally a hotspot because the mountains are warming faster than the global average. But activists say Nepal’s own ‘Enhanced NDC’ does not go far enough in mitigating carbon emissions, or adapting to the impact of the climate emergency

The document has been put up for public comment and is subject to revision. Its highlight is that Nepal for the first time mentions ‘net-zero emission’ as a future goal.

But the document does not give a timeline to achieve it, and only says that the country will formulate ‘a long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategy’ sometime next year.

In the region, Bhutan has already declared itself carbon neutral—meaning its forests absorb more than the CO2 it emits. China, responsible for 28% of total annual carbon emissions, recently pledged peak emission before 2030 and attain net-zero by 2060. President-elect Joe Biden as committed that the US, which contributes 15% of CO2 annually, to zero carbon emissions by 2050, as have Japan, South Korea and the UK.

India, the fourth largest CO2 emitter globally, is lagging but has been investing heavily in solar power, and by setting targets to electrify railways and phasing out diesel and petroleum vehicles by 2030.

Nepali activists say the country’s NDC could have gone much further to set realistic firm pledges, since it is starting from such a low carbon base.

“We could have easily set a target of net-zero by 2050. In fact, we can achieve it by 2030 if we are really committed,” says environmentalist Bhushan Tuladhar. “Our emission is negligible, we are a low-carbon economy and have much cleaner sources of energy like hydroelectricity at our disposal.”

In 2014, a report showed that Nepal’s forest area had doubled in 25 years, and it absorbed half of Nepal’s total emissions from burning fossil fuels. However, another report last year showed that carbon emission was rising faster than vegetation cover, and frequent wildfires were themselves pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere.

Manjeet Dhakal, adviser to the Least Developed Countries support group at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) says: “I’m pretty confident we will achieve net-zero by 2050. But what is important in this discussion is that, while we may be among the smallest emitters, our emissions are increasing and forests are not absorbing CO2 as they used to.”

 

 

Nepal’s annual per capita carbon emission is one of the lowest in the world at 0.29 tons. In comparison, an average American pumps 16 tons of carbon every year, and Qataris burn 37 tons. However, Nepal’s per capita emission is rising significantly due to the growing import of petroleum products and thermal electricity from India.

As new roads are built and more vehicles imported, Nepal’s main driver of fossil fuel consumption is the transportation sector. Motorcycles account for 80% of all vehicles in Nepal, and phasing them out for battery-powered two-wheelers would significantly reduce petroleum imports.

Electric public transport will need subsidies from the government and investors but it also means utilising Nepal’s clean energy from hydropower and further reducing our carbon footprint. Last fiscal year, Nepal’s petroleum import reached Rs200 billion— 2.2 times higher than the country’s total income from exports. Imports of diesel, petrol, aviation fuel and LPG went down slightly in 2020 due to the pandemic and lockdowns.

Switching to electric public transport and battery vehicles to reduce the petroleum import bill by just 10% would save Rs21 billion a year. This will also clean up the air. Air pollution killed 41,000 people in Nepal last year. This winter that risk for patients with respiratory issues is combined with Covid-19 complications.

Bishwo Nath Oli, Secretary at the Ministry of Forest and Environment agrees. “We plan to produce 15,000MW of clean energy by 2030 and we need a strategy so that it is properly consumed and utilised. Electrification of transport is the best way to go about it, along with electric stoves and biomass to cut emissions significantly.”

Nepal’s Enhanced NDC has set a target of turning 25% of all private passenger vehicles sales, including two-wheelers, to electric. It also aims to make 20% of all four-wheel public transport battery-powered by 2025. Most of Nepal’s three-wheel vehicles are already electric.

Planners hope to increase these numbers to 90% and 60% by 2030. Similarly, in 10 years Nepal aims to develop 200km of electric rail network.

But activists are sceptical. Prime Minister KP Oli had declared in 2018 that 25% of all vehicles in Nepal would be electric by 2020. However, Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada scrapped tax subsidies for electric vehicles in this year’s budget, although his successor has restored some rebate for smaller battery-powered cars.

But even if these targets are met, they are too conservative, says Bhushan Tuladhar. “Our targets are often too ambitious or too relaxed. With the new NDCs, we can see this pattern in sectors such as industry, waste and agriculture which are either too vague or too conservative,” he adds.

Planners have also not taken into account that the cost of electric vehicles is already at par with diesel vehicles of the same capacity, and will decline further as the price of lithium-ion batteries continues to fall. Increased affluence means more people will opt for two-wheelers and automobiles, most likely electric, especially as India and China phase out production of diesel and petrol vehicles.

While Nepal’s voluntary commitment sets a target to reduce coal consumption and air pollution from brick and cement industries by 2030, it does not mention how, and by how much. The NDC document only says the government will ‘formulate guidelines and establish mechanisms’ by 2025 to monitor emissions from large industries.

On the waste sector, the NDC says that by 2025, 380 million litres/day of wastewater will be treated before discharge to natural courses, and 60,000 cubic meters/year of faecal sludge will be managed. But it has targeted only 100 of Nepal’s 753 municipalities for waste segregation, recycling and waste-to-energy programs by 2030.

Nepal’s 2016 NDC pledged to increase forest cover to 40% of the total area, and here the country exceeded the target and current forest cover stands at 44.74%. The new NDC has included more community forests, and says 60% of Nepal’s area will be forest, pledging to stop deforestation of the Chure range.

Similarly, intercropping, agroforestry, conservation tillage and climate-smart agricultural technologies are all mentioned in the NDC, but missing conspicuously from the discussion is farm mechanisation.

Nepal aims to increase hydroelectricity generation  rom the current 1,400MW to 15,000 by 2030. Of this, 5,000MW is an unconditional target, and the remainder is contingent on funding from the international community. In fact, Nepal will need $25 billion to meet its NDC targets, and most of this will be dependent on foreign aid.

Manjeet Dhakal admits the targets in the new NDC may not be ambitious, but he says they are realistic. He adds: “For the longest time Nepal was the most vulnerable to climate change. But time has come for us to show our leadership and commitment to net-zero by implementing the targets set.”

 

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

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By Education Cannot Wait
Dec 2 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Nyagoa Dak was born to a world in chaos. Her story is one of loss, of redemption, of struggle and of triumph.

At a very early age, Nyagoa lost her parents to the conflict in South Sudan. As the conflict escalated, she escaped with her grandmother to Ethiopia in 2014. There they settled in the Pugnido refugee camp in Ethiopia’s Gambella region.

When they arrived there were no educational programmes for refugees – let alone a girl with a disability like Nyagoa. Unable to walk, the bright-eyed six-year-old was left out of many of the activities in the camp. She didn’t play with other children. She didn’t go to school. Nyagoa was a forgotten child living in a forgotten crisis.

