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Escaping the ‘Era of Pandemics’: experts warn worse crises to come; offer options to reduce risk

Thu, 10/29/2020 - 16:41

By External Source
Oct 29 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Future pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, do more damage to the world economy and kill more people than COVID-19 unless there is a transformative change in the global approach to dealing with infectious diseases, warns a major new report on biodiversity and pandemics by 22 leading experts from around the world.

Convened by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) for an urgent virtual workshop about the links between degradation of nature and increasing pandemic risks, the experts agree that escaping the era of pandemics is possible, but that this will require a seismic shift in approach from reaction to prevention. Credit: IPBES

COVID-19 is at least the sixth global health pandemic since the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918, and although it has its origins in microbes carried by animals, like all pandemics its emergence has been entirely driven by human activities, says the report released on Thursday. It is estimated that another 1.7 million currently ‘undiscovered’ viruses exist in mammals and birds – of which up to 850,000 could have the ability to infect people.

“There is no great mystery about the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic – or of any modern pandemic”, said Dr. Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance and Chair of the IPBES workshop. “The same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss also drive pandemic risk through their impacts on our environment. Changes in the way we use land; the expansion and intensification of agriculture; and unsustainable trade, production and consumption disrupt nature and increase contact between wildlife, livestock, pathogens and people. This is the path to pandemics.”

Pandemic risk can be significantly lowered by reducing the human activities that drive the loss of biodiversity, by greater conservation of protected areas, and through measures that reduce unsustainable exploitation of high biodiversity regions. This will reduce wildlife-livestock-human contact and help prevent the spillover of new diseases, says the report.

“The overwhelming scientific evidence points to a very positive conclusion,” said Dr. Daszak. “We have the increasing ability to prevent pandemics – but the way we are tackling them right now largely ignores that ability. Our approach has effectively stagnated – we still rely on attempts to contain and control diseases after they emerge, through vaccines and therapeutics. We can escape the era of pandemics, but this requires a much greater focus on prevention in addition to reaction.”

“The fact that human activity has been able to so fundamentally change our natural environment need not always be a negative outcome. It also provides convincing proof of our power to drive the change needed to reduce the risk of future pandemics – while simultaneously benefiting conservation and reducing climate change.”

The report says that relying on responses to diseases after their emergence, such as public health measures and technological solutions, in particular the rapid design and distribution of new vaccines and therapeutics, is a “slow and uncertain path”, underscoring both the widespread human suffering and the tens of billions of dollars in annual economic damage to the global economy of reacting to pandemics.

Pointing to the likely cost of COVID-19 of $8-16 trillion globally by July 2020, it is further estimated that costs in the United States alone may reach as high as $16 trillion by the 4th quarter of 2021. The experts estimate the cost of reducing risks to prevent pandemics to be 100 times less than the cost of responding to such pandemics, “providing strong economic incentives for transformative change.”

The report also offers a number of policy options that would help to reduce and address pandemic risk. Among these are:

Speaking about the workshop report, Dr. Anne Larigauderie, Executive Secretary of IPBES said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of science and expertise to inform policy and decision-making. Although it is not one of the typical IPBES intergovernmental assessments reports, this is an extraordinary peer-reviewed expert publication, representing the perspectives of some of the world’s leading scientists, with the most up-to-date evidence and produced under significant time constraints. We congratulate Dr. Daszak and the other authors of this workshop report and thank them for this vital contribution to our understanding of the emergence of pandemics and options for controlling and preventing future outbreaks. This will inform a number of IPBES assessments already underway, in addition to offering decision-makers new insights into pandemic risk reduction and options for prevention.”

Source: IPBES

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Categories: Africa

Nuclear Arms Control in Crisis While US Exerts Pressure on Treaty Signatories

Thu, 10/29/2020 - 16:18

Licorne nuclear test, 1971, French Polynesia. Credit: The Official Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) Photostream

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 29 2020 (IPS)

Responding to a question, Albert Einstein, the German-born physicist who won the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics, predicted rather ominously: “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Einstein, who regretted the marginal role he played in the creation of the atomic bomb, was implicit in his warning of a world going back to a pre-historic stone age– in case it is annihilated by nuclear weapons in a third world war.

With the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons (TPNW) receiving its 50th ratification last week, and scheduled to go into force in 90 days, there is a lingering fear as to the effectiveness of these treaties, particularly when the world’s nine nuclear powers stand defiant or are openly violating these treaties.

The slew of anti-nuclear treaties has, undoubtedly, acted as a deterrent against a nuclear war since the devastation caused by the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people back in 1945.

Paradoxically, there is also an often-quoted near-truism that “nuclear weapons have done more for world peace than any peace treaty”—as most nuclear powers have affirmed “no first use of nuclear weapons”.

Still, it did not prevent the emergence of four new nuclear powers since the 1970s—India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel (which has officially refused to admit its nuclear status)—even as four countries de-nuclearized, including South Africa which disassembled its arsenal while Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine repatriated their weapons to Russia.

And despite these treaties, the world’s major nuclear powers, particularly the US, UK, China, France and Russia, who are also veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council, have continued to modernize their weapons.

According to the London Economist, the US alone has spent over $348 billion in a decade-long modernization programme followed by the UK, France, Russia and China.

“In short, there has been no attempt to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the military and security doctrines of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council despite their commitments under the NPT”, said the Economist back in 2015.

There are also reports that some of the Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are harbouring intentions of developing weapons perhaps in a distant future.

So, how far are we from the longstanding struggle for a nuclear-weapons-free world? Is this an achievable goal or a political fantasy?

According to an Associated Press (AP) story last week, the Trump administration has sent a letter to governments, that have either signed or ratified the treaty, telling them: “Although we recognize your sovereign right to ratify or accede to the TPNW, we believe that you have made a strategic error.”

This has been interpreted as an attempt by the US to exert pressure on signatories to withdraw from some of the anti-nuclear treaties

Asked whether it was possible for Member States to withdraw their ratifications from the TPNW, if they were under pressure to do so from other Member States, Brenden Varma, the Spokesperson for the President of the UN General Assembly referred journalists to the Secretariat and its legal affairs officers.

From the President’s side, he said, the TPNW represented a significant step, and in general, he supported the objective of a nuclear weapon-free world.

According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the total inventory of nuclear weapons worldwide, as of 2019. stood at 13,865, of which 3,750 were deployed with operational forces. And, more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons were owned by Russia and the United States.

Dan Smith, Director at SIPRI said all nuclear weapon states are upgrading their arsenals.

“And arms control is in crisis,” he warned.

“The strategic arms agreement between Russia and the United States—the last bilateral arms control treaty still standing—must be extended by February next year. It is not surprising that a radical change of direction is gaining this degree of support worldwide,” he added.

Professor M. V. Ramana, Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Director, Liu Institute for Global Issues, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, told IPS the quest for a nuclear weapons-free- world has been longstanding, since the beginning of the nuclear age to be precise.

“The goal is definitely difficult to achieve and we are not close to it, but I don’t think it is a fantasy,” he said.

Other weapons of mass destruction, he pointed out, have been banned and there is no essential reason why nuclear weapons cannot be too, although this would require far-reaching changes in how countries interact with each other.

“The entry into force of the Ban Treaty is definitely a step toward the goal of the abolition of nuclear weapons because it allows non-nuclear countries to increase pressure on the nuclear weapon states to get rid of their means of mass destruction,” declared Dr Ramana, 2020 Wall Scholar, Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies University of British Columbia.

Since the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been violated by all the nuclear powers, one reporter asked at the UN press briefing last week, “what actually is accomplished by this?”

In his response, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “ I think the treaty itself is a very important message on the need for total elimination of nuclear weapons, and I think that’s reflected in what the Secretary General said its most immediate effect is that, when it comes into force, which it has [on 22 January 2021; is that the treaty will become binding international law for those States who have ratified it”.

Those States will also have to submit an initial declaration regarding any past or present nuclear weapons under their control within 30 days of the entry into force, he explained.

He also pointed out that the Secretary General is very well aware of the general climate, and he’s consistently called for dialogue among Member States so that they may return to a common vision and a path leading to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

“Despite the differences over the treaty itself, the frustrations and concerns that underlie it must be acknowledged and addressed. In that spirit”. The Secretary-General, he said, supports the continued engagement between supporters and critics of the treaty.

Dr Joseph Gerson, President of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, told IPS if there is hope for creating a nuclear weapons-free world, and thus for human survival, despite the reality of new arms races and possible proliferation, the obvious answer is “yes”.

There is hope, but no guarantee, he added. Humans inherently have free will and the possibility of taking action.

During the darkest days of the Vietnam War, with its massive daily death toll, he said, it was difficult to imagine a day when the murderous bombs would stop falling. But they did.

