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Eswatini makes Progress on NDCs thanks to Crucial Partnership Support

Tue, 11/17/2020 - 10:25

Director of Meteorology at the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs (MTEA), Duduzile Nheengethwa-Masina, said while Eswatini was able to implement many projects in the different sectors of the NDCs, some targets were not met. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Nov 17 2020 (IPS)

Barry de Maine, the director of Green Cross Pharmacy, lost about $ 7,675 worth of stock when The Mall, the largest shopping centre in Mbabane, was flooded back in 2003. But when the flash floods hit again this year, he had already installed a flange to stop water from coming in.

“This is the best I could do under the circumstances,” De Maine told IPS, adding: “Otherwise since we started experiencing floods at The Mall (17 years ago) nothing has been done.”

Besides damage to shops at The Mall, customers’ cars had to be towed away because they were floating in water.

While De Maine attributes the floods to climate change, he said no one has engaged him to discuss a long-term solution to what has become a frequent event in the capital city.

“I hear people talking about the floods but no one has ever proposed anything. I’m willing to listen but I’m more interested in action,” said De Maine.

He is likely to see action because the southern African nation is determined to leave no one behind, as it renews its commitment to the Paris Agreement. The country made its first commitment to the Agreement in 2015 when it submitted its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

But the first NDCs had no implementation plan, costing or monitoring tool, which presented a challenge, the director of Meteorology at the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs (MTEA), Duduzile Nhlengethwa-Masina, told IPS.

“We’re trying to build in all these elements as part of the review process to ensure that we know who is supposed to do what and how much is needed,” she said.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries revise their NDCs to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global temperature rise and implement solutions to adapt to the effects of climate change, every five years.

Although Eswatini is one of the developing countries whose contribution to greenhouse gases is minimal, at 0.002 percent of global emissions by 2010, it is experiencing severe climate impacts such as droughts, hailstorms and floods. About 26 percent of Eswatini’s population was projected to face acute food insecurity between December 2018 and March 2019. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, poor rainfall, late onset of the agricultural season and prolonged dry spells are some of the reasons households could not meet their needs over the projected period.

Through support from Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP), an initiative of the NDC Partnership, 63 countries are given financial and technical assistance to submit enhanced NDCs and fast-track their implementation. Eswatini is one of them.

According to Dr Deepa Pullanikkatil, the NDCs coordinator for Eswatini, eight partners – NDC Partnership, U.N. Development Programme’s Climate Promise, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, U.N. Environment, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the U.N., the Commonwealth, International Renewable Energy Agency and the World Resources Institute – are supporting different activities in Eswatini’s NDCs review process.

“The process of NDCs Revision began in May 2020 and the country expects to submit the revised NDC by June 2021,” Pullanikkatil told IPS.

The NDC Partnership has engaged 40 implementing partners as part of its Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP) which has provided 63 countries with financial and technical assistance to submit enhanced NDCs and fast-track their implementation. Courtesy: NDC Partnership

MTEA and the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development (MEPD) are spearheading the process.

In its 2015 NDCs, the country had committed to producing the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) by 2020, which will focus on building resilience in different sectors including agriculture, water and, biodiversity and ecosystems, among others.

For mitigation, the country committed to focusing on the energy sector – by doubling the share of renewable energy in the national energy mix by 2030 relative to 2010 levels. Emphasis was also been placed on the transport sector to introduce commercial use of 10 percent ethanol blend by 2030. The country made bigger strides in its commitment to substitute ozone-depleting substances by phasing out HFCs, PFCs and SF6 gases.

Nhlengethwa-Masina said while the country was able to implement many projects in the different sectors of the NDCs, some targets were not met. For example, the country could not complete the NAP by 2020 but she was hopeful that it will be ready by 2021.

“As we submitted the NDCs, we also had statements of conditionality,” she said, adding: “This was relating to the fact that while we commit but we can only achieve the targets on condition that we’re receiving the financial and technological support we need, including capacity building.”

Among the challenges of implementing the 2015 NDC, she cited inadequate investments, limited awareness about the NDCs, policy incoherence and limited involvement of non-state actors.

Rex Brown, a climate change advocate, noted that the private sector – sugarcane, livestock and timber industries – is not engaged in the NDCs process yet climate change has a huge impact on it.

“We can’t allow the private sector to fail but if it continues to bury its head in the sand, then it faces a stuck future,” Brown told IPS, adding: “It’s not only NGOs and parastatals who need to engage with this process.”

Nhlengethwa-Masina acknowledged to IPS the poor participation of the private sector, adding that when invited to meetings only a handful attend and it was usually the same business people time and again.

She said the NDCs process will come up with strategies to stimulate interest from the private sector because it is critical as the climate finance component focuses on it.

Speaking at the launch of the first review of the NDCs last month, the Principal Secretary at MTEA, John Hlophe, said it was everyone’s duty to take climate action, regardless of what sector people came from.

Hlophe, who was addressing experts from the private sector, government and civil society organisations, said the NDCs should be owned by the “whole of government” and the “whole of society”.

“We have to think deeply on how best to implement the NDCs once it is revised,” said Hlophe

Hlophe reiterated the call for renewed efforts made by Moses Vilakati, the Minister of MTEA, a week earlier to political leaders.

Vilakati said, when addressing complex challenges such as climate change, the country needed to bring together the best minds, technical and financial resources that support pragmatic action.

“We can only do this if we join forces,” said Vilakati.

Vilakati said coming up with viable climate adaptation and mitigation strategies in the NDCs will help Eswatini to achieve its national goals such as Vision 2022, its National Development Strategy and the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Strategy because all these goals were threatened by climate change.

“Enhancing NDCs also signals investment opportunities for public finance institutions and private investors to support,” said Vilakati.

The principal secretary at MEPD, Bheki Bhembe, said the National Development Plan 2019/20 – 2021/22 recognises the climate change challenge and is presented as a crucial focus for development planning.

“It is for this reason that the Ministry requested an economic advisor who will work closely with MTEA to strengthen the capacity of central agencies in integrating climate change into national development processes,” said Bhembe.

Bhembe thanked the NDC Partnership for the technical and financial support in the NDCs revision adding that, this time around, the process has improved compared to 2015.

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Categories: Africa

Our Development Priorities Have Shifted to the Immediate Task of Saving Lives & Livelihoods.

Tue, 11/17/2020 - 09:29

Forty-Fourth Annual Meeting of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Group of 77 and China*

By Hugh Hilton Todd
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 2020 (IPS)

We have come to the point in the agenda where we must take a ‘deep-dive’ in reviewing the lessons learnt so far in our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to chart a way for the future. But the future, by its very definition, must be relative. Flexibility and change will define policy making and the scope of action needed for development.

According to the World Health Organization, confirmed cases of COVID-19 now exceed 44.8 million worldwide, with over 1 million deaths as of October 30th, 2020. The human toll of death and destruction has been staggering.

We commend the speed of global collaboration in the search for vaccines, particularly through the ACT-Accelerator initiative of GAVI – The Vaccine Alliance and the WHO, with the hope that it will benefit all countries.

We also note the good news of support for the building up of manufacturing capabilities, the maintenance of global supply chains, and plans for the distribution of up to 2 billion doses of vaccine by the end of 2021, once initial testing is completed – through the COVAX Facility.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of our public health systems, putting immense strain on healthcare provision, and widening socio-economic divides. In short order, our development priorities shifted to the immediate task of saving lives and livelihoods.

Rapid building up of capacity for the effective distribution of social services became imperative, in the face of deepening inequalities, increased gender-based violence and greater vulnerability among children, youth and marginalized households. But we cannot relent in our primary aim to eradicate poverty and inequality.

Hugh Hilton Todd, Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana. Credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Guyana

UNDESA estimates that over 34 million people globally will be pushed into extreme poverty this year alone. Some consider this an optimistic forecast, with the World Bank projecting that between 71 million and 100 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty this year.

One thing is certain, that the gains of development of the past decades, and the progress made in the fight against extreme poverty have been eroded.

The social cost of the COVID-19 pandemic is unfathomable or incomprehensible. Children in poor households suffer disproportionally from the closure of schools, with limited or often no access to digital learning facilities and often missing out on school feeding initiatives.

The World Bank estimates that school closures could cause over 7 million students to discontinue their education, drastically increasing their chances of living in poverty. An additional 10 million children globally could face acute malnutrition, with a doubling of the number of people facing acute food insecurity in 2020 relative to 2019.

Globally, 243 million women and girls aged 15-49 have been subjected to sexual and/or physical violence perpetrated by an intimate partner in the previous 12 months. The number is likely to increase as security, health, and money worries heighten tensions and strains are accentuated by cramped and confined living conditions.

Our policy response has evolved, firstly, around the need to save lives and provide critical household support; secondly, in maintaining financial stability, and; thirdly, in providing liquidity and other support to business, particularly small and medium enterprises.

Estimates of global GDP contraction in 2020 range from 3.2 percent to 5.2 per cent – potentially the largest contraction in economic activity since the Great Depression. For regions like my own, this contraction is estimated to be 8.1%, with our CARICOM Small Island Developing States (SIDS) bearing the brunt of this, given the heavy reliance on tourism and services.

In the informal sector, including the gig economy, up to 1.6 billion people are estimated to be at risk of losing their livelihoods, this is according to the ILO. Many lack access to any form of social protection and youth are more likely to be in informal employment and in most cases are unemployed when compared to adults.

Again, Latin America and the Caribbean experienced a 20 percent contraction in employment in the second quarter of 2020 alone.

Not only are our Governments forced to consider shifts in policy priorities, but there are clear signs of even greater shifts by our development partners. An estimated ten trillion dollars were spent by G20 developed economies in COVID-19 stimulus packages, in the first few months of the pandemic. McKinsey and Company reports that Japan has spent 117.1 trillion Yen, equivalent to 21.0 percent of its gross domestic product.

And Germany reportedly spent 33 percent of its gross domestic product on COVID-19 rescue programmes, compared to 5.5 percent for Brazil, 10 percent for India and 8.6 percent for South Africa. At issue is, of course, the limited policy space available to G-77 countries.

The upshot of this is that the liquidity to weather this storm is severely lacking in many of our countries. With limited scope for raising revenue, coupled with contracting economic activity, we have found ourselves mainly reliant on access to financial flows from IFIs. Sadly, this access is severely restricted for the majority of our members due to outmoded systems of classification.

Official development assistance – ODA – could be the most assured form of financial support in our response to the pandemic and in our efforts to rebuild economic and social structures. We know that Official development assistance volumes declined in 2018 and 2019, and the OECD has recognized that the need for concessional development finance like Official development assistance is unparalleled in 2020, in response to COVID-19.

Now more than ever, we call on our developed partners to honor the commitment to increase Official development assistance flows as a percent of gross national income.

Trade as an engine of growth is especially tenuous, with UNCTAD estimating that COVID-19 could trigger as much as fifty billion dollars in export losses across global value chains.

Many of our countries are heavily reliant on remittance flows, which are expected to decline by 20 percent for this year. UNCTAD also projects a decline in foreign direct investment of between forty and fifty percent in the 2020-2021 period.

These factors put together, make a compelling case for greater international solidarity and cooperation. We must refocus our attention on implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in this Decade of Action and Delivery of sustainable development.

Collectively, we must redouble our efforts to eradicate poverty and inequality, deal with the impacts and threat of climate change and work towards achieving the seventeen interconnected and indivisible Sustainable Development Goals.

The frameworks exist. But accelerated implementation will require the requisite financing, and, as always, the political will, to give meaningful effect to our aspirations.

*The 134-member Group of 77, and China, is the largest single coalition of developing countries at the United Nations, currently chaired by the Republic of Guyana.

The post Our Development Priorities Have Shifted to the Immediate Task of Saving Lives & Livelihoods. appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Hugh Hilton Todd, Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, in an address to the Forty-Fourth Annual Meeting of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Group of 77 and China, on the thematic debate on "Global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the obstacles it poses to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and achievement of the SDGs”

The post Our Development Priorities Have Shifted to the Immediate Task of Saving Lives & Livelihoods. appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

COVID-19 Compounding Inequalities

Tue, 11/17/2020 - 09:05

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Nov 17 2020 (IPS)

The United Nations’ renamed World Social Report 2020 (WSR 2020) argued that income inequality is rising in most developed countries, and some middle-income countries, including China, the world’s fastest growing economy in recent decades.

Inequality dimensions
While overall inter-country inequalities may have declined owing to the rapid growth of economies like China, India and East Asia, national inequalities have been growing for much of the world’s population, generating resentment.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

In 2005, when the focus was on halving poverty, thus ignoring inequality, the UN drew attention to The Inequality Predicament. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that growing inequality within and between countries was jeopardizing achievement of the internationally agreed development goals.