With funding from Education Cannot Wait, Save the Children mobilized parents, teachers, children and the community to get refugee and host community children and youth back in school in Pugnido.

Through the Parent Teachers and Student Association, volunteers like Sara started cleaning the school and reaching out to children living in the area. Through this work, they met Nyagoa and her grandma. No child should be left behind. Especially a child as sweet and courageous as Nyagoa. So they decided to carry the little refugee girl on their shoulders to her preschool classes. Nyagoa had made a friend.

More friends were soon to follow. RaDO, a local organization that supports children with disabilities, provided Nyagoa with a wheelchair.

“I don’t have any word to express my happiness. Thanks to Save the Children, Sara and her friend, I am attending school and playing with friends. My situation is changed,” says Nyagoa.

Nyagoa’s teacher couldn’t be more proud of this joyful and brilliant girl, who’s found her place amongst the other preschool children. “You can read from her face the sense of ‘Yes, I can learn.’ There is nothing more inspirational than being in school for a child like Nyagoa and we need to mobilize the community to bring more and more children with disabilities to schools.”

One of the beneficiaries of the ECW-supported programme, Nya Banytik Hoth, 14, grade 4, learns at Makod Primary and Secondary School in Tierkidi Refugee Camp, Gambella Region. Credit: UNICEF Ethiopia/2018/Mersha

Responding to COVID-19
Nyagoa’s journey is far from over. After seven months of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools in Gambella are only now reopening.

Through Education Cannot Wait’s COVID-19 education in emergencies response, Save the Children and other partners are providing schools with disinfectants, water and sanitation facilities, and training on prevention and protection methods to slow the spread of the virus. Children are benefiting from expanded psychosocial support, gender-responsive education, and early literacy programmes. And teachers are receiving advanced training on math and early childhood development to ensure they have the tools they need to provide quality learning outcomes for special-needs children like Nyagoa.

The Big Picture
Ethiopia hosts the second largest refugee population in Africa. While drought, conflict, poverty, displacement and unequal access to education still exist, the nation as a whole is making impressive strides in providing access to education for refugees, internally displaced people, and other at-risk children, and reaching the Sustainable Development Goals.

The gains in enrollment are impressive. With support from a US$15 million Education Cannot Wait initial investment implemented by UNICEF and other supports, the primary gross enrollment ratio for refugee children in Ethiopia rose to 67 per cent in 2019, up five per cent from the year before.

Education Cannot Wait expanded this investment through a multi-year resilience programme. Launched in 2019, the programme is led by Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education in partnership with Save the Children International, UNICEF, Education Cannot Wait and the Education Cluster.

ECW’s catalytic grant is designed to activate resource mobilization efforts from donors, civil society organizations, the private sector and philanthropic foundations to fully-fund the programme, which will cost an estimated US$161 million over three years. The programme is designed to reach close to 750,000 girls and boys displaced by the crises in Ethiopia.

Nyagoa received a wheel chair and returned to school. Credit: Save the Children / Ethiopia

“This is an opportunity for aid partners to work together in breaking the cycles of inequality, illiteracy, poverty and hunger that too often come with forced displacement and jeopardize a child’s development. It’s a new vision for how nations can address the pressing educational needs of internally displaced children, refugees and returnees. We must step up to address this challenge and I call on all partners to join our efforts and contribute to this multi-year resilience programme to ensure no child is left behind in Ethiopia.” – Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait.

In Ethiopia, which hosts the second-largest refugee population in Africa, ECW funding boosted access to education for refugee children and youth (mainly from South Sudan) in the regions of Benishangul-Gumuz and Gambela.

Learn more about the impact of ECW funded programming in Ethiopia in our 2019 Annual Report.

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Patients seeking treatment at the Redemption Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. Credit: World Bank/Dominic Chavez

By Davide Malacrino
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 2 2020 (IPS)

Wealth begets wealth. This simple concept of privilege has added to growing discontent with inequality that has escalated under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A paper co-authored this year by economists from the IMF and other institutions confirms that wealthier people are more likely to earn higher returns on their investments. It also shows that the children of wealthy people, while likely to inherit that wealth, aren’t necessarily going to make the same high returns on investments.

Detailed data on wealth are extremely rare, but 12-years of tax records (2004-2015) from Norway have opened a new window into wealth accumulation for individuals and their offspring.

The Nordic country has a wealth tax that requires assets to be reported by employers, banks and other third parties in order to reduce errors from self-reporting. The data, which are made public under certain conditions, also make it possible to match parents with their children.

The data show that an individual in the 75th percentile of wealth distribution who invested $1 in 2004 would have yielded $1.50 by the end of 2015—a return of 50 percent. A person in the top 0.1 percent would have yielded $2.40 on the same invested dollar—a return of 140 percent.

Another significant finding: High returns both bring individuals to the top of the wealth scale and prevent them from leaving it. Controlling for age, parental background and earnings, moving from the 10th percentile to 90th percentile of wealth distribution increases the probability of making it to the top 1 percent by 1.2 percentage points compared to an average probability of 0.89 percent.

Why do rich people earn high returns? Conventional wisdom suggests that richer individuals put more of their assets toward high risk investments, which can result in higher returns.

But our research finds that wealthy people often earn a higher return even on more conservative investments. Richer individuals enjoy pure “returns to scale” to their wealth. Specifically, for given portfolio allocation, individuals who are wealthier are more likely to get higher risk-adjusted returns, possibly because they have access to exclusive investment opportunities or better wealth managers. Financial sophistication, financial information, and entrepreneurial talent are also important.

These characteristics make the returns to wealth persistent over time. This research is the first to quantify this mechanism and show that it is likely to matter empirically.

Do high returns persist across generations? The answer is a qualified yes. Wealth has a high degree of intergenerational correlation, but there are important differences in how returns to wealth accrue across generations.

The children of the richest are likely to be very rich, but unlikely to get as high returns from this wealth as their parents did. This suggests that while money is perfectly inheritable, exceptional talent is not.

IMFBlog is a forum for the views of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff and officials on pressing economic and policy issues of the day. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF and its Executive Board.

 

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Excerpt:

Davide Malacrino is an Economist in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

 
The UN agency devoted to ending AIDS as a public health threat is calling on top politicians and governments across the world to ensure the right to quality healthcare is upheld, and not just a privilege to be enjoyed by the wealthy.

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Guido Barilla, Chair of the Barilla Foundation, says the future of food is in our hands if we act to fix the problems in our food system. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Dec 1 2020 (IPS)

For Zimbabwean organic farmer, Elizabeth Mpofu, access to healthy food is liberation.

Millions of people across the world go to bed hungry. Scores do not have access to nutritious food owing to an inequitable global food system focused on industrial mass food production. The food from this system is less nutritious, more expensive and less friendly to the environment.

