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Women in War-Ravaged Afghanistan Fight Back for Their Rights

Thu, 11/05/2020 - 09:04

A family runs across a dusty street in Herat, Afghanistan. Credit: UNAMA/Fraidoon Poya

By Zarqa Yaftali
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov 5 2020 (IPS)

Bullets, bombs, tyranny and torture. Children crying for food, civilians struggling to survive, women unable to walk out of their homes freely. When we are not under siege from bombs and landmines, ordinary Afghans suffer from hunger, natural hazards and poverty.

Every day is a war and every day people lose their lives. This is Afghanistan today – and a reality too many around the world can relate to.

The conflict in Afghanistan has taken a particular toll on women and girls. Over half the population lives below the poverty line and this has hit women the hardest. 70% of Afghan women are illiterate, 87% of Afghan women have already experienced at least one form of gender-based violence, 35% of girls are forced to marry before the age of 18, and women and girls are less likely to have access to quality health services and treatment, particularly in rural areas.

Women and children make up the majority of four million internally displaced people. All these issues have only worsened with the spread of COVID-19.

In addition, our civil society is threatened, harassed and attacked and no measures exist for their protection. In mid-September, the US Embassy in Kabul reported an increased risk for women, including human rights activists and women in government.

Despite these challenges, my people have also worked tirelessly to change this country for the better. Today, many of our girls can go to school without fear. We have heroes like Shamsia, the daughter of a coal miner, who came first in Afghanistan’s national university entrance exam.

We have a free media and a constitution that protects the rights of women and ethnic and religious minorities. Women are no longer publicly shot or stoned in Kabul stadiums, imprisoned in their homes or forced to wear burqas or shoes that make no noise, like they were 20 years ago.

Today, Afghan women are gaining respect and recognition as they begin to flourish in all walks of life, as doctors, taxi drivers and film-makers. Women in Afghanistan are also ministers, women who, under the Taliban regime, were deprived of the most basic rights to education, employment and freedom of movement. Today, they are in a position to influence policy and shape the future of our nation.

Much of this change is only due to the role women played in advocating for their rights over the past two decades. Women’s increasing participation in public and political life has changed harmful social norms and expectations around our role in Afghanistan. Afghan society today is ready to see women lead this country into the future.

Despite the great strides we have made, we know our hard-won gains can be snatched away without warning. The bitter memories of Taliban rule haunt us daily. These experiences are still a reality for many women and girls living in areas controlled by the Taliban, where few girls are allowed to attend school past puberty, access to information is limited and freedom of expression is severely curtailed.

After extensive delays to the Intra-Afghan talks, the official start in September is indeed a milestone. The presence of four women on the government’s negotiation team is a positive development, but it is not enough. Afghanistan’s track record for including women is dismal — between 2005 and 2020, women were excluded from almost 80% of peace process meetings and negotiations.

Given the deep-rooted resistance by the Taliban to women’s formal inclusion in past processes, and the recent attack targeting one of the women on the government’s negotiating team, we are deeply concerned that women’s rights will be used as a bargaining chip between the Taliban and the Government of Afghanistan. This would undermine our fundamental rights and ignore our important contributions to the future of this country.

Peace cannot come at the cost of women’s rights. All we have achieved hangs in the balance in the current negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

We are urging the international community, including global and regional institutions, UN Member States and donor countries, to exercise your responsibility to ensure that none of the parties involved, including the Taliban, restrict women’s human rights, civil liberties or citizenship in any way.

Political pressure from the international community can be effectively used to promote the protection of women’s rights and our formal and direct participation in the talks and the subsequent state-building processes. The widespread and meaningful participation of women in the peace process is essential both for peace and for the fate of Afghan women.

At the UN Security Council this week, I, on behalf of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security made specific demands – for leaders to use their influence in this key decision-making space to emphasize and complement the work women leaders are doing on the frontlines around the globe.

We asked them to demand an immediate ceasefire, insist on women’s rights and participation as part of inclusive peace talks, ensure the safety of women’s rights defenders – and more.

20 years of commitments and resolutions by the Security Council have not substantially changed the reality for women in Afghanistan – or in Yemen, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan — in fact, in every country on the Security Council’s agenda.

Even the modest gains over the last 20 years are under attack. We are watching as women’s rights, health, equality and inclusion are being dangerously undermined. We must hold the line – and our leaders accountable to do the same.

Just last week, civil society and defenders of women’s rights were able to avert an unnecessary and potentially dangerous Security Council resolution led by Russia. Women leaders and our allies watch closely how leaders act in these moments to see what support we can expect as we face challenges to equality and inclusion in our own countries.

We were once again forced to hope that those in positions of power will wield it for good and demonstrate they are in lock step with the women who have earned the power to lead and push for peace in their communities. Our rights shouldn’t still be up for debate, but we were relieved to see our community and the majority of Member States on the Security Council hold the line against the erosion of women’s rights, inclusion and equality.

Although women have long suffered from war, violence, and exclusion, we are not victims — we have fought back for decades for our rights, and we will not sit by and watch our achievements be thrown away. It is equally the responsibility of the international community to stand with the women of Afghanistan and around the world as we demand our seat at the table, and a future that is safe, equal, and just.

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The post Women in War-Ravaged Afghanistan Fight Back for Their Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Zarqa Yaftali is a women’s rights advocate from Afghanistan and Executive Director of the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation. She represented the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security at the recent UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security.

The post Women in War-Ravaged Afghanistan Fight Back for Their Rights appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Forced Child Marriage & Conversion: Public Discussion & Legal Reforms Called for in Pakistan

Wed, 11/04/2020 - 13:04

Rita Raja, pictured here with her children, holds up photos of her 13-year-old who had allegedly been abducted and forced to covert her religion and marry her 44-year-old Muslim neighbour. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Nov 4 2020 (IPS)

October 13 began like any other day at the Lal house as Raja Lal and his wife Rita Raja left for work at 7:30 am.

“I made the usual breakfast of anda paratha (egg and flat bread) and told my eldest to lock the door from inside,” Raja, who works as an ayah in a school, told IPS. Their 13-year old daughter, the youngest of their four children, did not go to school that day as her school shoes no longer fit and her parents hadn’t bought her a new pair yet.

Little did they know that that day was the beginning of a nightmare for the Lal household. Their daughter would then allegedly be “abducted, forcefully converted and married in just one day”, Lal, a Christian, told IPS.

“My other two daughters saw [her] leave the house and thought she had taken the dog out at around 9:00 am,” narrated Raja. “But when she still hadn’t returned an hour later, they got anxious and called nearby relatives. They looked everywhere and then called us.”

Lal went to the police to report his daughter missing. According to Raja, “they did nothing” and two days later they handed Lal his daughter’s marriage certificate.

In a video shared over social media, the teenager claimed she converted to Islam of her free will and consented to marriage to her 44-year-old Muslim neighbour Azhar Ali.

Forced conversion of young girls has been going on for decades, Safina Javed, Vice President Pakistan Minority Rights Commission, Sindh chapter, told IPS. “Every year nearly a thousand young girls are forcefully coerced or lured to convert to Islam,” she said.

“The minorities feel very insecure because the religious extremists have made these conversions their business and see it as a path to heaven,” she said.

Javed wants a law that can control this practice.

An anti-conversion law was first tabled in the Sindh Assembly back in 2016 but was rejected. A second attempt of the same bill with amendments was brought forward in 2019 after a surge in conversion of Hindu girls was reported in various districts of Sindh. It was rejected again.

Maliha Lari, a lawyer and rights activist, told IPS the bill was “scrapped” as parliamentarians started to receive threats and religious parties launched protests, pressurising the government to repeal it. They contended that the bill was against the basic principles of Islam as there could not be an age limit on converting to Islam.

Raja Lal and his wife Rita Raja say their 13-year-old daughter was abducted, forcefully converted and married in just one day to her 44-year-old neighbour. The young girl has been moved to a women’s shelter in Karachi while her age is being determined through medical investigation as documents had been reportedly submitted to court that stated her legal age was 18. Courtesy: Safina Javed

Saroop Ijaz, senior counsel for Human Rights Watch Asia, told IPS societal attitudes and institutional responses and encouragement enables this practice to continue with impunity.

“It is an unhappy mix of socio-economic marginalisation, misogyny and religious intolerance. The victims are girls belonging to poor households and the conversion in most cases is followed by a forced marriage with a man who has greater socio-economic power,” he explained.

Lal took the matter to the courts where his daughter and Azhar Ali were summoned. The judge accepted the girl’s statement that she was 18 and had consented to the marriage. Documents were submitted to show her age to be 18. The judge allowed the 13-year-old to leave with her husband.

“She is just 13 and we have given proof,” said her mother, claiming the other side had produced fake documents in court. According to the Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act, 2013, marriage of any child under the age of eighteen is a criminal offence.

The case stirred a public outcry. Consequently, forced to review its decision, the court ordered the girl to be moved to a women’s shelter in Karachi while her age is being determined through medical investigation. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 5.

Ijaz was not surprised by the initial court order to allow the girl to remain with her husband. “The response of the criminal justice system at all three levels of investigation, prosecution and adjudication oscillates between indifference and complicity,” he said, adding that it was this impunity that was leading to more cases.

The Lal’s lawyer, Jibran Nasir, hoped for a more “proactive approach” from the court. “I hope the evidence of the child’s age as given in her school records and more importantly with the government’s National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) should be enough to prove her age,” he told IPS. Determining that she is a minor will declare the marriage void.

For Lari, “it’s black and white” and there are three laws under which the complainants can get relief: abduction of children below the age of 14, child marriage and rape (if there has been intercourse).

“Those involved should be charged with either abduction if she was abducted or incitement for purposes of illicit intercourse,” she told IPS, adding: “The law says the age of marriage is 18 and she is 13; everyone involved should be punished.”

“The court should declare a minor cannot be considered to have changed her religion and protection for the girl and a long-term plan for where the child should be placed should be discussed and planned out and re-visited regularly,” Lari concluded.

However, Justice Majida Rizvi, former judge of the Sindh High Court who now heads the Sindh Human Rights Commission, told IPS that things are not so simple.

“[While] we have two parallel laws, the Shariah law and the secular law, one allows marriage at 16 for girls or when she attains puberty, the other at 18, there will always be a problem,” said Rizvi. On top of that, she added, the constitution says “all laws have to be in accordance with the Shariah”.

This is precisely why Ijaz hopes this case “results in an honest public conversation on the issue followed by a comprehensive reform of the system.”

For this, he said, the government and the state machinery have to inspire confidence for the victim to fight this battle. “In the past high profile examples, victims have had to back down because of the unequal power relations between the victims and perpetrators,” he said.

Local rights activist Tahira Abdullah told IPS that the reason for increased incidences of forced conversions of young girls from minority communities was because the police and judiciary were “neither sensitive enough nor courageous enough to withstand the visible and invisible pressure exerted by the religio-political groups/gangs who perpetuate these crimes:.

“Thus, there is an increasing impunity from prosecution for the following multiple crimes against minority girls: abduction, forced conversion to Islam, faked documents (eg. birth certificates), forced marriage of a legal minor usually to a much older Muslim man, and, most heinous, rape – under the false guise of ‘conjugal sexual relations,'” Abdullah said.

Meanwhile, many of the experts IPS spoke to feel this case may not come to a conclusion anytime soon. For now, her father finds solace in the fact that his daughter is away from her abductor.

“At least she is safe,” said Lal, speaking to IPS inside the residential premises of the Holy Trinity Cathedral, the seat of the Church of Pakistan, where Pastor Ghazala Shafiq, the only woman ordained pastor in Karachi, has provided refuge to the Lals. “These people are powerful and we are poor but we have received much support from the church,” said Raja, looking around the new abode gratefully.

“Azhar’s side had come to us with as many as 15 to 20 women accompanied by their menfolk and asked for reconciliation,” said Raja. She added that they threatened the Lal family if they didn’t acquiesce.

“They are definitely not safe there!” concluded Shafiq, who spent a night in the Lal home. “They were continuously getting threats from the abductor’s side.”

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Categories: Africa

Education Cannot Wait Interviews LEGO Foundation CEO John Goodwin

Wed, 11/04/2020 - 10:30

By External Source
Nov 4 2020 (IPS-Partners)

John Goodwin joined the LEGO Foundation as CEO in April 2017 to pursue a career where he could combine his business skills with his passion for philanthropy and driving positive social impact.

The LEGO Foundation is dedicated to influencing parents, teachers and policy makers to adopt learning through play as the most powerful means for children to acquire the broad suite of skills needed to thrive in today’s world – and to provide the evidence and advocacy to support it. The LEGO Foundation is Education Cannot Wait’s largest private sector donor. With a US$27.5 million contribution to date, it is paving the way for public-private partnerships “to promote quality learning, holistic skills, and protection of children who are the most marginalized and need support.”

Prior to being appointed CEO of the LEGO Foundation, Mr. Goodwin held a position as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the LEGO Group with responsibilities comprising finance, corporate IT, corporate social responsibility, external relations, corporate business services, legal affairs and procurement.

Before joining the LEGO Group, John served as a President in Procter & Gamble where he was responsible for leading a variety of global businesses covering pet nutrition, electrical appliances and food snacks. Earlier in his career, he conducted a wide range of finance leadership positions in the company, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, new business ventures, investor relations and strategic development.

Education Cannot Wait: The LEGO Foundation decided to invest in education for those left furthest behind in emergencies and protracted crisis. ECW’s uncompromising commitment to speed, quality and results very much resembles the attitude of private sector mentality and approach. Why did you decide to support and invest in ECW’s global movement?

John Goodwin: The LEGO Foundation forged our partnership with Education Cannot Wait (ECW) to ensure that children in conflicts and crises get psychosocial and developmental support, by securing Learning Through Play in the classrooms of refugees and their host communities. Through this partnership, we aim to promote quality learning, holistic skills, and protection of children who are the most marginalised and need support.

Through the partnership with ECW, we are investing in capacity building on learning through play pedagogies of their staff and/or grantees, inspiring other donors who are interested in prioritising quality early childhood development and primary education for children, and supporting a research agenda and knowledge sharing around learning through play.

This partnership also enables us to raise the agenda in public platforms by talking about the importance of early learning – which is currently massively underfunded in the humanitarian sector – that includes Learning through Play for broader skills development, promoting it with other actors and host country governments.

The LEGO Foundation has been supporting early childhood development programmes of governments of countries such as Colombia.

Education Cannot Wait: What is your advice to private sector or philanthropic foundations who also want to help prioritize education for the 75 million children and youth in conflicts and forced displacement? What advice would you give to private sector partners or foundations who are still concerned about how their funding can make the greatest impact?

John Goodwin: The private sector has the resources and influence to positively impact lives of children in difficult situations. My advice is to work with partners to leverage the collective power of influence, reach and knowledge. At the LEGO Foundation we believe that we are stronger together and if we can leverage each other’s resources and expertise, we can deliver a higher impact for children around the world.

I would also advise to prioritise quality learning outcomes and developing breadth of skills in children. While the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in some challenges with access to education opportunities, we should not take a step back from the current efforts to improve the quality of education that is provided to these children. We should avoid falling into the trap of pushing narrow traditional education outcomes for the sake of hitting targets, but instead to think about how we support these children’s well-being through a holistic approach that can help them deal with trauma stressors caused by crisis situations AND set them on a learning trajectory for the future.

Education Cannot Wait: The LEGO Foundation is a strong driver of early childhood education and learning through play. What do you think are the most important achievements so far in the LEGO Foundation’s relentless advocacy for early childhood education and learning through play in emergency and crisis settings?

John Goodwin: In the last few years, the LEGO Foundation has built its humanitarian portfolio, with our first humanitarian grant Play to Learn, to a consortium of partners led by Sesame Workshop. This was followed by the second grant, PlayMatters, to a consortium of partners led by International Rescue Committee (IRC). Play to Learn seeks to establish play-based, early childhood development (ECD) programming as an essential component of all humanitarian responses, and validating this through the specific contexts of the Rohingya and Syrian refugee crises in Bangladesh, and Jordan and Lebanon respectively. PlayMatters will improve education outcomes for approximately 800,000 children and reach approximately 10,000 pre-primary and primary school teachers and education personnel and 170,000 primary caregivers in Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania, who will receive training to engage in learning through play with children who have faced adversities. Over the course of both projects, we can see some concrete outcomes such as direct ECD interventions for parents and children in three different countries, and the initial learnings from the implementation.

The LEGO Foundation is working in close collaboration with key partners to advocate for more investments and actions towards early childhood development and education in emergencies. We have been engaging with Moving Minds Alliance, other philanthropic organisations, and governments to scale up coverage, quality and financing to support young children and families affected by crisis and displacement, where we bring the important elements of learning through play into the efforts of this alliance. We took a similar approach with our recent grant to INEE to scale up their activities. We also learn from the collaborative efforts from other programmes of the LEGO Foundation and other partners that are developing and researching quality ECD interventions in non-crisis settings.

We know that resilience building and socio-emotional learning are key for children in this world of uncertainty, and even more for those affected by conflicts and crises. We believe that learning through play is one of the answers to help them develop these skills. We are launching the Socio-Emotional Learning Massive Open Online Course with Future Learn to explore how adults can support children to cope with change, stress and anxiety. Even though its approach is broader, it is applicable to humanitarian contexts. These are some important achievements for the LEGO Foundation that certainly encourage us to deepen our efforts towards our humanitarian portfolio.

John Goodwin, CEO of the LEGO Foundation at a Play Lab in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, one of the many set-up through the Play to Learn partnership.

Education Cannot Wait: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a global impact on all areas of virtually everyone’s life. How does the LEGO Foundation see the long-term effect on education by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for crisis-affected children and youth who were already impacted by armed conflicts, forced displacement and climate-induced disasters prior to the pandemic?

John Goodwin: The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the risk of donors and governments deprioritising investment in education. Underfunded areas like early learning could be even more affected. This has the potential of severely impacting all children, but children who have been impacted by conflicts and crises are even more vulnerable. Children in crisis settings not only need quality education opportunities but also ways to address their own stress and socio-emotional wellbeing. The LEGO Foundation strongly believes that learning through play-based pedagogy can help to address these challenges.