“Leave no one behind” has become the rallying cry of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Reducing inequality within and among countries is now the tenth of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015.
Uneven and unequal economic growth over several decades has deepened the divides within and across countries. Thus, growing inequality and exclusion were highlighted in earlier WSRs on Inequality Matters, The Imperative of Inclusive Development and Promoting Inclusion Through Social Protection.

The UNDP’s Human Development Report 2019 (HDR 2019) drew attention to profound education and health inequalities. While disparities in ‘basic capabilities’ (e.g., primary education and life expectancy) are declining, inequalities in ‘enhanced capabilities’ (e.g., higher education) are growing.

Meanwhile, inequalities associated with social characteristics, e.g., ethnicity and gender, have been widening. The January 2020 Oxfam Davos report, Time to Care, highlighted wealth inequalities as the number of billionaires doubled over the last decade to 2,153 billionaires, owning more than the poorest 60% of 4.6 billion.

Drivers of inequalities
WSR 2020 shows that the wealthiest generally increased their income shares during 1990-2015. With large and growing disparities in public social provisioning, prospects for upward social mobility across generations have been declining.

Anis Chowdhury

HDR 2019 found that growing inequalities in human development “have little to do with rewarding effort, talent or entrepreneurial risk-taking”, but instead are “driven by factors deeply embedded in societies, economies and political structures”. “Far too often gender, ethnicity or parents’ wealth still determines a person’s place in society”.

Capture of the state by rich elites and commensurate declines in the bargaining power of working people have increased inequality. Real wage rises lag behind productivity growth as executive remuneration sky-rockets and regressive tax trends favour the rich and reduce public provisioning, e.g., healthcare.

Polarising megatrends
HDR 2019 identifies climate change and rapid technological innovation as two megatrends worsening inequalities, with the WSR adding urbanisation and international migration. Technical change not only supports progress, creating more meaningful new jobs, but also displaces workers and increases income inequalities.

Meanwhile, global warming is negatively impacting the lives of many, especially in the world’s poorest countries, worsening inequality. While climate action will cause job losses in carbon-intensive activities, energy saving and renewable energy are likely to increase net employment.

International migration benefits migrants, their countries of origin (due to remittances) and their host countries. But immigrant labour may increase host countries’ inequalities by taking ‘dangerous, dirty, depressed’ and low-skilled work, pushing down wages, especially for all unskilled, while professional migrations are ‘brain drains’, creating new inequalities and worsening existing ones.

COVID-19 and divergence
COVID-19 may worsen divergence among countries owing to its uneven economic impacts due to the different costs and efficacy of containment, relief and recovery measures, influenced by prior health and health care inequalities as well as state capabilities.

Low-income countries have poorer health conditions, weaker health care and social protection systems, as well as less administrative and institutional capacities, including pandemic preparedness and response capabilities. Hence, they are more vulnerable to contagion, while lacking the means to respond effectively.

Rising protectionism and escalating US-China trade tensions have aggravated challenges faced by developing countries which also face declining trade, aid, remittances, export prices and investments. ‘Vaccine nationalism’ will worsen their predicament.

COVID-19 and inequality
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many existing inequalities, and may push 71 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020, the first global rise since 1998, according to the 2020 UN SDGs Report.

As 55% of the world’s population do not have any social protection, lost incomes mean poverty and hunger for many more. Before COVID-19, 690 million were chronically food insecure, or hungry, while 113 million suffered severe acute food insecurity, or near starvation, mainly due to earlier shocks.

While those in the informal sector typically lack decent working conditions and social protection, most of the workforce do not have the means or ability to work from home during ‘stay in shelter lockdowns’ as most work is not readily done remotely, even by those with digital infrastructure.

Most have struggled to survive. Relief measures have not helped many vulnerable households, while recovery policies have not done much for liquidity-constrained small and micro-enterprises facing problems accessing capital, credit and liquidity, even in normal times.

Meanwhile, many of the world’s billionaires have done “extremely well” during the coronavirus pandemic, growing their already huge fortunes to a record US$10.2 trillion, according to a UBS-PwC report.

Widespread school closures are not only disrupting the education of the young, but also school feeding and child nutrition. Poor access to health services is making matters worse, as already weak health systems are further overstretched.

Unexpected crossroads
UN and Oxfam reports show that growing inequality is not inevitable. The world saw sustained growth with declining inequality in the Golden Age of the 1950s and 1960s. With the neoliberal counter-revolution against development and Keynesian economics, government commitments to development and tackling inequalities have waned.

A 2020 Oxfam report notes, “only one in six countries … were spending enough on health, only a third of the global workforce had adequate social protection, and in more than 100 countries at least one in three workers had no labour protection … As a result, many have faced death and destitution, and inequality is increasing dramatically”.

Governments must adopt bold policies to radically reduce the gap between rich and poor and to avoid a K-shaped recovery. Internationally, improved multilateralism can help check vaccine nationalism, rising jingoist protectionism and debilitating neoliberal trade and investment deals.

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Categories: Africa

Reversing the Rohingya Crisis: One Woman at a Time

Mon, 11/16/2020 - 20:02

Female Training at centers. Credit: Bidyanondo Foundation

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, Nov 16 2020 (IPS)

“This is a crisis without a quick fix that could take years to resolve unless there are concerted efforts to address its root causes”, says Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Director of Emergency Programmes.

The Rohingya refugee crisis is among the largest and fastest-growing displacement of people in recent history. Since August 2017, close to a million Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar and taken refuge in Bangladesh. The Rohingyas are “one of, if not the most discriminated people in the world” said the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Flooding into Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh, the Rohingya refugees joined more than 200,000 of others who had fled years before. Today, about 860,000 stateless Rohingya refugees live in the world’s largest and most densely populated refugee camp, Kutupalong. Of the near one million refugees that Bangladesh is currently hosting, about half of them are children.

A stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar, the Rohingyas represents the largest percentage of Muslims in that country, with the majority living in the Rakhine region.

Shipra Das (40), one of the founding members and General Secretary of Bidyanondo Foundation said to IPS: “The Rohingya camp is the biggest refugee camp in the world. Approximately 1.1 million people live here. Among them, more than 10.000 women are pregnant – the majority of them being rape victims. These women give birth in the poverty-stricken refugee settlements in Bangladesh.” Das informed IPS that they have been working on empowering women with knowledge and expertise and added “we have tried to bridge the gap in gender inequality, lessen gender-based violence, and ease the pre-existing mindset. The journey was not easy and help was not accepted by them easily.”

According to Das, the major challenges they faced while working with the Rohingya women in the camps were trust factors, female work seen as a taboo and heightened religious decrees and backlash.

Children at the centers. Credit: Bidyanondo Foundation

Das and her team predominantly work with women and children. They first started their work in the camps by distributing food. Despite threats from local lords, they continued with food distribution.

“During the time of food distribution, I advised our team to go door to door. We saw that other Foundations were distributing food in the field. The elderly, women, and children were left out and could not fight to receive food. The mothers in households were happy to see their children receive food. Gradually the male household members also started to react in a positive manner” said Das.

The next step after the food distribution project was to launch an educational project. “In 2018, we established a handicraft center in the Jamtoli Rohingya camp-15,” Das remarked.

The women in camp-15 are trained in making handicrafts, clothing, PPE, face masks, and more. The training centers are situated in safe zones and women receiving training belong to a diverse age range. The trainees include rape victims, pregnant women, widows, divorcees, and young ones.

A trainee and now an earning member Fatima (24) said to IPS: “I was beaten and bruised. I used to hide my face and miss training because my husband did not want me to go out of the house. But then he fell ill and we were all going hungry. Now I have completed my training course. The weekly groceries are done with the money that I earn from the Bidyanondo centers. Seeing me, a few other women joined the training, and our children are receiving education now.”

The Secretary-General of the Bidyanondo Foundation commented that being the first woman to volunteer and run a female-led branch, she feels immense pride and a sense of achievement. Seeing other women, including the Rohingya refugee women, breaking the barriers and making a living gives her much needed drive to carry on.

The training centers have helped make hundreds of Rohingya women financially independent. All of the proceeds – 100% – earned from the centers are handed over to them.

The women in these Rohingya camps face harsh environments and relentless pressure due to families being displaced which has led to restlessness and violence. Despite the challenges, still, the women are working as frontline workers to sustain their families and communities. If these women can gradually be trained and learn to earn a living and their children are able to receive basic education, then slowly they can pull themselves out of poverty.

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Categories: Africa

Redesigning Urban Markets Post-Covid

Mon, 11/16/2020 - 13:53

Farmer displays her produce at a market in Nairobi, Kenya. Credit: Suleiman Mbatiah/IPS

By Etta Madete and Carl Manlan
NAIROBI, Nov 16 2020 (IPS)

Across Africa, even in cities with relatively modern infrastructure, many shoppers prefer the informal markets. In our case, both our mothers preferred the fresh produce sold at informal markets by women from the rural areas.

Thus, in cities as far apart as Nairobi and Abidjan, our mothers took us to buy fruits and vegetables sold by women entrepreneurs in the muddy corners of our neighbourhoods or at the vendors along main roads.

Reminiscing about these weekly visits to the local food market reminded us of the importance of informal traders in our food system. Most of these traders are women. In Abidjan, for example, the “Marché Gouro” run by women controls 97.5 percent of the fresh food supply and in Kenya women make up 80% of all farmers.

The merging of formal and informal markets has worked well in places such as the famous street markets of London or the souks of Marrakech. At a policy level, African governments can build a stronger relationship with informal entrepreneurs to learn from their skills, community engagement and spatial need

As adults, we still frequent the market. The modern indoor supermarkets and malls had most of what we were looking for but lack character and the animated bargaining conversations with the women traders we grew up with.

This holds true for most African countries where the vast majority of consumer spending is in the informal sector even where formal retail markets are well developed.

The informal transactions have an important element of trust – traders often give an extra banana to top up the purchase or simply add another fruit to test for taste. Through these market experiences, we were able to reconnect to our mothers upbringing in rural areas.

Traditionally, the market was the heart of the village and was often surrounded by important community buildings such as the chief’s camp, the healer’s hut, places of worship and even schools.

The design of these traditional bazaar-like markets with small moveable stalls; considered the social nature of both the buyer and seller. This enabled informal interactions that created a bond of trust that made our mothers and now us retain our connection to the women in the farms where the food comes from.

In the modern city, the market is still the centre for trade, and social activities. In Kenya, the informal market accounts for 82% of the retail market sector with the formal markets only capturing 18%.

Unfortunately, open-air markets, where most people buy their food, are increasingly being closed by governments to stop the spread of the coronavirus, leaving, millions across the continent jobless.

Yet, the inherent design of the open-air market is actually the safest way to shop. With proper sanitation methods in place, the natural ventilation and a buyers access to a multitude of shops these markets are safer than indoor malls.

Africa’s population is expected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050, including 60% living in cities. Transforming the market is investing in the 85.8 percent of Africans generating their income in the informal economy. Moreover, improving market access for the women growing 70 percent of Africa’s food.

Yet, despite the rapidly urbanising centres, the working conditions of informal vendors have not improved over time. Now, however, rebuilding after the coronavirus pandemic is a catalyst to redesign our markets with women at the centre.

In Africa, this means embracing the “Soko stall” for both informal and formal markets. We can learn from the food courts and hawkers in Singapore as well as the design of the Souk in Abu Dhabi Central Market combining traditional and modern architecture.

The traditional bazaar structures have character and most importantly are simple and portable. This allows users to move around the city for ease of market access. It is also more equitable as rents and permanent stalls require high monthly costs.

The urban market with social distancing restrictions will take up more space, we can use the space no longer being taken up by cars, such as quiet streets and parking lots to make temporary space for informal vendors. Thus offering citizens safer environments to meet, trade and build communities.

Furthermore coronavirus, health and safety requires hand washing stations to become a permanent feature in the markets. Some traders can be seen already attempting this by having a handwashing station by their stalls, wearing gloves, and distancing themselves from their neighbours.

This is not a mall versus market debate.

When the market becomes a public good — just like schools and hospitals — we are reminded that taxpayers’ resources must enable prosperity by being a source of skills development and prevention of diseases when adequate sanitary measures are in place.

Across the world, policies have been unable to quarantine inequalities. As African cities rebuild their economy, the urban market, formal or informal, can be the space that brings people together, creates employment and adds life to the city.

Etta Madete is an architectural designer at BuildX Studio and lecturer (TF) at the University of Nairobi with a passion for design innovation. She is a 2020 Aspen New Voices Fellow. Follow her on Twitter @ettamadete.