Generations of African-Americans suffered and courageously resisted brutal slavery and Jim Crow racism, said Dr Gerson.

“It took centuries, but legalized U.S. apartheid was overcome. And I had the unique privilege of knowing and working with courageous men and women who survived Nazi death camps and who resisted – nonviolently and otherwise – the Nazi occupations of their countries. Their actions, small and ambitious, saved lives and helped to build post-war democratic societies.”

“As long as there is life, there is hope,” declared Dr Gerson, author of With Hiroshima Eyes, and Empire and the Bomb,

*Thalif Deen is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; and military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group. He is also the co-author of “How to Survive a Nuclear Disaster” (New Century,1981).

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Categories: Africa

Crisis alla Turca II – From Currency Crisis to Debt Crisis?

Thu, 10/29/2020 - 12:11

Credi: Omid Armin, Unsplash

By Yilmaz Akyüz
GENEVA, Oct 29 2020 (IPS)

The meltdown of the Turkish currency that began in 2018 has continued unabated with the decline reaching unprecedented proportions in recent days. The causes of that turmoil including underlying financial fragilities and political shocks were discussed in a previous piece by this author. Since then the economy has become even more vulnerable in these respects.

In previous crises in emerging economies currency and debt crises often came back to back. Typically, an economy facing sudden stops in capital inflows and steep declines in its currency raised interest rates and deployed reserves in order to stabilize the currency, stay current on its external debt obligations and maintain an open capital account.

Efforts to stabilize the currency resulted in large reserve losses and the lira has lost half of its value against the dollar in the past two years. A matter of concern now is if this currency turmoil would eventually culminate in an external debt crisis and default

When reserves were exhausted, it ended up on the doorsteps of the IMF which provided some funding to enable the country to pay its debt to private creditors and avoid restrictions on capital outflows, and imposed austerity measures deemed to reduce external imbalances and generate confidence in international financial markets. In most cases private external debt was socialised and the country’s external debt was rolled over at some penalty rates with the help of the IMF.

So far, the Turkish case appears to depart significantly from this pattern. Despite a steep and sustained drop in its currency and significant loss of reserves which are now well below the level of short-term debt, the country has avoided arrears on its debt payments and has in fact been able to continue borrowing in international markets, albeit at a relatively high cost. What is going on?

There appear to be four factors that account for the sustained decline of the lira and loss of reserves.

First, like most emerging economies that opened up its local markets to international investors in order to shift from debt to equity and from forex debt to local-currency debt in external financing, Turkey experienced a significant increase in foreign presence in its equity, debt and deposit markets, particularly during the rapid expansion of global liquidity and sharp drops in international interest rates brought about by quantitative easing and zero-bound policy rates in advanced economies in response to the global financial crisis in 2008.

However, since 2018 there has been a rapid exit of foreign capital from local markets, notably from the debt market and this explains an important part of the decline in reserves and downward pressure on the currency. Malaysia had experienced a similar exodus in 2015 which pushed the ringgit below the levels seen during the 1997 crisis.

Second, the economy is highly dollarized both in credits and deposits. A constant flight of the residents from the lira has been a major factor in its decline. This seems to have taken place not so much as capital flight from the country as currency substitution within the Turkish banking system. Forex deposits of residents as a proportion of total deposits have been on an upward trend since summer 2018, exceeding 50 per cent in recent months.

A third factor is offshore speculation against the lira, notably in London, through derivative contracts very much like that against the Malaysian Ringgit in Singapore during the Asian crisis. In Malaysia, the Mahathir government effectively shut down the offshore trading in Singapore.

In Turkey in 2018 the authorities limited Turkish banks’ swap, spot and forward transactions with foreign investors to 50 percent of a bank’s equity, reducing it in several steps to 1 per cent in April 2020 before raising it to 10 per cent in September 2020.

A fourth factor is payment of external debt by private corporations. Alarmed by the sharp decline of the lira in 2018, many debtors in forex, notably financial institutions, started to deleverage, reducing their debt in an effort to avert losses due to sizeable exchange rate risks they were exposed to. Between March 2018 and March 2020, private external debt fell by some $73 billion while the public sector continued to borrow, seeing its total external debt rise by $36 billion.

Thus, the international financial markets have so far been willing to lend to Turkey in dollars but not in the lira even though the yields on lira bonds exceed those on sovereign (forex) bonds by a large margin. There are two possible explanations for this.

First, there is too much uncertainty about the future path of the lira, and the interest rate differentials between dollar and lira debt assets fail to cover the mounting exchange rate risk.

Second, given the volatility of the present regime in Turkey, sovereign risk is much higher for lira bonds issued in domestic markets because they come under local jurisdiction.

The lira can fall much further in the period ahead if flight from it continues unabated, its decline fails to bring a sizeable improvement in the current account deficit, the private sector continues to deleverage and pay forex debt, the debt of insolvent companies hit by economic slowdown and the rise of the dollar is pushed onto the government and, finally, if the public sector cannot borrow abroad sufficiently to meet the foreign exchange needs created by all these factors.

There is little scope for interest rate hikes to stabilize the lira not only because the government believes that high interest rates are the main cause of inflation and needs growth to restore credibility among its constituency, but also because under conditions of currency turmoil interest rate hikes may simply point to declining creditworthiness and greater default as shown by events in East Asia during the 1997 crisis.

One counteracting factor could be a rush back of international capital, fire-sale FDI, to capture cheap Turkish assets resulting from hikes in the dollar and deflation in asset prices, as seen in several emerging market crises in the past.

If this currency turmoil will culminate in a debt crisis is difficult to tell. Countries often default not because they are in debt but because they cannot borrow any more. Whether or not Turkey will face a sovereign debt crisis will depend on the willingness of international financial markets to keep lending and this depends on their assessment of default risk.

A high stock of debt and a continuous increase in foreign exchange needs make external borrowing more difficult and expensive, and this is also the case in Turkey. However, it is quite difficult to predict at what point the country will be cut off from international financial markets. These markets are often seen to pump in money for extended periods to countries widely seen to be on the verge of default.

There are a number of factors in Turkey’s favour in sustaining access to international finance. First, it has a clean record in debt repayments ‒ the Republic never defaulted on its external obligations and even paid up the debt inherited from the Ottoman Empire. Second, its debt is not seen as unsustainable, in need of reduction and relief, as in the case of Argentina. Third, as noted by the World Bank in its Turkey Economic Monitor Report, its external debt profile remains favourable ‒ the average cost of the current debt stock is relatively low and the average maturity is long ‒ and its debt rollover rate is quite high. Finally, although the risk margin and cost of new debt is very high, there is no obvious upward trend – today Turkey’s 5-year CDS rate is broadly the same as in September 2018.

However, if the need for external financing does not diminish, this Ponzi-like process may well end up in a debt crisis. On recent trends the external debt to GDP ratio can come to reach the 70-75 per cent range by 2023, well above that of Argentina on the eve of its recent restructuring initiative.

Since the IMF option has been ruled out and the current government does not have many friends left among the major OECD countries that could come to help as in the past, in the event of a sudden stop in lending, debt moratorium and default cannot be avoided.

This could come sooner as a result of political and geopolitical shocks triggering a reassessment of risks, especially since the economy is quite prone to such shocks under the current administration. Of course, it is possible for the government to seek bilateral bailouts in return for economic and political concessions. There is also the possibility of a change of government which would in all likelihood open the doors to the IMF and the West.

There is no easy way out for Turkey after so many years of economic mismanagement and waste. Until recently the economy enjoyed a debt-driven boom sucking in large amounts of imports financed by capital inflows.

Investment has concentrated in areas with little foreign exchange earning prospects such as real estate and physical infrastructure ‒ roads, bridges, airports and hospitals. Much of the latter capacity remains underutilised, entailing significant contingent liabilities for the government as a result of guarantees given to private constructers in dollars.

The economy has been showing signs of premature de-industrialization that has pervaded many semi-industrialized economies in the past two decades. Regrettably, while a genuine reform agenda should focus on how to reduce dependence on imports and foreign capital, the current debate in the country is largely concentrated on how to attract more capital.

Yilmaz Akyüz is former Director, UNCTAD, and former Chief Economist, South Centre, Geneva

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Categories: Africa

Nepal Needs to Bridge the Gap Between Legal Provisions Against Child Marriage and Social Norms

Thu, 10/29/2020 - 11:35

Credit: MONIKA DEUPALA.

By Karuna Onta
KATHMANDU, Oct 29 2020 (IPS)

Mohan and Sarita (name changed) studied together in the same school from Grade 6 onwards. They were friends initially, but fell in love and wished to be together, though underage.

Sarita’s parents did not approve of this relationship. They restricted her from going to school, and having any interaction with Mohan. Both then decided to quit school and elope, even though they knew marriage before age 20 was illegal.