Education Cannot Wait: The LEGO Foundation recently announced memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with both USAID and the government of Denmark. Can you explain the role of these strategic partnership in realizing the vision of the LEGO Foundation?

John Goodwin: The LEGO Foundation firmly believes that the only way to achieve significant positive impact for children at scale is to engage in strategic partnerships with NGOs, civil society, academic institutions, and more importantly partnerships with governments. We work with, and support governments who are keen on improving the delivery of child-centred play-based quality education. Partners such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and USAID are working very closely with education systems around the world, and with our support they can reach even more children with the power of learning through play, and help strengthen local systems to deliver quality play-based education to children. Working together and leveraging each other’s networks and expertise can secure a higher impact for children around the world.

But this is not the first time the LEGO Foundation has entered into partnerships with governments, and not all our public-private partnerships are with high income/donor countries. Back in 2010, the LEGO Foundation started a collaboration with the Ukrainian Ministry of Education, with a focus on bringing learning through play to young children in kindergartens across Ukraine. By training teachers and donating play materials, practice towards early learning has shifted from a traditional chalk-and-talk approach to one where children benefit from play-based learning tapping into their innate ability to learn. At our 10th anniversary of collaboration in Ukraine, we can celebrate that learning through play is now part of everyday life for around 1 million children between 2-10 years old and 50,000 teachers in 16,000 public primary schools and 250 kindergartens.

We have similar partnerships with the Ministry of Basic Education of South Africa, Secretariat of Public Health and the Secretariat of Public Education of Education of Mexico, the Government of Colombia, and the Ministry of Education in Ghana.

Education Cannot Wait: Where do you see the LEGO Foundation’s commitment to education, especially pre-primary education, for children affected by conflicts and forced displacement in 10 years from now?

John Goodwin: In 10 years, we would like to see a better understanding by the key stakeholders of the complete “learning journey” of a child – from birth to adulthood. The investments currently being made by the LEGO Foundation are geared to make programmes scalable and sustainable. We believe that in 10 years these programmes and the learning from them, would help other governments and organisations to reach even more children who might find themselves in difficult situations with development interventions that will help the children get back on a positive learning journey. Although, we hope that in 10 years, there would be no child if a crisis situation and therefore there will not be a need for such programmes.

Education Cannot Wait: We’d love to learn a bit more about you on a personal level. Learning through play is crucial, and learning to read is also key to one’s continual growth throughout life. Could you tell us what are the three books that have influenced you the most (or that you’d recommend to others to read), and why?

John Goodwin: ‘Influence the most’ is tricky as it is somewhat time/life-stage dependent. I also read a lot. So let me go down the path of three books I would recommend in light of what I am currently doing at the LEGO Foundation

Education Cannot Wait: Any final words of advice as we work together and move forward to reach Sustainable Development Goal 4 – inclusive quality education – for those left furthest behind?

John Goodwin: There is an urgent need to rethink education, by adopting a more child-centered rather than a teacher-centered approach. And this change is possible by adopting a learning through play approach to education which addresses the individual needs of each learner, and keep our focus on life-long skills, and not just on access to education. We have to build education systems around the agency of the child and make sure we close the inequality gaps, which is unfortunately growing right now, and more so for the most difficult to reach children. I would stress again that partnerships are key to drive this change at scale.

Mr. Goodwin holds a 1St class degree in Mathematical Engineering from the University of Loughborough and is a Fellow of the Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. He resides in York, England and is married to Elizabeth Goodwin, a former primary school teacher, with whom he has three grown children.

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Categories: Africa

UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 2

Wed, 11/04/2020 - 10:00

Credit: United Nations

By Mark Malloch-Brown
LONDON, Nov 4 2020 (IPS)

Kofi Annan’s Secretary-General-ship was a second honeymoon for the UN, coming six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall it was a moment of hope and alignment between the major powers of which he took ample advantage.

He saw a moment of opportunity that was largely denied to those who came before and after him to get the UN’s way on political, security and human rights matters.

Yet in the aftermath of a Security Council broken on the anvil of the US-UK invasion of Iraq a gale turned on him, too. So, for at most 10%, of the UN’s 75 years, has the wind blown strongly in the right direction. For the rest success has come despite- not because of- member state unanimity.

Bending the Sail

I want to suggest a manifesto for a re-purposed UN that is both true to its Charter; but recognises the direction the winds are blowing; does not cling to the mast of a failing western liberalism alone; but understands and responds to the dynamics that have left that liberalism, and it seems multilateralism, on the rocks.

This is a comeback strategy for the world as it is; in order to allow us later to make the world as we want it to be. It is no surprise that I don’t imagine the vehicle for it being our grandparents’ UN.

The world needs to believe the UN matters. That it is relevant. The UN still enjoys high levels of support in Pew and other surveys. Yet that support seems heavily aspirational – around what it ought to do; not what it does.

Support falls when pollsters ask about its specific performance. Churchill would see this, in a term he used in Fulton, as “Foundations built on sand”.

Without a more passionate public embrace it is hard to overcome the inter-state fault lines. Annan was possibly unique among Secretary-Generals in being able to appeal directly to people, citing the opening word of the Charter in justification: “We, the Peoples of the United Nations…..” Those before and since have been largely captives of Governments and their disagreements.

I often wish the UN’s supporters would accept a more pragmatic UN rather than the aspirational Save the World one that lights up the top line poll findings. It will always disappoint such hopes. It is of the World not above it.

Dag Hammarskjold’s words still capture it best: “The UN wasn’t created to take mankind into paradise, but rather, to save humanity from hell.”

For its 75th, as you will hear shortly from Natalie, the UN undertook a survey of a million respondents supplemented by independent polling by Pew and Edelman Intelligence as well the latter’s analysis of social and traditional media coverage in 70 countries.

What comes through clearly is that across very different national economies and circumstances there is a demand for the better delivery of basic services, notably at the moment health; protection of the environment and containing climate change; honest accountable government that delivers and protects its citizens. This is already the UN’s agenda.

The UN is not going to replace government as an agent of service delivery. It does not command the resources or the authority. But the UN must deploy its convening, campaigning and normative roles to double down on its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda.

Covid has attacked that agenda as Bill and Melinda Gates have said setting back 25 years of progress in 25 weeks; driving 115 million people back into extreme poverty this year and raising fears for economic security in almost every family elsewhere.

The current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres dedicated most of his early period in office in trying to pick off some early wins in conflict resolution – including Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Cyprus. His efforts were not blessed with any major breakthroughs.

He then embraced the SDGs and Climate. He was photographed for Time with his trousers rolled up standing in shallow water up on a beach in Fiji to illustrate a consequence of climate change – rising ocean levels. It illustrates his pivot from conflict to climate.

Probably his most noticed speech as Secretary-General was his powerful Mandela lecture delivered in July. He called for “A New Social Contract for a New Era” and spoke eloquently of how:

“The Pandemic has demonstrated the fragility of our world. It has laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; environmental degradation; the climate crisis”. He went on “Inequality defines our time. More than 70% of the World’s people are living with rising…inequality”.

Secretaries-Generals have been elected to be the world’s chief diplomat; today, successful ones quickly learn they have to be the world’s chief campaigner. The UN has a unique platform to measure a country’s progress, league table it, and name and shame those whose social and economic indicators fall behind.

This began with the legendary Jim Grant at UNICEF; moved through the UNDP Human Development agenda to being picked up by Kofi Annan and those of us around him in how we established and campaigned for the Millennium Development Goals, the MDGs.

Like any Campaign start by understanding your base constituency, “We, the Peoples”. The Bennett Institute at Cambridge University has just released a study of the state of global democracy that draws on more than 3,500 country surveys.

It finds support for democracy is at a low ebb; since the data series was established in 1995 a 10% swing across all countries in the set (developed and developing) has produced a clear majority who are dissatisfied with democracy.

The deficit was worst in almost all regions among 18-34 year-olds, the millennials. Dr Robert Foa, the study leader said: “This is the first generation in living memory to have a global majority who are dissatisfied with the way democracy works while in their twenties and thirties”.

But what the report is anxious to stress is there is little evidence that it is a rejection of the theory of democracy rather it demonstrates disappointment with its results. And indeed, where governments do deliver results, notably in some Asian countries, the researchers found that the disenchantment is much less.

This is not a protest against democracy so much as against poorly performing incumbents. That was democrats but now it will be populists with even fewer answers to the structural insecurity that is blowing up politics.

People don’t feel protected; particularly in the developed world (there is more optimism remaining in developing countries); too often don’t see a better future rather they see wave after wave of threatening change driven not just by pandemics but technology, trade, environmental degradation and consequent steepening inequality.

Youth protests in Nigeria have caught our attention in recent days. Perhaps one Nigerian statistic speaks volumes: 35% youth unemployment. Covid has reinforced economic exclusion.

The protests of a generation cannot be brushed under the Covid carpet much longer. The world is an unhappy place; and made more so by Covid- at the core is a growing crisis of youth structural unemployment and exclusion and the skewed inter-generational distribution of wealth and government benefits.

There is worse to come. To pluck just one random headline from the week’s news: McKinsey released a survey of more than 2000 SMEs in Europe. More than half don’t expect to be in business this time next year. SMEs have been estimated by ILO to account for up to 70% of global employment.

Here is the UN’s great cause. Throw caution to the winds and lay out Guterres’ new social contract for the world to see. Deploy campaigning and convening to build a new global bargain. And put governments on the spot by indexing and spotlighting performance to expose which are delivering and which aren’t.

For the MDGs, I set up UN project offices outside the normal UN intergovernmental constraints to measure and create league tables and score cards of national performance that allowed citizens to hold their government to account; then under Jeff Sachs to cost out what it would take to achieve the goals; and finally a team to liaise and communicate with civil society activists that was more jeans and tee shirts than the typical UN Brooks Brothers uniform.

Build on that precedent. Push bravely on the door. If I have a mild complaint about the SDGs it is that they have lost something of the edgy outsider status of the early MDGs. The UN is too much the incumbent and not enough the insurgent and it shows in the difficulty the current UN has in breaking through in communications terms.

On such a Campaign’s coattails remake the argument for multilateralism. Argue too many of these problems cannot be fixed at the country level alone. Local results on say climate require global collaboration and action. Once the UN is reconnected to grassroot concerns it is not a hard argument to make.

If a campaign that mobilises younger citizens around this global economic and personal security agenda is to have legs it must find allies where it can and not be constrained by the foot dragging back end of the General Assembly.

When the UN has touched the stars, the lift has come from civil society not government. Civil society was active in San Francisco in 1945 pushing the level of ambition of the official conference as it was later when Eleanor Roosevelt led the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Today around each SDG clusters a network of champions. In many, corporates show greater ambition than governments; in all, the most innovative thinking comes from the many corners of the civil society mosaic – local and international NGO’s, mayors and their cities, governors and CEOs; activists and academics that harness the energy. The UN Foundation which I co-chair interfaces with many of these groups. Their commitment is bracing.

Building variegated coalition of states and non-state actors willing to be first movers on different parts of this agenda is a not a new path to action in the UN. Now it needs to be turbo-charged. The world won’t wait for the most plodding and resistant nations to sign up to action.

This same variegated approach needs to be applied to the more difficult area of human rights. The official intergovernmental body, the Human Rights Council is not fit for purpose but as one of the authors of the reform that raised it from Commission to Council, I doubt there is an institutional fix.

The UN in the person of the High Commissioner for Human Rights needs to choose her ground and pick her fights – determine a mix of individual and collective Rights on which she wishes to particularly stand and marshal the UN’s allies, a variegated coalition if ever there was one of states and NGOs, to champion Rights for which it can build support.

And where the High Commissioner cannot- and the Council won’t- raise its voice her office must still let its reporting speak for itself. Abuses of Rights must be universally reported and documented and allies in civil society and government partners must raise their voices instead.

The UN needs to be part of a Rights ecosystem where different partners can each step up where their comparative advantage lies. The current High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet has the stature to thread this difficult needle.

UN Resident Co-ordinators that I have spoken to in recent months, and indeed the UN’s 75th research, suggests closing space around debating or criticising the performance of government service delivery, corruption and accountability. RC’s and the UN system must be critical protectors and promoters of local civil society voices.

This may seem a more unsung aspect of human rights work but it is a vital front in the UN’s wider comeback. Too many Governments see the current political climate as a license to step on their home critics. The UN needs to step in and protect its civil society partners. A Global Social Contract will be stillborn without them.

And the final step to restored effectiveness is of course in time to recover authority in the political and security space.

If there is a silver lining it is that the character of conflict continues to change opening grim new opportunity. Not only is peacekeeping less than ever the thin blue line between states it is not even in many cases policing full blown internal conflicts in a Democratic Republic of the Congo or Syria as in the past.

The more likely future of conflict, at least where the UN will have a role, is low level but persistent political violence around exclusion, suppression of minority rights and inter-generational conflict in a context of deteriorating state institutions such as policing, justice and social service delivery.

The way into these situations that may not be via the Security Council but rather via Humanitarian, Development and the Human Rights arms of the system. These will be Development and Rights breakdowns where the UN is already present.

The UN will not have to wait for the permission of the Security Council it is there already. The World Bank has estimated that by 2030, two thirds of the world extreme poor could be living in areas of conflict and violence.

What I have laid out today is not a manifesto to change the world overnight. Rather it is a call for the UN to seize the moment and take advantage of the opportunities it has at this moment of global crisis to recover relevance and to drive a new global consensus on tackling our collective weaknesses that Covid has so cruelly exposed.

There is a majority out there for a better governed and prepared, more caring and inclusive world but that same majority has grown terminally impatient with existing institutions. The UN can be part of that failed past or attach itself to an emerging future.

Let the Campaign begin.

*Mark Malloch-Brown was also Minister of State in the Foreign Office, covering Africa and Asia, and sat in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet. He has also served as Vice-Chairman of the World Economic Forum. He began his career as a journalist at The Economist and then worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and was later a Vice-President of the World Bank. He has served for many years on the Board of the Open Society Foundation. He formerly chaired the Business Commission on Sustainable Development and the Royal Africa Society. He is author of The Unfinished Global Revolution: The Limits of Nations and the Pursuit of a New Politics.

The article -Part 2 — is based on an address to the annual lecture at the Helsinki-based United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) last week.

The post UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 2 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Lord Mark Malloch‐Brown* holds international Board and Advisory positions in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors. He currently Co-chairs The UN Foundation and the International Crisis Group and is on the advisory committees to the heads of the IMF and UNICEF. He served as Deputy Secretary‐General and earlier Chief of Staff of the UN under Kofi Annan. For six years before that he was Administrator of UNDP, leading the UN's development efforts around the world.

The post UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 2 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Solving the Challenge of Food Security Key to Peacebuilding in the Sahel

Tue, 11/03/2020 - 12:34

A herder is about to take his sheep to graze early in the morning in Mauritania, the West Sahel. Peacebuilding and stability in the region is dependent on solving the challenge of food and security, says the African Development Bank. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Nov 3 2020 (IPS)

In 2013, when Jamila Ben Baba started her company, the first privately owned slaughterhouse in Mali, she did so in the midst of a civil war as Tuareg rebels grouped together in an attempt to administer a new northern state called Azawad.

Ben Baba, who is originally from Timbuktu, in northern Mali — where much of the civil war conflict took place — based the business in the country’s western region of Kayes and grew it into what is considered the largest private slaughter house in the West African nation.

She started her business with a deep desire to develop one of the country’s first rural, raw resources — livestock. Her aim was to promote Malian meat and to “make it known both in the sub-region and internationally”.

She said that while her business created 100 jobs, the company was evolving in a very difficult political and social context.

“War and Jihadists are rampant in the centre and north of Mali, which penalises us greatly in our livestock supply. Livestock farmers are forced to move constantly for their safety and that of their animals,” she said on Monday Nov. 2.

Ben Baba was speaking at the annual meeting of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, during which various stakeholders met to call on member states to increase funding to the commission’s Peacebuilding Fund. The Peacebuilding Fund is used as an instrument of first resort to respond to and prevent conflict.

But the impact of an Aug. 18 coup and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have placed the country in an unprecedented economic crisis, she said.

“Closed borders have slowed down our exports. Several purchase orders in Ghana and Guinea have been cancelled.”

Hotels that were closed during the pandemic restrictions caused her company’s turnover to drop by more than half, she said.

Ben Baba’s business success, and the success of other businesses and industries in the country and on the continent, is directly linked to peace.

While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has “definitely already derailed Africa’s positive growth projectory and hit the poorest and most vulnerable particularly hard, especially in fragile states,” according to Khaled Sherif, the Vice-President, Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery at the African Development Bank (AfDB), there remains “a direct link between poverty, and extreme poverty specifically, and terrorism, as is currently being witnessed in the Sahel”.

A report released by Amnesty International earlier this year noted that rife insecurity, food insecurity and more than 7.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance had left the region in crisis. In addition, the global coronavirus pandemic was expected to worsen the situation.

“The rise in violent extremism in the Sahel is linked to the conditions that the populations face in their daily lives. Many parts of the Sahel have never seen electricity, they have no access to potable water, education is at a premium, so these connects obviously lead to a deterioration of the security situation,” Sherif said during the same meeting.

He said that it was no surprising that in regions with chronic food insecurity, especially in Africa, “become unstable sooner or later”.

“We are all aware of the devastating consequences this means for peace, stability and social cohesion,” Sherif said.

But Ben Baba is convinced that her business could impact various factors of development within the country at different levels.

“From the bridges in our countryside, to the improvement of Mali’s balance of trade, with the creation of added value of course the creation of jobs in the Kayes region, which is usually the first region of emigration, especially for young people,” Ben Baba said.

A 2018 World Bank report showed that Mali needed to diversify its exports as “gold and cotton account for over 80 percent of total exports”. The report further suggested, “ an agriculture-based light manufacturing diversification strategy can deliver structural change by creating abundant and better paying jobs for low skilled Malians”.

Sherif called on the Peacebuilding Commission to address basic needs at a community level and to prioritise this accordingly.

“If generations of farmers are unable to get out of substance agriculture, there will always be a risk of conflict,” Sherif said. He said while there were many initiatives by development partners in this area, they all failed to reach the required scale.