Carl Manlan, a 2016 New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute, is Chief Operating Officer at the Ecobank Foundation.

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Categories: Africa

They Deserve No Less in Central Sahel

Mon, 11/16/2020 - 12:43

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Nov 16 2020 (IPS-Partners)

“I am so happy. This is my success!” says 13-year old Cynthia, beaming proudly as she shows her Primary School Certificate with an average mark of 120 out of 150. Thanks to the Radio Education Programme, she will now graduate on to Grade 6! Cynthia’s sense of pride, joy and achievement can only be fully understood when placed in the context of her circumstances. Cynthia is an internally displaced girl, living in Burkina Faso in Central Sahel.

Yasmine Sherif

According to the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, insecurity and direct attacks on school infrastructure and staff had already forced some 4,000 schools in the Central Sahel to close in early 2020. The impact of COVID-19 further exacerbated this situation, resulting in an estimated 13 million children now out of school across Burkina-Faso, Mali and Niger. The violence of armed conflict first forced Cynthia and her family to flee for their lives, quickly followed by the pandemic.

The result? Cynthia – a young girl already burdened by extreme poverty and gender-inequality – was forced out of school. Yet, she held onto her dreams, had the opportunity to participate in the Radio Education Programme, and now she looks forward to continuing to learn in Grade 6. Cynthia is an inspiration, and her sense of success is testament to the transformative power of delivering education with speed and quality in emergencies and protracted crises.

Empowering Cynthia to surmount the obstacles placed around her was only made possible because donor funds were readily and rapidly disbursable to UN agencies and civil society organizations working with the Ministry of Education. Through pooled investments from Education Cannot Wait, the Ministry of National Education and UNICEF rolled out continuity of learning of 65,000 children by April 2020, with a focus on girls, affected by both armed conflict and COVID-19. Cynthia was one of them.

Oumar, a 17-year-old refugee boy from Mali, now living in Burkina Faso, also succeeded in overcoming the barriers to his education. Due to violence and insecurity in the region, Oumar has been fleeing from refugee camp to refugee camp for the past eight years, while always yearning for some stability to attend school. And then came COVID-19, shattering his last shred of hope.

But today, Oumar has returned to learning! Since June 2020, Education Cannot Wait has provided investments to UNHCR, who together with the government, implements a Radio Education Programme for primary and secondary refugee students. “I now dare to hope again,” says Oumar, who is benefitting from radio-based education just like Cynthia.

Over the past 18 months, Education Cannot Wait has invested almost $30 million in over 20 partners in the areas hardest-hit by the multiple crises confronting girls and boys in the Sahel. These funds are currently reaching over a quarter of a million children and youth. This is possible thanks to continued, generous support from ECW’s 20 strategic donors (see ECW’s Donor Chart below), including recent, top-up support for the Sahel by the United Kingdom and the United States.

But much more needs to be urgently done. The Central Sahel Ministerial Roundtable convened on 20 October 2020, and Education Cannot Wait was invited to join 23 donor partners, who together pledged over US$1.7 billion to Central Sahel. Education Cannot Wait pledged important seed funding to cover one-third of the total budget of its forthcoming Multi-Year Resilience Education Programmes (MYRPs) in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Donor support to close the remaining $94 million funding gap is now a priority for children like Cynthia and Oumar.

The ECW-facilitated joint programmes bridge humanitarian and development efforts in the education sector. Governments in Central Sahel, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations on the ground are ready to work together in delivering holistic, crisis-sensitive, protection-oriented and gender-responsive quality education, with a focus on the most disadvantaged children and youth, especially girls.

However, without full funding, millions of crisis-affected children and youth may never experience feelings of pride, joy and achievement and may never dare to hope again. Instead of learning, they will be even more vulnerable to poverty, gender-based violence, sexual exploitation, child labor, recruitment into armed and criminal groups, hunger, trauma and loss of hope. This can all be prevented. These barriers can be surmounted. Cynthia and Oumar have proven this, as have many other resilient girls and boys in the region.

The UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina J. Mohammed, is currently traveling in the Sahel. She has just visited a girls’ secondary school in Nigeria and met with 300 girls surviving the horrors of Boko Haram. All of them are now learning, achieving and able to fulfill their dreams.

In her opening statement to Education Cannot Wait’s High-Level Steering Committee, in September, UN-DSG Amina Mohammed stated: “Education is foundational to all the Sustainable Development Goals, but to advance on the Decade of Action and to recover better from the COVID-19 pandemic, we must step up our efforts to ensure that all girls and boys, including the poorest and most marginalized, are able to complete their primary and secondary education.”

With the Central Sahel Conference, we stepped up our efforts. Now, pledges have to be delivered and education has to be given priority in the allocations. Education Cannot Wait therefore calls on all our strategic donor partners in government and the private sector to fill the $94 million gap for the ECW-facilitated Multi-Year Resilience Education Programmes in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

Cynthia and Oumar not only yearn for hope and education, but they have worked for it and persevered by surmounting high barriers. They show that it is possible to succeed even in the most difficult circumstances. We must rise together to the challenge, too. The 13 million children and youth in Central Sahel deserve no less from us.

The post They Deserve No Less in Central Sahel appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait

The post They Deserve No Less in Central Sahel appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

The Silence of the International Community on Western Sahara

Mon, 11/16/2020 - 12:27

Women in Smara camp – the largest of the five refugee camps – collect their monthly distribution of produce from humanitarian agencies. For many families, these are the only fresh vegetables they have access to, resulting in widespread health conditions related to nutritional deficiencies among the refugee population. Credit: Adad Ammi via Oxfam International

By Enguiya Mohamed Lahu
TINDOUF, Algeria, Nov 16 2020 (IPS)

For my entire life, I have been forgotten. I am a Sahrawi refugee, born and raised in the Algerian desert, where my people have remained displaced for 45 years, awaiting the moment when we can finally return to our homeland, Western Sahara.

As we wait, we endure living conditions unimaginable to most – temperatures here soar above 50 degrees Celsius in summer and drop below zero in winter. Water is scarce, delivered to us irregularly by trucks or through deteriorating hosepipes.

Our families rely on food distributions from humanitarian agencies to survive, and many of us grapple with health conditions related to nutritional deficiencies, such as malnourishment, anemia, and stunting. And yet, much of the world is unaware of our existence – in fact, the European Union considers our plight a “forgotten crisis.”

Western Sahara, the last remaining colony in Africa, has been under Moroccan occupation since the signing of the Madrid Accords on 14 November 1975. In 1991, with the agreement of a ceasefire and the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force, the UN made a promise to the Saharawi people that a referendum would be organized, enabling us to freely and fairly decide our own fate. Decades later, that promise remains unfulfilled and our trust in the international community is eroding.

During that time, another generation of refugees has been born and raised in displacement, acutely aware that the international community has abandoned us. Faced with the prospect of raising our own children hundreds of miles away from our homeland, the frustration among young people in the refugee camps has become palpable.

Nova, a Sahrawi youth-led civil society organization that I was elected to lead this year, is working in the camps to promote non-violence and channel the frustration of young people in constructive and peaceful ways. But without concrete actions taken by the international community to facilitate the peace process, our hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict is disappearing.

How many more decades will it take for the eradication of colonialism to be achieved? When will the Sahrawi people finally have an opportunity to determine our futures? Our only dream is that we can return to our homeland freely and in peace.

While we understand the challenges that must be overcome for that dream to become reality are immense, Nova believes there are a number of steps that the UN and the international community can take to inspire confidence in the Sahrawi people, and Sahrawi youth in particular.

For 45 years, Sahrawi refugees have been displaced to five refugee camps in the Algerian Sahara, where temperatures soar to 50 degrees Celsius in summer, water is scarce, and produce is incredibly difficult to grow, leaving refugees dependent on humanitarian aid for survival. Credit: Adad Ammi via Oxfam International

Firstly, the UN Secretary-General must immediately appoint a UN Personal Envoy for Western Sahara. It has been 18 months – an inexcusable amount of time – since the former Personal Envoy resigned in 2019. It is the Envoy’s responsibility to lead the political process, and in the past year and a half we have witnessed political negotiations come to a total halt.

We cannot afford to lose any further momentum towards peace. As soon as the new Envoy is appointed, he or she should meet with youth representatives in both the Sahrawi refugee camps and the Western Sahara territory under Moroccan occupation to get a better understanding of our experiences of this ongoing conflict.

Secondly, the UN and international community must ensure that the peace process, once relaunched, is inclusive and representative. The Personal Envoy and the UN Security Council should support and facilitate the participation of young people and women within the negotiations process. It is our futures that will be most impacted by any decisions made during this process, and so our voices deserve to be represented at the negotiations table.

Finally, the UN and governments across the globe should boldly voice support for a referendum on self-determination for the people of Western Sahara, in accordance with international law. When Morocco agreed the terms of the ceasefire decades ago, they made a commitment to allow the people of Western Sahara to exercise their right to self-determination without constraint. Many of Nova’s members – myself included – were not even born when these terms were agreed, and yet they still have not been fulfilled.

The silence of the international community on Western Sahara and the situation of my people amounts to acceptance of decades of suffering and injustice. Sahrawi refugees will not be able to truly live in dignity until a just and lasting political solution that provides for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara is achieved. After 45 years, it is time for global action towards peace.

Footnote:
In a statement November 13, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters “in recent days, the United Nations, including the Secretary-General, has been involved in multiple initiatives to avoid an escalation of the situation in the Buffer Strip in the Guerguerat area and to warn against violations of the ceasefire and of the serious consequences of any changes to the status quo. The Secretary-General regrets that these efforts have proved unsuccessful and expresses his grave concern regarding the possible consequences of the latest developments”.

He alsol said the Secretary-General remains committed to doing his utmost to avoid the collapse of the ceasefire that has been in place since 6 September 1991 and he is determined to do everything possible to remove all obstacles to the resumption of the political process.
The UN Mission, MINURSO, is committed to continuing implementing its mandate and the Secretary-General calls on the parties to provide full freedom of movement for MINURSO in accordance with its mandate.

The post The Silence of the International Community on Western Sahara appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Enguiya Mohamed Lahu is President of Nova, a Sahrawi youth-led organization for the promotion of non-violence

The post The Silence of the International Community on Western Sahara appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

WFP – ‘Focus on Starvation, Destabilisation and Migration to Avert a COVID-19 Global Food Crisis’

Mon, 11/16/2020 - 12:09

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the world was facing a dual pandemic – COVID-19 and hunger and said the international community must prioritise starvation, conflict and migration to stave off a worldwide food crisis. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Alison Kentish
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 16 2020 (IPS)

Food security has become a priority in the Caribbean as COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions have hit the tourism-dependent region hard.

The International Development Bank predicted in July that for Caribbean destinations most dependent on tourism such as Saint Lucia, 12 to 20 percent of the workforce could be affected by the pandemic. That country’s Red Cross COVID-19 Project Manager Marva Daniel told IPS that the impact of tourism jobs losses on low-income households has been particularly devastating.

“With hotel closures food insecurity has really been drastic. We started since March delivering food parcels,” she said. “We’re now moving into a phase where we are going to be issuing food vouchers. That people can also get fresh food. With packaging we could only deliver items with a long shelf life. The vouchers will allow them to expand their diet buying fresh food, meat and dairy items,” she said.

With some countries in the Caribbean relying on tourism for as much as 90 percent of GDP and employment, hotel closures and empty cruise ports have been devastating for the economy – and for families. Many governments announced relief packages, but those measures were for a few months and set against the backdrop of a protracted pandemic. And while resorts are slowly reopening and inviting tourists to work safely from the Caribbean, across the region, millions of hospitality workers remain on the breadline.

Daniel told IPS that the Red Cross’s target is 2,300 households. She says the agency is providing food relief along with risk communications that includes placing banners on public buses, reminding people to protect themselves and others through the 3W’s – washing hands, wearing masks and watching their distance. The agency has also produced public service announcements promoting psycho-social support for the public and those hit by unemployment.

The challenges being faced in the Caribbean are not unique to the region. COVID-19 restrictions interrupted food supply chains globally. In countries already facing food shortages, millions of mothers, children and the most vulnerable are going hungry.

In April this year, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the world was facing a dual pandemic – COVID-19 and hunger. Last week, David Beasley told the 3rd Edition of the Paris Peace Forum that the international community must prioritise starvation, conflict and migration to stave off a worldwide food crisis.

“When I arrived at the WFP as Executive Director three years ago, the number of people on the brink of starvation was 80 million. That number spiked up to 135-145 million people in the last few years because of man-made conflict,” he said. “Now, COVID comes on the scene and with economic deterioration and the ripple effect around the world, we’re moving from 135 million people on the brink of starvation to 270 million.”