Nepal’s policies assure that girls have opportunity for education, employment and exercise their rights. But increasing instances of elopement prove that most parents have failed. But we need to bridge the gap between the law and the social norms

They crossed the border into India, to get married. But the parents of Sarita filed a police complaint against Mohan charging him with human trafficking, and rape of a minor.

After a year, Sarita and Mohan returned to the village with a baby. Mohan was detained and taken to court. By this time, Sarita’s own parents had forgiven her and accepted her child. They were also sympathetic towards Mohan.

Sarita’s father approached the police to withdraw his case, but it was not legally possible. Today, Mohan is serving out his sentence. His father-in-law regrets having filed a police case against him. He takes lunch for Mohan every day in jail.

This is not an isolated case. As per the Nepali law the age of consent is 18 years. Girls, in such instances, have been mostly sent back to their parent’s home and the boy, if under 18, is sent to a correction home.

As per the National Civil Code Act 2017, the legal age of marriage has been raised to 20 for both boys and girls so that young people can finish school, become independent and mature before they can make informed marriage choices.

However, there is a wide gap between the purpose of the law and practice, and social norms. This gap needs to be addressed for the law to be effectively implemented. In 2014, at the Global Girl Summit held in London the Minister of Women, Children and Senior Citizens made a pledge to end child marriage by 2030, a commitment reflected in the National Ending Child Marriage Strategy.

Marriage is viewed as a traditional and religious institution and is considered a ‘must’ for girls in Nepali society. Parents and members of the family are expected to be responsible for the marriages of their daughters and sisters.

The reasoning is ‘protection of girls’, ensuring a ‘secured future’ and a ‘better life’. Girls are also seen as an economic burden on families, and the pressure of dowry has made this worse. Girls from a very young age are also socialised in such a manner that they see marriage as the only possible future.

Many girls feel a sense of security when married, and also perceive marriage as the beginning of their lives. Even among school girls one rarely finds a girl brave enough to declare that she may consider marriage only after school, or may not wish to marry at all.

The thinking of parents, family members and even the young girls are shaped by strong patriarchal mind-sets that view girls as objects to be married off to a ‘permanent home’. The result of all this. Our girls are not safe, and parents play a part in keeping it that way.

In reality, the expectations that the girls and their families have of marriage are not always met. With weak agency, low self-esteem, and less confidence, girls are unable to negotiate equal status in marriage.

The unequal power relationship between men and women always place young married girls as subordinates – they are expected to solve their married life challenges by themselves.

Parents mostly shrug their shoulders if married daughters land in trouble from in-laws. Girls are often left alone to fight their fight. Despite being aware of their rights, lack of economic independence, confidence to speak up for themselves and poor knowledge of sexual and reproductive health among the girls result in unwanted pregnancies, gender-based violence and, sometimes even rape.

Nepal has the third highest rate of child marriage in the region, after Bangladesh and India. The Nepal Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) 2016 showed that on average women marry four years earlier than men (17.9 years versus 21.7 years). And the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2019 revealed that nearly 14% of women 20-24 years had given birth before age 18.

But change is happening. As per the Demographic Health Survey of 2016, the proportion of young women age 15-19 who have never been married has increased from 56% percent to 73%, indicating a positive trend toward later marriage. However, the challenges for educated, economically independent girls and young women are equally tough and slightly different from those of the uneducated.

They have to deal with multitasking at home and work equally well, manage the expectations of joint family members, and if not met, deal with separation and divorce. Expectation of marriage, disapproval of living a self-governing, economically independent life without marriage is also not accepted with respect and appreciation by the society.

Local political leaders have been trying to reduce the legal age of marriage down to 16. Their argument is that marriage at the age of 20 years is too late, and to ‘keep’ the girl at home unmarried until then is not advisable.

The extreme social control of girl’s sexuality encourages early marriage and unsafe relationships. On one hand, the control of female sexuality is somehow supported by legal restriction of age for sexual relationship between girls and boys.

On the other hand, rapidly changing external context offers both boys and girls more opportunities for interaction through education platforms, or social media. In urban areas, it is increasingly common to see young girls and boys in friendship and sometimes also in relationships. Sooner or later, this trend will gradually expand to the rural areas also, posing serious challenge in implementing the law.

We urgently need a debate about the challenges of implementing the law and existing social norms around marriage and sexual activity between young people. We need to shift our thinking, mind-sets and beliefs to provide space and opportunity for girls to grow and make their own life choices.

Children should be exposed to untraditional gender norms, so they do not automatically adopt those of their parents’ generation. Girls and boys should learn about sexuality and reproductive rights in a way that empowers them to make safe and consensual choices.

Girls should be allowed dreams that go beyond marriage, and it should not be promoted as an ultimate destination for girls. The institutional features of marriage are accountable for 23% of married women experiencing domestic violence. We cannot make such high rates of failure the end destination for our girls.

Awareness alone will not be enough to break entrenched feudal and patriarchal mind-sets of both of men and women. Better education alone will not change these harmful practices. Sexuality of adolescent girls and boys needs to be better understood and accepted. Parents should support, not hinder, that journey.

Karuna Onta, PhD, is the Social Development Advisor at the British Embassy in Kathmandu.

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

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Categories: Africa

Reclaiming Africa’s Early Post-independence History

Thu, 10/29/2020 - 10:20

Mausoleum of Kwame Nkrumah, First President of Ghana (Accra). Credit: Greg Neate, Flickr

By Adebayo Olukoshi, Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei, Aishu Balaji and Anita Nayar
ACCRA, Ghana, Oct 29 2020 (IPS)

In 1965, Kwame Nkrumah described the paradox of neocolonialism in Africa, in which “the soil continue[s] to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa’s impoverishment.” He captured what continues to be an essential feature of Africa’s political economy.

Enforced through neoliberalism in the contemporary period, many African states remain dependent on exporting primary commodities to enrich the global North, with their domestic policy constrained by unequal aid, trade, and investment regimes, and what is now, after almost four decades of structural adjustment, an almost permanent state of austerity.

Despite its manifest failures, neoliberalism continues to dominate policy making on the continent, bolstered by an ideological onslaught and a conditionality regime that has stifled any space to imagine and pursue alternatives. African governments in the immediate post-independence period challenged the neocolonial exploitation of the continent.

Whatever their ideological inclinations, governments saw the key task of their time as securing their political and economic agency by breaking out of their subordinate place in the global economic order and imagining a new one. In contrast with the contemporary externalization of policymaking, they responded creatively to the material interests of the majority of ordinary peoples.

The state sponsored and/or established industries; provided universal education to foster skills necessary for transforming the economy; built social infrastructure to ease reproductive labor; delinked from colonial currencies; made resources available for domestic producers and women through developmentalist central bank policies; worked to diversify revenue sources; and built regional solidarity.

The post-independence project was undermined and derailed by the active efforts of North governments including their former colonizers. They disrupted African governments through assassination attempts and coups, and opportunistically seized on the 1980s commodity crash that devastated African economies, compelling them to accept World Bank/International Monetary Fund (WB/IMF) loans conditional on liberalization, austerity, and privatization.

Four decades later, the ideological dominance of neoliberalism is profound. Spaces of progressive thought and learning have been fragmented, knowledge production has been monopolized by the free market logic, and tendentious mis-readings of the post-independence period as ideological, statist, and inefficient abound, facilitating a sense best summed up by the Thatcherite pronouncement that “there is no alternative.”

Recasting post-independence policies

Three widespread mis-readings of the post-independence period were wielded to push structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and continue to underpin the neoliberal hegemony in Africa.

Firstly, the WB/IMF and North governments cast post-independence leaders as excessively ideological in order to discredit the entire experience. In reality, however, while there was an ideological ferment, the range of policies adopted by African governments to assert economic sovereignty were similar across the ideological spectrum.

Capitalist oriented Kenya, socialist humanist Zambia, scientific socialist Ghana, Negritudist Senegal, and Houphouet-Boigny’s Côte d’Ivoire (then the Ivory Coast) constructed a central role for the state in post-colonial social and economic transformation, often driven by the collective ethos of meeting society’s needs in the absence of any significant local private capitalist class and the levels of investment necessary for transformation.

This often translated to the creation of state-owned enterprises and heavy investment in human capital; interventionist fiscal and monetary policies; and a uniform (if ultimately inconsistent) commitment to import substitution industrialization.

The false homogenization of the post-independence development project as a failure of ideology has allowed neoliberalism to be positioned as an ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ remedy to this period rather than an ideology itself, liable to contestation.

Secondly, the strong role of the state in post-independence development policy has been blamed for Africa’s development problems and used to justify the installation of the market as the solution, laying the basis for large-scale privatization and deregulation. In reality, however, all post-independence economies were largely market-oriented with key sectors dominated by foreign capital, serving as a continuation of colonial patterns.