“The Peacebuilding Commission should therefore focus on scaling up these interventions to avoid community pockets of fragility that lead to insecurity,” Sherif said.

He said that in Africa, where more than half the population of 1.3 billion live below the poverty line of less than $2 a day, “our priority has to be to create wealth and this takes us back to the reality of how we develop value chains,” Sherif said.

He added that the AfDB looked at the African Continental Free Trade Area as an opportunity to create a level of resilience.

But Sherif pointed out that on a continent of 54 countries, 26 countries had a GDP growth of 5 percent or more but in those same countries the GDP per capita was reducing, creating inequality.

“So how are African countries getting richer but the citizens of Africa are actually getting poorer? If we don’t address this issue, we are not addressing the basic reality of stability that is going to be a persistent problem, a perennial problem, that will affect Africa, especially fragile states, for many years to come,” Sherif said.

While there were many ways to address the issues, Sherif said he felt it was important “to start with the people and the communities that the live in, as this is where conflict ultimately manifests itself”.

He said that villages, towns, communities, local governments, municipalities could undertake certain measures to mobilise the needed investment to tackle the issues at the roots.

“Our experience shows that food security can be enhanced locally by groups of producers getting together pooling cash resources and utilising local technologies to help with basic food processes. These are investments that can be done locally to create jobs and profit-sharing opportunities that enhance income.”

Ben Baba, however, pointed to the obstacles that women faced when accessing investment in her country.

“As a woman it’s very difficult to be involved in this very masculine world where the cultural barrier is very pronounced with prejudices against the female gender.

“Obtaining financing in a high-risk country remains complex,” she said. And if financing was given, the rates were too high that it would affect the company’s results, she explained.

“Indeed women know that the cultural problem in raising funds because of a lack of confidence in the female gender,” Ben Baba said.

She said that in order to convince one bank she had to invest almost 80 percent of a project’s equity, and despite this “we were very poorly supported by the banking network”.

“Malian industries are not very developed and those invested in by women are non-existent,” she said. “Attracting and convincing investors is almost impossible,” Ben Baba added.

But Sherif stressed that it was important to “find a model that is specific to regional development, that is specific to community development, that is specific to wealth creation, so we can begin to create a level of consumption based on increasing disposable income so we can begin to break this chain of lack of availability of growth of incomes, desperation and then lack of security.”

In a recorded message U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he saw great value in enriching the U.N.’s partnership with international monetary funds.

“Sustained support for peacebuilding cannot be delivered by any single actor. It requires a multi-layered strategy with several layers of financing; bi-lateral, multi-lateral and international financial insinuations working in concert,” he said.

Guterres urged donors to reverse a worrying trend and commit to spend at least 20 percent of official development assistance on peacebuilding priorities in conflict settings.

“As the world seeks to recover from COVID-19, countries will require carefully designed and conflict-sensitive support to get back onto a sustainable micro-economic footing,” Guterres said.

But he said that the demands for the fund were far outpacing the resources.

“We’ve already had to scale back our target for 2020 by $30 billion,” Guterres said. Already some member states had responded to his call for unspent committed peacekeeping budget and he called on others to do so.

Guterres welcomed the work of the both the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

“It is important that these funds help tackle conflict drivers, reach marginalised areas and support key governance needs, especially those that create the conditions for private sector investment.”

Guterres said more could be done to advance innovate financing solutions for peacebuilding, including partnerships with the private sector.

But Sherif pointed out: “So long as we don’t solve the challenge of food and security, we haven’t solved the problem of fragility and we will continue to see one crisis after the other.”

The post Solving the Challenge of Food Security Key to Peacebuilding in the Sahel appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 1

Tue, 11/03/2020 - 12:23

The 75th anniversary of the United Nations is marked by a ceremony in the UN General Assembly September 2020. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Lord Mark Malloch-Brown
LONDON, Nov 3 2020 (IPS)

Let me begin with an appeal to our venerable friend, the UN: get down on the ground with the grandchildren. Just having celebrated its 75th birthday, we can hear your knees creak! The UN, for as long as I have known it up close- since its thirties- has often seemed prematurely old.

Today a Youth Challenge is being mounted to the way we live, organise and govern ourselves that is much bigger than the UN alone. The social restrictions of Covid may disguise the scale of the gathering social protest but Covid has also accelerated it.

I would wager that my generation will have the keys seized from us. A digital revolution on the one hand and rising social and economic inequality on the other will unseat a ruling Establishment that has failed to navigate these tides. The UN has to be part of that future or pushed aside by it.

For the UN a second older vector blows with equal force. The UN has been in the grip of a transition from its founding Anglo-Saxon and Western DNA to a more globally distributed state influence almost from its beginnings.

From 48 founding members 1945 to 193 today the expansion reflects the big twentieth century shifts- decolonisation, the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the pursuit of self-determination by those overlooked by history’s cartographers.

And adaptation to new members and their aspirations has been vital to the UN’s legitimacy and universality. Most notably it has allowed it to build a staff that for the most part is a proud mirror of the world it serves.

There is a price, however, for this changing agenda: The UN Charter, imbued with the wisdom and sacrifice of the survivors of a World War, is one of the world’s most eloquent and uplifting constitutional documents.

It is also thoroughly Western, borrowing from America’s founding fathers and assuming a world order managed by the Allied victors of 1945. This is reflected in a western rights-based agenda that to this day has stressed Human Rights, in terms of individual civil and political rights, refugee protection, gender and reproductive health over collective economic rights.

There was an early opposition to western dominance notably in the General Assembly centred on the championing of the New International Economic order. Through the Non-Aligned movement and the G77, new member states sought to correct the historical and structural imbalances in the global political economy.

At the time, despite the passion brought to the debate by its champions, it seemed likely to remain a permanent backbench cause.

Now, however, it is not a simple division of East and West or North and South. Many of us have added collective social and economic rights to our own agendas – climate change, structural inequality and exclusion, injustices in the global economic system.

A western human rights NGO or a former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson is as likely to be heard championing Climate Justice as the cause of political prisoners.

Lord Mark Malloch-Brown

China with President Xi’s remarkable pledge at September’s General Assembly to reach carbon neutrality by 2060 has put himself in a leadership role on the latter. But this is the same regime that has employed mass incarceration and extensive discrimination to suppress the political rights of its 12 million Uighur minority.

The Economist editorialised earlier this month on the desperate plight of the Uighurs observing: “China’s ruling party has no truck with this concept of individual rights. It claims legitimacy from its record of providing stability and economic growth to the many”.

China has flexed its muscles in the UN, where it is now at 12% the second largest contributor to the assessed budget; strengthening its representation across the secretariat, agencies, funds and programs. It has become a more active voice in critical policy debates from regulation of the internet to peacekeeping.

And in the wider world, a more authoritarian model of government is the new majority. It embraces leaders who come to power by the ballot box and those who didn’t but who all share a preference for a nationalist foreign policy, weakening of domestic institutions and the rule of law including the political rights of its citizens, and a casual disregard for minority and in some cases majority rights.

That’s the world today. For now, at least they are the new majority in global share of population terms. Between them China, India, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, Hungary and the United States represent a demographic majority. And many others are borrowing from their playbook.

The widespread rejection of middle-class liberalism reflects very real shifts in global public opinion that are likely to dissolve any time soon. The uneven impact of economic change, now accelerated by Covid, has produced across much of the world’s politics similar divisions of city versus town and country; young versus old; university educated versus high school or less, those employed in new services sectors versus those in failing industrial sectors.

From Trump to Brexit or Bolsonaro to Modi we have seen the rise of economic security, cultural identity and anti-immigration as the flagship issues of a new populist politics that reaches those who feel they are being left behind by unsettling change.

Freedom House in its 2020 Democracy report notes that last year was the 14th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Sixty-four countries experienced deterioration in their political rights from the pressure in India on Muslims to a steady less noticed restrictions of freedoms elsewhere.

Its lead author observed: “The unchecked brutality of autocratic regimes and the ethical decay of democratic powers are combining to make the world increasingly hostile to fresh demands for better governance”.

The closing space for open inclusive debate does not stop at the borders of these countries rather it seeps into the UN itself. This month’s elections for membership of the UN Human Rights council gave seats to China, Cuba and Russia although Saudi Arabia another candidate fell short.

Each has served before but it marks the steady capture of this institution by those opposed to that founding western individual rights based agenda.

Inevitably, perhaps as a consequence this is an age of UN caution. My colleague at the International Crisis Group, Richard Gowan, asked in a recent paper: “What is the purpose of the Security Council in an era of worsening great power tensions? Division among its five permanent members (or P5) have repeatedly undermined the United Nations in recent years”

In a way it was ever thus. I remember in my first UN year, 1976, an older generation – indeed in a few cases the original generation, the self-named last of the Mohicans founded by those who has joined the UN Secretariat before 15 August 1946, when the original secretariat camped out in temporary space on Lake Mohauk, complaining in not dissimilar terms. The place already seemed stiff, cautiously bureaucratic and a bit rundown.

Then as now, the UN has sought to make up for that black hole at the centre of its political authority then because of Cold War stand off by swarming the humanitarian and development space with compensating activity.

It was in the 1960s to 80s that its direct operational capacities to address the refugee flows of the Cold War and Post-Colonialization grew rapidly. For UNHCR it saw the transition from a small staff of lawyers to a large staff of logisticians; it was the years of early growth for this year’s Nobel Prize Winner WFP which was spun out of FAO in 1961. It was when the technical assistance activities of the specialised Agencies marshalled by UNDP were a critical prop to newly independent governments.

In 1980 the then UN Secretary-General visited a huge UNHCR supported refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border where I was the Field officer in charge. He turned to me in bewilderment as we toured the huge encampment with its heavy UN and NGO presence and asked how this huge UN operation could have been set up without him knowing almost anything about it.

I tell this story to illustrate a simple truth. The political and security UN in New York was gridlocked but there was ample space for activism and innovation as long as you stayed well away from that graveyard, the Security Council. Operations like mine were run in the Field and from Geneva, based on a mandate derived from international law not the permission of the Security Council.

A few remarkable hold outs such as Sir Brian Urquhart ingeniously shoehorned the UN into political and peacekeeping roles in the Middle East despite Big Power dead lock but this was the exception.

As I crisscrossed the world for UNHCR from refugee hotspots in South East Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Central America and the Horn of Africa, I saw that an extraordinarily committed and creative group of UNHCR leaders had managed to prise apart the Cold War gridlock and make sufficient space for an imaginative operational activism that saved countless lives and relieved huge suffering.

The politics of getting into these situations was never easy; the compromises often disappointing; and the motives of major interested powers and donors only rarely altruistic but the space was carved out and generally held.

When I arrived at UNDP as Administrator, I found a similar legacy of programs established by my independent-minded American predecessors against the prevailing political grain of the time – the first UN assistance program in “Red China”; PAPP a program begun in 1980 to support the Palestinians ; or an office in North Korea whose establishment was still being contested by the US State Department years later when I was Administrator.

And indeed, the UN of today has similarly found space – notably around the sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs) which play to the UN’s convening and standard-setting roles; Climate change where three Secretary-Generals in turn have driven this as a priority; and a tragically expanded humanitarian function as grim conflicts in Yemen, Syria and elsewhere stubbornly run on.

A UN, having to find space where it won’t be bullied by its stronger members and ignored at key moments by many others, is not new. In fact, it’s been the condition to which it has been condemned for most of its 75 years on earth.

There was a brief glorious period of conception and birth from the San Francisco conference in 1945 to Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech delivered in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946 when he warned of the coming conflict between the US and the Soviet Union.

The article is based on an address to the annual lecture at the Helsinki-based United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) last week.

(To be continued)

The post UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 1 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Mark Malloch‐Brown* holds international Board and Advisory positions in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors. He currently Co-chairs The UN Foundation and the International Crisis Group and is on the advisory committees to the heads of the IMF and UNICEF. He served as Deputy Secretary‐General and earlier Chief of Staff of the UN under Kofi Annan. For six years before that he was Administrator of UNDP, leading the UN's development efforts around the world.

“You cannot change the wind; but you can bend the sail”
- a favourite African proverb of Kofi Annan

The post UN at 75: Slow Death or a New Direction – Part 1 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Africa Must not Assume a ‘Business as Usual’ Approach to COVID-19 Recovery

Tue, 11/03/2020 - 12:16

Jennifer Cynthia Nyakonga, a 24-year-old teacher in Palabek Refugee Settlement, Uganda in class. Following closure of schools due to COVID-19, many of the girls have gotten pregnant and some have repatriated back to South Sudan. Photo credits: Emmanuel Museruka/Oxfam.

By Peter Kamalingin B.L.
NAIROBI, Nov 3 2020 (IPS)

The corona virus pandemic is impacting Africa’s population in quite differentiated ways and is significantly entrenching inequality. At the greatest risk are lives and livelihoods of the poor.

Millions are being pushed further into hunger and poverty. Children have been forced out of school with many of them, particularly girls, having a slim or no chance of accessing education again.

Without access to piped water and no food reserves, women have had to bear the biggest burden of the pandemic and risked exposure to the virus to keep families going. Reversal of the gains made during the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) era, ais now more likely than ever.

Leaders must refuse to take the easier option of failed economic models that allow few rich people to build their wealth off the backs of the poor and thrive even in the middle of a pandemic. Political and business leaders must take bold steps towards building a human economy for all Africans

This crisis has clearly shown how critical publicly funded public services are to dealing with pandemics. Decades of underinvestment in public services and social protection systems have left the majority of governments woefully unprepared to tackle Covid-19, according to the Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index, an analysis published recently by Oxfam and Development Finance International. The report ranks 158 countries on labour rights, taxation, and spending on health, education and social protection.

While Africa and its people have seen its fair share of crises in the past and exhibited appreciable levels of resilience and ‘bounce back’, Africa shouldn’t forget the Covid-19 crisis, like the many crises before, and adopt a “business as usual” approach to recovery.

An economy where the size of your bank account does not dictate how long you live or how many years your children spend in school. An economy that rewards and guarantees dignity for workers, especially with the coming into force of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). An economy where big corporations and the rich pay their fair share of taxes and public resources are not used for private benefit

A more just and human economy is achievable!

Excitingly, a few African governments are taking steps towards building an economy that works for all, not just a few super-rich and big corporations. They agree that inequality is not inevitable but a consequence of their choice of policies.

Sierra Leone has remained true to its commitment of making secondary education free for all. To improve its tax collection, it is cracking down on unnecessary tax incentives and clamping down on tax evasion by mining companies.

Ethiopia has consistently stood out globally for spending the second-highest proportion of budget on education – the greatest equaliser in society. It has increased spending on health and social protection with tangible impact on poverty and inequality reduction.

Namibia, a country with a poisonous legacy of high inequality and colonial expropriation has been able to introduce payments to support workers in the informal sector who have lost their jobs during the pandemic. A new World Bank study has found that Namibia’s taxation and spending policies are reducing inequality significantly. These governments can do more and there is much that other African leaders can learn from them.

What needs to happen?

Africa should defend its tax revenues to finance a people’s recovery. Across the continent, tax collection has been on a decline with public debt stocks on a sharp rise. This trend needs to be reversed. Governments should stop taking the easy road of debt and instead put a halt to the bleeding of legitimate revenues through tax dodging and ruinous tax competition.

West Africa, a region that has lost over 2,500 lives to corona virus, for example, loses an estimated $9.6bn annually from wasteful corporate tax incentives. This lost revenue is enough to build 100 modern and well-equipped hospitals each year. Indeed, the region could have been better prepared to deal with the pandemic.

While global solidarity and action is required to truly turn things around, political will is needed now, more than ever, to implement the recommendations of the Thabo Mbeki led high level panel on illicit financial flows.

African countries can individually take action to review, renegotiate or cancel tax treaties that expose them to profit-shifting and treaty shopping, and collectively pursue a minimum effective tax rate for the profits of multinationals.

People’s lives must be put before the profits of creditors. High debt repayments are severely hurting social spending. Today, interest payments constitute the highest and rapidly growing public budget line. Before the pandemic, over thirty three African countries were already spending more on debt payments than healthcare.

At the beginning of the pandemic, African Finance ministers asked for a waiver of all interest payments for 2020, which were estimated at $44bn to allow governments more fiscal space. Sadly, the G20’s response has been underwhelming.

The much-needed resources to save lives and protect economies has continued to flow from poor African countries to foreign banks in rich countries. For example, in 2020, 69 per cent of all debt payments due in Zambia is owed to private creditors.

African governments should consolidate and raise their voice on the urgent need for global action on debt. Private lenders and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank should be compelled to join the Debt Servicing Suspension Initiative (DSSI).

Governments and their citizens must learn from the structural adjustment programme and push back on any austerity being imposed through new financing. Already, 84 per cent of the Covid-19 loans by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) encourage, and in some cases require, countries to adopt more tough austerity measures in the aftermath of the health crisis. Any cuts in social spending or increase in regressive taxes such as value added tax (VAT) on food items will be borne by the poor further widening inequality.

Developed nations should also pay their financial and moral debt. Aid is not only a means of channelling additional financing to developing countries but also a form of redistribution, especially in a global economy where inequality is alarmingly high and characterised by an extractive, colonial and racial history.

The year 2020 marks the fiftieth anniversary since rich nations committed to spend 0.7 per cent of their gross national income (GNI) on aid to low-income and middle-income countries, a majority of which are in Africa.

Fifty years later, this figure stands at a mere 0.3 per cent, on average. According to Oxfam’s calculations donor countries owe $5.7 trillion to the poorest people. With the pandemic, there must be a renewed political commitment to international aid and a move from a charity-based system to one based on justice.

To build a more human and just economy, Africa must shun economic policies that trap Africans in indignity. African political and business leaders can choose to build back a divided Africa – one where just three men have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population. Or they can choose the right path of building back an Africa for all, by promoting efficient and progressive tax systems, investing in free, quality and gender-responsive public services and social safety nets that reduce the burden of care on women and girls, and protecting the rights of workers to dignified work and wages.

This is not the last pandemic. A more equal Africa will cope much better with the next pandemic.