The U.N. says the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize-winning agency continues to work on the front lines “providing more aid than ever before”. This includes work in countries like Yemen, which Beasley describes as “undeniably the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe,” reeling from war, extreme weather events, sparse water resources and hunger worsened by the consequences of COVID-19.

The WFP spent over $8 billion in humanitarian assistance in 2020, but Beasley estimates that it will need twice that amount next year. He says the international community must put more resources into combating starvation.

“2021 is going to be a very, very difficult year,” he said. “Let me be clear – if we don’t get the money we need in the strategic locations, you will have famine, destabilisation and mass migration. It’s that simple.”

Madagascar’s President Andy Rajoelina told the Paris Peace Forum, which ended on Friday, Nov. 13, that his country’s COVID-19 containment measures dealt a blow to food production.

“Food scarcity was made worse by the pandemic,” he said. “This was particularly true for the most isolated regions of Madagascar like the south, where the population was already suffering from chronic malnutrition and in some cases were starving.”

Rajoelina said his government is aware that millions of people in Madagascar must leave home every day to find food and for them, the lockdowns meant loss of jobs, food shortages and fear for the future. He said his administration is working with the international community to provide food and medical supplies to the most vulnerable, prioritising malnutrition and starvation in the country’s south – a region he concedes has been neglected for far too long.

For regions in the Global South, COVID-19 is hampering efforts to achieve the U.N. goal to eradicate hunger by 2030. Food security is a fundamental human right and the humanitarian agencies say with movement, climate change and now the pandemic, help is needed to remain on course.

Meanwhile, Daniel told IPS that volunteers are bringing relief in an environment with a different set of protocols than they are used to, now interacting with the community from a safe distance. A food drive is taking place as officials in Saint Lucia deal with a double public health emergency – curbing the spread of COVID-19 and a Dengue outbreak. Daniel is also working with a looming deadline for this level of humanitarian assistance.

“Sadly, this component of the programme will end in December. We will continue as best as we can after that, but the food vouchers will be done by year-end,” she told IPS.

The post WFP – ‘Focus on Starvation, Destabilisation and Migration to Avert a COVID-19 Global Food Crisis’ appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

African Languages Matter: Is There Still Time to Prevent Cultural Genocide?

Mon, 11/16/2020 - 10:17

By Victor Oladokun
ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Nov 16 2020 (IPS)

As a 10 year-old newly arrived in Lagos from England, I recall listening intently to how the Yoruba language – my father’s language – was spoken. I would constantly repeat in my head or verbally repeat what I thought I had heard. I was not always successful. Many times, what would come out of my mouth would throw my friends into fits of laughter.

Victor Oladokun

Yoruba is a tonal language. Some three-letter words pronounced wrongly or with the accent on the wrong syllable, can get you into a whole lot of trouble.

I am indebted to the Canadian Catholic boarding School I attended in Ondo – St. Joseph’s College. At the time, the high school was well known for academic rigor and discipline. But one thing I’ve come to really appreciate over the years, was the mandatory learning of the Yoruba language in the first two years of a five-year study. In addition, while Mass was in Latin and English, the music also had a generous sprinkling of uplifting Yoruba hymns backed by traditional drums.

As I look back, I owe my love of the Yoruba language to this cultural exposure.

Which is one of the reasons why I never cease to be amazed by the linguistic snobbery of many upwardly mobile and not-too-upwardly mobile Nigerian and African elite, when it comes to transferring a knowledge of indigenous languages to their children.

In the case of my fellow Yoruba, it is not unusual to be regaled with pride about how their children only speak English.

With an affected Yoruba-English accent denoting social class, this is how the commentary tends to go – “Ehhh … so mo pe awon omo aiye isiyin, won o gbo Yoruba mo. Oyinbo nikan ni won gbo.” Meaning “You must realise that today’s generation no longer speak or comprehend Yoruba. They only speak English.”

The comment by the way is supposed to be a badge of honor.

Languages become endangered for many reasons. While focusing on Nigeria, the same applies to almost all African countries.

1. Unprecedented urban mobility and migration, in which children grow up in places where the language of their parents is either not generally spoken or where it is no longer taught in the community.

2. Inter-ethnic marriages and relationships and a recourse to the official language of English or the more widely spoken Pigin English.

3. A tech-driven world that is dominated by less than a dozen global languages. Consequently, social media, TV and digital content, children’s programs, computer games, mobile apps and news content, do not favor indigenous African languages.

4. Dislocation of populations due to terrorism and ethnic conflicts.

5. Economic migration that ends up leaving the older and elderly speakers of a language behind in rural communities. Languages cannot live without children speakers. As such, as elderly rural speakers die out, the survival of some languages is simply impossible.

This is the dilemma that has befallen the Yoruba language and countless other indigenous languages.

Language is all-encompassing. It is not just a means of communicating. It is also a repository of values, customs, culture and history. In short, language is the embodiment of who a people are.

Therefore, the loss or extinction of a language is simply not an inability to speak in a way and manner that is generally understood. It is the loss of identity – linguistically, culturally, psychologically, and historically.

I’m delighted to see indigenous Nigerian languages woven into the fabric of many recent Nollywood blockbuster movies. Its a step in the right direction.

According to the ‘Atlas of Languages in Danger of Disappearing,’ published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and (UNESCO), today, there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken worldwide. Half of the world’s total population speaks only eight of the most common. Also, more than 3,000 languages are said to be spoken by fewer than 10,000 people each.

So what can we do about lingustiic genocide?

Fold our arms? Bemoan our fate? Accept the seemingly unstoppable collision of languages with the forces of ‘modernisation’ and globalization? Or do we take stock, recognize what is at stake, turn adversity into opportunity, and innovatively add value to the tremendous linguistic resources that we own?

We have no choice.

I offer 7 suggestions for starters.

1. Policy makers should go back to the drawing board and once again make the learning of indigenous languages compulsory from kindergarten through high school.

2. Public advocacy and campaigns should be developed to encouage family members and local communities to pass on the treasure of language to the younger generation. One of the dilemmas however, is that today many young and older adults are themselves linguistically challenged. As such, they are in need of tutoring and learning themselves. This is an entrepreneurial opportunity for developers of language apps or creative radio and TV programs.

3. Debates in indigenous languages: Growing up in Lagos, one of my favorite TV programs was the live broadcast of the National High School Debates. I can still hear the opening music ringing in my ears.

Here lies another opportunity. Policy makers, content producers, advertisers, and the private and public sector, could team up to create regionally televised elementary and high school debates in indigenous languages.

To motivate the younger generation, generous and not token awards could include academic scholarships, regional and national media mentions and opportunities to meet with and be honored by leading public and private sector leaders.

4. Business Incubation Hubs: Tech savvy entrepreneurs have an unprecedented opportunity to create innovative indigenous language content, apps and platforms. Opportunities abound for policy makers and the private sector to support and give out annual awards for the best digital content in indigenous languages including children’s animation programs, computer games, TV programs, vlogs or podcasts.

5. Language Schools: France, the UK, Switzerland and Germany have an abundance of schools that offer short or long term language programs. The French language school Alliance Française for example, has a presence in almost every African country. Some foreign language programs are immersive. Others provide tourists or business folk with a basic working knowledge. Again, this is another entrepreneurial opportunity for Nigerians in the Diaspora and at home.

6. Policy makers must help create an environment that promotes learning and drives demand for content and information in indigenous languages. We certainly can learn from countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania and to some extent Rwanda, that use indigenous languages in their respective parliaments.

Why should proficiency in multiple Nigerian or other African languages not be a desirable employment competency? Why should important national messages not be simulcast in their entirety in key indigenous languages in order to reach the largest possible audience? Why is there a complete reliance on English or French in public communication, as is the case in many African countries?

7. Becoming Linguistic Ambassadors: Finally, each one of us can brush up on our own language skills and do so with exceptional pride. For too long, we have bought into the false narrative that ‘local’ is bad and ‘Western’ is sexy. Instead, learn to speak your language with pride. Listen intently to how it is spoken properly. Each week learn new vocabulary words. Over time, you’ll be amazed at the progress you have made.

Every African language is a repository of history, culture and values. When a language dies, so too does history, culture, values, and the intuitive sense of who a people are, where they are from and where they are going.

There is still time to save our languages and prevent cultural genocide. It starts with each one of us.

Dr Victor Oladokun is a communication consultant and former Director of Communication at the African Development Bank

The post African Languages Matter: Is There Still Time to Prevent Cultural Genocide? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Ecuadorian Director Shows a Different Kind of Migration

Mon, 11/16/2020 - 10:13

By SWAN
QUITO / PARIS, Nov 16 2020 (IPS)

Ecuador’s entry for the 2021 Academy Awards’ International Feature section is a surprising movie, highlighting a story that up to now has been little-known. Titled Vacío / Emptiness and directed by self-taught filmmaker Paúl Venegas, the work focuses on how increasing numbers of Chinese migrants have ended up in Latin America over the past 15 years, and it features a cast of mainly non-professional actors – speaking Mandarin, Spanish, English and some Cantonese.

Even viewers familiar with stories of migration will find this an unexpected look at the issue, after decades of news articles about Europe and the United States. The migrants here are Chinese individuals arriving clandestinely in Ecuador and other Latin American countries, trying to make a living while dreaming of going elsewhere, and speaking not a word of the local language.

Paúl Venegas

This is Venegas’ first feature (after producing several documentaries since 2003), and he clearly draws on his own Ecuadorian background as well as his time living in Asia, where he worked in finance in the Philippines and China. Viewers get a sense of both worlds, the one the characters have fled for various personal reasons, and the new one that is merely a way station for some but still filled with peril for the “paper-less”, the undocumented.

The film follows Lei (Fu Jing) and Wong (Lidan Zhu) who arrive clandestinely in Ecuador after having met on a packed boat heading to what they think will be a land of opportunity. Lei’s objective is to get to New York, while Wong’s aim is to make enough money working so that he can bring his 12-year-old son from China to South America.

Before long, we see them falling into the hands of a seemingly charming but sinister individual, the bipolar gangster Chang (Meng Day Min), who has his own devious agenda, especially as regards Lei. They will have to figure out a way to escape, helped by friends including a fun-loving, good-hearted young Ecuadorian (played by Ricardo Velastegui) and an older immigrant (Yin Baode), who himself yearns to return to his homeland. Yet, even if escaping should prove successful, perhaps this won’t change their fate of forever having to live in the shadows.

Vacío could have been an unbearably bleak movie if Vinegas hadn’t pulled back from leaving the main characters in despair. With his cast, we get a depiction of the many hazards of migration, but also a message of optimism. Lei’s dream could take a long time to be realized; still, she may eventually get to New York and follow the career path she has set herself.

In a videocall, Vinegas told SWAN how and why he made Vacío (which had its première at South Korea’s 2020 Busan International Film Festival in October and has already won awards in Latin America). The edited interview follows.

SWAN: Migration is a universal topic, but your story is special because not many know of this particular movement of people. Can you tell us about the background?

Paúl Venegas: Well, Chinese communities have been migrating all over the world since more than 150 years. In Ecuador and Latin America in general, they started arriving about 120 years ago. Lima (Peru) has a huge Chinatown. They were brought as coolies to work on the Panama Canal too. And then there have been waves of immigration to countries in southeast Asia, for instance. I remember in Cambodia, literally in the middle of the jungle, I found a Chinese community that had been there for over a hundred years. They were farmers. They were just hidden somehow.

So, there’s been this spirit of always leaving … something that has permeated the culture.

Regarding the script, my co-writer (Carlos Terán Vargas) studied filmmaking in Cuba around 2005, and he began to write a script about Chinatown in Havana, because in the late 1800s, there were Chinese helping to fight the war of independence of Cuba. So there’s this long history, and when we met in 2008, I was already going back and forth to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for my work, and whenever I went to a corner shop, it was run by an Argentinian. But as the years went by – and starting around 2012, 2013 – all of a sudden around 99 percent of all these mid-size supermarkets, across all neighbourhoods, became run by Chinese, to the point that nowadays you don’t say I’m going to the supermarket. The expression translated from Spanish in Buenos Aires is: I’m going to the Chinese. It’s amazing.

So, I started observing this phenomenon, and seeing the same thing happening in São Paulo, also in Madrid, in Milan, in Valencia. I took inspiration from what’s happening all over the world, and the script developed and changed.

SWAN: And in Ecuador, specifically?

PV: Here particularly, in 2008, the government opened up the borders completely. You didn’t need a visa, and a lot of nationalities came in, using this as a transit point for the traditional migration to the United States. A lot of Asians came, and also people from Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, and from the Middle East as well. They’ve come in large numbers to Ecuador. They stay a few weeks, and then they go to the United States by land or other ways. But a lot of them will also stay and go to southern cities like São Paulo or Buenos Aires.