Post-independence governments did, however, set out to regulate foreign capital through, for example, nationalizing strategic industries and capital controls. Ultimately, the failure to curtail the dominance of foreign capital, continued dependence on primary commodity export, and the vagaries of the global economic system worked to undermine the post-independence development project.

This reality has been obscured to scapegoat state intervention, justifying the further encroachment of foreign capital and continued integration into an unequal global economic order. Thandika Mkandawire and Charles Soludo outlined the hypocrisy of this narrative, noting that the post-independence project was not outside the dominant policy orientation globally.

Post-depression, Europe was being reconstructed through massive state-driven intervention, and the Marshall Plan led by the United States was far from a market driven exercise. As Ha-Joon Chang has noted, the delegitimization of the state as a development actor in Africa denied the continent the very policy instruments used by the North to develop.

Finally, the myth of weak and inefficient institutions in the post-independence period underpinned efforts to dismantle the state and its role in the economy and social provisioning.

This misrepresents what was a uniquely consistent policy period on the continent, in which there was stable tariff policy and taxation, and public development plans and budgets. Mkandawire and Soludo suggest neoliberal actors like the WB/IMF simply failed to understand the multiple roles of institutions in the post-independence period: rural post offices were also savings banks and meeting places for the community, the Cocoa Marketing Board in Ghana also raised money to fund education.

As such, when they were dismantled and replaced with standardized, monotasked institutions during structural adjustment, it ripped the social fabric that was integral to the post-independence agenda. For example, after the state-run Cocoa Marketing Board was dismantled, universities were forced to raise funds privately, and those donors over time reshaped and de-politicized the curriculum.

The resulting sense of dislocation, alienation, and commodification has undermined the deep efforts of post-independence governments to foster socio-economic inclusion.

The post-independence period had a range of limitations, critically related to the failure to adequately address gender imbalances, enable independent workers and peasants movements, or build strong decentralized systems of local governance.

However, when compared to the neoliberal era, there was inspiring clarity around the goal of structural transformation and a wealth of policy efforts aimed at transforming the neocolonial patterns that still grip the continent.

The questions post-independence governments asked, to which the policies were formulated as answers, were all but ignored by neoliberalism. It is, therefore, of value for Africans to go beyond the persistent narratives that serve to bolster neoliberalism, and reassert Africa’s experiences in this period as an anchor for development alternatives.

Republished from Africa is a Country under a creative commons license. This article comes out of Post-Colonialisms Today, a research and advocacy project of activist-intellectuals on the continent recapturing progressive thought and policies from early post-independence Africa to address contemporary development challenges. Sign up for PCT updates here.

The post Reclaiming Africa’s Early Post-independence History appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Adebayo Olukoshi is Director for Africa and West Asia at International IDEA and on the advisory committee for Post-Colonialisms Today; Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei is Head of Programs at Third World Network-Africa and on the Post-Colonialisms Today Working Group; Aishu Balaji is a Coordinator at Regions Refocus and part of the Post-Colonialisms Today secretariat; and Anita Nayar is Director of Regions Refocus and part of the Post-Colonialisms Today secretariat.

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Categories: Africa

Distributed Generation Provides Hope of Energy for the Poor in Brazil

Wed, 10/28/2020 - 20:46

A hotel in Xanxerê, in the western part of the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, took advantage of its rooftops to generate its own solar energy and save on electricity costs. Similar initiatives have taken place in other states of the country, such as the northeastern state of Paraíba, where solar power self-generation facilities are mushrooming in the capital, Sousa. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RÍO DE JANEIRO, Oct 28 2020 (IPS)

“Showing solidarity is consuming the energy generated in your own municipality” – this is the motto of a project of distributed electricity generation in one of Brazil’s many poor neighbourhoods.

“Sertão (the word for the country’s semiarid hinterland) with solidarity” is how the director of the Brazilian Association of Distributed Generation (ABGD) in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, Walter Abreu, named the project. The organisation promotes solar energy in the north of that state, where 1.5 million of the state’s 2.7 million people live in poverty and half of these in extreme poverty.

If local governments were to decide to use solar panels to generate the electricity consumed by their offices and other facilities, this would represent significant savings in public spending and incomes comparable to a minimum wage (about 200 dollars per month) for 3,500 families, estimated Abreu in an interview with Solar TV, a channel that advocates the use of solar power.

Another estimate he provided is that increasing the proportion of solar energy in the national electricity grid to five percent could lift out of poverty two million people in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast, a region of 27 million people that experienced its longest drought between 2011 and 2018.

Distributed or decentralised generation is seen as an important means of giving a social boost to poor or energy-poor communities in different parts of this country, where 23.7 million people out of a total population of 212 million live in poverty.

The expansion of decentralised generation is part of a broader transition in several sectors, such as decarbonisation in response to requirements for combating climate change, the breakdown of monopolies and empowerment of consumers to become “prosumers” – both producers and consumers at the same time.

Carlos Evangelista, president of the Brazilian Association of Distributed Generation, explained to IPS that Brazil already has more than 400,000 “prosumer” plants for electricity from renewable sources, mainly solar. The growth and diversification of this type of generation is part of a global trend. CREDIT: Courtesy of ABGD

In this process, solar energy plays a leading role, “as the source that is growing the fastest and generating the most jobs,” Carlos Evangelista, president of ABGD, told IPS by phone from São Paulo.

In addition, 57 percent of these jobs in Brazil arise from the installation of the solar power systems, i.e., they are local, not distant or foreign, such as jobs involved in the manufacture and sales of the equipment, he pointed out.

The isolated solar energy systems in many communities in the Amazon rainforest, far from the electricity grid, produce perhaps the most outstanding effects.

They are used to pump water and to run refrigerators to preserve fish, the main local source of protein, other foods and exportable forest products, such as açaí, the fruit of a palm tree of the same name (Euterpe oleracea).

In general, scattered villages and hamlets in the jungle have diesel or gasoline generators, which only operate a few hours at night, due to the high cost of fuel and its scarcity. Fuel takes days to bring in by river boat.

ABGD, with support from the U.S.-based Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, promotes policies and projects together with more than sixty municipalities in the Amazon jungle in northern Brazil, with the aim of “mobilising resources for an economy that makes the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, and solar energy is one of the solutions,” said Evangelista.

“Four projects were completed in the Purus River basin,” with the installation of micro solar plants and the training of local technicians for the installation and maintenance of the equipment, the involvement of local leaders and the community, in order to “create a self-propelled economic ecosystem,” he said.

The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the activities of the two-year project, but ABGD’s new director of sustainability and social action, Lucia Abadia, announced for the near future the larger “Divine Light” project, which would create 150 community micro solar plants.

This housing complex for a thousand poor families in Juazeiro, in the Northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, was built at the beginning of the last decade with 9,144 solar panels to generate electricity for self-consumption and sell the surplus. In 2016, the monthly payment of about 18 dollars to each resident was suspended because the project did not meet all the requirements for distributed generation. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

“The people in the Amazon need energy for their daily tasks and for starting businesses, producing, freezing and storing food, and thus living better while preserving the forests, without burning firewood,” she told IPS from Paulinia, 120 km from São Paulo.

Abadia “discovered” solar energy in her previous business activity, construction, when she was looking for solutions to develop “smart neighborhoods”, where she wanted to incorporate energy alternatives.

She then joined a solar system installation company which led her to ABGD, where she became director of sustainability, an unremunerated volunteer position.

In the Amazon, there are still 990,000 Brazilians without electricity, including indigenous people on reservations, riverbank dwellers, small farmers and people who live in environmental conservation areas, according to a study by the non-governmental Institute of Energy and Environment, in São Paulo.

In order to mobilise municipal authorities, the private sector and community leaders, ABGD is preparing a manual on public policies for the Amazon, which details the potential of distributed generation to bolster the local economy by generating jobs and social improvements.

Evangelista said: “We want to bring information to the local governments, about national and state public policies with which authorities in the interior are sometimes unfamiliar, such as the possibility of stimulating local energy generation with measures like tax reduction.”

It’s a process of transition, of a change in mentality that requires planning and takes time, he said. Many apparently well-designed projects have failed in the Amazon because they did not take into account local specificities, he added.

Lucia Abadia, director of sustainability in the Brazilian Association of Distributed Generation and executive director of Yellow Energía Solar, aims to promote 150 micro solar plants in remote communities in the Amazon rainforest, to improve the quality of life for local residents and boost local development. CREDIT: Courtesy of ABGD

There are also embedded interests, such as the fuel business.

“I received death threats for going against the diesel fuel distribution chain,” said Evangelista, an engineer whose interest in distributed generation was awakened when he had to secure power for telecommunication antennas while working for a transnational company.

In 2015 he founded ABGD with the participation of 14 companies from the power industry, involved in various services, production or sources. Today there are more than 800 associates.