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Excerpt:

Peter Kamalingin B.L. is the Pan Africa Program Director for Oxfam International

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Categories: Africa

Television Education in Mozambique

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 17:52

Alzira Ngomane, 17, and her brother Amilcar Ngomane, 14, have been studying at home using the television program Telescola since their schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: | UNICEF Mozambique / 2020 / Claudio Fauvrelle

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

“We missed our teachers, they were very friendly and helped us solve the complex exercises, but with the coronavirus, we need to adapt and learn to solve our exercises alone at home,” says Alzira Ngomane, 17 years old, and her brother Amilcar Ngomane, 14, from the Albazine district, in the city of Maputo, Mozambique.

Since their school was closed in March 2020 as a preventive measure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Alzira and Amilcar are now studying at home using the television programme Telescola da Televisão de Moçambique (TVM).

Every afternoon at 3 p.m., Alzira and Amilcar place their notebooks on the small wooden table in their living room and turn on the television to follow the classes broadcast by TVM. Both recognize that it is not the same as being in a classroom with their colleagues and teachers. But despite the short 30-minute lessons they can remember some subjects and do their exercises.

Alzira studies at Escola Secundária Eduardo Mondlane, in 12th grade, and dreams of being a civil engineer. Her school closed 6 months ago when the Government of Mozambique declared a state of emergency due to the coronavirus.

“I try to maintain a routine while I’m at home: wake up and do my housework, then study and watch Telescola. Without Telescola, it would be difficult to understand the subjects and solve some exercises. The teachers who participate in Telescola clarify many of my doubts, and I can do the exercise sheets they give us at school and also can better understand the subject,” says Alzira.

“At school, it was easier to get answers to my questions because we had the teacher present. At home it is more difficult to study and concentrate. I dream of being an architect because I like to draw. I know I need to go to school to achive my dream, and, with the schools closed, Telescola is helping me to continue studying at home so that I can continue working to make my dream come true,” says Amilcar.

Credit: | UNICEF Mozambique

To support the continuity of children’s learning during school closings, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with funding from Education Cannot Wait (ECW), is supporting Telescola television education and radio education programmes, including translation into local languages and broadcast on community radio. For example, TVM broadcasts about 1.5 to 2.5 hours of Telescola per day to support the continuity of learning for children in primary and secondary education. During COVID-19, school closings and movement restrictions continued in Mozambique, making it difficult for millions of children to learn. Until September 2020, the government had not yet decided on the reopening of primary and secondary schools.

Constância Guiama, 56, is one of several teachers who accepted the challenge of teaching at Telescola.

“This experience has been an asset both for the teachers who participate and for those students who accompany them, too. I have been part of the Telescola programme since its inception in 2005, so when schools closed due to the coronavirus it only made sense to return to teaching and supporting students through Telescola,” says Constância.

Constância Guiama, 56, is a teacher at Francisco Manyanga Secondary School, in the city of Maputo, and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she is now teaching on television during the Telescola program. Credit: | UNICEF Mozambique / 2020 / Claudio Fauvrelle

Professor Constância also uses digital platforms to teach and support her students. Once a week she teaches using the Zoom application, so she can have face-to-face interaction with her students. Some of their students are unable to participate in online classes due to the financial situation that does not always allow them to access the Internet.

“I receive complaints from some of my students that they cannot access the Internet to participate in my Zoom calls or read my explanations on WhatsApp, so Telescola helps to solve this problem.”

Herika Manhiça, 17, and her sister Laurina Manhiça, 12, are also using Telescola to study and learn from home. They live in the neighborhood of Mahotas, in the city of Maputo. Herika studies at Laulane Secondary School in 12th grade, and her sister studies at Estrela do Oriente Primary School in 7th grade. Both share the same dream of becoming doctors.

With what Herika Manhiça, 17 years old, learned at Telescola, she decided to teach her younger sister Laurina Manhiça, 12 years old, and her friends: \”I use the gate of my house to teach them\”. Credit: | UNICEF Mozambique / 2020 / Claudio Fauvrelle

“Our day is different now, we have to be quarantined at home, and we learned that we always have to wear a mask if we want to go outside and wash our hands with soap and water to protect ourselves from the coronavirus. As soon as the coronavirus started, our school closed, and they gave us exercise sheets so we could study at home. It was difficult to do some of the exercises without support because some subjects were new. But with Telescola, it became easier because, through our television, we can learn all the new subjects and the teachers also teach us how to solve some difficult exercises. We all thought that the coronavirus would pass quickly and that we were going to go back to school soon, but unfortunately, that is not the case now,” says Herika.

With what she learned at Telescola, Herika decided to teach her younger sister and her friends at home: “I use the gate of my house to teach them. If I know how to read, I have to teach others to read too,” says Herika.

The post Television Education in Mozambique appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Special Contribution by Claudio Fauvrelle, UNICEF Mozambique

The post Television Education in Mozambique appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Building Blocks for Nuclear Ban Treaty: NPT & Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 14:46

Sculpture depicting St. George slaying the dragon. The dragon is created from fragments of Soviet SS-20 and United States Pershing nuclear missiles. Credit: UN Photo/Milton Grant

By Dr. John Burroughs
NEW YORK, Nov 2 2020 (IPS)

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will become binding law for participating states on January 22, 2021. Entry into force was triggered on October 24, the date marking the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, when Honduras become the 50th state to ratify the TPNW, reaching the threshold set by the treaty.

This is a signal accomplishment on the part of the 122 states, none nuclear-armed, that negotiated and adopted the TPNW in 2017, along with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which provided expert advice, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a civil society initiative that won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

Together, the negotiating states, the ICRC, and ICAN took responsibility for creating a path toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons, essentially because the world’s most powerful states – all nuclear armed – are failing to do so.

In an October 24 statement, UN Secretary-General António Guterres commented that the entry into force of the TPNW “is the culmination of a worldwide movement to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons. It represents a meaningful commitment towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons, which remains the highest disarmament priority of the United Nations.”

The core provisions of the TPNW prohibit development, testing, possession, and threat or use of nuclear weapons. Reflecting the rise of “humanitarian disarmament,” the treaty also provides for assistance to victims of testing and use of nuclear arms and for environmental remediation of areas impacted by testing and use.

Further, the preamble observes that the “catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons cannot be adequately addressed, transcend national borders, pose grave implications for human survival, the environment, socioeconomic development, the global economy, food security and the health of current and future generations, and have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, including as a result of ionizing radiation.”

The preamble notes as well “the waste of economic and human resources on programmes for the production, maintenance and modernization of nuclear weapons.”

The TPNW & the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

In assessing the potential significance of the TPNW, it is important to understand how it reinforces and builds upon existing international law, notably the obligations set forth in the 1970 NPT and those analyzed in a 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice.

The NPT has 191 states parties, making it one of the most widely subscribed to international agreements. Five states parties (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States) are acknowledged to possess nuclear weapons pending their elimination pursuant to Article VI of the treaty.

All other NPT members are obligated, subject to safeguards monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), not to acquire nuclear weapons.

Similarly, members of the TPNW are obligated not to acquire nuclear arms subject to IAEA safeguards, and the importance of the NPT to international peace and security is recognized in the preamble to the TPNW.

But the TPNW goes further than the NPT: Any member of the TPNW is barred from “inducing” a state to use or threaten nuclear weapons on its behalf. TPNW states parties are therefore barred from participating in alliance arrangements with nuclear-armed states in which nuclear weapons may be used on their behalf, or in any other way or any other circumstance requesting or cooperating in the use of nuclear weapons on their behalf.

In contrast, some 30 members of the NPT are in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or other alliances in which US nuclear weapons are explicitly part of defense postures. US nuclear weapons are even stationed on the territory of five NATO states, a practice specifically barred by the TPNW.

So far, no member of a nuclear alliance has signed or ratified the TPNW, nor have any of the nine nuclear-armed states (the five NPT nuclear weapon states plus India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan).

The TPNW & the International Court of Justice

In 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered an Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons requested by the UN General Assembly.

Like the TPNW, the opinion resulted from a major collaborative effort between states – mostly from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a very large group of mostly Global South states – and civil society in the form of the World Court Project, a coalition of over 500 groups. Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy was a leader of the World Court Project.

The Court found that the threat or use of nuclear arms is “generally” contrary to international humanitarian law forbidding the infliction of indiscriminate harm and unnecessary suffering in warfare.

The Court declined to assess the legality of use of low-yield nuclear weapons in remote areas and of use of nuclear arms in reprisal against a nuclear attack or when a state’s survival is endangered.

While the Court’s opinion thus was not definitive, it is also fair to say that the thrust of its reasoning was toward illegality in all circumstances.

The opinion stimulated subsequent in-depth examination of the question, as well as initiatives implying or finding use of nuclear weapons to be categorically illegal, including a 2011 resolution of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the 2011 civil society Vancouver Declaration.

The TPNW prohibits any threat or use of nuclear weapons by a state party. Further, its preamble recites rules and principles of international humanitarian law applicable, as it notes, to all states, and “considers” that “any” use of nuclear weapons violates that law.

The view taken in the TPNW thus goes beyond the ICJ’s finding of general illegality, ruling out use in all circumstances. At a minimum, then, the TPNW is an important contribution to the ongoing process of stigmatizing and delegitimizing nuclear weapons.

On its own initiative, the International Court of Justice also took on analysis of a question it was not asked, the nature of the nuclear disarmament obligation set forth in Article VI of the NPT and other international law.

In a unanimous conclusion cited in the TPNW preamble, the Court held that “there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion, negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

While the Court did not explicitly say so, its reasoning strongly implies that the obligation is universal, extending to those nuclear-armed states not party to the NPT.

In an annual resolution following up on the ICJ opinion first adopted in 1996 (51/45 M), the UN General Assembly called for all states to negotiate a comprehensive convention providing for elimination of nuclear weapons. The Chemical Weapons Convention and a civil society draft would have been starting points for such an agreement.

The Western nuclear weapon states and Russia showed no interest. The TPNW, championed by non-nuclear weapons states, was a response to this stalemate. It provides a framework, but not detailed provisions, for an elimination process.

The Reaction of the NPT Nuclear Weapon States

Except for China, the NPT nuclear weapon states continue to express firm opposition to the TPNW and to claim implausibly that it does not affect the development of international law going beyond obligations of parties to the TPNW.

The far better position would be to welcome the TPNW as grounded in the NPT and other international law and as a powerful statement of the humanitarian and legal principles that should guide the abolition of nuclear arms.

Most importantly, all nuclear-armed states must invigorate their currently weak efforts to comply with the disarmament obligation and join in creation of a world free of nuclear weapons.

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Excerpt:

Dr. John Burroughs is Senior Analyst, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

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Categories: Africa

Driving Climate Change from the Top in the Dominican Republic

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 14:26

Street scene in the Dominican Republic. Credit: Ben Albano / Unsplash

By Jan Lundius
SANTO DOMINGO, Nov 2 2020 (IPS)

When President Luis Abinader arrived at his inauguration in an electrically driven car as a symbolic gesture of his Government’s intentions to make sustainable development one of its main objectives – he signalled the start of addressing climate change commitments in the country.

Abinader furthermore said he would immediately initiate preparations to make the presidential palace dependent on solar energy for its electrical supply – a commitment towards moving the country from being dependent on non-renewable energy.

Since his August inauguration, his Government has moved towards revising and making good the commitments of the Paris Agreement where it agreed to implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

The Dominican Republic’s President Luis Abinader

The Paris Agreement was in itself a success because since then, most of the signatories have submitted national climate mitigation goals. Five years have passed, and according to the agreement, the signatory countries must now revise their NDCs, an opportunity for aligning their climate and development agendas and revisit their efforts to mobilise interest and funding for achieving their previously set goals.

On October 1, 2020, the Dominican Republic launched its NDC update process. The event included representatives from the Government, the private sector, the civil society, development and implementing partners and the academia, and its purpose was to showcase and raise awareness on the NDC update process, its steps and implications for these different stakeholders.

As part of an endeavour to mainstream an eco-friendly approach to all policies, the Dominican Republic, with the support of The Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP), an initiative of the NDC Partnership, is working on a revised and enhanced NDC strategy. This strategy includes a medium-term implementation, finance and investment plan to effectively address water management, ecosystem preservation, food security, smart urban development and dependency on fossil fuels.

Simultaneously the plan will be supported by a strengthening capacity and awareness for safeguarding natural resources. An assessment of attained achievements will in 2025 constitute the groundwork for the development and implementation of a long-term strategy leading up to 2050.

Max Puig, Executive Vice President of the Dominican National Council for Climate Change and a Clean Development Mechanism

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Max Puig, Executive Vice President of the Dominican National Council for Climate Change and a Clean Development Mechanism said despite a change of regime and hardship caused by COVID-19, many of the commitments made five years ago are gradually becoming realised.

NDCs are country-specific, though Puig repeatedly reminded us that even if every country has its specific character and preconditions, the implementation of NDCs must go beyond national efforts. CAEP is a step in this direction since it provides international expertise, as well as technical and financial support to countries in need of such assistance.

Like most other island nations, the Dominican Republic is grappling with several unique challenges, which solution would benefit from foreign expertise.

A significant concern is that even if the Dominican Republic has one of the largest and most diverse economies in the Caribbean, it still relies on imported fossil fuels for nearly all of its energy needs. The NDCs have become one tool for amending this problem. While seeking solutions to limit greenhouse gas emissions, it is necessary to invest in alternative and more sustainable energy production.

A step in this direction is to determine the extent of the emissions and sources of greenhouse gas, something that has been realised through a CAEP supported cooperation between the Dominican Government and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). IRENA is an agency that assists Governments towards renewable energy and author of a report A Renewable Energy Roadmap providing essential energy statistics.

Findings and suggestions the IRENA document has been further developed in reports on impacts of renewable energy in Dominican power systems and a study of renewable energy prospects. The research highlighted a potential to increase the share of renewable power generation to as much as 44 percent by 2030, based mostly on solar photovoltaic, wind and bioenergy.

While talking to Puig, you are reminded that the Dominican Republic is part of an island and thus to a great extent dependent on its coast – both for its booming tourism industry and for maintaining its ecological health and distinctiveness.

The coastal ecology is another CAEP initiative, supporting the cooperation between the National Climate Change Council and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). This international NGO is currently updating collected data to identify highly vulnerable coastal areas and in 2019 published a study mapping and describing threatened ecosystems, like coral reefs and mangroves. TNC is currently working with the Government to develop the effective management of more than 3.2 million acres of terrestrial and marine habitats.

Puig mentioned that because the Dominican Republic is an island nation, it is considered to be one of the ten most vulnerable countries in the world when it comes to the effects of climate change.

The Dominican Republic is situated right in the frequent path of devastating hurricanes, which, due to global warming, now may gain even more strength. There is a constant threat of flooding, and the arrival of a hurricane generally causes extensive landslides and loss of livelihoods.

The Dominican Republic’s Unit for Coordination of Water Resources is currently assessing these risks, supported by CAEP activities led by the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB). The analysis will include the development of a viable approach for limiting the harmful effects of sudden flooding based on a multi-stakeholder approach involving relevant sectors of the Global Water Partnership (GWP).

While discussing the ecological peculiarities of the Dominican Republic, Puig accentuated the importance of considering the nation as part of a unique, insular ecosystem shared with the Republic of Haiti.

The island of Hispaniola is, with its 76,000 square kilometres, roughly the same size as the three Benelux countries together (Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg). Despite its limited size, the island has four distinctive eco-regions; moist forest areas, dry forests, moist grasslands and dry savannas.

This diversity is due to the highest mountain range in the Caribbean, which stretches diagonally across the island, placing nearly a third of the territory in a rain shadow. For historical reasons, far too complicated to address here, extreme contrasts are also evident in the political makeup of the island.

It is the only island in the world shared by two sovereign nations, and even if the ecosystem initially has been the same in the two parts of the island, natural resources are more depleted in Haiti than in the Dominican Republic.

Puig lamented that many of his Dominican fellow citizens assume that a wall along the border would solve any problems. Far better would be to consider the entire island as an ecological unity within which social and eco-friendly solutions are pursued in unison.

Hispaniola has the largest economy in the Greater Antilles. Most of this economic development is found in the Dominican economy, which is almost 800 percent larger than the one in Haiti.

As of 2018, the estimated annual per capita was USD 8,050 in the Dominican Republic and USD 868 in Haiti. This contrast in economic well-being makes the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, one of the sharpest divisions between need and relative prosperity in the world. A reason why the Dominican Republic has one of the highest migration influxes in the Americas.

According to Puig, a solution to this problem would be to emphasise the human aspect of sustainable development. Poverty, ignorance and inequality weaken the resilience of any nation and obstruct sustainable development. Cooperation – local, bilateral and international – is necessary, as well as compassion, respect for human dignity and social awareness. If we finally learn to realise that the conservation of our planet’s natural resources is a prerequisite for human survival, maybe every Government would come to understand the futility of short-term actions and unnecessary strife.

With CAEP, the Government is working on several fronts. These include strengthening its overall climate-related mechanisms through coordination of government institutions in charge of the National Climate Change Policy. At a practical level, there will be a framework for ecosystem-based adaptation projects, along with the provision of capacity building for implementing such projects. The Dominican Republic has committed to identify and prioritise a pipeline of investment-ready projects at all levels including energy, agriculture, industry, transport, water and sanitation services, buildings and infrastructure and livelihoods diversification.

Finally, IPS asked Puig why he was engaged in such a thorny venture as Dominican politics?

“In spite of all the difficulties and frustrations you encounter through political engagement, I assume that for many of us, politics equals a belief in a change for the better. A transition of power, like the one the Dominican Republic now experiences, promises improvement, nurtures imagination and action, and stimulates dreams and visions,” he replied.

https://youtu.be/zHyq6mmn52Q
https://youtu.be/RR-ClA3LJaU

(Additional reporting Cecilia Russell)

Nono the Carbon Footprint Bear—Part of Peru’s Ambitious Work on Climate Action

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Categories: Africa

The Rape of India’s Dalit Women: It’s All about Gender & Class Subordination

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 14:03

Women listen to the news in a village comprising mainly of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh. After a 19-year-old young woman was murdered and raped in the state last month it triggered nationwide protests. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India , Nov 2 2020 (IPS)

Shabnam*, a young woman from Northern India’s Haryana state, is two years away from becoming a law graduate. She sees parallels between her own rape and that of the 19-year-old Maha Dalit woman whose brutal rape and torture by a group of men from a “dominant” or “higher” caste in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh triggered nationwide protests.