In 2008 to 2009, around 30,000 Chinese nationals came to Guayaquil (the second biggest city in Ecuador) especially, and it’s said that around 20,000 of them stayed, and they began to enlarge the already existing Chinatown – which had been there for generations but without the name. Last year it was recognized that there is a Chinatown, but even today, when you speak to people from the city about this, they say: What? Where’s the Chinatown? What I mean to say is that Chinese migration is very low-profile. It’s not marginalisation. They arrive under different conditions (from other migrants), and they arrive to already existing economic networks. So, it’s very silent, but it’s very permanent.

That is the interesting fact, I think, about the film – that people don’t realize … because they’re more aware of the terrible conditions of other migrations, with all the tragic things that we know. Still there are a few Chinese nationals now being caught at the border between Mexico and the United States, but not in the numbers compared to Latin Americans.

SWAN: How did you find the members of the cast?

PV: The casting process was one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had with this film. I’ve worked with natural actors before on projects with other directors, and it was always a good result. But it wasn’t my original idea for this film. I started out aiming to co-produce with China, so I went through the process of the Beijing International Film Festival Pitch Forum. I applied there in 2014 and the film won “best project”.

After this, many producers came on … so I started doing casting with professional actors, but they just demanded so much money – half a million dollars! After ten times of going back and forth to China, I gave up. It became so difficult. I said to myself, I’m gonna go for natural actors and do a casting in the Chinese community in Guayaquil. The first thing that we did is that I got in touch with the Chinese immigrant associations in Guayaquil. This was around Chinese New Year in 2017, and they invited me to take part in their celebrations, at big banquets in restaurants. There we were presented in society and we went up to the podium and talked about the film.

So, the word got out and the Chinatown doors opened to me. They used social media to announce the castings … and we did six months of castings and eventually we found the right people. They all have very interesting stories. I interviewed them extensively, and this gave me a deep insight into what human beings they were and what happened to them when they migrated to Ecuador or somewhere else. We rehearsed a lot, every day, and we watched a lot of Wong Kar-wai films – I do take a lot of influence from him, I like his cinema a lot.

The cast gave me feedback about things, too, about how to say certain things. So, we adapted the script, and I adapted the story to their personalities. (The natural actors include a teacher of Mandarin and a miner.)

SWAN: Coming back to the story, the ending is not as sad as one might expect. It could have ended in a much worse way, particularly where the women characters are concerned. You seem to have pulled back from that. Why?

PV: Well, the female character that I try to portray is, to me, this liberated, empowered woman of the new China that is basically somehow escaping chauvinism. It’s clear that she does what she wants, and she manipulates males, in a good way as I see it, to get what she wants. I wished to portray this character as someone that keeps going, even when she has all these things that could stop her. To me, the transition at the end is a metaphor, it’s not complete disappointment, but she is empty inside.

SWAN: It’s probably a good choice because we know of the other story, other endings.

PV: Yes, I didn’t want to fall into the typical abuse story. Actually, there are other films that have done that, by a director in France, for example, where the Chinese migrant character ends up in a prostitution ring. I know this happens, but I don’t see migration like that. It was not my point for the story I wanted to tell. I’ve migrated a lot during my life and I’ve gone through a lot of the emotions, and I’ve seen people go through the emotions. So, that’s what I aimed to do with the film. The criminal aspect is there but that’s not the main point.

SWAN: What do you want the audience to take from your film?

PV: To reflect on the harshness of migration, on these journeys that we go through, the emotions that we go through. I like to say that migration is like jumping into emptiness: you really don’t know what’s going to happen, so you take a jump into a hole, basically. And perhaps what I want to say to people is that: before you take that jump, to think about it, about whether you’re going to be better off in your home country with your own people.

I also think audiences will see that you don’t just migrate for economic reasons, you migrate for existential reasons too. And it’s hard, no matter where you go.

SWAN: And the Academy Awards? How do you feel about the film being selected as Ecuador’s entry?

PV: Of course, I’m very happy about that. It raises the value of the film for distribution and gives more awareness to my film career and to filmmaking in Ecuador. Hollywood is not my thing, and the film is a small film and probably has little chance of making the shortlist. But it gives the story a higher profile. And I’m already in the game, so I have to play the game.

Vacío / Emptiness is an Ecuador-Uruguay coproduction.

This article is published in association with Southern World Arts News (SWAN).

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Categories: Africa

US Republican Party’s Soul in Danger as Trump Hijacks the GOP

Fri, 11/13/2020 - 16:52

US President Donald Trump addressing the UN General Assembly. Credit: United Nations

By Ameen Izzadeen
COLOMBO, Nov 13 2020 (IPS)

What has happened to the Republican Party? Picking Donald Trump in 2016 as the Republican candidate, giving him victory in primary after primary and later tolerating his idiosyncrasies and unpredictably dangerous behaviour and policy decisions were bad enough however much one tries to digest them as vagaries of the democratic tradition.

But some Republican leaders going to the extent of endorsing Trump’s refusal to concede defeat is shocking if not outright sycophancy and the ultimate insult to the Grand Old Party. Among the praiseworthy exceptions are former President George W. Bush and Senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney who had called President-elect Joe Biden to congratulate him and urged President Trump to concede defeat.

Past Republican presidents, if they are alive, will be banging their heads on democracy’s wall in disbelief and, if dead, will be turning in their graves if they hear that Senate Republican leader Mitchel McConnell and some other Republican seniors, tacitly or otherwise, back Trump’s claim without evidence that the November 3 election was a fraud.

Joining this cabal was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who told journalists there would be a smooth transition to Trump’s second administration. Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr, meanwhile, ordered the Justice Department’s election crime unit to initiate a probe on Trump’s election fraud claims, prompting the head of the unit to resign in disgust.

According to a poll conducted by Reuters and Ipsos on November 5, as much as 30 percent of the Republicans believed Trump’s claim that he had won the election – an indication of the extent to which Trumpism had penetrated the Republican grassroots.

The party today stands stripped of its hallowed ideology that was the standard bearer during the civil war under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, a martyr hero who laid his life for abolishing slavery and upholding democracy as highlighted in his immortal Gettysburg speech.

Trump has hijacked the Republican Party and made it a party of and for stooges and illiberal and irrational extremists, conservatives and racists.

Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, some concerned Republicans did foresee the danger to the party and the country if Trump was to be elected as the president of the United States. The then House Speaker Paul Ryan, a loyal Republican and vice presidential candidate in 2012, worked out a framework to protect the party from any harm that an opportunist and wild card entrant like Trump could cause. At a party seniors’ meeting, Ryan presented a set of proposals, describing it as “This is Trump inoculation Plan.”

In the type of politics Trump dabbles in, principles have little place. As president, he became unruly, dismissing democratic traditions and not doing what rightminded people thought was right. As a result, the Republican Party lost its identity and soul. Republican politicians one by one started defecting to Trump’s camp.

All 51 Republican senators sided with Trump to defeat the impeachment resolution passed by majority vote in the House of Representative although there was evidence to back the impeachment charges that he obstructed justice, violated emolument clauses and undermined the independence of the judiciary.

If only two Senators had desisted from voting, the Trump era could have ended in December last year, but the Republican politicians propped him up, though he was the biggest presidential misfit in US history.

That Trump officials kept resigning in frustration or got fired for not carrying out his irrational bidding only confirms the chaos associated with the billionaire businessman turned president. One White House inside source described the chaos as a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower of a busy airport.

The Republican Party is known with its honorific Grand Old Party (GOP) in recognition of its historic achievements such as abolishing slavery and saving the Union. The party was founded on classical liberalism which believes in freedom, liberty, and equality. Free trade and free market activism, as had been advocated by Reagan-ism, were part of the party policy.

Though the country is politically divided along the lines of Republican and Democratic party affiliations, until Trump came to the scene the two parties had been united by a common belief that republicanism is democratic while democracy is rooted in republicanism. The two parties had their roots in one single Democratic-Republican Party that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison founded in 1792.

Republicanism has its origin in the ancient Greco-Roman democratic tradition. The word Republic is derived from the Latin word Res Public – meaning the thing of the people. Rome was once a republic and had been so since the 5th century BC for more than 500 years.

The excuses trotted out by those involved in the Julius Caesar assassination plot were that he had destroyed the constitutional republic and had established himself as Rome’s first dictator for life.

In ancient Greece, Plato insisted that the republic’s ruler should become a philosopher, or a philosopher should become a ruler to promote the people’s welfare through knowledge. But Trump spurns science and knowledge-based governance and is widely known to be a demagogue acting on impulse, as has been seen in his costly mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While not respecting the will of the people and not cooperating with President-elect Biden’s team to facilitate a smooth transition, the Republican renegade is throwing multiple legal challenges to his rival’s victory.

Meanwhile, his hardline supporters, his Proud Boys, to whom he told stand down and stand by during an election debate, are flocking to Washington DC to stage tomorrow a show of force dubbed the million MAGA march. It could even be a mini coup d’état if the President’s actions of firing Defence Secretary Mark Esper and appointing loyalists to key positions in the National Security Agency and the Pentagon were an indication. Similar shake-ups are also expected in the CIA and the FBI.

The March for Trump and the President’s intransigence raise fears of further chaos or even a civil war, similar to what is often seen in weak democracies where rulers care little or no two hoots about democratic governance. The manner in which Trump behaves makes him in league with dictators in ‘shithole’ countries, to use his own words.

As the US is being plunged into uncertainty and its democracy’s darkest days, perhaps the hope for the Americans is in the unlikely possibility that his stubborn behaviour is only a face-saving exercise or a narrative to claim he won the election but was deprived of his second term by the establishment or what he and his supporters derisively refer to as the deep state.

It is high time the Republican Party found its sole to once again practise principled politics and save itself from the ignominy of being lumped together with rightwing political parties which have destroyed the democratic fabric of the countries where they operate.

The post US Republican Party’s Soul in Danger as Trump Hijacks the GOP appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ameen Izzadeen is international editor of the Sunday Times, Sri Lanka. He writes a regular column for its sister paper Daily Mirror on global justice and good governance. He is also a visiting lecturer in journalism and international relations. He could be contacted at ameenizzadeen@gmail.com

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Categories: Africa

Working Class Bears Disproportionate Burden of COVID-19 Economic Fallout

Fri, 11/13/2020 - 15:18

With upwards of 200 separate pieces of labour legislation, there is no strict definition in India of ‘labour laws’ to draw any boundaries. | Picture courtesy: Nayantara Parikh

By External Source
DELHI, India, Nov 13 2020 (IPS)

Back in May 2019, we were visiting a large garment factory in Arsikere, Karnataka, when we asked some of the workers, “What would you do if you got Saturdays off?” Their responses to this simple question summed up their priorities. A majority said they would spend time with family or friends and take care of their children. Many said they would use this time to relax or do household chores. Only a few said they’d look for additional pay.

Since garment factories in India are characterised by a predominantly female labour force, it seems almost obvious that a shorter workweek would not only give existing female workers a better work-life balance, but also incentivise prospective women to join the workforce—many of whom are bound by other time constraints

But the broader question that still remains is: How would giving workers time off affect the productivity and profits of the business? Will the anticipated effect be positive and sizeable, enough to incentivise a policy change in favour of lowering daily or weekly working hours? Answering these questions requires us to examine the link between working hours and productivity. This is particularly relevant in the context of the amendments made to India’s labour laws in the wake of COVID-19.

What do India’s labour laws say about working hours?

Globally, labour laws have been put in place with the purpose of protecting employees’ rights and setting forth employers’ duties, and Indian labour laws are no different. The Indian Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to work, secured to the best abilities of the state. However, with upwards of 200 separate pieces of labour legislation in the country, there is no strict definition of ‘labour laws’ to draw any boundaries. The current laws not only regulate the conditions of work of industrial establishments, but also industrial relations, payment of wages, and registration of trade unions, among other subjects.

Without a set definition to serve as a compass, the scope for what can be regulated is wide, and can thus fall at the discretion of the regulators. One area where this has played out is in the context of The Factories Act, 1948 (amended in 1987)—an iconic act relating to minimum conditions of employment, which lays down all the provisions concerning occupational safety and health in factories, including working hours. Section 51 and 59 of the Act state, “No employee is supposed to work for more than 48 hours in a week and nine hours in a day. Any employee who works for more than this period is eligible for overtime remuneration.”

However, the same act also allows state governments to exempt factories from these provisions relating to work hours for three months if factories are dealing with an exceptional amount of work.