How to achieve just, equitable food systems where more people do not only have enough to eat but have nutritious food was the central question food experts sought to answer at the one day ‘Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork’. The international dialogue was co-hosted by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutirition (BCFN) and Food Tank and forms a critical part of the discussions ahead of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit.

“We should not be talking about food security in the world today but about food sovereignty, if we are seeking to end hunger and malnutrition,” Mpofu told IPS in a telephonic interview from her farm in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo Province. It is here that where she grows drought-tolerant sorghum and finger millet, cowpeas, groundnuts on ten hectares of land.

“Food sovereignty is about giving farmers control over how they grow food, what food they grow, what seeds they use and how they consume that food because it is food grown in a sustainable way,” said Mpofu. This is a subject close to her heart as she doubles as the general coordinator of the international peasant movement, La Via Campesina, which advocates for an agroecological approach to farming. The methodology promotes resilient and sustainable farming and food systems through agroecology, diversified health and nutritious food systems.

Farmer Elizabeth Mpofu on her maize plot. Courtesy: Elizabeth Mpofu

A sustainable food system

The world needs a new food system where all actors from farmers, civil society, researchers, chefs, policymakers and business leaders act together to create a more sustainable food future for all, was a crucial message in Tuesday’s dialogue.

Guido Barilla, chairman of BCFN, said the Covid-19 pandemic had shown how interconnected we all are with each other and the planet.

“This crisis is the latest example of the increasing pressure and expectations being put on the world’s food system – not only to keep us all fed but to ensure we are all nourished and to do so while looking after the environment tackling the climate crisis and ensuring people’s livelihoods continue to be met,” Barilla said calling for a fundamental shift in attitude and making radical choices to build a transformative agenda for a sustainable and equitable future.

“I am not afraid of the change we need to make, the future of food is in our hands, said Barilla. “Let’s make the future grow. And the list of potential improvements, from farm to fork, could be long and exciting.”

Asma Khan, an Indian-born British chef and owner of the Darjeeling Express Restaurant in London, called for a shift in eating patterns of buying and eating less to cut food waste. 

“COVID was a lesson that food systems are vulnerable and that we are all connected,” Khan said urging that restaurateurs can promote food equity by respecting food and seeing food as an opportunity to make a difference.

“Let us not use food as our right … you don’t have a right to eat as there are many people waiting to eat …  Hunger is relentless,” said Khan.

“It is important that we respect the fact that we have a privilege to eat. I really would want to honour the food we eat because there are many people who do not have this opportunity and we should be responsible. There is no justification to throw away food.”

Khan’s comments led to a discussion by farmers who outlined the the myriad of challenges – from access to land, land grabs, poor skills, climate change and impact of COVID-19 that they face.

Speaking at a panel session on Farmers Feed the World, Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm and author of Farming While Black, said land was a vital issue in empowering farmers in the United States. She called for reparations for indigenous communities and black communities who lost their land through expropriation.

“When we talk about reparations, we really need to look at land reform and distribution, and there are models such as the North East Farmers of Colour and the Black Family Land Trust which have ways of putting land into permanent protection so that it can be used for full developing agriculture,” said Penniman. She noted that the US government realised the need to put land in trust to ensure that people dispossessed of land could have the chance to return to farming.

In Africa, land grabs have affected farmers and the agriculture sector.

Land grabs are some of the biggest injustices are farmers have faced, said Edie Mukiibi, vice president of Slow Food International. He advocated the building of a movement to ensure that farmers are recognised for their roles in food production and that agroecological approaches be prioritised.

James Maes, president of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA), agreed that farmers across the world faced similar challenges. However, contexts were different, he said, and there was a need to uphold the farmers’ rights to produce food. A change of narrative was needed on food systems debates.

“I would question the need to reset food systems. I believe resetting comes at a huge economic and social cost for those already involved in that food system,” Maes said, noting that the perspective should be on improving and empowering farmers to build resilience and to enhance their production.

As a farmer, Mpofu had a positive perspective on sustainable food systems:

“We have been talking about food security year in year out. We need to stop filling bellies and start promoting nutrition, and this lies in agroecological approaches.”

 

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By External Source
Dec 1 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Pacific Governments, agencies, donors and civil society now have a central source of reliable and current data to help them to make decisions that affect Pacific Islanders.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) has backed The Pacific Community (SPC) to create and launch the Pacific Data Hub, which will fill data gaps in the Pacific and provide trusted and evidence-based information to decision-makers.

New Zealand is currently the primary funder, putting $6.5 million over nearly four years into the SPC-led Pacific Statistics and Data project, a region-wide regional initiative out of which the Pacific Data Hub was created. Early on in the project, Australia also provided in-kind support.

“Many of the problems facing the Pacific are too big to tackle alone. The Pacific Data Hub will enable a more joined-up response to development issues,” said Belinda Brown, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Consul-General in New Caledonia.

“It provides a platform to share knowledge and build an ongoing cycle of evidence, which will drive learning and better outcomes over time.”

The platform serves as a digital gateway to information from Pacific countries, development partners, academia and research organisations and the private sector, and will act as a single, authoritative point of entry for all Pacific data, information and publications.

“Access to reliable data enables us to make decisions that are informed by evidence. The Pacific Data Hub will increase confidence in the decisions we make through the New Zealand Aid Programme, and is particularly important at a time when we are helping countries address COVID-19 and respond to its wide-ranging socio-economic impacts,” Ms Brown said.

SPC Director General Dr Stuart Minchin said this is an exciting time for the Pacific, as the Pacific Data Hub had been nearly two years in the making.

“The Pacific Data Hub has been entirely created and developed in the Pacific, by the Pacific, with the guiding objective of improving the lives of the Pacific peoples. We’re excited about the launch and by what this will do for the Pacific well into the future,” he said.

Source: The Pacific Community (SPC)

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Credit: Whitehouse.Gov

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Dec 1 2020 (IPS)

Covid-19 is on track to be the deadliest and one of the most catastrophic epidemics since the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, which infected about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population at the time. The number of deaths was estimated somewhere between 17 and 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million worldwide.

The first observations of illness and mortality were documented in December 1917 at Camp Greene, North Carolina. To maintain morale, World War I censors minimized reports of casualties, but as newspapers in neutral Spain were free to report the epidemic deaths, it was wrongly named “the Spanish Flu”.

The Covid-19 pandemic will also have widespread and long-lasting political, economic, and social consequences, challenging many equations on the international arena and perhaps even changing the balance of power between the United States and China. One of the main effects of the pandemic in the international context has been in the way that different countries have dealt with it.