“She was a Valmiki like us, from a landless and poor family like ours. They raped her, brutalised her and when she died, they burnt her body without the consent of her family. And even after all of that, they would not allow her family to talk about it and threaten them to keep quiet. This is exactly what I and my family have experienced and what we continue to go through. The only exception is that I am still alive,” Shabnam tells IPS in Hindi. The 19-year-old young woman eventually died of her injuries. But just like her, Shabnam also belongs to the Maha Dalit – India’s most marginalised and oppressed community formerly known as “untouchables”.

The death of the young woman focused a spotlight on the sexual violence faced by Dalit women in India, who number some 100 million according to a discussion document by Navsarjan Trust (India), FEDO (Nepal) and the International Dalit Solidarity Network.

“Violence, including rape and gang rape, have been systematically utilised as weapons by dominant castes to oppress Dalit women and girls and reinforce structural gender and caste hierarchies,” a soon-to-be-released report by Equality Now, a global non-profit which promotes human rights and equality, and the local charity Swabhiman Society, states.

“In the northern state of Haryana, where Dalit make up around one-fifth of the state’s population, a deeply-rooted caste-based and patriarchal society still flourishes. There are high rates of violence against women – data from the National Crime Records Bureau in 2018 indicates that nearly 4 women are raped every day in this state alone,” the report further states. Titled “Justice Denied: Sexual Violence and intersectional discrimination: Barriers to Accessing Justice for Dalit Women and Girls in Haryana, India”, the report draws from Swabhiman Society’s experience of working directly with Dalit survivors of sexual violence in Haryana over the past decade and highlights insights from this work.

Shabnam was a minor when she was gang raped in 2013. Over the past seven years, even as her case has gone to trial, there have been several attempts and threats on her life for which she was eventually granted court protection.

“People think rape is a single crime. But for Dalit rape victims, it’s just the beginning of a lifelong chain of crimes and struggles: mental abuse, fear, intimidation, threats, denial of basic rights, denial of education and a decent livelihood – the list is very long. In fact, once you are raped, you stay a victim all through your life,” Manisha Mashaal, founder of Swabhiman Society, tells IPS in Hindi. Mashaal, a Dalit women’s rights defender and lawyer, is helping Shabnam and many other young women in their fight for justice.

Violence against Dalit women – what are the true numbers?

According to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), a federal agency, cases of physical attacks on women have been increasing.

In 2019 alone, says NCRBs latest report, there were over 405,861 cases of assaults on women — 7 percent more than was reported in 2018. The crimes include beating, stripping, kidnapping and rape.

Of these, 13,273 assaults, which included 3,486 cases of rape, were against women from Dalit communities.

Jacqui Hunt, the Europe and Eurasia Director of Equality Now, says widespread under-reporting and problems registering sexual assaults with the police mean that the true figures are likely to be considerably higher.

“As a consequence of gender, caste and class inequalities, Dalit women and girls are subjected to multiple forms of subjugation, exploitation, and oppression. Sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, has been perpetrated against them by men from dominant castes as a mechanism that reinforces India’s deeply entrenched structural hierarchies. Women’s bodies are being used as a battleground to assert caste supremacy and to keep women ‘in their place,’” Hunt tells IPS.

Mashaal believes that almost 80 percent of Dalit women who are raped do not report the crime because of political and social pressure as the women and their families are usually threatened by the perpetrators. Besides, Mashaal says, a majority of the sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) survivors are minor Dalit girls, while NCRB data for child rape survivors does not differentiate according to caste.

A safe space for Dalit women

To help break the cycle of silence on crimes against Dalit women and girls, in 2013 Mashaal founded Swabhiman Society – a charity that provides various services, including legal and psychological support to Dalit survivors of SGBV.

“We currently have 25 women who work with us off and on, but this is a safe place for hundreds of women who have been stigmatised, brutalised and yet have nobody else to turn to,” says Mashaal.

Mashaal started the society because she noticed few organisations were aiding Dalit survivors of SBGV and that there was a lack of knowledge and awareness among the community about their legal rights to justice or the procedure to follow.

In several cases, they would be dictated to settle out of the court by the Khap Panchayat – a powerful, traditional, community assembly run by the landowning Jat community, which decides on village affairs. The decisions of the Khap are often controversial and considered anti-Dalit, but few dare oppose them fearing reprisals.

Mamta*, another woman Mashaal represents, was a minor when she was gang raped by “dominant” caste men in 2012. When the Khap Panchayat ordered that she had to marry one of her rapists, her father – a farmhand and daily wage earner — was too scared to oppose the decision.

For months Mamta was locked in a small room and repeatedly raped by both her ‘husband’ and his friends and relatives.

“It was like a cage. I lived in a small room. My husband would lock the door from outside. He would not otherwise touch me as I was a Dalit but would forcibly have sex whenever he wanted. Every day, he would bring other men and they would also rape me.

“I was like a fly stuck in mud – I could not live and could not fly away either,” Mamta, who is now 26, tells IPS in Hindi.

Eventually Mamta managed to escape and discovered the Swabhiman Society. There she met many other women who had also experienced similar abuse and brutality. Together they have received counselling, awareness training about laws on rape and sexual attacks on women. But most important of all, they have gathered the courage to demand justice in a legal court.

Land ownership or lack thereof perpetuating vulnerabilities and violence

According to Hunt, Dalit women lack economic power and are often reliant on dominant castes for their livelihoods. When survivors of sexual assault or their families are dependent for jobs or other sources of income from someone who is from the same caste as an assailant, or the perpetrator is also their employer, accessing justice for sexual violence becomes even more problematic

“Culprits and their associates often wield their economic power to silence survivors and witnesses. This includes coercing survivors or victims’ family members into settling cases out of court, or hounding them from their home and village.

“Our forthcoming report gives an indication of how common this problem is. In almost 60 percent of the cases we studied, survivors were forced into a compromise, many times caused by threats of economic retaliation,” Hunt says.

According to the recent data published by the Census of India, 71 percent Dalits are landless labourers who work on land they do not own. According to the Agriculture Census, in rural areas, 58.4 percent Dalit households do not own land at all. This gets grimmer in Dalit-dominated states such as Haryana, Punjab and Bihar, where 85 percent do not own land.

“This is the reason why there is continuous gruesome sexual assaults on Dalit women because they are thrice-vulnerable. First, because of their caste, second, because of their gender and third, because of their landless status,” says Mashaal.

Independent studies have established this as well.

According to a 2018 study by Reena Kukreja, an assistant Professor at Queens University, Canada, the Dalit community in Haryana, “with over 80 percent of Dalits living in rural areas, they are dependent on the three landowning castes for agricultural wage labour as their primary source of livelihood.” The study explores the link between land rights and gender violence, especially in the context of Dalit women’s marriages in Haryana.

Preparing for a life-long fight

The women Mashaal represents don’t believe there is a silver bullet for the endemic SGBV against women in their community. It is why a number of them are pursuing a college degree, especially in law.

“Every time we go to court, we see the perpetrators hiring 10 to 15 lawyers to fight their cases. They hire big law firms. On the other hand, a Dalit woman victim can hardly afford a single lawyer. It is very frustrating. So, we encourage the girls who come here to go back to school and study law. We must build our own network of women lawyers who will fight and win every single case of Dalit rape,” Mashaal says.

Presently, at least 10 women from the Swabhiman Society are studying law, says Shabnam.

Pooja* is another young Dalit woman whom Mashaal is assisting. When Pooja was only 17 she was kidnapped by 12 men who took turns to rape her. Pooja – the youngest of the women — just passed her last school exams and plans to enrol in a law school. Though her enrolment has been delayed by COVID-19 lockdowns.

“I will apply to a private college if needed and take up a job to pay the fees, but will not give up on becoming a lawyer,” Pooja tells IPS as Mashaal and the other Dalit women in the room break into a cheering chorus of support pledging to “make sure that happens”.

Meanwhile, the Equality Now / Swabhiman Society joint report provides recommendations for improvement of the police, medico-legal and judicial processes in Haryana to improve access to justice for survivors of sexual violence, particularly Dalit women and girls.

*Not her real name. Names of some interviewees have been changed to protect their identity.

The post The Rape of India’s Dalit Women: It’s All about Gender & Class Subordination appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Drop Boxes Tell Tale of US Democracy in 2020

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 12:39

Drop box outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s office in Phoenix, Arizona. Credit: Peter Costantini.

By Peter Costantini
PHOENIX, ARIZONA, US, Nov 2 2020 (IPS)

It sits stolidly, bolted onto a concrete base outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s office in Phoenix, Arizona. Weighing in at around 600 pounds, it sports “anti-tampering features” and “heavy-duty, all-weather construction”. Security agents check it periodically and it appears to be watched by a camera. As I scrutinize it, a man in an SUV pulls up and deposits a ballot in its slot. He tells me he votes this way every election, then drives off.

Despite its impassive demeanor, this drop box and its fellows have flirted with media celebrity. If they could talk about how they came to be deployed – or not – this year, they could tell a tabloid-ready tale teeming with lurid details about the sad state of democracy in these United States of America.

But this one didn’t even offer a “no comment”, so let’s tease out its story from other sources.

Most states permit bypassing the U.S. Postal Service by dropping mail-in ballots off at a drop box or a polling place, while only four states ban drop boxes. Many states also allow early voting in-person for days or weeks before the election as a way to forestall crowds on Election Day. In several other states, though, permitted voting methods are unclear or pending litigation.

Voting procedures in the U.S. vary widely from state to state, in a matrix of Byzantine complexity. Several states conduct elections nearly completely by mail, and most others offer mail-in ballots as a routine option. A few, however, allow absentee ballots only on request and for restricted reasons. Most states permit bypassing the U.S. Postal Service by dropping mail-in ballots off at a drop box or a polling place

This year, the COVID-19 pandemic left many voters loathe to enter a polling place to vote out of fear of exposing themselves to the virus. Numerous volunteer poll workers, who are often elderly, also decided to sit this election out. In response, many states decided that numbers of polling places would have to be reduced.

Given the unusually high expected turnout, though, this would likely mean long lines of voters. Most states had long allowed “absentee ballots” to be mailed in by those away from home or with physical limitations. So this year, in many places, mail-in voting was expanded, often by sending a request form for a mail-in ballot to every registered voter.

States with all-mail voting (including my home state of Washington) have made voting more accessible to all voters for many years with hardly a whisper of misconduct or controversy. President Donald Trump himself has voted by absentee ballot.

But as the phenomenon gained momentum, he and a chorus of Republican politicians began to raise a hue and cry against mail-in voting, accusing it of fostering massive fraud, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Throughout most of the country a pattern emerged: Democrats were tending to vote in advance by mail or drop box, while Republicans, perhaps heeding presidential warnings, were more likely to plan to vote in person on Election Day.

Then in June, Louis DeJoy, a major Trump and Republican donor, took over as Postmaster. Without missing a beat, he began to dismember the United States Postal Service – a long-term goal of the Republican Party, which has sought to privatize it and break its labor unions. DeJoy reportedly has significant financial interests in firms that compete or do business with the USPS.

The new Postmaster removed essential equipment, fired experienced management, and eliminated employee overtime, resulting in substantially slower mail delivery in some areas. All this obstruction came at the beginning of an electoral season when a major surge of voters, particularly Democratic ones, were counting on reliable, speedy delivery of ballot requests and ballots.

With predictable chutzpah, Republicans in several states have sued to require that mail-in ballots be counted only if they are received by Election Day, rather than if they are postmarked by that day, which is the norm. This would put mailed votes at the mercy of politically motivated postal slowdowns.

I couldn’t find one of the junked mail-sorting machines that was willing to go on record.

Credit: Peter Costantini.

Public outcry and Congressional hearings made DeJoy back off on some off his restrictions, but the capacity of the post office to handle high volumes of ballots remained in question. Many voters who had received mail-in ballots became concerned that, if returned by mail, they might still face delays.

Yet entering polling places to drop them off added some risk of exposure. One good solution was to deposit the ballots into the secure drop boxes that roughly two-thirds of the states and many localities already provided outside polling places and in other locations.

Last June, the Trump campaign had sued the State of Pennsylvania for adding ballot drop boxes around Philadelphia, the state’s biggest city, with a combined Black and Hispanic population of 58 percent. Both of these groups vote heavily Democratic.

A Federal judge appointed by Trump found that the campaign “failed to produce any evidence of vote-by-mail fraud in Pennsylvania,” including fraud related to drop boxes. A research project by the Brennan Center for Justice calls voter fraud “a myth” and explains: “Extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare. Yet repeated, false allegations of fraud can make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to participate in elections.”

Nevertheless, Trump later tweeted that ballot drop boxes are a “big fraud” and “make it possible for a person to vote multiple times”. Twitter reportedly put a notice on the tweet saying that it violated its “civic integrity policy.”

The response of some other Republican officials has been – you’ve probably guessed by now – to severely restrict the number of drop boxes. In Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott imposed a limit of one drop box per county.

The populations of Texas’ 254 counties, however, vary from under one hundred to several million. Democrats fought this restriction in court, but lost. Now Harris County, where Houston is located, has one drop box for nearly 4.8 million residents. Not coincidentally, the county’s population is around 60 percent Black and Hispanic.

Similar limitations on drop boxes have been imposed by the Republican Secretary of State of Ohio, also provoking a legal rumble. My Phoenix drop box, though, seems to have job security. Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State has rolled out a well-distributed network of its siblings, some of them in drive-through locations. This year, over 80 percent of Arizona voters will send in an absentee ballot, either through the mail or via drop boxes, without perceptible controversy.

Still, the malevolent hybrid of Machiavellian yet transparent voter suppression, bred by the coordinated attacks on mail-in voting and drop boxes, is a lowlight in a campaign full of Republican assaults on democracy. Enumerating them all is a job for historians – and civil-rights attorneys. But another one stands out for sheer vindictiveness.

In most states, prisoners are not allowed to vote, but ex-felons who have done their time and finished probation have their civil rights, including voting, restored. In Florida and a few other states, however, released ex-felons were not allowed to vote again except by special dispensation.

In 2018, Florida voters approved, by a two-to-one margin, a constitutional amendment that restored voting rights to ex-felons. But not long after, the state’s Republican legislature intervened and added a provision that to have their rights restored, ex-felons had to pay all prison fines, fees and restitution charged against them during their incarceration.

Most people emerge from jail with little or no cash on hand, so this amounted to revoking their newly reinstated suffrage. A legal challenge initially struck down the legislature’s changes, but a federal appeals court reversed the lower court and upheld the pecuniary provisions, although confusion persists on how they should be carried out. Out of the 1.4 million ex-felons who initially had their rights restored, a disproportionate number of them people of color, it appears that fewer than one-quarter of them will be able to vote in this year’s elections.

If this sounds like something right out of Jim Crow, it’s not far off. Among the many ways that Black voters were disenfranchised after the end of Reconstruction was imposition of a poll tax, which had to be paid in order to vote.

Few African Americans could afford the cost, and those that could were often denied their rights by other chicanery or violence. The first judge’s ruling against the legislature said the financial requirements amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax.

This chaotic landscape of multi-faceted voter suppression has grown worse this year, but it has roots at least a century and a half old. Just a bit more than a decade after the Civil War, repressive measures like the poll tax combined with outright terrorism – lynching, arson and mass murder – to snatch away the rights and economic advances Black people had won since the end of slavery.

This continued up until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, with the Democratic Party playing the dominant role in denying democracy across the South. With the social changes spearheaded by the movement, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, the center of gravity of Southern racism moved into the Republican Party, which embraced it tightly with President Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy”.

A political rallying point of the segregationists was the concept of “states’ rights”, the idea that they could defend Jim Crow against Federal efforts to desegregate by invoking the primacy of each state to determine its own laws. Federal enforcement helped Black and liberal movements and politicians roll back some of the worst abuses.

Under the Voting Rights Act, most of the states of the South and a few others with a history of discrimination were forbidden to make changes in their electoral laws without Federal approval. But then in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that the patterns of discrimination the Act guarded against were no longer occurring, and removed the requirement for federal supervision of voting laws.

Very quickly, many of those states re-enacted restrictions on voting, some more subtle than before, but aiming towards the same old goal: making it harder for people of color people to vote.

Ironically, along with the reactionary effects on voting rights in conservative-run states, the resurgence of states’ rights and loosening of federal control has provided more leeway for some blue states to enact liberal and progressive reforms despite the Trump administration’s opposition.

All but one of the states that have chosen all mail-in voting are run by Democrats. States and cities have enacted sanctuary and immigrant-justice laws in defiance of regressive federal immigration regulations and enforcement.

Underlying all the political and legal hurly-burly, three structural elements deeply entrenched in the U.S. Constitution and statutes help ensure that fundamental democratic principles such as neutral, fair electoral administration and “one person, one vote” remain problematic.

Unlike many other countries, the United States does not have a fourth, electoral branch of government, independent of the executive, legislative and judicial, that could standardize electoral law and practices nationally.

Some jurisdictions have independent, non-partisan electoral commissions, but they are often appointed by a partisan executive. Many electoral authority posts, though, are partisan, and as the 2000 Florida fiasco and Bush v. Gore made indelibly obvious, political pressure and voter exclusion in high-stakes contests can bulldoze even-handed election administration.

The U.S. has a bicameral legislature with a Senate comprising two senators from every state, large or small. This is perhaps the most blatant Constitutional violation of “one person, one vote”: a citizen of the most populous state, California, with a nearly 40 million residents, has only a tiny fraction of the representation of a citizen of the least populous one, Wyoming, with under 600 thousand. Both states have two senators.

The old justification that the collegial deliberations of the Senate would restrain the tendencies toward mob rule in the House of Representatives has been rendered ridiculous by the Republican Senate leadership’s comportment over recent years, but it always reeked of elitism. Senators from smaller states have often been excessively beholden to the biggest local industries: Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington state, for example, was known as “the Senator from Boeing” for his fealty to the dominant aircraft manufacturer.