The government also took a new stance on the energy exclusion experienced by many communities in the Amazon. In February, it launched the “More Light for the Amazon” programme, but with a limited goal of bringing solar energy to 70,000 families (a total of some 300,000 people).

But decentralised electricity generation as a factor in local social and economic development is also a concern in the Northeast, another poor region of Brazil.

“The Northeast concentrates 65 percent of the installed capacity of centralised solar energy, but only 18 percent of distributed generation,” said Daniel Lima, president of the Northeast Association of Solar Energy (Anesolar), founded in August, and director of the solar energy company RDSol.

“The state of Minas Gerais installed more power in solar distributed generation than the nine states of the Northeast,” he noted.

The difference lies in the tax exemption that Minas Gerais has been offering for the past five years, an initiative only followed by the state of Rio de Janeiro, starting in July of this year. Anesolar will demand that the governments of the Northeastern states adopt a similar measure.

Centralised generation, generally on solar farms, grew a great deal because of the low price of land in the Northeast, compared to other regions, Lima explained. The difficulty that consumers run into with regard to finding financing is another barrier to their becoming “prosumers”, he added.

Even so, there are cases of successful projects, such as that of the Cabedelo School of Medicine, in the state of Paraíba, which took advantage of its parking lot with 300 parking spaces and covered it with solar panels. The energy generated allowed it to save 90 percent of its electrical expenses – about 11,000 dollars per month.

The major incentive for people to become prosumers is the unsustainable increase in the price of electricity, which for more than a decade has been rising more than inflation, the result of subsidies to various sectors and activities whose cost is charged to energy consumers, Lima said by telephone from a town in Alagoas, a neighbouring state where he has been living during the COVID-19 crisis.

There is still very little distributed generation in Brazil, but it is growing rapidly. It rose twofold from one to two gigawatts between June and December 2019 and reached three GW in May 2020, according to the Energy Research Company, a planning body under the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

Integration and Development Brazilian-Style – More IPS Coverage

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Categories: Africa

Cultivating an Eco-friendly Culture in Indonesia’s Schools

Wed, 10/28/2020 - 20:05

Students at the Santo Markus I Elementary School in East Jakarta, Indonesia, learn how to plant medicinal herbs as part of their green programme. Courtesy Ruben Kharisma

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Oct 28 2020 (IPS)

In West Jakarta, Indonesia, teachers at the private Santo Kristoforus High School are so environmentally conscious they make other schools seem a little bit green when it comes to environmental education.

“We integrate environmental issues into science, especially natural science subjects. At school we teach them to conserve water and electricity. And since we don’t have a designated area for students to grow and learn about plants, we organise field trips to botanical gardens in the capital Jakarta and surrounding towns,” teacher Senobius Santi told IPS.

Santo Markus I, a private elementary school in East Jakarta, Indonesia, also has a green vision. Since it opened in 2006, the science and homeroom teachers have been integrating environmental issues into their classes and designing extracurricular activities aimed at teaching students to care for the environment.

“We usually ask our students to bring medicinal herbs to be planted in what we call family garden under the guidance of their teachers. We homeroom teachers meet every two months to evaluate the programme,” teacher Ruben Kharisma told IPS.

He explained that the school’s green programme is not limited to planting medicinal herbs.

“We also teach our students environmental cleanliness, including disposing of trash at designated bins and keeping a roaster of students cleaning classrooms after school hours.”

Both schools could be candidates for the country’s Adiwiyata award, which is given to elementary, junior high, and senior high schools that have integrated environmental issues into their education system, including extracurricular activities.

The Ministry of Environment and Forestry introduced the award in 2006, with the aim to develop environmentally-conscious school that are able to participate and contribute to efforts for conservation and sustainable development. The award has four indicators that include; an environment-based school policy, an environment-based curriculum, participatory environmental activities, and environmentally-friendly supporting facilities.

Indonesia has been listed among the world’s biggest polluters, producing a total of 2.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2015. In 2016, the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions went down to 1.46 million metric tons and fell down further to 1.15 million metric tons in 2017, according to Indonesia’s Statistics Agency.

Land-use change and forestry contributed at least 65.5 percent of GHG emissions, followed by the energy sector at 22.6 percent, and agriculture at 7.4 percent.

A 2018 study by Greenpeace and AirVisual IQ showed that Jakarta ranked first in Southeast Asia for the worst air quality and that Jakarta, along with Hanoi, was one of Southeast Asia’s two-most polluted cities.

In 2009, the country pledged in its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution to the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce GHG emissions by 29 percent below the business as usual level by 2030, and by 41 percent with international support.

But Prof. Arief Rachman, Executive Chairman of the Indonesian National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and Ministry of Education and Culture official, said the Adiwiyata campaign would help government efforts to reduce the country’s GHG emissions.

“Indeed, the green campaign would not bring immediate results, but we are on the right track. We have to cultivate environmental awareness among the country’s young generations if we want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,” Rahman told IPS.

“We have around 51 million students from the elementary to senior high school level and 2.7 million teachers, it takes time to mobilise all of them. But I believe we are on the right track. We have to educate our young students to care for the environment and cultivate a nature-loving culture and environment in the school compound,” Rachman said.

According to Rachman, the Adiwiyata programme focuses on climate change education and accommodates UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development criteria of “student participation, community involvement, varied learning methods, local excellence-based learning, and proactive actions”.

“The Adiwiyata programme is built on two basic principles of participation and sustainability. Participation means school communities are actively involved in school management from planning, implementation, and evaluation based on their role and responsibility, while sustainability means all school activities should be well planned continuously and comprehensively,” he said in a recent regional webinar hosted by UNESCO Jakarta Office.

Asri Tresnawati, an official from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, told IPS that between 2006 until 2019, the ministry has given national green awards to 3,477 schools.

However, this year the green award was scrapped due to the on-going coronavirus pandemic that has killed 13,612 people out of 400,483 confirmed cases in the country, according to Johns Hopkins.

Experts expect the coronavirus pandemic will reduce Indonesia’s 2020 emissions by between two to six percent compared to 2019, mainly due to a decrease in household consumption, a slowdown in investments, and a fall in coal and palm oil exports.

Ananto K. Seta, Education for Sustainable Development Coordinator at the Indonesian National Commission for UNESCO, said the current COVID-19 pandemic presented a challenge for education. According to Seta, over 50 million students in Indonesia are temporarily out of school due to COVID-19.

“The biggest challenges that students face while learning at home is the lack of internet access and electronic devices, lack of teachers’ ability to deliver (online) the education curriculum, and lack of parents’ ability to accompany their children for learning at home,” he told a recent webinar.

The green programmes run by Santo Markus I and Santo Kristoforus High School are obviously hard to continue in their entirety with pupils learning from home.

But Tresnawati, from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, told IPS the COVID-19 pandemic was a learning opportunity about the strong relation between human health and environmental sustainability.

“When the environment is destroyed or contaminated, new diseases will appear. The COVID-19 pandemic also wakes us up to the reality that we have to take care of the environment just as we take care of ourselves,” Tresnawati said.

But until schools reopen, students will have to learn this lesson from home.

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Categories: Africa

Climate Friendly Travel and Tourism

Wed, 10/28/2020 - 18:20

By Hans Friederich
GOZO, Malta, Oct 28 2020 (IPS-Partners)

SUNx Malta, a not-for-profit organization, based in Malta is advancing and enabling “Climate Friendly Travel” which is tourism and travel that is Low-Carbon and linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and follows the Paris Agreement 1.5 degree trajectory.

Hans Friederich

Together with the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the 2019 Global Climate Action State of the Sector Report produced by SUN Malta noted the limited engagement of travel & tourism stakeholders in the global climate discussions, although the sector is responsible for 10% of global GDP.

While there are many hopeful statements, there is not much substance in many of the ambitions of the sector. To fill this gap, SUNx Malta brought together a think tank of international experts in travel and tourism in early 2020 to discuss how best to effect transformation to climate friendly travel. My report on the meeting can be accessed here:https://hansfriederich.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/the-existential-climate-crisis-requires-even-more-urgent-action-by-the-entire-global-travel-tourism-sector-than-has-been-generally-recognized-to-date/.

The findings of the report embraced a wide range of issues, one of the identified priorities being education of the next generation of travel and tourism practitioners. As a response, SUNx Malta has started an international Climate Friendly Travel Graduate Diploma with the Institute for Tourism Studies (ITS) in Malta. The 2020/2021 course is delivered through the internet, in the face of the COVID 19 travel restrictions. It is hoped that in the coming years students will be on site in the ITS Campus on the island of Gozo, Malta. Most of the current students come from Small Island States and from the African continent. It is expected that they will return to their current employers and become trainers in their own right. This will eventually create a world-wide group of 100,000 Travel and Tourism Climate Champions by 2030.