Where freedom is allowed, freedom is usually taken.

In light of COVID-19, some states have increased both the daily and weekly work hours with the purported aim of reviving the economy, boosting productivity, and ensuring more workers get jobs.

Assam, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh governments issued notifications to increase the maximum daily work hours for workers in their states to 12 hours. Karnataka and Uttarakhand increased maximum daily work hours to 10 and 11 hours, respectively.
Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh subsequently withdrew their notifications for various reasons, including change in the economic conditions from earlier this year and legal challenges via public interest litigation.
More recently, the Karnataka government passed an ordinance which increases overtime hours in a quarter from 75 to 125.

These amendments violate the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 adopted by the International Labour Organisation—to which India is a signatory. Further, they also put at risk the fine balance between productivity and labour rights. But is increasing working hours the only way to increase productivity?

An alternative to boost productivity

In 1914, Henry Ford took the ‘radical’ decision to cut daily work hours from nine to eight and double pay for workers to USD 5 a day. Though this move was initially unpopular among most rivals, many followed suit, seeing the overall profitability of Ford’s operations.

Over the last few years, many of us working in urban, ‘white-collar’ jobs have a seen a clarion call for shorter workweeks as well. In 1930, the British economist, John Maynard Keynes, famously predicted that by 2030, workers will be able to enjoy more leisure due to technological advancements. More recently, Microsoft’s Japan office witnessed a 40 percent increase in productivity as a result of putting in place a four-day workweek. One study suggests that productivity may be a decreasing function of time. Even critics of shorter workweeks, at best, call for work hours to remain the same.

In contrast, factory workers in India are at risk of going back to more rigid, less flexible work conditions if changes continue in the direction of the latest labour law amendments with respect to working hours.

To present a balanced view, it is worth asking if factories simultaneously increased any other benefits to ‘offset’ the increase in work hours? This too presents a bleak picture. Madhya Pradesh introduced changes for factories to be exempt from provisions of the Factories Act, 1948, such as those related to dangerous operations, along with those providing for crèches, washrooms, and disposal of waste, for three months. According to a draft of the Uttar Pradesh ordinance, all factories and establishments engaged in manufacturing processes will be exempt from all labour laws for three years, subject to the fulfilment of certain conditions.

Who bears the burden of these changes?

It is true that in the wake of this pandemic, businesses were hurt worldwide and were forced to reconsider their business strategies and costs. For labour-intensive industries, concentrated in this part of the world, cost adjustment, of which labour adjustment is a part, assumed importance. But what proportion of this COVID-19 burden should labour bear, and what proportion should businesses? Especially when there is an inherent power dynamic between the two parties involved?

We live in a world where alternative methods to increase productivity exist—methods that don’t achieve ‘the needs of the industry’ at the cost of the working classes, and that take into account labour well-being by reducing, and not increasing work hours.

These recent changes in India’s labour laws show their disguised priority towards businesses over workers. On one hand, one could be hopeful that such support in strengthening business’ capacity to be resilient would ultimately trickle down to workers in terms of employment and growth opportunities. However, in the absence of proper checks and balances, this can snowball into unfair working conditions for a certain class of workers.

Lavanya Garg is a development professional, with a special interest in gender. She is currently Chief of Staff and Senior Manager (Strategy and Development), Good Business Lab.

Mansi Kabra is a development practitioner, both professionally and personally, who is trying to understand development through the lens of systems and metaphors. She is currently a Senior Marketing Manager, Good Business Lab.

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

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Categories: Africa

Secretive Mega-Trade Deal Rules Could Harm Asia’s Covid-19 Recovery

Fri, 11/13/2020 - 15:12

Community Health warriors (Anganwadi center in Chennai, Tamil Nadu). Credit: Public Services International (PSI)

By Lyndal Rowlands
BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov 13 2020 (IPS)

Fifteen countries will sign a mega-trade deal at the ASEAN conference this weekend imposing secretive restrictions on how governments help workers through the pandemic, trade union leaders and parliamentarians have warned.

The text of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement is so secretive that even elected representatives have not been allowed to see it, even though it will potentially lock future governments into rules that will limit their abilities to make policies required in times of crisis or to improve access to public services and worker’s rights.

Leaked documents have shown that the agreement limits the potential for governments to make policies, including policies to recover from the Covid-19 crisis said Risa Hontiveros a Senator from the Philippines. “This pandemic has shown us that we should never put the economy before our people,” she said at a press conference organised by Unions for Trade Justice on Thursday.

Elected officials across the region fear that the agreement has been kept secret because it heavily favours large multinational corporations who help draft trade rules, over the local small and medium businesses that are struggling most due to the pandemic.

“Even parliaments have no idea what the hell is being signed in the name of the people,” Charles Santiago a Member of Parliament from Malaysia said.

The secretive nature of the agreement is also unusual, given that the text was finalised 12 months ago, meaning that it includes no specific updates recognising the extraordinary challenges created byCovid-19 pandemic, said Andrew Dettmer the National President of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

However, Covid-19 isn’t the only major omission from the agreement. Leaked documents have also shown that it does not mention climate change or make provisions for labour rights, including forced labour or child labour.

Considered volunteers, Anganwadi workers and helpers are not part of regular government compensation and social benefit schemes, including pension. Credit: Public Services International (PSI)

The 10 members of ASEAN – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – will sign the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) together with five additional countries Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea on 15 November.

Notably, India, recently withdrew despite spending several years in RCEP negotiations, citing concerns it would not protect its own industries and workers, said Kate Lappin, Regional Secretary for Asia and Pacific, at Public Services International. Free trade agreements create a “race to the bottom” said Lappin, encouraging governments to compete to have the lowest possible wages and conditions.

Che Chariya, a Cambodian garment worker and union leader described the real-world consequences that this type of race to the bottom creates. Garment workers in Cambodia have been particularly hard hit by the suspension of major contracts from multinational firms due to Covid-19. However, Chariyasaid that for many garment workers, including herself, the challenges pre-dated Covid-19. Chariyaworked in a garment factory for 18 years until it closed in 2018. She now works in a sweatshop for a piece rate, losing the factory’s minimum wage and social security benefits, despite still making clothes for the same companies. Since the pandemic, she says the cost of living has increased whilethe piece rate has gone down.

Instead of signing new rules that favour big business, and harm workers like Chariya, Lappin said that governments should instead work on agreements for the greater public good, such as India and South Africa’s proposal to have governments waive trade rules in the World Trade Organisation so that all countries will have access to a Covid-19 vaccine and other critical medical information, noting that restrictions on access to medicines were “a prime example of why we shouldn’t be signing trade agreements at the moment.”

Indeed, Santiago described how restrictions imposed by international agreements had already prevented some governments from rolling out mass testing: “even in a pandemic the people are being held hostage by big pharma,” he said.

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Categories: Africa

Promoting Peace in Mali

Fri, 11/13/2020 - 13:51

By Education Cannot Wait
Nov 13 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Despite the various challenges they face, teachers are showing incredible dedication to their profession, writes Leandro Salazar-Lievano, our education expert deployed to UNHCR Mali.

Teaching has always played an important part in my personal and professional life. From my first teacher back in pre-primary to my adult years in university and my own experience as a language teacher in Colombia and France; it has shaped the way I think and perceive this world.

Through teaching, I learned about myself and to be mindful of others by caring about people’s learning and development process. Through teaching, I discovered the important role education plays in every society, which made the education sector my battlefield and people’s learning my life goal.

Through an education, I was able to fulfill my own life goals. Refugee, internally displaced and host community children deserve the same fate\”, writes Leandro Salazar-Lievano, our NORCAP expert deployed to UNHCR Mali (pictured in blue).(Photo: UNHCR Mali)

Preventing conflict and trauma through education

At UNHCR Mali, we place a special focus on teachers’ capacity development and strengthening in our education interventions in conflict-affected zones. We understand how important it is for communities at large to have well equipped, motivated, committed, inspiring female and male teachers as role models for the current and future generations.

For displaced communities in hosting regions, it means an opportunity for children to find safety and protection as we strengthen teachers’ capacity to address stress and trauma through mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in safe, friendly, and inclusive learning environments.

For the country, it means the promotion and preservation of a peaceful nation, in which youth are essential actors contributing to peace-building processes.

Teachers in Gao, Mali during a training session with UNHCR and NORCAP. (Photo: Leandro Salazar-Lievano/NORCAP)

Teacher training in Mali

Our most recent teachers’ training session took place in Mali’s Gao region during the week the international day of the teacher is commemorated.

Thirty-six female and male teachers and school principals participated in an Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs-funded six-day training on Covid-19 prevention in schools. Facilitated jointly by the regional education authority and UNHCR Mali’s education unit, the training focused on MHPSS and Education in Emergencies (EiE).

Every teacher had a story and a good practice to share, and the sessions became the right place to exchange about challenges and ways forward. I witnessed the commitment of each of them in giving their best to maintaining children at school – safe and learning – and to contribute to maintaining peace in their communities.

I love what I do

“What motivates me most in my profession is the love for children. I love what I do,” Maria, a young teacher, explains.

Like her, teachers in Mali showcase an intrinsic motivation towards the profession despite the various challenges they face, mostly in terms of security, threats, attacks against them, and limited resources. Other teachers, like Issa, manifest that their motivation lies in contributing to the development of future generations and highlights the role everyone plays as models in society.

One of the teachers participating in the training session in Gao, Mali (Photo: Leandro Salazar-Lievano/NORCAP)

They were also aware of their key contribution in reducing school dropout rates among children, as well as the impact of being out of school has on children’s safety, protection and future. Once children drop out, they become easy targets for early marriage and pregnancy, sexual exploitation and abuse, recruitment into armed groups, child labour, and other protection risks that hinder the fulfillment of their life goals.

Through education, I was able and continue to fulfill my own life goals. Refugee, internally displaced and host community children deserve the same fate, and teachers in Mali are doing all it takes to make that become a reality for hundreds of thousands of children across the country.

To all of them, my sincere admiration and unconditional support.

Responding to COVID-19

Earlier this year, Education Cannot Wait launched a series of COVID-19 education in emergencies responses. In Mali, a total of $1.5 million was allocated to UNICEF ($750,000) and UNHCR ($750,000).

Activities supported through this series of emergency grants run from 6 to 12 months and include:

Emergency Education Measures

Messaging and Support Around Risks

Upgrading Water and Sanitation Facilities in Schools

2019 Update

In Mali, after flooding devastated parts of the country, ECW established school feeding programmes that encouraged children to stay in school or to return if they had dropped out. The intervention reached more learners than planned, feeding 32,689 children (16,746 girls/15,943 boys) in 35 primary schools and 47 early childhood development centres.

Learn more about the impact of ECW-funded programming in Mali and the Sahel Region in our 2019 Annual Report.

The post Promoting Peace in Mali appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Education Cannot Wait investments delivered by UNHCR in Mali are training teachers, reducing dropout rates and protecting vulnerable children from abuse, exploitation and child labour.

Special contribution by Leandro Salazar-Lievano. This story was originally published by the Norwegian Refugee Council (Original)

The post Promoting Peace in Mali appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

What does the second wave of Covid-19 mean for the apparel industry?

Fri, 11/13/2020 - 13:01

By Mostafiz Uddin
Nov 13 2020 (IPS-Partners)

During the past few months, I had worked on a documentary for the BBC which looks at the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the apparel industry of Bangladesh. That documentary caught me at an exceptionally low ebb. I was struggling amid the cancellation of orders and some brands being unwilling to pay for orders which had already been shipped.

Since that time, things briefly did pick up again for our industry as retail outlets began to reopen in the West, following huge self-imposed lockdowns. Since mid-summer, most European markets and the US, the main destinations for Bangladesh apparel exports, have been open for business. I was hopeful that we might be over the worst of the coronavirus in terms of economic impacts, although I was always aware it was going to be a bumpy road ahead.

In recent weeks, however, the mood has changed once again. Brands are putting major orders on hold. I have witnessed this first-hand, as well as hearing anecdotal evidence of this across the industry. The reason for this is clear: as we head into winter, and schools and other educational establishments return from summer holidays, coronavirus cases are once again on the rise. In the wake of over-flowing hospital beds, governments feel they have no choice but to impose lockdowns again in an attempt to control the virus.

This is not to complain about the brands. Since the pandemic started, there have been good brands and bad brands in terms of payments—some have been more supportive of their suppliers than others, and that will always be the way.

Instead, I want to raise the alarm bells for what a second lockdown might mean for Bangladesh’s apparel industry and, more importantly, its workers. In the BBC documentary alluded to above, it was made very clear that many garment workers suffered a lot in the wake of the pandemic in March. Some spoke on film of their fears not being about the coronavirus killing them but about poverty if the factories where they are employed could not continue their operation.