Unfortunately, it is the nation that is bearing the main cost of the mismanagement, arrogance, selfishness and inaction of the president. President Trump’s approach to the pandemic has been abysmal and the nation has been paying the price of that inaction

Covid-19 was first reported in Wuhan, capital of China’s Hubei province, in December 2019. On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) China office heard the first reports of a previously-unknown virus behind a number of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. The Chinese government responded immediately to the initial outbreak by placing Wuhan and nearby cities under a de-facto quarantine encompassing roughly 50 million people in Hubei province.

The WHO quickly warned other countries of the highly infectious virus and, as early as January 30, it designated Covid-19 a “public health emergency of international concern”. Then, on March 11, it officially declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic. The statement by its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus read: “WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction.”

So, WHO warned the world about the existence of the deadly Covid-19 virus on January 30, and on March 11 classified it as a pandemic and bemoaned “the alarming levels of inaction.” Due to the total lockdown of Hubei province, the Chinese limited the spread of the virus and brought it under control. Consequently, as of 29 November 2020, Covid-19 has infected 92,300 and killed 4,742 people in China.

However, the situation has been starkly different in many other countries. The figures in the United States as of 29 November 2020 are 13,216,193 cases and 265,897 deaths, by far the largest number in the world. In other words, China has experienced 0.34 deaths per 100,000 people, while the figure for the US is 77.19 per 100,000 people, or 227 times greater. The United States has about four percent of the global population, but over 20 percent of Covid-19 cases. The number of Covid patients in hospitals has reached a new record high.

Even India, with four times the US’s population and with much more limited public health facilities, has suffered 9,309,787 cases and 135,715 deaths, just over half the number of US deaths. Similarly, the figures for Russia are 2,196,691 cases and 38,175 deaths.

It is often argued that the low number of cases in China has been due to the authoritarian nature of the state, but other democracies such as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and some European countries have fared much better than the United States too.

Australia has had 27,885 cases and 907 deaths, New Zealand 2,050 cases and 25 deaths, South Korea 33,375 cases and 522 deaths. Germany, like the rest of Europe, has suffered badly as the result of Covid-19, but there have been only 1.04 million cases and 16,011 deaths. This means that with a population four times that of Germany’s, the number of deaths in the United States is nearly 16 times higher.

Consequently, while China, South Korea, New Zealand and some other East Asian countries have been able to allow their citizens to attend work and school, and enjoy restaurants, theatres and sporting events, the United States and much of Europe have languished under lockdown for a much longer period. While China has seen a growth of 4.9% between July and September compared to the same quarter last year, the United States and much of Europe are in the throes of deep recession.

In the United States the economic fallout for the working class has been severe. Unemployment has skyrocketed with 45.4 million new unemployment claims since March, and at least 1/6th of those with jobs before the pandemic now out of work. As many as 40 million renters may be facing eviction by the end of the year.

So, the reason for this disparity between the countries with higher levels of mortality and those with much fewer cases has nothing to do with being authoritarian versus democratic. It has been mainly due to the lack of management, denial of science, putting personal interests ahead of the public good and closing one’s eyes to reality.

Even before the start of the pandemic, in May 2018, the White House disbanded the pandemic response team. In July 2019, the administration decided to eliminate the post of the epidemiologist in the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As a result, the country was ill-prepared to cope with a major pandemic.

On January 22, when many cases of Covid-19 had been detected in the United States, the President boasted: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” At other times, he called the report of the pandemic a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats to harm his re-election chances.

Initially, the president praised China’s handling of the coronavirus, saying: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi.”

However, later on, instead of following what President Xi had done to contain the virus, Trump blamed China for the spread of the pandemic in the United States, calling it “the Chinese virus”.

As late as February 27, he said: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” Instead of introducing a lockdown, on March 4 he said: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”

Instead of listening to the experts, he began advocating the use of untested drugs, such as “drinking hydroxychloroquine.” His justification for advocating it was: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

He gave exaggerated figures about the number of tests that were carried out or the PPE that had been distributed, but hospitals were suffering from a lack of equipment and low levels of tests. The Atlantic reported that less than 14,000 tests had been done in the ten weeks since the administration had first been notified of the virus, though Vice-President Mike Pence who had been put in charge of the pandemic had promised the week prior that 1.5 million tests would be available by this time.

At one point, the president advocated injecting disinfectant, saying: “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

It was basically this lack of scientific outlook, mismanagement, relying upon his own ill-informed feelings, lack of concern for the public good, with excessive attention paid to his re-election that contributed to the United States having one of the worst cases of the pandemic in the world. It has already cost the lives of more than a quarter of a million Americans, devastated many lives, brought the economy to a halt and may cost the country trillions of dollars before it is over.

It is the job of the president to lead, to guide, to inform and to set an example. However, President Trump failed miserably on all counts. He belittled the danger of the pandemic, ignored the experts, refused to wear a mask and even encouraged his followers to do the same, with the result that the number of infections and deaths is still showing an upward trend.

The pandemic might have cost President Trump his second term, but taking wrong decisions has a cost. Unfortunately, it is the nation that is bearing the main cost of the mismanagement, arrogance, selfishness and inaction of the president. President Trump’s approach to the pandemic has been abysmal and the nation has been paying the price of that inaction.

His unscientific approach can also be seen in relation to the issue of climate change which is a much more serious and long-term threat that is facing mankind and for which there are no vaccines. As one of the most technologically-advanced countries, the United States needs a president who at least does not effectively campaign against scientific facts.

 

Farhang Jahanpour is a British national of Iranian origin. He is a former professor and dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan and a former Senior Research Scholar at Harvard. He taught Persian Literature at Cambridge University for five years and for more than 30 years he taught courses on the Middle East at the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Oxford. He also served as Editor for Middle East and North Africa at BBC Monitoring for 21 years.

 

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A mother and doctor tend to a young girl with COVID-19 at an intensive care ward in the western region of Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Credit: UNICEF/Evgeniy Maloletka

By Asoka Bandarage
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka , Dec 1 2020 (IPS)

According to the Center for Systems Science at Johns Hopkins University, as of November 29th, there have been 62,150,421 COVID-19 cases, including 1,450,338 deaths.

And according to the latest ILO reports, as job losses escalate due to lockdowns, nearly half of the global workforce is at risk of losing livelihoods, access to food and the ability to survive. The World Economic Forum states that ‘With some 2.6 billion people around the world in some kind of lockdown, we are conducting arguably the largest psychological experiment ever.’

As governments and corporations tighten political authoritarianism and technological surveillance, curtailing privacy and democratic protest, much of humanity is succumbing to anxiety, depression and a sense of powerlessness. Countries with some of the harshest lockdowns, such as India, have seen significant increases in suicides.