SUNx Malta has also created a global Registry for 2050 Climate Neutral and Sustainability Ambitions to be the travel & tourism entry point into the United Nations Climate Action Portal. The idea of a climate reduction ambitions registry for Nations was built into the 2015 Paris Agreement and this was extended to non-state actors like regions, cities and companies. After we realized the limited engagement of travel & tourism stakeholders, we reached agreement with the Climate Change Convention to create a discreet travel and tourism climate change ambitions registry. The Climate Friendly Travel Registry was launched on 25 September during the climate week that formed part of the 2020 United Nations General Assembly programme. With effect from 1 October 2020, I have the honor of being the Registrar of this new Registry.

As a catalyst, the Registry will be open to all travel & tourism companies and communities, whether or not they have created a 2050 Carbon Neutral Ambition yet. It will cover transport, hospitality, travel service and infrastructure providers – from the smallest to the largest.

Registrants who are still developing their carbon reduction strategy will have two years to benefit from on-line knowledge and support systems. Those who have already embarked on a 2050 Plan will be able to readily incorporate those details in the Registry, with little or no extra work. They can cross-reference any other mainstream carbon reduction initiative they are already involved with, as the SUNx MaltaRegistry is complementary to such other initiatives.

As the new Registrar, I think there are four very compelling reasons for a tourism company or community to register their carbon reduction ambitions:

Responsively

Recording the plans on the Registry is a way to show the good intentions

Economically

registration can be used for branding and advertising purposes

Politically

Our register is the only official registry for tourism and travel that is recognized by the Convention

Strategically

Registering your ambitions now will put you in a stronger position to have a full plan when it becomes a legal obligation

I hope that many small and large tourism and travel companies and communities will sign up to show their commitment to climate action, and to highlight their particular ambitions.

For more information about the Registry, go to: https://climatefriendly.travel/
More information about the Diploma course is available here: https://its.edu.mt/courses-admission/32-courses-admission/468-diploma-in-climate-friendly-travel.html
A report of the launch is available here: https://travelcommunication.net/featured/sunx-malta-launches-climate-friendly-travel-registry/.

The author is a member of the Board of SUNx Malta

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Categories: Africa

$280m ‘Dark Money’ Spent by US Christian Right Groups Globally

Wed, 10/28/2020 - 13:34

Groups linked to the Trump administration have poured at least $270m into activities globally. Graphic: Paul Hamilton/openDemocracy

By Claire Provost and Nandini Archer
LONDON, Oct 28 2020 (IPS)

US Christian right groups, many with close links to the Trump administration, have spent at least $280m in ‘dark money’ fuelling campaigns against the rights of women and LGBTIQ people across five continents, openDemocracy can reveal today.

Today openDemocracy has released the first-ever dataset detailing the global scale of this spending. Human rights advocates and transparency campaigners from around the world have called it “alarming”, and a “wake-up call” for democracies.

None of the Christian right groups we studied reveals who its donors are, or discloses details of how exactly it spends its money overseas.

“This is a form of interference in our political and judicial system which is as harmful to human rights as Russian meddling in democratic elections,” said Neil Datta, head of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF), which includes dozens of MEPs and national MPs from across Europe.

Organisations led by some of Donald Trump’s most vocal allies and supporters have spent increasing amounts of money globally to influence foreign laws, policies and public opinion in order “to stir a backlash” against sexual and reproductive rights

Irene Donadio at the International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network (IPPF EN) said there has been a clear increase in campaigns against reproductive and sexual rights across the region, and described the scale of the funding revealed by openDemocracy today as “staggering”.

She added: “It is outrageous that groups that are playing with women’s lives and safety are allowed to operate in the darkness. They should be forced to comply with the basic principles of transparency and accountability.”

Trump-linked dark money

Each of the US groups openDemocracy examined is registered as a tax-exempt non-profit and as such is barred from participating in partisan political activity.

However, several of them, including the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) – which is run by Trump’s personal lawyer Jay Sekulow – have vocally supported Trump’s administration and his Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Last year, openDemocracy uncovered how a dozen US Christian right ‘fundamentalist’ groups, many with links to the Trump administration and to Steve Bannon, had poured at least $50 million of dark money into Europe over a decade.

openDemocracy’s latest dataset is the most comprehensive yet, following examination of thousands of pages of financial records since 2007 from 28 US groups. According to this data, these organisations spent more money in Europe (almost $90 million) than anywhere else outside the US, followed by Africa and Asia.

This European spending has been led mainly by two groups that focus their fights on the courts. One of these is the ACLJ organisation headed by Trump’s personal lawyer Jay Sekulow who, along with Rudy Giuliani, will be coordinating any legal challenges brought by Trump to the result of the US election on 3 November.

Another half-dozen ACLJ lawyers were also part of Trump’s defence team in impeachment proceedings earlier this year.

The ACLJ’s European branch (the ECLJ) has intervened in two cases to defend Italy’s position against gay marriage. It has also intervened in at least seven cases involving Poland, including at the European Court of Human Rights, to defend that country’s conservative policies including against divorce and abortion.

Last week, Poland’s constitutional court voted to restrict access to abortion in cases of fatal foetal anomalies. Sekulow’s group submitted arguments in favour of the new restrictions.

A second US conservative legal group involved in such cases is Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Based in a small town in Arizona, it is also closely linked to the Trump administration through former staffers and frequent meetings.

ADF went to the US Supreme Court last year to defend non-profit donor secrecy. The case is still ongoing. Its few known funders include the family foundations of Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, which are also major Republican party donors.

Financial secrecy

The full extent of US religious right funding for global activities is hidden, given that many Christian conservative organisations are registered as church organisations that do not have to disclose any of this information.

For some groups in openDemocracy’s data – notably the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association – US financial filings are only available for a small number of years. This group re-registered as an association of churches in 2015.

Sekulow has come under scrutiny over his financial practices since the 1980s when he was a tax lawyer specialised in creating tax shelters for Atlanta’s elite.

Earlier this year, the Associated Press revealed that Sekulow’s groups, including the ACLJ, had paid more than $65 million in charitable funds to Sekulow, his family members and corporations they own, fuelling a well-documented opulent lifestyle including expensive cars and high-end real estate.

In 2018 alone, the ACLJ spent $6 million on legal services provided by the CLA Group, a for-profit law firm in which Sekulow holds a 50% stake. This is the same firm that is understood to be contracted by Trump. It only has a mailbox address, however, and Sekulow is believed to do his work for Trump from the ACLJ’s offices.

American Institute of Philanthropy president Daniel Borochoff has said: “Regulators should investigate whether or not charitable resources, such as office, labor, equipment, etc, are being wrongly utilised to benefit Sekulow’s for-profit law firm.”

The US website Charity Navigator, which rates non-profits, has attached an orange “moderate concern” label to its entry for the ACLJ because of “atypical financial reporting issues”. These include millions of dollars that the ACLJ has paid over the years to Sekulow’s for-profit legal firm.

Global outcry

Several of these US Christian right groups have also been linked to COVID-19 misinformation. The anti-abortion Population Research Institute (PRI), for example, is led by an ultra-conservative activist who claims COVID-19 was man-made in a Chinese lab, and also sits on an anti-China lobby group with Steve Bannon.

Another group, Family Watch International (FWI), has been training African politicians, religious and civil society leaders for years to oppose comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) and LGBT rights across the African continent.

UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima, from Uganda, told openDemocracy that “CSE is an integral part of the right to education and to health. It is not optional. It is not negotiable.”

South African gender rights group The Other Foundation also said that it has witnessed how US religious right funding has been used to “stir a backlash to the pursuits for freedom, dignity and equality of LGBTIQ people”.

It said, “the government has a duty to frown upon and act against any agenda that undermines its country’s constitution”, which in South Africa forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Alejandra Cárdenas, director of global legal strategies at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said openDemocracy’s 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”.

The EPF’s Neil Datta said: “As Europeans, we cannot sit back and watch what’s happening in the US with distance, thinking that the erosion of democratic norms and human rights cannot happen here. The same US Christian groups pushing for this in the US are now spending millions in Europe trying to achieve the same over here.”

Croatian MP Bojan Glavasevic, a member of EPF’s executive committee, said openDemocracy’s revelations show “that action needs to be taken by member states to ensure full protection of EU citizens against predatory organisations. This isn’t a question of ideology. This is a question of security, the health of our citizens and transparency”.

“It’s time for the world to wake up. Do not stumble into our mistakes and do not think it could not happen where you live,” said Quinn Mckew, director of Article 19 (an NGO focused on freedom on expression and information), about the rising influence of dark money in US politics. She attributed this to “a long-standing process to erode accountability and transparency”.

“It was inevitable that these individuals, powering these organisations, would seek to internationalise their influence,” she added. Action is now needed to increase “financial transparency, shining light on these groups’ sources of funding”.