I read that for most people, coronavirus is not a serious illness. Its mortality rate among 20 to 30-year olds—the core demographic of garment workers in Bangladesh—is tiny. Coronavirus kills mainly people who are over 65 and the obese and/or people with serious underlying health conditions. I am not trying to downplay this virus which, after all, has killed a great many people around the world. Rather, I wish to bring into focus the problems facing Bangladesh in the here and now.

Bangladesh has a fairly young population and obesity is certainly not a problem in our country compared to western nations. Bangladesh has had just over 6,000 deaths from Covid-19. By way of comparison, the UK, a country with a far smaller population, has had almost 50,000 deaths. The US has had more than 200,000 deaths from Covid-19.

This, then, is the cruel irony: while our customer countries, with their ageing populations and serious obesity issues, face the Grim Reaper of coronavirus hanging over their heads, in Bangladesh our fear is about something entirely different—poverty and associated starvation. The coronavirus might not kill us directly, but its impacts on global apparel supply chains threaten the very fabric of our industry and its people.

Our apparel industry was teetering on the brink in autumn. We thought we were through the worst but further lockdowns in our key markets this winter could take us right over the edge and into the abyss. The impacts on workers and their families do not bear thinking about. I fear a future in which many will face destitution if this crisis goes on for many more months.

Is there a solution? As well as support from the Bangladesh government, we need support from the global community to provide a safety net for garment workers. We as an industry have talked for years about inclusiveness and fairness, and now is the time for all of us to stand up and be counted on these issues.

Are we, as an industry, serious about the Sustainable Development Goals? SDG number 8 is about promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

At full employment, the apparel industry in Bangladesh employs more than four million people, many of them young women. Without support, our industry faces a financial Armageddon, with the potential loss of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of factories and millions of jobs.

With no safety net for those right at the bottom of our industry pyramid, the ramifications are poverty, malnutrition and even death. An industry that prides itself on sustainability, and whose main actors have repeatedly cited the SDGs in recent years, cannot afford to stand by and allow to happen the slow-motion car-crash we are seeing in supply chains.

Mostafiz Uddin is the Managing Director of Denim Expert Limited. He is also the Founder and CEO of Bangladesh Apparel Exchange (BAE).
Email: mostafiz@denimexpert.com

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Categories: Africa

Global Summit of Development Banks Fails to Learn from Destructive Past

Fri, 11/13/2020 - 11:41

Indigenous men and women of Nuñoa in Puno, Peru, spin and weave garments based on the fiber of the alpacas. Credit: SGP-GEF-UNDP Peru/Enrique Castro-Mendívil

By Siddharth Akali
MANILA, Nov 13 2020 (IPS)

This week, 450 public development banks from around the world met for the Finance in Common Summit at the Paris Peace Forum. They gathered to discuss how they can direct their combined investments of over USD 2 trillion – 10% of total investments in the world – “to support the transformation or the global economy” and “build new forms of prosperity that take care of people and the planet.”

However, the summit has done little to fundamentally transform development so it is bottom up, focussing again on government officials, bankers, think tanks, and academics over the real experts at the frontlines, who are living, breathing, and drinking the impacts of these banks policies and practices that have their stolen lands and polluted their ecosystems.

Grassroots communities and human rights defenders directly affected by these banks’ activities did not have a seat at the summit table, or the chance to speak and be heard in the webinar room.

And after ongoing advocacy by hundreds of civil society groups from around the world, and several United Nations special procedures, the final declaration of the summit contains only reference to community-led development and human rights. There are no concrete actionable commitments beyond business as usual dressed in the language of motherhood and apple pie.

The Finance in Common Summit was the first global meeting of the vast family of institutions that intersect between finance and public policy, and was one of the largest international governance and finance gatherings in 2020 since the spread of the pandemic.

The organizers of the summit are heralding public development banks as a “visible hand” that can help mobilize and direct the finance we need for the future we want. Unfortunately, these institutions do not have a great track record, with significant documentation of their projects excluding directly affected communities and doing more harm.

Development banks have repeatedly supported fossil fuel projects that have contributed to climate change, polluted ecosystems causing lung diseases and made people more vulnerable to the worst effects of Covid-19.

They have also engaged in greenwashing, supporting fossil free projects that take traditionally held lands without the consent of local communities and Indigenous Peoples, destroying the biodiverse ecosystems they have protected for generations.

These institutions have also repeatedly looked the other way and been complicit in the human rights violations of corporations and governments they work with. They support activities where armed forces push forward large infrastructure and extractives projects on traditional lands without the participation and consent of Indigenous Peoples.

They indiscriminately fund states where there is corporate capture of institutions, and police and courts violently punish those who speak truth to power rather than those who murder social justice leaders.

For instance, despite warning from local communities in Colombia several development financiers provided support for the construction of the Hidroituango dam, which has had a catastrophic impact for the people and the environment, including forced displacement of hundreds of families, loss of livelihoods, floods, landslides, and mass fish kill.

In the past 11 years, six members of the grassroots organization Movimiento Ríos Vivos and more than 30 other community members have been killed for raising their concerns about the project.

Development banks have also supported privatization of essential services, prioritizing growth and corporate profits over protections for workers and communities. And now, in the middle of a pandemic, many people are left without access to healthcare, shelter, livelihoods, food, sanitary products and medicines, even as stock markets rise.

However, in the name of crowding in private investments, development banks are continuing to pump out billions of dollars to bail out corporations during the pandemic, with few safeguards to ensure the money reaches the people who need it the most.

Indeed, public development banks have contributed to a world where the 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa. They have done little to challenge systems through which caregiving falls disproportionately on women, focusing instead on farcical women’s empowerment efforts.

They have also failed to confront their role in advancing racism and colonialism, or contributing to increased surveillance and securitization, and inhibiting world peace.

A better world is possible, even as we reel under the shocks of intersecting crises of the pandemic, climate change and rising inequality, violence and militarization. And a better world can benefit from the right kind of public development finance.

But public banks, governments, and businesses need to make changes if we want to move away from a world of self-inflicted existential threats. The response to the current crises of our times cannot be to simply push out more money without consideration for the long-term environmental and social impacts of these funds on local communities and workers.

And who better to assess the long term impacts of these investments than communities and workers themselves?

The very idea of international development finance has to be reshaped under the leadership of communities who have repeatedly called for the lens of collective responsibility and reparations. The existing models of debt and financial aid, focused on states and corporations, only serve to replicate colonial power imbalances, and support the prevailing top-down paradigm.

Instead, people who are the purported beneficiaries of development finance have to be the key decision-makers.

To make future iterations of the Finance in Common summit impactful, the first thing the organizers have to do is to recognize communities are the experts of their own development.

Community-led development and human rights must be front and center on the summit agenda. Indigenous Peoples, grassroots communities and social movements must be invited to share their vision of development.

If governments and their public banks are serious about transformation, and leaving behind old patterns of crises, human rights in common have to come before finance in common.

The post Global Summit of Development Banks Fails to Learn from Destructive Past appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Development banks have repeatedly looked the other way and been complicit in the human rights violations of corporations and governments they work with. They support activities where armed forces push forward large infrastructure and extractives projects on traditional lands without the participation and consent of Indigenous Peoples.

Siddharth Akali is an international lawyer who has been trained by local communities, Indigenous governments and peoples in Canada, India and Nepal. He works as director of the Coalition for Human Rights in Development, a global coalition of social movements, civil society organizations, and grassroots groups working together to ensure that development is community-led and that it respects, protects, and fulfills human rights.

The post Global Summit of Development Banks Fails to Learn from Destructive Past appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

In India, Ending FGM Demands Truth and Transparency

Fri, 11/13/2020 - 11:16

By Masooma Ranalvi
NOIDA, India, Nov 13 2020 (IPS)

“My daughter is eight years old. In May 2017, I had her ‘Khatna,’ her circumcision, done. I had taken her to a traditional cutter. Once back home I made her sleep on the bed. After some time, around 4:00 p.m. I took her to the bathroom, she was bleeding as if she had started her menses. It seemed like she was urinating blood. By 6:00 p.m. my daughter had been bleeding so heavily, the blood had soaked three bed sheets and I was very worried. And my daughter was quiet and she also kept asking me if she will be fine.” Excerpt from: How I got her from the hands of death: WeSpeakOut study 2018

The child belongs to the Bohra community, where Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) persists. A study by my organisation, WeSpeakOut, in 2018 indicates that over 75% of the girls in the community are cut. Their clitoral hoods are removed. They are not all “fine.” Some suffer life-threatening infections. And the procedure leaves girls physically and emotionally scarred and robbed of sexual pleasure for a lifetime.

If FGM in India and elsewhere in Asia remains hidden and unmeasured, if governments collect no data, UN agencies should sponsor the large-scale qualitative and quantitative studies needed, and support groups trying to do this research on the ground

The Bohra community is not in Africa, long the focus of global efforts to stop FGM. It is in India. The fact that it happens here came to light when women, including me, spoke about our childhood traumas, researched the prevalence of FGM, and exposed it to the world. But we are part of a global blind spot on the FGM map. To many in the Indian government and the international community, we remain invisible. India has no government database on FGM, a secret and silent practice for centuries

My survivor-led organization, WeSpeakOut, has spent the last five years meeting with top officials from government commissions and ministries, providing evidence and testimony, and circulating petitions, including one that garnered over 200,000 signatures.

We have been imploring the government to pass a law banning FGM. We and members of Parliament who have asked questions about this have been rebuffed. .

The Indian government’s official response is that since there is no official data on the prevalence of FGM in India, FGM in India does not even exist. They claim this, even though WeSpeakOut provided them surveys as part of the consultations held around the country to track progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Eliminating FGM is a clear target under the SDGs, agreed to by 193 United Nations member countries around the world, including India. But the government’s obfuscation undermines this goal. It leaves the United Nations — the global organization that is supposed to be able to shed light, offer guidance, and apply pressure so that nations do the right thing—powerless.

India is not alone. It is one of at least 60 countries that do not collect or provide national-level data on the prevalence of FGM. The sustainable development goal 5.3 is to end female genital mutilation or cutting by 2030, and with less than ten years to go we are still not even sure of the extent of this practice globally.

Masooma Ranalvi. Credit: Natasha Sweeney Photography

If our governments continue to pretend the problem does not exist, international organizations should step in.

They could start by including India in official United Nations documents on FGM. At international forums where our government representatives have signed treaties denouncing FGM, Indian officials should be asked about FGM in India. India should not be allowed to hide behind its supposed support for international treaties and conventions promising to end FGM globally, while ignoring and covering up the practice within its own borders.

Countries like India that committed to fast-track progress for achieving the SDGs pledged to Leave No One Behind. What is the value of this pledge if nations that break this promise cannot be held accountable? There must be any international mechanism to pull up truant nations.

If FGM in India and elsewhere in Asia remains hidden and unmeasured, if governments collect no data, UN agencies should sponsor the large-scale qualitative and quantitative studies needed, and support groups trying to do this research on the ground. International funding does not typically reach organizations like mine, and we survive with hardly any local contributions. We can all be part of the larger global effort to end FGM by 2030. We can collaborate to put together the funding, research, legal and technical expertise needed to achieve this collective goal.

All SDGs are interconnected; poverty, development, gender justice, peace and prosperity cannot be viewed in isolation. The SDGs are universal and transcend borders, and neglecting one goal hinders progress on others. For this to work, governments cannot be evasive or complacent. They need to mean what they say, and to demand the truth from others.

They failed to do this at the concluded United Nations High Level Political Forum 2020. But there will be other high-profile international meetings – more opportunities to ask tough questions and demand honest answers.

Masooma Ranalvi is the Founder of WeSpeakOut, India’s largest FGM survivor-led organization. She is a 2020 Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow. Follow her on Twitter @RanalviMasooma

The post In India, Ending FGM Demands Truth and Transparency appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

The Armored Divisions of the European Union

Thu, 11/12/2020 - 17:50

The Berlaymont building in Brussels, headquarters of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union (EU). Credit EU.

By Joaquín Roy
Nov 12 2020 (IPS)

An anecdote tells, never sufficiently confirmed, that in the hardest moments of the Second World War when Stalin was dictating his orders of battle to his subordinates, he was told that perhaps it would be advisable to consult with the Pope. The Soviet dictator replied: “And how many armored divisions does the Pope have?”

The rationale of the question has been used in international relations theory and practice consistently to illustrate a vision of the realist school, in the company of classical interpretations such as those of Thucydides and von Clausewitz.

Stalin’s reflection has often been adduced to interpret the real level of influence of the European Union on the international scene since the middle of the last century.