In the United Kingdom, by contrast, the House of Lords, the U.S. Senate’s counterpart, has been reduced to a mainly advisor body with little political power. Democrats have long contemplated trying to bring in the District of Columbia, and possibly Puerto Rico, as new states with two senators each, but this would be a heavy lift politically. It’s hard to see a feasible reform short of major changes in the Constitution.

The Electoral College is another negation of “one person, one vote”. Although numbers of electoral votes are very roughly proportional to state populations, they still give considerably more representation to smaller, more rural, whiter states. The winner-take-all nature of the electoral vote, with the exception of two states, means that it frequently does not reflect the popular vote.

The Electoral College is an 18th Century institution that gives far too much leeway to the whims of appointed electors, and can be too easily overridden by state legislatures. It has become enough of an embarrassment that some reforms are attracting public attention. The best known is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under it, states pledge to give all their electoral votes to the candidate winning the national popular vote, but this goes into effect only after states representing 270 electoral votes, the majority needed to elect a president, have signed onto the agreement.

Elections in 2016 and 2000, in which the winner of the Electoral College lost the popular vote, have inflamed bitter national divisions and installed governments that led the country into ongoing catastrophes. A previous contested election, in 1876, was resolved by both parties agreeing to end Reconstruction, snatching away the barely restored civil and human rights of Black people for most of the next hundred years.

The country’s rickety electoral infrastructure might not be able to weather another such blow.

For one more electoral cycle, at least, the salvation of democracy here may lie in the same decentralization that has caused such frustration. Beneath the brazen attempts to disfigure democracy, there remains a strong, grassroots culture of fairness.

There are millions of voters willing to stand in long lines, even if they’re caused by political manipulation, and puzzle out confusing regulations in order to cast their votes. And there are thousands of local officials and volunteers of all political persuasions who are willing to work long hours and brave stifling bureaucracy to make sure that all votes are counted.

I returned to check on the original drop box. It was clearly the strong, silent type: no complaints, no publicity seeking, it just did its job. I took a few more pictures. A security guard shook his head and told me that he had never seen a drop box attract the paparazzi like this one.

The post Drop Boxes Tell Tale of US Democracy in 2020 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

“If things could talk, then I’m sure you’d hear a lot of things to make you cry, my dear. Ain’t you glad, glad that things don’t talk.” – Ry Cooder

The post Drop Boxes Tell Tale of US Democracy in 2020 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Economic Trends and What’s Important in Life

Mon, 11/02/2020 - 12:26

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 2 2020 (IPS)

US third quarter GDP numbers released two weeks ago delighted stock markets and President Trump. Output had picked up by 7.4%, annualised as 33.1%, the largest quarterly economic growth on record, almost double the old record of 3.9% (annualised as 16.7%) in the first quarter of 1950, seven decades ago.

Anis Chowdhury

Spinning numbers
This news could not have come at a better time for Trump, who is struggling for re-election, as his Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) declared that this affirmed Trump’s claim, “we’re coming back, and we’re coming back strong”. The CEA spun the White House press release headline accordingly, “The Great American Recovery: Third Quarter GDP Blows Past Expectations”.

The CEA attributed the record to “the strong foundation of the pre-pandemic economy and the efficacy of the Trump Administration”, portraying it as “a testament to the fortitude and resilience of America’s workers and families”.

Meanwhile, new US COVID-19 cases on the very same day reached a record high, surpassing 90,000 and still rising, with total cases nearing a million, with deaths four times the total American death toll during the two decade long Vietnam War, and fast approaching a quarter million.

Glass half full/empty
As COVID-19 rages unchecked, economic activity remained US$670 billion below its pre-pandemic peak. According to the ‘Back-to-Normal Index’ of Moody’s Analytics and CNN Business, the economy was only 82% of what it was in early March, with 10.7 million jobs lost since February!

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in early October show that more than 12.6 million Americans were out of work while lasting job losses rose, with 36% of the jobless deemed permanently unemployed.

Those permanently laid-off ballooned from 1.5 million in March to 3.8 million in September, and the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 781,000 to 2.4 million. This number is still rising fast, threatening extreme hardship for many more households.

Prospects for those losing jobs may be bleak as US job recovery appears to be running out of steam. After adding 4.8 million jobs in June, job gains slowed to 1.8 million in July, 1.5 million in August and only 661,000 in September. As time passes and job growth continues to slow, it will take years to bring employment back to pre-pandemic levels.

Exaggerating trends
Annualising a quarterly or monthly rate tells us how much the economy would expand or shrink if the rate of change is maintained for a full year. But this can be misleading, by making mountains out of molehills. Undoubtedly, the second quarter’s massive collapse was followed by a large gain in the third.

But the third quarter recovery of 33% after the second quarter contraction of 33% does not mean the economy is back to where it was. If 100 drops 33% to 67, and then regains 33%, it gets to 89 (from 67) — still 11 short of the original 100.

Rapid growth in one quarter does not mean the economy has gained strong momentum. The collapse in the previous quarter had set a low baseline. Hence, any rebound from that depressed base would generate a huge growth rate.

Hours worked are often a better proxy for employment and economic recovery. Average hours worked in the first quarter were 5.1 million, dropping to 4.5 million in the second, before recovering to 4.8 million in the third, still below pre-COVID levels.

Other evidence also indicates that the economy has been slowing. For example, consumption growth was slower every month from June to August than in the month before.

Similarly, retail sales slowed over mid-2020, before a slight rebound in September. The Chicago Federal Reserve National Economic Activity Index indicated that August growth was the slowest since recovery began in May.

Disparities widen
The prestigious Lancet has observed, “COVID-19 exacerbating inequalities”, as the pandemic sharpened various US disparities already growing for decades. As 45 million Americans lost their jobs, US billionaires made US$584 billion.

Meanwhile, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show hospitalization rates for Blacks and Latinos 4.5 times that for non-Hispanic whites. A US National Academy of Sciences study also found age-adjusted COVID deaths more than 2.5 times higher for Blacks than for Whites.

US income and wealth inequalities have been rising since the early 1970s. The share of total income earned by the top decile (10%) rose from around 31% in the 1970s to about half in 2015, while the top 1% or percentile’s share rose from 8% to 20%.

Much of this increase among the top 10% came at the expense of workers in the bottom half of the distribution whose share of total income halved from 20% in the 1970s as median US workers’ real wages fell from 1973.

Over the past three decades, the wealth share of those in the top decile (10%) of household income rose from 61% to 70%, while that of the top 1% went up from 17% to 26%.

Jobless rates for Asians, Blacks and Hispanics were higher than the national average, even before the pandemic. Disproportionately employed in low paying occupations, they have suffered more job losses due to the pandemic.

Women have also suffered much more, e.g., as 617,000 women, compared to 78,000 men, dropped out of the labour force in September. Half of these women were between 35 and 44, the prime working age.

Omitting the important things in life
The pandemic can even augment GDP, which includes all COVID-related expenses, including those for treatments and funerals, plus the trillions that governments – federal, state, municipal – spend to tackle the crisis.

Perhaps, it is fitting to recall Robert Kennedy from over half a century ago:

“Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product… counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

“It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

“It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

“It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

“And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

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Categories: Africa

COVID-19: A Global Survey Shows Worrying Signs of Vaccine Hesitancy

Sun, 11/01/2020 - 21:36

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.

By External Source
Nov 1 2020 (IPS)

It has been nine months since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak of COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a “public health emergency of international concern”. Since then, more than 44 million cases have been recorded and over one million lives lost. Economic costs measure in trillions of dollars. Global recovery will take years.

A safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be developed in record time and may be approved for production, distribution and acceptance some time in 2021. Public health experts say that at least 70% of any community must get vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine to achieve an acceptable level of immunity to protect its members.

We recently surveyed 13,426 people in 19 countries. We included two of Africa’s most populous and visible nations, Nigeria and South Africa, which are among the most affected by COVID-19 on the continent.

Overall, we found that 71.5% of participants said they would take a “proven safe and effective vaccine” while 14% would refuse it outright. An additional 14% said they would hesitate to take the vaccine.

But that average figure is deceptive. It was raised by favourable responses from two Asian countries that also recorded very high trust in government health recommendations. More than 80% of Chinese respondents and 75% of South Koreans said they would accept a vaccine. South Africans came closer than any other country to the 70% standard, at almost 65%. But only 46.3% of Nigerians said they would do so. This is slightly higher than the results we found in Spain, Sweden, Poland, Brazil and Ecuador.

Hesitancy

These vaccine hesitant people are not necessarily vaccine opponents. A large number of them consistently vaccinate their children against numerous childhood diseases. However, it must be noted that the increasingly well-coordinated global anti-vaccine movement has repurposed itself to challenge the very reality of COVID-19 as well as the usefulness of a new vaccine to prevent it. They have leveraged social media platforms to promote these doubts.

We also tried to determine how much trust people would have in a COVID-19 vaccine if their employer recommended it. Just more than three in five (61.4%) of all our respondents said they would do so. The numbers dropped to less than half of South Africans (46%) and Nigerians (44%).

Our data confirms a troubling trend towards vaccine hesitancy that has been found in other global and national studies. Professor Heidi Larson, a co-author of our paper, and her team at the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine recently reported on trends in vaccine confidence observed across 149 countries between 2015 and 2019. They found that political instability and religious extremism were critical factors in declining vaccine confidence in many of these countries.

Recent political unrest in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with over 200 million people, does not bode well for a successful COVID-19 vaccination campaign there. Only South Africa and Ethiopia have recorded more COVID-19 cases on the continent.

Many public health workers also recall a massive boycott against polio vaccination in northern Nigeria. It was caused by a single rumour, and not an adverse event. This boycott led to the years of more polio infections and deaths in Nigeria, and delayed polio eradication from the continent as a whole.

So what must be done to get on track for a successful African vaccination programme against COVID-19?

Moving forward

As scientists, we should help health leaders to prepare now with education and dialogue to set appropriate expectations for when a coronavirus vaccine may be available. We need to build vaccine literacy with effective communication and community engagement for acceptance country by country, village by village, taking into account community-specific issues, concerns or misconceptions and working with local religious and civil leaders and influencers.

We also need to help people become more fluent about vaccinations: Are they safe? Will they protect me and my family? Do I need to be vaccinated to be able to work? Will everyone be able to get it? Will vaccination sterilise me or my kids?

And we must be realistic that none of this information and advocacy will truly convince people to accept COVID-19 vaccination, or any other, in the absence of genuine societal trust. Without mutual trust, we may not be able to rebuild economies and return to anything approaching “normal” life.

It would be tragic if we developed, made and distributed safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and people refused to take them, when health infrastructure and equipment levels cannot stem the pandemic.

Two authors of this study, Drs. Ratzan and Larson, are co-leaders of a recently launched global coalition – CONVINCE [COVID-19 New Vaccine Information Communication and Engagement]. This initiative is spearheaded by the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health, the Vaccine Confidence Project of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Wilton Park, a part of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. A number of African public health leaders have already joined it.

Scott C. Ratzan, Distinguished Lecturer, CUNY Graduate Center; Agnes Binagwaho, Vice Chancellor, University of Global Health Equity; Heidi Larson, Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology & Population Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; Jeffrey V Lazarus, Associate Research Professor, Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal); Kenneth Rabin, Senior Scholar, CUNY Graduate Center, and Lawrence O. Gostin, University Professor; Founding Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law, Georgetown University

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

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Categories: Africa

Q&A: COVID-19 has Pushed Women Peacebuilders from Key Leadership Roles

Fri, 10/30/2020 - 17:11

Scenes from a rehearsal session with Colombia’s Cantadora Network, a network of singers using traditional Afro-Colombian music to preserve their culture and promote peace. According to the Global Network of Women Peacebuilder, funds are being diverted from women-led peacebuilding organisations, and from peacebuilding processes more broadly. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 30 2020 (IPS)

Women need to be given roles as negotiators, not just offered representation through advisory groups, Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos from the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) told IPS.

Santos spoke with IPS after the Wednesday, Oct. 28 webinar “Beyond the Pandemic: Opening the Doors to Women’s Meaningful Participation”. At the conference, policymakers and analysts spoke about ways to ensure that women have more leadership roles in society.

Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos from the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP). Courtesy: GNWP

Santos was responding specifically to comments by Kavya Asoka, executive director of the NGO Working Group (NGOWG) on Women, Peace and Security, who said that women should not be allotted to “any participation” but “meaningful participation” in peacemaking decisions.

Yifat Susskind, executive director of Madre: Fighting for Feminist Futures, told IPS that women have been holding leadership positions in policymaking for a long time. Thus, while addressing the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, women must be given “the space to offer their expertise to shape policy responses,” she said.

During the webinar, Jeanine Antoinette Plasschaert, special representative of the secretary-general for Iraq and head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, highlighted the importance of taking into account the social, economic, political and historical contexts when engaging women in leadership roles.

The current coronavirus pandemic adds to the challenges.

“Our partners report that funds are being diverted from women-led peacebuilding organisations, and from peacebuilding processes more broadly,” Santos told IPS. “For example, in Colombia, women peacebuilders report that COVID-19 has served as an excuse to divert funds away from the transitional justice mechanisms.”

She added that another challenge is also the digital divide, which affects women disproportionately. This is exacerbated by the fact that not all peacebuilding work can be performed over the Internet – such as reconciliation work, dialogues between conflicting communities and support to trauma survivors – which can’t be easily moved to the virtual space owing to their “delicate and sensitive nature”.

“At the same time, the pandemic has also shown the incredible resilience of women peacebuilders and women’s movements,” she said. “Despite the digital barrier, women have continued to organise, and find innovative ways to use the internet and other communication means to continue their work.”

Excerpts of the interviews with Susskind and Santos follow:

Yifat Susskind, executive director of Madre. Courtesy: Madre

IPS: What entails meaningful participation of women in the peacebuilding processes?

Yifat Susskind (YS): Women must have more than a seat at the table in formal peace negotiations. They must also have the power and influence to set the agenda, ensuring that gender impacts are addressed as a priority and bringing community demands to the forefront. Crucially, this access must be available to grassroots women peacebuilders rooted in frontline communities, who have a deep well of knowledge about war’s impacts at home, who can help build community trust in the peace process, and who can ensure that any resulting peace agreement is implemented at the ground level.

Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos (AFS): The most common understanding of “meaningful participation” is that it’s the kind of participation that allows women to actually impact the outcomes of peace negotiations and other processes.

It also means participation of diverse women, and participation of women at all levels. Women need to be included in decision-making bodies and peacebuilding processes at the local, national, regional and international levels. Further, when we talk about women’s participation we have to think of women from all walks of life – refugee and internally displaced women, indigenous and ethnic minority women, young women, women with disabilities, lesbian, bi-sexual and trans women, etc.

IPS: MADRE focuses especially on climate change and how rural women are most affected by this. How have they been affected during the coronavirus pandemic?

YS: Rural women worldwide on the frontlines of climate change are forced to confront daily its worst impacts, typically carrying the heaviest burden as those responsible for providing families with food, water, and household fuel. The coronavirus pandemic has only deepened this burden of care work on women and girls.

Lockdowns have shut down markets, limiting the availability of food and making it impossible for many rural women to sell livestock, crops, and wares. The lack of income, combined with the spike in food prices and the continued effects of the climate crisis, has made food scarce for many families.

IPS: GNWP involves women from countries around the world. How do you address the diverse set of challenges they face from different parts of the world?

AFS: A key aspect of our work is to elevate the voices, recommendations and practical solutions of women peacebuilders to global policy spaces. We do this through research, as well as by creating spaces and opportunities for women peacebuilders to share their perspectives and recommendations directly with global policy makers.

But equally, if not more, important is the other aspect of our work – global to local. Localisation of Women, Peace and Security is one of flagship programmes of GNWP. It brings together local women, youth and representatives of other historically marginalised groups, as well as religious and traditional leaders and local authorities — mayors, governors, councillors, etc. Together, they analyse their local context and the relevance of the global resolutions and national policies on WPS to it. They identify concrete measures to translate these global and national laws into tangible actions and impacts on the ground.

Localisation also leads to institutionalisation of the commitments to WPS, and to harmonisation of the existing laws and policies on gender equality, women’s rights and peace and security. We have seen it yield concrete impacts and results across the world – for example, inclusion of women in traditional conflict resolution councils in the Philippines, increased SGBV reporting in Uganda, etc.

IPS: What are some ways to ensure women are given leadership roles in addressing the pandemic?

YS: We must first recognise that at the community level, women are already vital leaders in pandemic response: caring for people who become sick, ensuring food for their families, organising their communities and more. Many are trusted, longtime activists who understand deeply and specifically the needs of their communities and who are known locally as reliable sources of support and information. We must ensure that these women — including those in hard-hit places like refugee camps and climate disaster zones — have the space to offer their expertise to shape policy responses.

What’s more, since long before the pandemic, grassroots feminists worldwide have grappled with the need to meet urgent needs while simultaneously working towards long-term, systemic solutions. Learning from these approaches, policymakers can implement emergency relief efforts, whether distributing food or providing health information, while setting the stage for long-term recovery. This means continually reasserting the need for a shift in the values driving our policies, amplifying feminist approaches of collective work and community care.

AFS: Women are already leading the responses to COVID-19. From mobilising and organising humanitarian responses in their communities, to drafting Feminist Recovery Plans (for example in Northern Ireland), to monitoring the ceasefires and the implementation of peace agreements.

What is sorely lacking is their inclusion in decision-making about the pandemic recovery. We spoke to women peacebuilders and civil society across the world, and we have consistently seen that women are being excluded from COVID-19 Task Forces and planning committees. Globally women make up less than a quarter of such committees (according to CARE). One way to ensure that women are given leadership roles is to guarantee that all COVID-19 Task Forces and Committees include at least 50 percent of women. This must include women from the civil society, who are at the forefront of COVID-19 response; and women in all their diversity.

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Categories: Africa

US Groups Linked to COVID Conspiracies Pour Millions of ‘Dark Money’ into Latin America

Fri, 10/30/2020 - 16:05

A satirical poster of President Jair Bolsonaro saying COVID-19 ‘is just a flu’ in Brazil, where US-linked groups have also denied the virus exists. | Cris Faga/NurPhoto/PA Images

By Diana Cariboni and Isabella Cota
MONTEVIDEO, Oct 30 2020 (IPS)

Half a dozen US Christian right groups have poured millions of dollars into Latin America and have promoted misinformation about COVID-19 and other health and rights issues, openDemocracy can reveal today.