“It is the duty of governments to ensure that women’s rights are not eroded through misinformation and ideologically motivated campaigns,” said Melissa Upreti, member of the UN working group on tackling discrimination against women. “There are real-life and often dangerous consequences for women as a result.”

Neither the ACLJ, PRI or FWI responded to openDemocracy requests for comment.

ADF did not answer openDemocracy’s questions about its spending, but said that it is “among the largest and most effective legal advocacy organisations dedicated to protecting the religious freedom and free speech rights of all Americans”.

This story was originally published by openDemocracy

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Categories: Africa

Global Data Community’s Response to COVID-19

Wed, 10/28/2020 - 12:02

Data Community's Response to Covid-10. Credit: UNWDF Secretariat, UN Statistics Division

By Francesca Perucci
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 28 2020 (IPS)

The world is currently counting more than 42 million confirmed cases of the COVID-19 and over 1 million deaths since the start of the pandemic.1

The first quarter of 2020 saw a loss equivalent to 155 million full-time jobs in the global economy, a number that increased to 495 million jobs in the second quarter, with lower- and middle-income countries hardest hit.2

The pandemic is pushing an additional 71 to 100 million people into extreme poverty and, in only a brief period of time, has reversed years of progress on poverty, hunger, health care and education, disrupting efforts to realize the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.3

While the virus has impacted everyone, it has affected the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people the most.

The pandemic has also demonstrated that timely, reliable and disaggregated data is a critical tool for governments to contain the pandemic and mitigate its impacts.

In addition, data on the social and economic impact have been essential to develop support programmes to reach those in need and start planning for a recovery that leads to a safer, more equal, inclusive and sustainable world for all.

Data and statistics are more urgently needed than ever before. While many countries are finding innovative ways to better data, statistical operations have been significantly disrupted by the pandemic.

According to a survey conducted in May 2020, 96 per cent of national statistical offices partially or fully stopped face-to-face data collection at the height of the pandemic.4

Francesca Perucci, UN Statistics Division. Credit: IISD/EBN | Kiara Worth

Approximately 150 censuses are expected to be conducted in 2020-2021 alone, a historical record. Yet, to address the urgent issues brought by the pandemic, some countries have diverted their census funding to national emergency funding.5

Seventy-seven out of 155 countries monitored for Covid-19 do not have adequate poverty data, although there have been clear improvements in the last decade.6

Behind these numbers there is a tremendous human cost. Despite an increasing awareness of the importance of data for evidence–based policymaking and development, data gaps remain significant in most countries, particularly in the ones with fewer resources.

In addition, the lack of sound disaggregated data for vulnerable groups, such as persons with disabilities, older persons, indigenous peoples, migrants and others, exacerbates their vulnerabilities by masking the extent of deprivation and disparities and making them invisible when designing policies and critical measures.

The 2030 Agenda, with the principle of “leaving no-one behind” at its heart, underlines the need for new approaches and tools to respond to an unprecedented demand for high quality, timely and disaggregated data.

The UN World Data Forum

The UN World Data Forum was established as a response to the increased data demands of the 2030 agenda and as a space for different data communities to come together and find the best data solutions leveraging new technology, innovation, private sector and civil society’s contributions and wider users’ engagement.

The first and second World Data Forums in Cape Town and Dubai resulted in the Cape Town Global Action Plan for Sustainable Development Data and the Dubai Declaration.

These two forums addressed the new approaches required to the production and use of data and statistics not only by official statistical systems, but across broader data ecosystems where players from academia, civil society and the private sector play an increasingly important role.

This year, the UN World Data Forum, initially to take place in Bern, Switzerland, was held on a virtual platform because of the pandemic.

The virtual event allowed for a very broad and inclusive participation, with over 10,000 participants from 180 countries to showcase their answers to the challenges posted by the COVID-19 crisis, share their latest experiences and innovations, and renew the call for intensified efforts and political commitments to meet the data demands of the COVID-19 crisis and for delivering on the sustainable development Goals (SDGs) while also addressing trust in data, privacy and governance.

The programme of the Forum included three high-level plenaries on leaving no one behind, on data use and on trust in data. Together and under one virtual roof, the forum launched the Global Data Community’s response to COVID 19 – Data for a changing world.

This is a call for increased support for data use during COVID-19, focusing on the immediate needs related to the pandemic and for increased political and financial support for data throughout the COVID 19 pandemic and beyond.

Showcased in 70 live-streamed, 30 pre-recorded sessions and 20 virtual exhibit spaces, many innovative solutions to the data challenges of the 2030 Agenda were proposed and partnerships were formed, including:

The next World Data Forum is scheduled to take place from 3 to 6 October 2021 in Bern, Switzerland, hosted by the Federal Statistical Office and the United Nations.

What next?

The Covid-19 pandemic has sadly confirmed that without timely, trusted, disaggregated data there cannot be an adequate response to the many challenges of dealing with the crisis and ensuring a sustainable, inclusive and better future for all.

Clearly, the time is now to recognize that we need data for a changing world. The time is now to accelerate action on the implementation of the Cape Town Global Action Plan and the Dubai declaration to respond more effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic and to put us back on track towards the achievement of the SDGs and to build stronger and more agile and resilient statistical and data systems to respond to future disasters.

World leaders need to recognize that increased investments are more urgently needed than ever to address the data gap and to close the digital divide and data inequality across the world.

To ensure the political commitment and donor support necessary to prioritize data and statistics, it is critical that the data community is able to demonstrate the impact and value of data.

The UN World Data Forum will continue to strive towards these objectives. It will also remain the space for knowledge sharing and launching new initiatives and collaborations for the integration of new data sources into official statistical systems and for promoting users’ engagement and a better use of data for policy and decision-making.

1 WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard
2 ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work. Sixth edition
3 United Nations, The Sustainable Development Goals, Report 2020
4 United Nations Statistics Division, COVID-19 widens gulf of global data inequality, while national statistical offices step up to meet new data demands, 5 June 2020. https://covid-19-response.unstatshub.org/statistical-programmes/covid19-nso-survey/
5 PARIS21 Partner Report on Support to Statistics 2020
6 The World Bank

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Excerpt:

Francesca Perucci is Chief, Development Data and Outreach Branch at the United Nations

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Categories: Africa

The Mental Health Consequences of the Lekki Toll Gate Attack

Wed, 10/28/2020 - 11:12

Protesters hold up their placards in front of the Lagos State House. Credit: TobiJamesCandids/Wikimedia Commons.

By Ifeanyi Nsofor
ABUJA, Oct 28 2020 (IPS)

On October 20, 2020, young Nigerians who were protesting against police brutality were shot by men in Nigerian military uniforms. Unarmed, peaceful citizens were massacred at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, southwest Nigeria.

The Governor of Lagos state, Jide Sanwo-Olu earlier in the day had announced a 24-hour curfew to curb violence that erupted following the #EndSARS Campaign. SARS is Special Anti-Robbery Squad, established in 1984 to combat armed robbery which was rife then. However, SARS has been on a killing spree of young Nigerians. Protesters are demanding for the disbanding of SARS, prosecution of indicted officers and total reform of the Nigerian Police Force.

I do not know how long this campaign against police brutality will last. However, one thing I am sure of is the mental health consequences of the pre-meditated massacre of young Nigerians at the Lekki Toll Gate will be with us for a long time

Governor Sanwo-Olu’s announcement for curfew to begin at 4pm was made at 11:49am on the same day. This meant that a city of more than 20 million people was somehow supposed to magically beat the notorious Lagos traffic, get off the streets and be at home within 4 hours. I do not live in Lagos. However, I am aware of the confusion that arose as residents scampered home. My sister-in-law drove through the Lagos traffic from Apapa to Ojuelegba to make sure she was home for her three daughters aged 7 years and below.

There were complaints on social media about the short time available for people to get home before the curfew began. Human rights advocates urged residents to do everything possible to obey the directives. However, it is understandable that not all would be able to. Some peaceful protesters stayed back to continue pushing their message of disbanding SARS, at the Lekki Toll Gate, Lagos.

I followed the protest over Twitter while preparing dinner for my wife and daughters. My wife was tracking it too, and soon she called to me in tears that these peaceful protesters were being shot. Coincidentally, one of Nigeria’s celebrity Disc Jockeys (DJ Switch) was a protester at Lekki Toll Gate and live streamed the shooting.

When I viewed it, it was pure chaos hearing the sounds of multiple gunshots and the screams. It was like a war zone. It was also pitch dark because lights were off at the usually well-lit area. Sadly, these young protesters assumed they would be safe if they sat on the ground while singing Nigeria’s national anthem and waving Nigeria’s flag. It was a fatal assumption.