It has never been easy to explain the birth and survival of Monnet and Schuman’s invention by means of a variant of realism.

One of the clichés about the soul of the EU is as an example of possessing a “soft power”, according to the founding arguments of Joseph Nye.

Joaquín Roy

It agrees with the birth of an entity whose initial leaders were mostly Christian Democrats, who based their logic on reconciliation and who promoted a new entity based on an unusual “declaration of interdependence.” While the bulk of the history of international relations exuded the phenomenon of war, the EU stubbornly justified its existence on the strategy of peace.

Citizens outside Europe tried to answer the question about the reason for the founding of the EU with strange answers such as competition with the United States, the improvement of the European economy, and the reinforcement of capitalism. The goal of making war “unthinkable, and materially impossible” was rarely alluded to.

Since then it has not been easy to understand the EU, because to do so, “one must be French or very intelligent” as Madeleine Albright once said. She rightly described the EU as extremely complex, especially if you insist on viewing it through the lens of “hard power.”

The funny thing is that its survival has been an enigma for more than 70 years, in an already long existence sown along with experiences as shocking as the Vietnam War, the end of the Cold War, the disappearance of the Soviet Union, and now the questioning of the fundamentals of the United States.

Despite such impressive achievements as the adoption of the euro, the marked improvement in the standard of living of Europeans, their comparatively superior longevity, the pleasant feeling of being able to travel and reside throughout the EU, there is a certain discomfort and inner feeling, their survival is in doubt.

The explosion produced by Brexit, barely softening the effects of the 2008 economic crisis, while some of the evils of the past are reborn (nationalism, authoritarianism, racism), and the community territory is beset by uncontrolled immigration, has not helped to soften fears.

Inside and outside, the predictions of its disappearance are insistent. And specialists wonder why, while many voices disagree with these pessimistic predictions.

Anu Bradford, author of “The Brussels Effect” (Oxford University, 2020)

Anu Bradford, a law professor at Columbia University in New York, belongs to this sector. She is the author of a book that has been considered as the most influential of the decade in the field of international relations and the EU in particular. Its title is The Brussels Effect (Oxford University, 2020), repeatedly reproduced as a term that is destined to be enthroned in the permanent vocabulary of the EU. The central thesis is that the EU, despite its lack of “hard power”, has achieved not only its survival, but a position of preeminence in the world theater.

But this nature of a global agent does not come from the traditional methods of imposing its interests, but simply through the use of a weapon of something as simple as law, developed in the design of a network of norms in the internal scene of the industry, business, the environment, agriculture, and protection against climate change.

But these norms are not imposed on the external territories, in a traditional imperialist way, but, exceptionally, they are self-adopted by the external businesses themselves, voluntarily.

How is this achieved, without the imposition of the hard power of the EU? Bradford’s answer is very simple: external actors, in the United States, Latin America, Asia, weigh between the cost of adding the standards of EU regulations or losing such a substantial market. They hesitate before being forced to adopt community standards or even be their goods rejected, once the process of entering the gigantic EU single market has begun.

They wisely choose to make the necessary investment and place the blue sticker with the twelve golden stars of the EU as a guarantee, a courtesy gift from the “pope” Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. The EU does not oblige anyone: it is the choice of external economic interests.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

The post The Armored Divisions of the European Union appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Vietnam Takes the Lead on Indo-Pacific Economic Integration

Thu, 11/12/2020 - 11:43

A farmer in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Credit: UN Photo/Kibae Park

By Kyle Springer
PERTH, Australia, Nov 12 2020 (IPS)

This was the year that Vietnam was poised to make progress on its rise as a regional leader. Under the auspices of Vietnam’s ASEAN chairmanship, a breakthrough in global trade has been achieved despite rising protectionism and a global pandemic.

Assuming the chair of ASEAN in January, Vietnam’s diplomacy has proven adaptable amid the constraints of COVID-19. The successful completion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade agreement under Vietnam’s watch this year will cement its claim to middle power leadership in the Indo-Pacific region.

The 2020 ASEAN Summit would have been easy to write off, but we have learned to expect a lot from a Vietnam-chaired year. Consider what Vietnam’s leadership has delivered in the past. When Vietnam chaired ASEAN in 2010, it inaugurated the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) Plus, a defence dialogue of all ten ASEAN members and its eight dialogue partners, which includes the US and China.

When Vietnam convened the East Asia Summit (EAS) that same year, the US and Russia attended as Vietnam’s guests, paving the way for their official membership in the summit the following year. The ADMM Plus and the EAS are now key institutions in the political architecture of the Indo-Pacific.

And in the crisis year of 2020, Vietnam’s skillful diplomacy once again comes to the rescue. When Vietnam delivers RCEP during this November’s adjusted Summit process, it will be the most significant development in the global trade system since the establishment of the WTO in 1994.

Eight years in the making and spanning over thirty rounds of negotiations, RCEP promises to buttress the post-COVID-19 economic recovery of its fifteen members. Covering 29 percent of global GDP, its provisions spur the further development of regional value chains and greatly lower regulatory barriers to investment.

Vietnam’s leadership of RCEP marks its transformation to become one of the region’s fastest-growing and most internationally-engaged economies. Thirty years ago, Vietnam emerged from a period of war during which it had fought every permanent member of the UN Security Council except the then-Soviet Union. Vietnam had isolated itself from its Southeast Asian neighbours when it invaded Cambodia in 1978, and it suffered a bloody clash with China at its northern border in 1979.

On the economic front, matters were equally dim. Post-war reconstruction did nothing to boost Vietnam’s inflation-stricken economy. Five-year economic plans failed to stimulate growth and production in its agriculture-based economy. Trade and aid sanctions were placed against it by the US, Australia, and many of its other neighbours. With this context, no one could have foreseen the transformation that would later take place.

RCEP perhaps represents the apex of Vietnam’s efforts to integrate into the global economy starting in the mid-1990s. Coming on the back of its domestically-focused Doi Moi (renovation) economic reforms that began in 1986, Vietnam joined ASEAN in 1995 and acceded to the World Trade Organization in 2007. It eschewed protectionism and began pursuing a number of free trade agreements starting in 2005.

Today, it has signed a number of deals with advanced economies. Vietnam has emerged not only as a participant in multilateral trade efforts, but as a leading proponent of regional trade integration. It is a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) with Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The CPTPP’s predecessor, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), earned fame with US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US from the deal after long being promoted as a cornerstone of former President Barack Obama’s “rebalance” to the Asia-Pacific region.

A few months after the US left the agreement, the remaining TPP members met on the sidelines of the 2017 APEC trade ministers’ meeting, hosted by Vietnam. There the ministers reaffirmed the value of the TPP and discussed how to finalise it with the eleven of the original signatories.

Here Vietnam made the decision to stay in the agreement, despite losing market access to its most important trade partner – the US. Vietnam’s participation in the CPTPP makes Vietnam’s stance clear: it is committed to trade liberalisation even though the spirit of the time is decidedly protectionist.

RCEP continues Vietnam’s efforts, and Vietnam once again delivers an important new institution while it presides in its moment as ASEAN chair. RCEP is timely as well. It will put Vietnam and its Indo-Pacific partners in a good place to solve the economic problems pressuring the region, not the least the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit Southeast Asia particularly hard.

Here again, Vietnam looks like it will come out on top. With its domestic outbreak under control, Vietnam’s standing in the forecasts for economic growth are promising. Even under the most pessimistic modelling, Vietnam’s economy should maintain positive growth in 2020.

By the time Vietnam next takes the reins as ASEAN chair, presumably in 2030, its economy will be well on its way to becoming one of the world’s largest. RCEP will get a lot of credit for that progress.

Along with catalysing post-COVID-19 economic growth in the broader Indo-Pacific region, RCEP will further enhance Vietnam’s ability to attract the investment it needs to propel its economy in this promising direction.

The challenge for Vietnam’s leadership will be matching its regional ambitions with continued domestic economic reforms.

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

The post Vietnam Takes the Lead on Indo-Pacific Economic Integration appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Kyle Springer is the Senior Analyst at the Perth US Asia Centre.

The post Vietnam Takes the Lead on Indo-Pacific Economic Integration appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

More Children in Zimbabwe Are Working to Survive: What’s Needed

Thu, 11/12/2020 - 11:11

The actual number of children at risk is not known due to a dearth of research on child deprivation and government responses in Zimbabwe. This 16-year-old boy sells sweets and popcorn to earn a living in downtown Harare. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/ IPS

By External Source
Nov 12 2020 (IPS)

The ability of Zimbabwean families to take care of children has been compromised by a collapsing economy, compounded by COVID-19. About 4.3 million people in rural communities, including children, are food insecure this year. The World Food Programme indicates that at least 60% of the population of Zimbabwe need food aid.

The Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation in Zimbabwe has estimated that over 20,000 children have turned to vending as a means of survival since the COVID-19 lockdown.

According to reports, child vendors in the city of Bulawayo are mostly selling fruit and vegetables. And in the capital, Harare, they sell a variety of goods from vegetables to used clothes and shoes.

The phenomenon of child vendors in Zimbabwe has been topical for some time. But the situation appears to be worsening.

When children spend hours of their day in the streets or at the market, they lose a portion of their childhood that will never be regained. They miss out on education, play opportunities and other childhood activities. This has far-reaching effects on their development

There are no statistics about how much income vendors make, due to the informal nature of this business and a lack of centralised coordination of their activities. Nevertheless, it’s clear that poverty is the reason children are on the streets. But in their efforts to help their families, they are exposed to risks such as exploitation, abuse and missing school.

The situation calls for a critical conversation about the capacity of families to protect and care for their children and the role of social protection policies in the country.

Policy to protect vulnerable children

A National Action Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children has been in place since 2004. The policy guides the provision of care for these children. My prior experience and observations as a social researcher suggest that the plan isn’t working in practice.

There are number of gaps.

The first is that there’s no clear definition of what the term “orphans and vulnerable children” means, especially in the current economic climate and increasing vulnerability of children in the country. There’s a danger that children will fall through the cracks and go unnoticed without any government support.

Secondly, there is a lack of good data. The actual number of children at risk is not known due to a dearth of research on child deprivation and government responses in Zimbabwe.

Thirdly, government interventions aren’t reaching those in need. The government’s National Action Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children is meant to be overseen by a multi-sectoral committee to mobilise resources. Under it poor households were to receive grants varying from US$10 (one person household) to US$25 (four person household) per month (paid bimonthly) through a cash transfer. The funds for this come from the Child Protection Fund.

The first phase of the plan was between 2005-2010 and the second phase between 2011-2015. The evaluations of these two phases showed several gaps in service provision and targeting of orphans and vulnerable children in the country.

Even by 2017 only 23,000 beneficiaries in eight districts had received the cash transfers. However, the number of families in need way surpasses the number that received it. According to social policy experts, the unconditional social cash transfer programmes don’t target all poor households. They only target those that in addition to being extremely poor, also suffer from severe social and economic vulnerability. This, however, is open to interpretation.

The current third phase of the plan was supposed to cover household economic security, basic social services and child protection. The fact that there appears to be a growing child vendor problem in the country in 2020 shows the plan is not reaching everyone in need.

Child vendors exposed to risks

The legal working age in Zimbabwe is 16, but children as young as 10 and 12 years old are selling goods on the streets.

Children aren’t being adequately protected from child labour and the risks they face, including exploitation and abuse.

According to the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth, the third phase of the National Action Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children seeks the involvement of families and the community in child protection.

But the governnment’s ability to drive the plan is severely compromised because it doesn’t have the capacity in the Ministry of Social Services. This is due to a massive exodus of Zimbabweans from the country as a result of the economic crisis. As a result, the plan is heavily reliant on external assistance and development partners.

Going forward

So far, the government’s response has been to reunite children found in the streets with their families. The reality is that without alternatives for these families to earn an income and to feed their families, children will go back on the streets.

In addition, it’s proving difficult to change the mindsets of Zimbabweans on the role of children in the society. Culturally, the involvement of children in the family economy is generally regarded as acceptable. Parents feel that it’s a way of training the children to become more responsible adults.

The government can prevent child vending through identifying families that are at risk of losing their livelihood. Social policy programmes need to be expanded to cover more people. This implies increasing the social protection budget to cater for growing numbers of families with children in need.

Policy makers and social service practitioners must consider adopting a bottom-up approach and work collaboratively with the affected and at-risk families. This can be done through participatory approaches such as workshops to hear from the community how best the issue of child labour can be tackled in this economy.

Dr Getrude Dadirai Gwenzi, Early Career Researcher in the Sociology of Child Welfare in Africa, Lingnan University

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

The post More Children in Zimbabwe Are Working to Survive: What’s Needed appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

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