Pandemic Narrative and Dissent

Dominant global political and economic institutions and the media present their pandemic narrative as based on scientific authority. However, there is increasing dissension on the origin and prevention of the virus within the biomedical profession. Many physicians and scientists are questioning if COVID-19 is a natural occurrence or the product of a leak from a lab experimenting with coronaviruses and bioweapons.

There is concern over the accuracy of PCR tests and false positives, as well as the classification of deaths simply as COVID-19 deaths when an overwhelming number of deaths are related to pre-existing illnesses or comorbidities, such as diabetes and heart disease. Even according to November 25, 2020 CDC statistics, COVID-19 was the sole cause of death mentioned in only 6% of the deaths.

The disproportionately higher rates of Covid deaths among American Indians and Alaska Natives, for example, are due to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease than among more privileged U.S. communities.

The Covid pandemic has not been the ‘Great Equalizer’ as suggested by the likes of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and members of the World Economic Forum. Rather, it has exacerbated existing inequalities along gender, race and economic class divides across the world.

Just as unemployed and uninsured Americans are pleading for support, the combined wealth of U.S. billionaires ‘surpassed $1 trillion in gains since March 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic,’ according to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies. The top five U.S. billionaires – Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison – saw their wealth grow by a total of $101.7 billion, or 26%, during this period.

Among the pandemic profiteers are CEOs of companies like Zoom and Skype providing video conferencing, and Amazon providing online shopping to citizens under lockdown. Yet the success of these companies has not translated into better wages and safety conditions for their employees.

However, the political and ideological power of the billionaire class and their influence over domestic and global policymaking are increasing. Relevant in this regard is billionaire Bill Gates’ central role in the development and marketing of vaccines and interest in use of vaccines as a method of population control.

The pharmaceutical industry, i.e. Big Pharma, (including vaccine manufacturers) are known for inflating prices, avoiding taxes and manipulating the political process to maximize profit. Unfortunately, this corrupt industry is a key player in the race to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

The incoming Biden administration in the US has received extensive funding from the pharmaceutical industry, yet they have not agreed to cut the cost of a possible coronavirus vaccine developed with federal research dollars.

Rather, the Biden administration, also heavily funded by the big tech, finance and defense sectors, is poised to facilitate ‘The Great Reset;’ the initiative to remake the post-pandemic world order by the World Economic Forum.

The ‘Great Reset’

The World Economic Forum (WEF), which identifies itself as ‘the international organization for public-private partnership,’ (i.e., like the Council on Foreign Relations, a geopolitical corporate power agency) sees the social and economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as a ‘unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery.’

Speaking at a conference organized by the WEF in June 2020, former US Secretary of State, John Kerry expressed concern:

“Forces and pressures that were pushing us into crisis over the social contract are now exacerbated……The world is coming apart, dangerously, in terms of global institutions and leadership.”

The ‘Great Reset’ envisioned by the WEF seeks to address these challenges by radical global restructuring. It seeks to reinvent ‘the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons…to build a new social contract…,’ with sustainable development and resilience as its ultimate objectives.

At its next annual gathering of the rich and powerful in Davos, Switzerland in January 2021, the WEF is expected to adopt the Great Reset and also incorporate youth leaders from around the world into the initiative through a virtual summit.

The stated goals of sustainability and resilience are laudable, but many are questioning the true objectives of both the WEF and the Great Reset. The pandemic simulation called Event 201, for example, was conducted in October 2019, about three months before the COVID-19 outbreak by the World Economic Forum in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The simulation predicted up to 65 million deaths due to a coronavirus. Many are wondering why these powerful organizations, having apparently already run the exact scenario as a test, failed to prevent or at least prepare the world for the imminent viral outbreak.

The global political economy has been moving in the direction of increasing technological and market integration through social media, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. In the wake of COVID-19, the trends towards digitalization and commoditization of economic and social relations have increased.

The ‘Great Reset’ seeks to accelerate and solidify these trends as well as expand corporate control of natural resources and state surveillance of individuals. In the post-pandemic ‘Great Reset,’ there would not be much life left outside the technological-corporate nexus dominated by monolithic agribusiness, pharmaceutical, communication, defense and other inter-connected corporations, and the governments and media serving them.

The proponents of the ‘Great Reset’ envisage a Brave New World where, ‘You will own nothing. And you will be happy. Whatever you want, you will rent, and it will be delivered by drones…´ But it is more likely that this elite-led revolution will make the vast majority of humanity a powerless, appendage of technology with little consciousness and meaning in their lives.

Resistance

The mainstream media establishment tends to cast all critiques of the dominant Covid narrative and solutions as ‘conspiracy theories.’ Yet, more and more people are questioning the narrative on the origin and management of the pandemic and, instead, see the need to shift to a truly democratic, just and ecological civilization.

Many of the anti-lockdown protests around the world have had a limited focus on social restrictions and personal freedom, desires usually in tune with the individualism of globalized consumer culture. While these have gained some attention in the mainstream media by their acceptability, the more focused and progressive demands for social and economic rights by civil society groups have received scant attention.

These include demands by numerous groups, such as Oxfam International, to make COVID-19 medicines and vaccines free and fair for all. There is also a demand for a global public inquiry, to be led by independent scientists, to gather evidence on the origin and evolution of COVID-19. In addition, there is a call for an International Biowarfare Crimes Tribunal, to bring perpetrators of the pandemic to justice, whether they be from the US or China.

The overall objective of these demands is in greater transparency, ethics and accountability in the use of technology, especially biotechnology and vaccines against COVID-19 and other viruses. The demand for enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention calls on the ‘nations of the world, China, Russia, the US, to come together to enforce better verification systems for preventing the production of biological weapons in the future, before the world is put through multiple pandemics to come’. These are concerns to be included in an alternative ethical, wise and compassionate ‘Great Reset.’

The Covid pandemic is a turning point, an opportunity to change. The reset we need now is not the creation of a ‘post-human, post-nature’ world defined by unregulated corporate-led growth of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. We need to balance digitalization and commoditization with an ecological reset, a way of living that respects the environment, promotes agroecology, bioregionalism and local communities.

We need to raise our consciousness and understanding of humanity as a species in nature, our connectedness to each other and the rest of planetary life.

 

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Excerpt:

Dr Asoka Bandarage, a scholar and practitioner, has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Mount Holyoke (where she received tenure), Georgetown, American and other universities and colleges in the U.S. and abroad. Her research interests include social philosophy and consciousness; environmental sustainability, human well-being and health, global political-economy, ethnicity, gender, population, social movements and South Asia.

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By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 1 2020 (IPS)

COVID-19 recessions have hit most countries, requiring massive fiscal responses. While most developing countries struggled with mounting debt even before the pandemic, many developed countries also face unprecedented macroeconomic pressures despite earlier spending cuts due to ‘fiscal consolidation’ policies.