These groups are part of a bigger number of twenty Christian right groups that have spent at least $44 million of ‘dark money’ into Latin America since 2007. Several of them are linked to President Trump’s administration.

None of these organisations disclose the identities of their donors or details of how exactly they spend their money in Latin America. Many do not mention their Latin American operations on their websites.

One group has called COVID-19 “the most monumental social engineering and ideological… effort in history”. The leader of another group also sits on an anti-China lobby group with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon – and claims that coronavirus was man-made in a Chinese lab.

These groups use the Global South as a laboratory for misinformation campaigns, with incalculable costs for lives and well-being

Alejandra Cárdenas, Center for Reproductive Rights

At least three of these US groups have attacked the World Health Organisation (WHO) during the pandemic, claiming for instance that it is “using COVID-19 to spread abortion”. The Trump administration announced earlier this year that it would halt US funding to the global health body.

Two groups have also supported anti-abortion projects across Latin America that have been accused of using “deception and manipulation” against vulnerable women. Another organisation has funded a controversial app that employs “misleading” advice to discourage the use of contraception.

All of these US groups promote a strict vision of a “traditional family” against abortion and LGBT equality. Latin America already has some of the world’s highest rates of adolescent pregnancies and murders of LGBT people; many rights advocates say these groups are aggravating the situation.

Alejandra Cárdenas, from global advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights, said these findings “prove a manipulation we’ve been seeing for years by the US Christian right in Latin America and Africa, meant to break the social fabric and human rights protections that popular movements fought for”.

These groups “use the Global South as a laboratory for misinformation campaigns,” she said, with “incalculable costs for lives and well-being.”

Senator Humberto Costa from the Brazilian Workers Party added that “these findings confirm that there is an international network behind orchestrated actions to misinform and attack specific groups with hate messages.”

COVID-19 conspiracies

In February, as coronavirus infections began to swell globally, a veteran US anti-abortion activist claimed that the virus was created in a Chinese lab as a bioweapon and then released, either intentionally or accidentally. President Trump has also shared this theory.

The activist is Steven Mosher. He directs a US group called Population Research Institute (PRI), which has published an online book in English and Spanish claiming that China’s fabrication of the virus has the “clear intention… of radically modifying the known world through social engineering”.

Mosher also sits on the board of an anti-China lobby group that he co-founded with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign director. Bannon was earlier this year charged with fraud over a fundraising campaign to build a wall between the US and Mexico. He has denied these charges.

PRI has spent more money in Latin America than it has anywhere else in the world, outside the US – more than $1 million between 2008 and 2017. While it is not one of the biggest spenders in the region, it appears to be one of the most active.

Among its activities, PRI says it has trained staff of CitizenGo, a Spain-based global conservative group that has links to far-right parties across Europe. PRI trained CitizenGo “in the use of political strategy tools, communicational and scenario analysis”, and PRI’s Latin America director, Peruvian Carlos Polo Samaniego, is also on the board of CitizenGo.

Polo is accused by his son, LGBT rights activist Carlos Polo Villanueva, of having taught him to manipulate the results of an online survey about the legalisation of abortion in Peru.

His son told openDemocracy: “I was ten or twelve years old, and my father asked me if I wanted to help him with his job. He put me in front of a computer, saying ‘you vote here against abortion, then go to cookies, disable cookies, return to the webpage and vote again. Do it as many times as you can’.”

Polo’s son also claimed that Catholic and evangelical schools pushed their students to attend the “marches for life” that his father and other ultra-conservatives organised. He said: “I marched against abortion as a child because our school took roll calls. I was forced to march in 2009 and 2010.”

Polo did not deny his son’s accounts when asked about them by openDemocracy. He said: “Obviously, there are a lot of differences between the points of view of LGBTI activists and PRI’s. LGBTI activists are free to express their views. I know what my son Carlos thinks. I love him as a son and respect him as a person, despite our conflicting opinions. PRI defends and promotes the freedom of expression for all peoples”.

In April, CitizenGo launched an online petition to “defund” the World Health Organisation, alleging that it uses public money to “promote Communist China’s false COVID information” as well as to “teach masturbation to children from ages 0 to 4… and force doctors to perform sex reassignment surgery on children”.

COVID-19 misinformation

Another one of the groups analysed by openDemocracy is the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), which has disclosed spending at least $2.7 million in Latin America since 2007.

Founded in 1960 in Brazil as an anti-communist, Catholic network, its US branch has called the ongoing coronavirus crisis “the most monumental social engineering and ideological… effort in history”.

A Brazilian member of the TFP network has published articles denying the existence of COVID-19 cases in Rio de Janeiro and claiming that coronavirus mortality figures have been “inflated and manipulated” by the media and politicians to fuel “fear and hopelessness”.

“With the justification of fighting the virus, the church and the good people are persecuted,” said one of the articles published by TFP’s Instituto Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in Brazil, referring to temporary closures of churches in the country – which currently has the world’s second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths, after the US.

Cárdenas, from the Center for Reproductive Rights, said: “The public must know who is behind these campaigns, and understand their alignment with political causes. Why are they interested in weakening public health protection systems, like the WHO? What benefit can be drawn from it?”

“Misinformation is instrumental to the Latin American right-wing tactic of dismantling rights,” added Thiago Amparo, law professor at educational institute Fundação Getulio Vargas of São Paulo. “Being funded transnationally, these misinformation tactics function as disruptive tools in the region’s democracies.”

“We are not behind or aware of any campaigns and certainly deny wanting to weaken or take any actions against public health”, the American TFP group told openDemocracy. It added that the articles published by its “autonomous sister organisation” in Brazil “are not official statements” from the group.

One of the articles was authored by a Catholic priest that is not a member of TFP, it said, and the other is a commentary on government statistics.

Misleading women about reproductive health

The president of the US Catholic conservative group Human Life International has also claimed that the WHO is “using COVID-19 to spread abortion”.

This group has spent $2.3 million in Latin America since 2007. Together with another US anti-abortion group, Heartbeat International, it supports a network of ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ that have been accused of misleading and manipulating Latin American women, as openDemocracy revealed this year.

Another US group, the World Youth Alliance (WYA), has spent a more modest $640,000 in Latin America – but it has also been involved in activities condemned for “misleading” women about their health. It is promoting a controversial fertility app (the FEMM app) that dissuades women from using birth control and emergency contraception, claiming it is dangerous.

If a user asks the FEMM app specifically for information on contraception, it says it doesn’t provide this as “artificial means” of preventing pregnancy “can be detrimental to a woman’s health by suppressing hormone function. Hormones are needed in sufficient levels to promote optimal health in the body”.

“The app is clearly misleading,” said Grazzia Rey, associate professor of gynaecology at Uruguay’s University of the Republic, “as it circumvents the scientific evidence provided by the WHO and Uruguay’s ministry of health guidelines, on the efficacy and security for all contraceptive methods.”

If a user says they want to avoid pregnancy, the app tells them to abstain from sex completely or on days when they are most fertile. Anita Román, president of Chile’s Midwifery Society, said such ‘fertility awareness’ methods “have a high margin of insecurity,” while sexual abstinence “is unnatural.”

In a “training course” from WYA’s sister group FEMM, which created the app, a Catholic gynaecologist from Chile claimed that young women take birth control “not because they don’t want to have babies, but because they want to be beautiful”. (A study by the US Guttmacher Institute found that 86% of women use contraceptive pills primarily to prevent pregnancies.)

Spending not disclosed

Globally, openDemocracy found that 28 US Christian right groups have poured at least $280 million into activities around the world since 2007 – led by their spending in Europe (almost $90 million).

However, this data underestimates the US Christian right’s influence and spending internationally. Money sent via churches, or groups registered as ‘church affiliates’, for example, is not included in the total because these organisations are not required to publicly disclose their spending.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) is the biggest spender in Latin America, spending at least $21 million in the region between 2007 and 2014, plus almost $10 million in Mexico and Canada. It’s led by the late American televangelist’s son Franklin Graham – an outspoken supporter of President Trump who said that God was behind the 2016 election.

Graham – who called the cancellation of his festivals in Europe due to COVID-19 “spiritual warfare” – was also in Russia last year meeting a Kremlin official who is under US sanctions, on a trip that he said was personally signed off by Trump’s vice president Michael Pence.

After 2014, the BGEA stopped disclosing its financial information as it obtained a reclassification as an “association of churches”.

Focus on the Family, the second-largest spender in Latin America ($6.2 million between 2008 and 2018), offers online shows, podcasts and counselling in Spanish with the message that homosexuality is “not normal” and trans identity is a “disorder and has to be treated”.

This group’s founder James Dobson has spoken out against Trump’s impeachment and celebrated his anti-abortion and pro-Israel positions. In early 2020, Jenna Ellis, who once worked for Dobson, was appointed Trump’s campaign legal advisor.

Cárdenas, from the Center for Reproductive Rights, accused all these groups of working “to break down the entire human rights protection system, which is their hidden and ultimate goal”. She said: “I hope this investigation is widely shared and helps us to open eyes at their full agenda.”

In response to openDemocracy’s questions, Polo at PRI said the group “complies with the US and Peru’s laws” and that all their financial information was “publicly registered and available to any citizen, as is established by law”.

He said that Facebook’s removal of PRI director’s Steven Mosher’s article – on the origins of COVID-19 – was later reversed, “without explanation, proving that censoring Steven Mosher publication was an error beyond any doubt.”

“We are in full compliance with US law in what we disclose or not disclose” the American TFP told openDemocracy. About LGBT rights it said: “Our position is that of the Catholic Church, which calls homosexual acts a grave sin.”

BGEA told openDemocracy that was reclassified as an association of churches because it had been operating in that way “for years, as virtually everything BGEA does is in cooperation with churches” – and because such registration offers groups more protection from government interference.

Filing non-profit disclosures had become “increasingly onerous”, it added, though it “continues to submit to an independent financial audit each year and posts a consolidated financial statement on its website for public review.”

Focus on the Family said: “We believe in the inherent worth and value of every individual, which is why we so passionately support policies designed to strengthen families all across the world.”

HLI, WYA and CitizenGo did not respond to openDemocracy’s requests for comments.

This story was originally published by openDemocracy

The post US Groups Linked to COVID Conspiracies Pour Millions of ‘Dark Money’ into Latin America appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

The rise in plastic pollution during Covid-19 crisis

Fri, 10/30/2020 - 11:17

Scientists have been warning us about the impacts of plastic pollution for decades.

By Farah Kabir and Anhara Rabbani
Oct 30 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Ever since the pandemic began this year, countries across the globe have been striving to protect their people from the virus through various preventive measures where protective gear also known as PPE are in high demand. On the contrary, this has dramatically increased the unsustainable use of plastic posing significant risk for the environment. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) which includes masks, gloves and goggles have become indispensable plastic products for everyone currently witnessing the coronavirus pandemic. The global health crisis has given rise to the consumption of PPE at a staggering rate, which is considered a shield for combatting the virus. PPE is playing a key role in protecting people, especially the frontline workers, who are fighting day and night to cure millions of patients ever since the outbreak started. This has led to some tough questions for those of us who are continually advocating for environmental protection and sustainability— how are we going to manage the devastating impact of plastic waste generated due to Covid-19?

The worldwide lockdown during the pandemic initially led to positive change to the environment. Reduction in air travel and road transport brought significant drop in the daily CO2 emission level across the globe. However, an unsurmountable challenge has emerged as countries are stockpiling plastic products such as PPEs to prevent the spread of Covid-19 virus. Growing number of households have also been seen to hoard groceries which too come in single-use plastic packaging. According to the World Health Organisation, it is estimated that 89 million medical masks are needed globally every month while the coronavirus pandemic lasts, together with 76 million examination gloves and 1.6 million goggles and face visors. An article in The Economist says that consumption of single-use plastic may have grown by 250-300 percent in the United States alone. A research report has forecasted a spike in the global disposable-mask market from an estimation of USD 800 million in 2019 to USD 166 billion in 2020. A crash in oil price has made it easier for industries to produce more plastic as petroleum, one of the main constituent of plastic composition, has become extremely affordable.

Ever since the outbreak of coronavirus, billions of gloves and protective masks are being disposed every day at a global scale. According to a report published by Environment and Social Development Organisation (ESDO), Bangladesh alone has generated around 14,500 tonnes of PPE and other hazardous plastic waste in March 2020. In order to curb the spread, healthcare workers are mandated to wear PPE and government has ordered people to wear a mask every time they go in public spaces. Few opted for masks made out of fabric, but its effectiveness remains highly questionable. As the consumption of these plastic products have become an everyday norm for us, uncontrolled disposal of these items is severely impacting the environment. Hazardous PPE wastes are piling up in landfills, seabeds and oceans, further adding to the existing plastic pollution and threatening the marine ecosystem. Used PPEs, especially medical waste from hospitals, are also creating health hazard for waste pickers who are responsible for collecting and transporting the waste to the storages. The lockdown period has given rise to online shopping and food delivery where most items come in unrecyclable plastic packaging, an inevitable choice people are making at this point.

Scientists have been warning us about the impacts of plastic pollution for decades. Globally the production of plastic has quadrupled over the years and the scientific community is worried that if this growth continues, the entire plastic production will make up to 15 percent of total global emission by 2050. Plastic waste is considered one of the greatest environmental challenges that can have devastating impact on land, wildlife, oceans and human health. Ironically, the issue of plastic pollution has taken a back seat during the pandemic. What we are using now to fight the global public health crisis, is contributing to a bigger crisis. The year 2020 was noted to be the year for climate and environment action, where countries are said to be gearing up to take a comprehensive and coordinated effort in addressing climate change. Adopting circular economy was considered a catalyst for accelerating implementation of the global agenda 2030 and became a key interest of focus for government, development agencies and corporations. Number of industries had started recycling initiatives to show their commitment in protecting the planet. However, due to the economic downturn caused by the pandemic, government and corporations are finding it hard to live up to their commitment of sustainable practices, as it has become critical for both parties to revive the economy at any cost. Ecological sustainability is being given the least priority as countries are racing to revive their economy. Many recycling businesses have been reported to close down because of fear of contracting the virus from plastic waste, lack of staff member and high overhead cost.

The global pandemic has highlighted crucial gaps in our structural system among which plastic pollution has lingered for ages. Managing this unprecedented level of plastic waste will be a challenge for countries, especially developing nations like Bangladesh who has poor, unregulated waste management system that can further trigger health risk for workers from informal sector. The current pandemic situation has made it difficult for us to make a conscious choice due to not having an alternative solution. What we require is to make informed planning at different level and timescale. During the recovery period it’s imperative that government consider ecological sustainability as a key priority in disaster preparedness. This also means investment in efficient waste management system and allocating resource for research and development. We must look into a post-pandemic recovery through the lens of environmental sustainability and resilience, where green initiatives are integrated within the economic stimulus package to create a win-win situation for both economic revival and sustainable development of the country. Most importantly, a shift in behaviour is needed where every citizen makes conscious choice of avoiding the use of unrecyclable plastic products in everyday life to protect the environment.

The current crisis requires urgent government action to prevent long term environmental risk and health hazards. At this point it is critical that the government, along with experts and development actors, establish a practical guideline on the usage and disposal of PPE for medical facilities, factories, malls, shops and local bazaars. A strict monitoring mechanism and law enforcement engaging the local authorities are required to ensure that guidelines are been implemented at every facility. Media can play a crucial role in disseminating the guideline and creating public awareness. This can also become an employment opportunity for young people to engage in monitoring process of waste disposal at community level. It is important to ensure health and safety of workers involved in waste management where they are provided with PPE to protect themselves from virus-related hazards. While a number of medical facilities are burning the used PPEs, its critical to ensure that these activities do not cause air borne hazards. Finally, we strongly urge for a specially trained taskforce to oversee nationwide management of Covid-19 related waste to prevent further degradation of the environment.

Farah Kabir is the Country Director of ActionAid Bangladesh, Anhara Rabbani is the Resilience and Environmental Sustainability Officer of ActionAid Bangladesh.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Categories: Africa

20th Anniversary of UNSCR 1325: Much Remains to Be Done

Fri, 10/30/2020 - 10:46

On October 31 2000, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1325 (2000) calling for participation of women in the prevention, management, and resolution of conflicts. Credit: United Nations

By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Oct 30 2020 (IPS)

In 2010, at the opening session of the civil society forum observing the tenth anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on “Women and Peace and Security”, I had the honor to declare 1325 as “the common heritage of humanity” indicating the wide-ranging nature of the potential benefits which will flow from the landmark resolution’s full and effective implementation by all at all levels.

On 31 October, the world will be observing the 20th anniversary of 1325. The United Nations Security Council held a virtual session with wider participation of UN Member States on 29 October to observe the anniversary.

Today, in Namibia, the country which presided over the Security Council as it adopted UNSCR 1325, President Dr. Hage Geingob is launching the International Women’s Peace Center located in Windoek.

Anniversaries become meaningful when there is a serious stock-taking of the progress and lack of it and thereafter, charting of a realistic, determined roadmap and course of action for the next years. Of course, it is a pity that COVID-19 pandemic has setback our plans and enthusiasm for the observance in a major way.

The core message of 1325 is an integral part of my intellectual existence and my humble contribution to a better world for each one of us. To trace back, a little more than 20 years ago, on the International Women’s Day on 8 March in 2000, as the President of the Security Council representing my country Bangladesh, following extensive stonewalling and intense resistance from the permanent members, I was able to issue an agreed statement [UN Press Release SC/6816 of 8 March 2000] on behalf of all 15 members of the Council with strong support from civil society that formally brought to global attention the contribution women have always been making towards preventing wars and building peace.

The Council recognized in that significant, norm-setting statement that “peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men”, and affirmed the value of full and equal participation of women in all decision-making levels.

That is when the seed for UNSCR 1325 was sown. The formal resolution followed this conceptual and political breakthrough 31 October of the same year with Namibia at the helm, after tough negotiations for eight months, giving this issue the long overdue attention and recognition that it deserved.