Anis Chowdhury

Tax, not aid?
Before the third United Nations’ Financing for Development conference (FfD3) in Addis Ababa in mid-2015, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) head Angel Gurria acknowledged, “Much of [the tax not collected] is lost abroad in illicit flows. Developing countries also lose tax revenue from aggressive tax planning by multinational corporations. This cannot go on.”

Earlier, then OECD Development Assistance Committee chair, Erik Solheim foresaw an end to official development assistance (ODA): “Nothing would please me more than seeing the end of ODA, and for development to be financed through taxes, normal trade relations, long term investments and sustainable businesses.”

Solheim also observed: “Developing nations need to be in control of their own revenues and economic resources through sound taxation … The fight against corruption and tax havens is crucial in this context…The amount of money leaving developing countries in the form of illicit financial flows each year is many times greater than the amount of aid coming in”.

However, before and at the conference, developed economies ganged up to block developing country efforts to enhance international cooperation to stem such illicit outflows, especially tax evasion.

Losing resources
The UN-initiated Financial Accountability, Transparency & Integrity (FACTI) interim report has made staggering estimates of lost resources that could contribute to development:

• 10% of world output held in offshore financial assets
• criminal money laundering worth 2.7% of global output
• US$7 trillion of private wealth hidden in mainly secret, tax havens
• US$500~600 billion yearly in lost global corporate tax revenue due to ‘profit-shifting’ by transnational corporations (TNCs)
• US$20~40 billion yearly in bribes in developing and transition economies

Illicit financial outflows
According to Global Financial Integrity (GFI), developing countries have lost US$13.4 trillion in unrecorded capital flight since 1980, via trade mis-invoicing and tax evasion, primarily by TNCs and ‘high worth’ individuals, with US$1.1 trillion lost in 2013 alone.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

TNCs also steal money from developing countries through ‘same-invoice faking’, i.e., by shifting profits among subsidiaries by false trade invoicing. The GFI figure of illicit funds transfers does not include same-invoice faking, but estimates losses of US$700bn yearly from goods trade alone.

If trade in services is included, net resource outflows total about US$3 trillion yearly, 24 times more than OECD countries’ aid in 2014. In other words, developing countries lost $24 for every $1 of aid received in 2014, depriving them of much needed finance and government revenue for development.

Estimates of trade mis-invoicing in Africa during 2000-2016 averaged US$83 billion annually, totalling US$1.4 trillion, i.e., about 5.3% of Africa’s output value, worth about 11.4% of its trade in that period.

Such illicit outflows are greatest for Asia. Outflows grew by an average of over 9% yearly during 2004-2014, reaching around US$330 [272~388] billion in 2014. The equivalent of 7.6% of tax revenue in the Asia-Pacific region may have been lost to fraudulent trade declarations in 2016 alone.

OECD not inclusive, legitimate
Tax avoidance by TNCs frequently involves tax base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), enabled by loopholes in tax governance and the law.

In 2013, G20 leaders endorsed the OECD BEPS action plan, requesting it to recommend international standards and measures to tackle corporate income tax (CIT) avoidance. CIT evasion cost US$100~240 billion annually, i.e., 4~10% of global CIT revenue. In response, the OECD initiated the Inclusive Framework on BEPS and the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes.

Developing countries are invited to participate on condition they commit to implement and enforce standards and norms they did not design or decide on, having been excluded from negotiations. Thus, the claim of developing country ‘inclusion’ in the OECD BEPS framework is misleading, to say the least.

Besides illegitimacy and other problems of exclusion, the proposals may also be inappropriate for developing countries. As the FACTI report observes, “Lack of inclusiveness in setting international norms results in implementation gaps and weakens the global fight against illegal and harmful tax practices”.

Digitalisation challenge
Rapid digitalisation presents new challenges, as TNC assets and profits can be easily moved among tax jurisdictions. Ensuring accurate company reporting on actual revenue and profits from each location is necessary for fairer taxation, but the status quo enables evasion instead.

Digitalisation threatens revenue collection as taxation practices try to catch up with innovations in tax evasion. Recent more ‘technology-driven’ businesses – increasingly involving ‘hard to value’ intangible assets such as patents and software – also require improving international corporate taxation.

Traditional assumptions about links between income, profits and physical presence now seem irrelevant, requiring new approaches, principles and norms. For example, countries with many users or consumers of digital services currently get little or no tax revenue from companies denying any physical presence.

But new international corporate taxation in this age of digitalisation should benefit all, both developing and developed countries. With marginal costs close to zero, all revenue can be taxed without adversely affecting digital services supply.

Current tax systems cannot prevent egregious tax avoidance by digital TNCs. For some time, the OECD has been discussing tax avoidance by digital TNCs within the BEPS framework without reaching consensus, mainly due to US opposition.

“With no consensus on taxation of the digital economy, some countries have resorted to unilateral measures”, noted the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters. But such actions have provoked retaliation, e.g., the US threatened new tariffs on French exports following France’s attempt to tax tech giants.

Systemic challenges, cooperative solutions
Poor financial accountability, transparency and integrity – enabling illicit financial flows – is a global problem. As the FACTI report emphasised, the problem needs global solutions, while taking country circumstances into account.

It noted, “all aspects of this problem require action and ownership in developed and developing countries; in source, transit, and destination countries; in public and private sectors; and in small and large countries alike… there are no silver bullets or single measures”.

Governments around the world face severe fiscal pressures responding to COVID-19 economic crises with adequate relief and recovery measures as revenue collection shrinks. As other donor countries emulate the recent UK foreign aid budget cuts, aid-reliant developing countries will face more financing challenges.

As the OECD noted, domestic and external financing levels and trends already fell short of SDG spending needs well before the COVID-19 crises. External private financial inflows to developing economies could drop by US$700 billion in 2020 compared to 2019, 60% worse than the 2008 global financial crisis impact.

Hence, tackling resource haemorrhage from developing countries has become all the more urgent as even developed countries scramble for more fiscal means. This could finally catalyse the long-needed cooperation on international tax matters led by the UN, still the most inclusive and legitimate platform for multilateral cooperation.

 

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By External Source
Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

World AIDS Day this year finds us still deep amid another pandemic – COVID-19. The highly infectious novel coronavirus has swept across the world, devastating health systems and laying waste to economies as governments introduced drastic measures to contain the spread. Not since the HIV/AIDS pandemic of the 1990s have countries faced such a common health threat.

This explains why UNAIDS has selected the theme “Global Solidarity, Shared Responsibility” for this year’s World AIDS Day.

Infectious diseases such as these remain a major threat to human health and prosperity. Around 32.7 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses in the last 40 years. At the time of writing, 1.4 million people had already died from COVID-19 in just one year.

The HIV/AIDS response played out over a much longer trajectory than COVID-19. But it is, in some respects, a shining example of what can be achieved when countries and people work together

These diseases take incredible expertise, collaboration and dedication from all levels of society to track, understand, treat and prevent.

The HIV/AIDS response played out over a much longer trajectory than COVID-19. But it is, in some respects, a shining example of what can be achieved when countries and people work together. The work of organisations such as the World Health Organisation, UNAIDS and the International AIDS Society help to coordinate rapid sharing of information and resources between healthcare providers and communities.

The Global Fund and PEPFAR have mobilised resources that have helped to reduce morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income regions. AIDS-related deaths have declined worldwide by 39% since 2010.

These and other groups have also fought against high drug prices that would render medication inaccessible to many in the developing world. In South Africa, the epicentre of the HIV epidemic, a day’s supply of the simplest antiretrovirals cost about R250 in 2002. Today easier, more palatable treatment taken once per day costs a few rands.

Collaboration and co-ordination has also meant that medications have been developed and tested in populations across the world. And once available, global guidelines and training opportunities ensure that healthcare provision and quality is standardised.

Many of these achievements did not come without a fight. Dedicated and sustained activism, at a political and community level were required to drive down drug pricing for the global South and is constantly required to ensure inclusive distribution of resources.

The corollary is also true – areas where the world continues to struggle arise predominantly where there’s a lack of solidarity and agreement. These include a lack of political support to implement evidence-based protection mechanisms for vulnerable or stigmatised populations. For example the legalisation of homosexuality. This results in continued but avoidable HIV infection and related mortality.

These lessons need to be taken on board as the world prepares for the next phase of managing COVID-19. All the interventions that helped contain and manage HIV and AIDS are critical in ensuring that no country, regardless of developmental status, and no population, especially those that face stigma and battle to access healthcare services, are left behind.

 

Building on existing systems

The lessons learnt from HIV and AIDS can be used to inform the COVID-19 response as the challenges are similar.

Many of the ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials are taking place in multiple countries, including South Africa. The capacity to conduct these studies, including the clinical staff and trial sites, are well established as a result of decades of HIV/AIDS research. There are fears that developing nations might be excluded from accessing an effective COVID-19 vaccine. But global mechanisms are now in place to avoid this and to, instead, encourage and enable global solidarity, some of which were championed by the HIV/AIDS response.

The Access to COVID-9 Tools (ACT)-Accelerator, established by the World Health Organisation in April 2020 in collaboration with many other global organisations, governments, civil society and industry, have committed through the pillar known as Covax, to equitable distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine as well as diagnostic tests and treatments. These global institutions and mechanisms require continued support.

With the deployment of an effective vaccine, an end to COVID-19 might soon be in sight. For HIV, vaccine development has been more complex and disappointing. The global community needs to remain committed to promoting access and support for the many incredible prevention and treatment options that are available. The unprecedented effort on the part of private industry in the COVID-19 vaccine response shines a light on what can be achieved when all interested parties engage. The HIV and TB vaccine endeavours need a similar effort.

These are not the only pandemics the world will face. In fact, there are strong predictions that the emergence of new pandemics will increase in the future. This is due to the effects of globalisation, climate change and proximity to wildlife.

The best hope for humanity is to not lose sight of what these pandemics cost us in terms of loved ones, in terms of freedom and economically. We must prepare now collectively across countries and across all levels of society. These preparations need to be grounded in the lessons learnt from HIV/AIDS and re-learnt from COVID-19.

 

Social solidarity

The success of the global response to current and emerging pandemics will rely on the ability of the less vulnerable to acknowledge their shared responsibility and respond to those calls.

An important truth of the HIV epidemic is that it doesn’t discriminate. No infectious disease acknowledges political borders and everybody is at risk of being infected or affected. If nothing else, because of this we need to continue to work together on a global scale knowing that “no one is safe, until everyone is safe”.

Carey Pike, Executive Research Assistant at the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation contributed to this article.

Linda-Gail Bekker, Professor of medicine and deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town

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

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Only 35.6 percent of all enrolled children received some kind of learning materials or activities from their teachers. | Picture courtesy: PxHere

By Upamanyu Das
Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

School closures due to the nationwide lockdown in March 2020 meant that children were disengaged with formal education for a prolonged period. The resulting talks around e-education exposed India’s digital divide, with only 24 percent of households having access to the internet.

Children studying in government schools were hit particularly hard, with a recent study indicating that more than 80 percent of government school students (in Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Uttar Pradesh) hadn’t received any educational materials during the lockdown.

With this backdrop, Pratham Education Foundation conducted surveys for its Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2020. The first round of the report (called Wave 1) has been published, and through it Pratham attempts to fill the national data gaps on the status of rural education during the lockdown. It explores the provisions of remote-learning (educational materials), and how accessible these provisions were in rural India, as well as how often they were used.

To write the report, Pratham conducted a survey in late September 2020. Based on a random sample of participants drawn from the ASER 2018 database, the survey saw participation from 52,227 households and 8,963 teachers from 16,974 villages in 26 states and four union territories.

Data was collected for each child between the ages of five and 16 in each household, and in schools it was collected for the grade that teachers could provide the most information for. Here are some highlights from the report.

 

Children’s school enrolment

The report notes that there has been a marked shift in the number of children enrolled in government and private schools in 2020:

• Roughly, there are three to four percent more children enrolled in government schools than private institutions, as compared to 2018. This is true across all academic grades, for both boys and girls.
• For children between six to ten years of age, there as been a sharp increase in those not enrolled in school (from 1.8 percent to 5.3 percent). This can be explained by schools being shut, which implies that admissions for the Grade 1 are on hold.

 

Household resources

A family’s resources can influence the support they provide towards their children’s learning in a variety of ways. The report attempted to capture these varying support mechanisms:

• Parent education levels: Only 31.3 percent and 16.6 percent of surveyed mothers and fathers, respectively, had no schooling. In contrast, 53.1 percent of mothers and 70.8 percent of fathers had completed more than five years of school.
• Access to smartphones: For 22.5 percent children whose parents had ‘low’ education levels, there was a 45.1 percent chance of their household having a smartphone, with an 84 percent chance of the child bring enrolled in a government school. While for 27.6 percent children whose parents had ‘high’ education levels, there was a 61 percent chance of having a smartphone at home, with a 69.5 percent chance of the child being enrolled in a government school.
• Textbooks: Having relevant textbooks at home is crucial for a child’s learning. The report indicates that schools have fared fairly well in this regard, with 84.1 percent of government school children and 72.2 percent of private school children having relevant textbooks for their grade.
• Learning support: Taking all children across different grades together, close to three-quarters of all school children received school-related help from their family members. This was more pronounced for younger children, with 81.5 percent children in Grades 1 and 2 receiving help from family members as compared to 68.3 percent children in Grade 9 and above. Expectedly, parents with higher education levels were better equipped to help their children. In cases where parents had completed Grade 9 or more, approximately 45 percent of children received help from their mothers.