The very first paragraph of this formal resolution starts with a reference to the 8 March 2000 statement identifying the rationale and tracing the history of “Women and Peace and Security” at the Security Council. The inexplicable silence for 55 long years of the Security Council on women’s positive contribution was broken forever on the 8th of March 2000.

Adoption of 1325 opened a much-awaited door of opportunity for women who have shown time and again that they bring a qualitative improvement in structuring peace and in post-conflict architecture. We recall that in choosing the three women laureates for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, the citation referred to 1325 saying that “It underlined the need for women to become participants on an equal footing with men in peace processes and in peace work in general.”

1325 is the only UN resolution so specifically noted in the citations of the Nobel Prizes. That is the value, that is the essence and that is the prestige of UNSCR 1325 in the global community.

The historic and operational value of the resolution as the first international policy mechanism that explicitly recognized the gendered nature of war and peace processes has, however, been undercut by the disappointing record of its implementation, particularly for lack of national level commitments and global level leadership.

The driving force behind 1325 is “participation”. I believe the Security Council has been neglecting this core focus of the resolution. There is no consideration of women’s role and participation in real terms in its deliberations.

The poor record of the implementation of 1325 also points to the reality of the Security Council’s continuing adherence to the existing militarized inter-state security arrangements, though the Security Council is gradually, albeit slowly, accepting that a lasting peace cannot be achieved without the participation of women and the inclusion of gender perspectives in peace processes.

The Council has also met with women’s groups and representatives of NGOs during its field missions on a fairly regular basis. The first such meeting was held with women’s organizations in Kosovo in June 2001 when I was leading the Security Council mission to that country as the Council President, over the unwillingness of the UN appointed Mission Chief in Kosovo.

My work has taken me to the farthest corners of the world and I have seen time and again the centrality of women’s equality in our lives. This realization has now become more pertinent in the midst of the ever-increasing militarism and militarization that is destroying both our planet and our people.

Women’s equality makes our planet safe and secure. When women participate in peace negotiations and in the crafting of a peace agreement, they have the broader and long-term interest of society in mind.

It is a reality that politics, more so security, is a man’s world. Empowering women’s political leadership will have ripple effects on every level of society. When politically empowered, women bring important and different skills and perspectives to the policy making table in comparison to their male counterparts.

Women are the real agents of change in refashioning peace structures ensuring greater sustainability.

As the UN adopted the SDGs in 2015, 1325 was about to observe its 15th anniversary and many were wondering why Goal 5 on women and girls and Goal 16 on peace and governance did not make any reference to the widely-recognized 1325. This disconnect between the two main organs of the UN is unacceptable to all well-intentioned supporters of the world body.

That global reality is dramatically evidenced in the fact that the UN itself despite being the biggest champion of women’s equality has failed to elect a woman secretary-general to reverse the historical injustice of having the post occupied by men for its more than seven-decades of existence.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of 1325, I have been invited to speak at many virtual events and interviews from different parts of the world. I am asked again and again what could be done for the true implementation of 1325 to make a difference. In my considered judgment, I have identified four areas of priority for next five years.

One, Leadership of the UN Secretary-General.

What role the Secretary-General (SG) should play? Secretary-General Guterres has done well on women’s parity in his senior management team. It would be more meaningful to expand that parity for the Special Representatives of Secretary-General (SRSG) and Deputy SRSGs, Force Commanders and Deputies at the field levels with geographical diversity.

Many believe there is a need for the Secretary-General’s genuinely proactive, committed engagement in using the moral authority of the United Nations and the high office he occupies for the effective implementation of 1325.

Would it not have a strong, positive impact on countries if their heads of state/government received a formal communication from the Secretary-General urging submission of respective National Action Plans (NAPs)?

Implementation of 1325 should be seriously taken up by the SG’s UN system-wide coordination mechanism. UN Resident Coordinators who represent the SG and UN country teams should assist all national level actors in preparation and implementation of NAPs.

A “1325 Impact Assessment” component with concrete recommendations needs to be included in all reports by SG to the Security Council asking their inclusion in all peace and security decisions taken by the Council.

Gender perspectives must be fully integrated into the terms of reference of peace operations by the United Nations. Improving the gender architecture in field missions and at headquarters; improving gender conflict analysis and information flows; and accountability for sexual exploitation and abuse by UN personnel do need SG’s engaged leadership to make progress.

A no-tolerance, no-impunity approach is a must in cases of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN personnel and its regional partners in hybrid missions. UN is welcomed in countries as their protectors – it cannot become the perpetrators themselves!
1325 implementation has an additional obstacle of overcoming a culture among Council members and within the UN system that views gender issues as an “add-on” component, rather than being one of the central tenets which support conflict prevention and underpin long-term stability. SG should take the lead in changing this culture in a creative and proactive way.

Two, National Action Plans (NAPs)

As we observe the anniversary of 1325, it is truly disappointing that a mere 85 countries out of 193 members of the UN have prepared their National Action Plans (NAPs) for 1325 implementation in 20 years.

It should be also underscored that all countries are obligated as per decisions of the Security Council (as envisaged in Article 25 of UN Charter) to prepare the NAP whether they are in a so-called conflict situation or not.

In real terms, NAPs happen to be the engine that would speed up the implementation of 1325. There are no better ways to get country level commitment to implement 1325 other than the NAPs. I believe very strongly that only NAPs can hold the governments accountable.

There is a clear need for the Secretary-General’s attention for the effective implementation of 1325. Though NAPs are national commitments, it can be globally monitored. SG can also target 50 new NAPs by the 21st anniversary of 1325.

Three, Mobilizing Men for Implementing 1325

Patriarchy and misogyny are the dual scourges pulling back the humanity away from our aspiration for a better world. Gender inequality is an established, proven and undisputed reality – it is all pervasive. It is a real threat to human progress! UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has lamented that “… everywhere, we still have a male-dominated culture”.

Unless we confront these vicious and obstinate negative forces with all our energy, determination and persistence, our planet will never be a desired place for one and all.
Women’s rights are under threat from a “backlash” of conservatism and fundamentalism around the world.

We are experiencing around the globe an organized, determined rollback of the gains made as well as new attacks on women’s equality and empowerment. Yes, this is happening in all parts of the world and in all countries without exception.

Men and policies and institutions controlled by them have been the main perpetrators of gender inequality. It is a reality that politics, more so security, is a man’s world. It is also a reality that empowered women bring important and different skills and perspectives to the policy making table in comparison to their male counterparts.

We need to recognize that women’s equality and their rights are not only women’s issues, those are relevant for humanity as a whole – for all of us. This is most crucial point that needs to be internalized by every one of us.

With that objective, we launched the initiative for “Mobilizing Men as Partners for Women, Peace and Security” on 20 March 2019 in New York with the leadership of Ambassador Donald Steinberg, taking the vow to profess, advocate and work to ensure feminism as our creed and as our mission.

Four, Direct involvement of civil society

Another missing element is a greater, regular, genuine and participatory involvement of civil society in implementing 1325 both at national and global levels. The role and contribution of civil society is critical. I would pay tribute to Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) for making creative and qualitative contributions for the implementation of 1325 for the last two decades.

Civil society should be fully involved in the preparation and implementation of the NAPs at the country levels. At the global level, the UN secretariat should not only make it a point to consult civil society, but at the same time, such consultations should be open and transparent.

We should not forget that when civil society is marginalized, there is little chance for 1325 to get implemented in the real sense.

Let me reiterate that Feminism is about smart policy which is inclusive, uses all potentials and leaves no one behind. I am proud to be a feminist. All of us need to be. That is how we make our planet a better place to live for all.

We should always remember that without peace, development is impossible, and without development, peace is not achievable, but without women, neither peace nor development is conceivable.

Let me assert again that observance of anniversaries becomes meaningful when they trigger renewed enthusiasm amongst all. Coming months will tell whether 1325’s 20th anniversary has been worthwhile and able to create that energy.

Let me end by reiterating that “If we are serious about peace, we must take women seriously”.

The post 20th Anniversary of UNSCR 1325: Much Remains to Be Done appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury was Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN (2002-2007); former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to UN (1996-2001); and globally acclaimed as the initiator of the precursor decision leading to the UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 as President of the UN Security Council in March 2000.

The post 20th Anniversary of UNSCR 1325: Much Remains to Be Done appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

In the Face of a Pandemic, the World Turns to Trade

Thu, 10/29/2020 - 20:16

"International cooperation is the only tool to face the situation, threatened by nationalism, import substitution, protectionism and populist policies of several countries". Credit: UNCTAD

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO, Oct 29 2020 (IPS)

Greatly affected by the coronavirus pandemic, international trade can play a key role in the economic recovery, but it must overcome obstacles, such as protectionism and commercial disputes, especially between the United States and China.

This became clear during the virtual debates at the Toronto Global Forum “Forging a Resilient Economy,” organized by the non-governmental International Economic Forum of the Americas, based in Paris, from Monday, 26th to Wednesday, 28th.

During the last plenary session of the Forum, dedicated to analyzing the condition of international trade in times of global uncertainty, on Wednesday 28th, the Argentinean José Luis Manzano, Integra Capital private investment fund’s founder and president, stressed that the negative global context persists in the last quarter of a year marked by the pandemic.

He pointed out that there has been an incipient economic recovery, which comes from the reactivation that occurred in the middle of the year in the United States and Europe, now threatened by the increase in covid-19 infections, which in the case of Europe has already produced a withdrawal of activities.

“At this moment we are halfway through the pandemic, which means we still have another year of retreat. This will impact trade, economic growth, investment. The pandemic found regions and companies in different situations,” said Manzano.

Focusing on Canada’s position in the world, the Forum, which brought together Canadian officials and business and civil society organization representatives from several countries, also addressed issues such as financial services, future of work, the role of women in the economy, the digital ecosystem, innovation and investment.

Participants also discussed resilient infrastructure, education, health, cyber security, sustainability, agriculture and food.

The appearance of the coronavirus in December in China and its rapid global expansion in the weeks that followed led to domestic confinement and the curbing of non-essential economic activities, especially in sectors such as transportation, retail and tourism, which in turn led to a decrease in energy consumption.

Governments have responded to this with different packages of measures to deal with the aftermath of the crisis, such as reduced income due to the fall in international oil prices, in the case of exporting countries, which is contrasted with a reduction in the energy bill for oil importers.

The covid-19 pandemic has unleashed a wave of social and economic effects around the world, and to face them, governments have responded with different policies. Among the hardest hit in the developing South are informal workers, like the shoe polisher in the picture, in Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy

Rachel Bendayan, Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade, and Mairead Lavery, President and CEO of Canada’s export promotion agency (EDC), agreed that trade is key the to economic recovery.

“The pandemic should not be an excuse for protectionism, for placing barriers to free trade, or for leading countries to become more protectionist. We need a stable and predictable system,” Bendayan said during his participation in the Forum.

For his part, Lavery said that international trade has positive effects on investment, employment and prosperity.

“We need to ensure that all Canadians have access to the benefits of trade. We need to rebuild trust. The response in different countries is different and we have to analyze how they affect consumption, customers, the supply chain,” she said.

In his opinion, “the recovery will depend on the health situation in the world, it’s the predominant factor, and depending on the economic sector and the country concerned” and that opens an opportunity to adapt to electronic commerce and digitization of international processes.

Canada, the United States and Mexico make up one of the largest trading blocks in the world, the Mexico, the United States and Canada Agreement (T-MEC), which came into force last July and replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has been in force since 1994.

But the trade disputes led by the right-wing government of Donald Trump, which is seeking re-election in the November 3rd presidential poll, cast a shadow over the initial steps of the agreement.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) projects that the largest contractions in the region’s exports would be to the United States (32 percent) and within the region itself (28 percent).

In contrast, China, the region’s second largest trading partner and a country that keeps the coronavirus under control, increased its gross domestic product (GDP) by 4.9 percent year-on-year during the third quarter of 2020, although it is still too early to predict whether the Asian giant can be the global powerhouse, as it was after the financial crisis of 2008.

Manzano stated that international cooperation is the only tool to face the situation, threatened by nationalism, import substitution, protectionism and populist policies of several countries.

“There are two things that intersect with international trade and investment: the pandemic and frictions between the United States and China,” he said.

For this reason, he said, “we need to be prepared to continue injecting money into monetary and fiscal policies, educating SMEs to work in the digital world, without forgetting the environmental impact. The recovery packages will offer opportunities for sustainability”.

The Argentine investor insisted that there must be government support for salaries, digital training, bringing value chains closer to producing countries, and government backing for the transformation of small and medium enterprises.

During the 75th General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), Costa Rica’s president, Carlos Alvarado, presented in September the proposal to create the “Fund to Relieve the Economy covid-19”, an international solidarity effort in the face of the economic recession caused by the pandemic and an instrument to promote a sustainable recovery.

In addition, Mexico is promoting an UN Extraordinary General Assembly in 2021 to agree on the necessary actions for economic recovery and to reduce the social impact of the current crisis, in the post-pandemic phase.

In a session on global manufacturing and the future of globalization, Christiana Riley, executive director for the Americas at the German Deutsche Bank and member of its Board of Directors, indicated that the differences in income between countries are “structural” and need government intervention at the domestic and international levels.

“The private sector can finance much of what is needed to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Governments and financial institutions can be intermediaries between sources of capital and sustainable projects,” she said.

The post In the Face of a Pandemic, the World Turns to Trade appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

The Day After

Thu, 10/29/2020 - 18:23

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris. Credit: Biden Campaign.

By Joaquín Roy
Oct 29 2020 (IPS)

For Europe, the region closest by culture and political tradition to the United States, the mood of the day after the presidential election may be very different from that assumed a priori depending on the verdict.

It is believed that, according to polls and sporadic opinions expressed in analytical articles and direct statements by leaders, support for the Democratic victory is majority. This sentiment is also shared by most of the opinions of the extra-European world, called “liberal-democratic”.

Although it cannot be said that the sentiment is universal, it is also believed that the support of authoritarian regimes for Trump’s candidacy is scarce, with the few exceptions of some leaders who from some quarters have dared to pour out scandalous judgments.

It is not clear, therefore, that, with the exception of Russia and Brazil, the authoritarianism of the rest of the planet is an endorsement of the current occupant of the White House.

Therefore, if that desire is fulfilled, which is frequently alluded as fair, that the citizens of the rest of the world would deserve to participate in the election of the president of the United States, it can be said, especially with respect to Europe, that a triumph of Biden and Harris would be greeted with fireworks.

It is not clear if these strange “voters” are aware of what the new US government would look like and if it would respond to their interests.

Nor is it easy to know before the plebiscite what kind of government in the United States will suit the wishes of Europe.

The reason for this indecision is predominantly due to the persistence of the stereotype that this complex reality is projected onto Europe on the other side of the Atlantic. If this diagnosis is generalized over time, it is even more so today taking into account the seismic changes that the North American society itself has suffered.

Joaquín Roy

These have been buried for a long time and have suddenly surfaced dramatically to the surprise of many citizens, with the exception of the group of voters that raised Trump to the presidency in 2006 and who stubbornly persists in keeping him on the pedestal.

America is no longer the imagined nation of the past (all nations are “imagined,” as Benedict Anderson proposed). The mystique of Normandy and free speech that triumphed when the New York Times and the liberal press that brought down Richard Nixon (1969-1974) and tamed George W. Bush (2001-2009) no longer works the same.

But at the same time the media felt powerless to stop the madness in Iraq, just as years before it was speechless in the face of the tragedy in Vietnam. Nobody believes in the “end of history” anymore, an effective image of the then respected “scholar”, Francis Fukuyama, when he labeled the end of the Cold War as the burial of the ideologies that had competed the market with liberal democracy. Many scholars laughed silently, being left without intellectual work.

But buried history not only survived thanks to the survival of abuse, poverty, and inequality. Trump sold very well the existence of the ills of the United States, attributed to immigrants, the so-called “socialism”, and evil liberalism. We had to “make America great again.”

Now he has finished his special task with a “hat trick” (scoring three goals in a game) by appointing three conservative judges in the Supreme Court. Earlier he had accomplished the feat of systematically and quietly placing dozens of magistrates for life at the judicial levels immediately below.

The neutrality of the third power has been questioned for a whole generation, at least until the death of all the Republican judges who, taking into account the age of the last magistrate, will go a long way.

If Biden’s victory occurs, the majority Democratic sector that will have supported him will have achieved a feat in the face of fear, unrest, and that rise of demons that were supposed to have disappeared. But this victory can also be attributed not only to Trump’s authoritarian behavior during those four years in power, but also to a great extent to his mistakes in administering an effective policy to combat the pandemic.

Ironically, therefore, Trump would had been defeated not by a Democratic political opposition but also by “divine” action. The Cobid19 would had acted like those evil medieval viruses sent by the devil, which decimate the population, and has punished the tyrant. It is not going to be a comfortable conclusion.

That “help” from the pandemic is going to take a toll in the new Biden-Harris era. The surviving marriage made up of the virus and Trump will begin plotting his revenge.

Meanwhile, the new government will have to face new horsemen of the apocalypse: a shattered economy, a huge debt, the revenge of the ultra-right, police resentment, the persistent frustration of blacks and minorities, and a return to the resistance to a determined economic opening, which was a past mark of Democratic politics.

Biden’s America, pressured by urgent reconstruction, may opt for ambivalent behavior regarding foreign involvement. “America first” will remain latent with Biden.

At the very least, Democrats can be satisfied with the reestablishment of internationalism, the recovery of the good name (the essence of the United States still has a value on political Wall Street), moderate regional integration, arms control agreements , the agreements in favor of the fight against climate change, and the fight against drug trafficking and international crime. The international community can still trust the United States.

In contrast, in the case of a Trump reelection, it can worsen, not only in the national territory, but also in the spillover that occurs, racism, violence, corruption, poverty and inequality. The “end of history” may mean the beginning of another history, with the disappearance of the United States from the map built since 1945, which paradoxically will have been replaced by an unusual planet.

It would be like that terrifying scene from the best Hollywood movies with the streets littered with wrecked cars, the surviving inhabitants competing for the rest of the food available, and the apes watching the scene from the top of the cracked skyscrapers.

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

The post The Day After appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

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