 

Access to and availability of learning materials and activities

Only 35.6 percent of all enrolled children received some kind of learning materials or activities from their teachers:

• The proportion of children in higher grades (Grade 9 and above) receiving learning materials was 37.3 percent, while the same for children in lower grades (Grades 1-2) was 30.8 percent. The numbers were consistently higher for children in private schools compared to government schools across all grades.
• Among those who did receive learning materials, 67.3 percent of government school students and 87.2 percent private schools students received them on WhatsApp. Government schools tended to use phone calls and personal visits more often than private schools.
• Of the enrolled children who didn’t receive any learning materials, 68.1 percent of parents cited schools not sending materials, while 24.3 percent households stated not owning a smartphone as the reason. This number was almost five percent higher for government schools than private schools.

 

Children’s engagement with remote-learning

Of the 35.6 percent households which did receive learning materials during the survey week, most reported that children engaged in some kind of educational activity during that week:

• For children in all schools, 59.7 percent reported using textbooks.
• Students in higher grades were more likely to engage with online classes or video recordings than their younger counterparts. For students in Grade 9 and above, 27.5 percent accessed videos or recorded classes and 16.3 percent accessed live online classes. The same numbers for students in Grades 1 and 2 were 16.6 percent and 7.3 percent.
• Recorded video lessons and online classes were more accessible for private school students, with 28.7 percent reporting using video recordings and 17.7 percent reporting using live online classes. The same numbers were for government school students were 18.3 percent and 8.1 percent, respectively.

 

Involvement of schools

The survey also examined how schools understand their ability to maintain contact and conduct remote learning with their students.

Of the total 8,963 teachers surveyed, more than half were from primary schools, while most of the remainder were from upper primary schools. Half of them responded for Grades 2, 4, or 5; and more than a quarter for Grades 6, 7, or 8:

• Teachers reported having the phone numbers of at least half of their students. However, the necessary training provided to them was inadequate, with only half reporting having received any training.
• Two-thirds of all respondents reported that they had shared learning materials in the previous week, while another 21 percent had shared materials at least once during the lockdown. Another 86.8 percent had shared textbooks with all children in the selected grade.
• Seven out of every ten schools respondents reported receiving help from a variety of community actors in order to reach and support children.

Existing inequalities in education have only been further exacerbated during the lockdown. The report makes clear that a large number of children are in danger of being pushed out of formal education, and the marginalised populations, as always, remain at greater risk.

 

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

The post How Did Rural India Learn During Lockdown? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Protecting and improving food systems will be vital to reduce the risk of people falling into food insecurity, the United Nations says. Credit: Sara Perria/IPS

By IPS Correspondents
BONN, Germany/BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

In March, after the World Health Organisation first declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations activated a global corporate emergency mechanism for the first time. It had already written to all donor countries asking for $1.9 billion in front-loaded funding, and had begun emergency procurement. Its priority was to sustain life-saving assistance first.

And as the world’s countries began unprecedented nationwide shutdowns, including international travel bans, the closure of schools, shops, and indirect restrictions on local transport and food supply chains, WFP aimed to keep open transport corridors for passenger and cargo movement.

The U.N. agency, which won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its response, had already estimated that some 270 million people — increased from 135 million pre-COVID-19 — would become acutely food insecure if not assisted. In addition, 690 million people do not have enough to eat.

But responding to the development emergency, WFP noted that in addition the pandemic was placing significant stress on existing food systems.

Protecting and improving food systems would be vital to reduce the risk of people falling into food insecurity and will enable “quicker and more inclusive recovery”, the agency noted.

Addressing “the impending global food emergency and avoid the worst impacts of the pandemic, while seizing upon the opportunity of resetting food systems,” is a focus of the upcoming online dialogue, ‘Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork’, which will be hosted by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and Food Tank on Dec. 1.

“The current crisis is showing us we went wrong somewhere along the way. We need to rethink the whole food system to move forward,” said Edie Mukiibi, Vice President, Slow Food International and participant in the event.

Chair of the Barilla Group and BCFN, Guido Barilla. Courtesy: Barilla Group

Chair of the Barilla Group and BCFN, Guido Barilla, believes that resetting food systems is possible in less than a decade: “We need a positive movement to accelerate, empower, refine, and design a more sustainable future, and raising awareness in people – companies, citizens, institutions- that another future is possible.”

“If there’s one thing the current situation has taught me is that no one wins alone and that it is necessary to build new powerful alliances,” Barilla said, adding, “Another very important aspect is related to the individual commitment of each and every one of us.”

Danielle Nierenberg, a food systems advocate and founder of Food Tank, a U.S. think tank for food, said that in doing this smallholder farmers play a key role as well.

“We need farmers in decision making roles and policies that affect them whether it is dealing with the pandemic, climate crisis or how to create more equity in the food system, especially for women and girls.

“We need participatory research where farmers work with economists, researchers and extension workers to do the research that will help them improve yields or develop their practices and use different kind of technologies. Innovations are not often taken up because farmers are not involved in them,” Nierenberg told IPS.

Excerpts of the interview with Barilla follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the further strain it has placed on the the global food system, how can we move forward to ensure that the world’s people are fed in a sustainable way?

Guido Barilla (GB): The COVID-19 pandemic shows just how interconnected we all are, not only with each other but also to the planet itself. This crisis is the latest example of the increasing pressure and expectations being put on the world’s food system – not only to keep us all fed, but to ensure we are well nourished and to do so while looking after the environment, tackling the climate crisis, and ensuring people’s livelihoods continue to be met.

Faced with this situation, we must have the courage to change – agri-food companies, retailers, institutions, chef, citizens – because there is no alternative to sustainability. We need to make radical choices and today we are here to build a truly transformative agenda for a sustainable and equitable future (contributing with our ideas and recommendations to the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit).

IPS: We only have 10 years to reach the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Is this enough time to change global food systems? And how can we do it in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic?

GB: From my point of view, 10 years is rather long enough to generate a revolution, and the next 5 years will be crucial. If there’s one thing the current situation has taught me is that no one wins alone and that it is necessary to build new powerful alliances:

• between the generations, to find a common language and common objectives to pursue;
• among the actors along the agri-food chain, to find joint solutions to build a truly regenerative, restorative, and resilient food system;
• between rich and poor countries to call Governments for a global partnership for agriculture, food security and nutrition in order to promote better coordinated and coherent global action;
• between civil society and private sector, to never lose sight of people’s real needs.

 

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