This experience has negatively affected my mental health. I am completely overwhelmed with feelings of helplessness and apathy. I could not sleep that night. I kept turning and tossing. I was edgy and jumpy for days. For instance, not long after daybreak, I heard loud sounds and I thought they were gunshots. It turned out to be sounds made by masons at a construction site next to my house. A week later, I am still trying to make sense of this massacre.

I am not alone in my reaction to the horrible events. Indeed, there is fear and apprehension in the land. All over social media, Nigerians are sharing how depressed they are by this massacre:

Nigerian public health physician, Dr. Chijioke Kaduru tweeted:

For someone who is used to being angry, and channeling that anger, today feels very different. It’s anger. Heartbreak. A sense of helplessness. And for the first time, doubt. This is 2020.

For someone who is used to being angry, and channeling that anger, today feels very different. It’s anger. Heart break. A sense of helplessness. And for the first time, doubt.

This is 2020.

— Chijioke Kaduru, MD (@cj_kaduru) October 21, 2020

In response to his tweet, my friend and laboratory scientist Celestina Obiekea responded:

Today, I can’t even channel any anger… I’m just numb… and when I think my heart can’t break any more than it has already, it breaks all over again.

For someone who is used to being angry, and channeling that anger, today feels very different. It’s anger. Heart break. A sense of helplessness. And for the first time, doubt.

This is 2020.

— Chijioke Kaduru, MD (@cj_kaduru) October 21, 2020

With such strong emotions, Nigerians are searching for answers and mental health support. I am not surprised that Nigeria’s top mental health advocacy organization, Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (MANI) is inundated by calls and have now extended their usual service hours.

With these increased requests for mental health therapy by Nigerians, my friend and MANI founder, Dr. Victor Ugo sent out this this message for international mental health support volunteers.

Reaching out for help to all my friends in the international #mentalhealth community. We’ve just had the most overwhelming day since Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (MANI) started providing crisis support services in Nigeria, way beyond what we experienced during the months of #COVID19 lockdown. We are very much overwhelmed and need your help. If you have Mental Health and Psychosocial Support experience and can provide remote support, please fill this form. If you aren’t able to help, please do share across your networks.

The mental health services provided by MANI are very important in a country like Nigeria with poor knowledge of mental health and inadequate human resources for mental health. In 2019, EpiAFRIC and Africa Polling Institute conducted the mental health in Nigeria survey that found most people know little about it or how to help.

For instance, 54% say it is caused by evil spirits, and when someone has a mental health illness, 18% say they will take the person to a prayer house. For a country of about 200 million people, Nigeria has only 250 psychiatrists, according to the Association of Psychiatrists of Nigeria. This means that approximately one psychiatrist provides mental health services to 800,000 Nigerians.

Nigerians currently feel like sheep under attack without a shepherd. President Buhari made a national broadcast without acknowledging the massacre at Lekki Toll Gate. Initially, the Lagos State Governor had alluded that those responsible were forces beyond his control. However, at a recent interview, he mentioned that it was indeed the Nigerian military that is responsible for the massacre.

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

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Categories: Africa

The Path to Global Food Security

Tue, 10/27/2020 - 15:12

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, Oct 27 2020 (IPS)

This year, the Nobel Peace Prize recognised the inextricable link between hunger and conflict. With climate change as a further complicating factor, research, investment, and coordination with local farmers are critical for ensuring food security for all.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) was awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for “its efforts to combat hunger” and “bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas.” In a world with over 850 million people who are hungry, a number that has increased because of COVID-19, recognising and awarding a Nobel Prize to an organisation that toils at the frontline of the fight to end hunger is timely.

There are many reasons to celebrate this recognition. First, it brings visibility to the hunger and food insecurity issue. Secondly, it reminds us all that without food security, there is no peace.

For me, a food security activist, a scientist, and a founder of an agricultural start up that is working to ensure small holder farmers on the Kenyan coast achieve food security, the awarding of 2020 Nobel Peace Prize to WFP reignited my drive to continue doing my part to help solve hunger and food insecurity once and for all.

This year alone, I have helped organise over three small holder farmer trainings to share information about climate-smart agricultural technologies that are well adapted to the Kenyan coast. Our farm also serves as a demonstration garden, showcasing different farming techniques.

As a researcher, I continue to work on understanding how plants respond to multiple threats including flooding, drought, and insect attack, and whether beneficial soil microbes can help plants thrive under these climate-linked stress factors.

But as we celebrate, I still wonder if we can achieve food security for all, which means that all people, at all times, have access to enough food). If so, I wonder what we must do to make it happen.

To begin with, we would need to continue to ensure that we have accurate data of the problem. The WFP must be commended for its effort to keep the entire world updated on the status of food insecurity through reports like the annual State of Food report and World Hunger Maps. This must continue.

Complementing that knowledge is the need to know the root causes of hunger and food insecurity. According to UN, climate change, human-made conflict, economic downturns, and more recently, coronavirus are some of the root causes of food insecurity.

Climate-linked causes, particularly, are worth paying attention to. The farmers of many African countries continue to rely on rain-fed agriculture. Because of the changing climate, rainfall has decreased, become erratic, and undependable.

Consequently, farmers are unable to make adequate decisions about the right time to plant, which crops to plant, and how to time, inputs. And even when crops do grow, rains end up failing, leading to low crop yields or no harvests at all. As a result, many farmers are unable meet food security needs.

In addition, many of farmers are farming on nutrient-depleted soils. Degraded soils and dependence on rain-fed agriculture, coupled with planting the wrong crop varieties, are some of the fundamental problems that lead to poor harvests and then to hunger.

Knowing what causes hunger paves the way for governments, NGO’s, universities, research institutions, and private partners to continue implementing initiatives to meet food security targets. Because hunger and food insecurity are a complex issue, multiple solutions must continue to be rolled out. Both short- and long-term solutions are critical now and in the long run.

Short-term solutions must begin with investments to ensure that farmers have access to water and other climate-smart tools and technologies such as drought- and flood-tolerant crop varieties and drip irrigation technologies.

Complementing short-term solutions is a need for demonstration centers where farmers can learn how to use new climate-smart technologies by seeing them at work. These demonstration farms can also serve as research venues to test new methods alongside traditional ones.

This goes a long way in taking risks away from farmers that cannot afford the risk of trying new crop varieties, methods, or technologies.

Importantly, hunger and food insecurity can only be solved if countries where hunger is prevalent take action and prepare concrete plans and strategic documents outlining how they will achieve food security for all, both in the short and long term.

As such, they should come up with detailed, well-thought-out preparedness measures and national contingency plans of action.

At the same time as they invest in food security programs, they must invest in vulnerable groups, including women and children. Women are particularly important, as they produce over 90 percent of food in African countries.

Yet, despite their essential roles in achieving food security, women continue to face many barriers, including having less access to land, agricultural markets, recent innovations in farming technologies, agricultural inputs such as seeds and fertilisers, credit, and training. It is important that they are equipped with the resources they need to continue being on the frontline as food producers.

Long-term solutions must entail improving infrastructure such as electricity, refrigerated transportation, and roads that connect rural areas to urban markets. When rural communities are connected with urban cities, farmers are able to access markets, sell their products, and generate income.

At the same time, there is need to improve agricultural research. In the end, all the challenges presented by climate change, challenges that continue to make achieving food security for all a difficult task, can be solved through research.

For example, efforts to address soil degradation can benefit from research on African soils, including researching the soil microbes that are prevalent in African soils. Armed with research-based evidence, scientists can begin to develop biologically based products that can be used to improve soil and plant health, and ultimately improve yields.

Achieving food security for all is the most pressing and urgent issue of our time. The 2020 Nobel Prize win by the UN WFP should be a wakeup call to all humanity, and should reignite the spark for all stakeholders that care about eradicating hunger. Time is of the essence.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.
Source: Australian Institute of International Affairs

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Excerpt:

Esther Ngumbi is an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana. She is a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute.

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Categories: Africa

Finance Covid-19 Relief and Recovery, Not Debt Buybacks

Tue, 10/27/2020 - 14:36

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 27 2020 (IPS)

In July, the UN Secretary-General warned that a “series of countries in insolvency might trigger a global depression”. Earlier, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had called for a US$2.5 trillion coronavirus crisis package for developing countries.

Anis Chowdhury

Debt distraction
In the face of the world’s worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, a sense of urgency has now spread to most national capitals and the Washington-based Bretton Woods institutions. Unless urgently addressed, the massive economic contractions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and policy responses to contain contagion threaten to become depressions.

Nevertheless, many long preoccupied with developing countries’ debt burdens and excessive debt insist on using scarce fiscal resources, including donor assistance, to reduce government debt, instead of strengthening fiscal measures for adequate and appropriate relief and recovery measures.

Most debt restructuring measures do not address countries’ currently more urgent need to finance adequate and appropriate relief and recovery packages. In the new circumstances, the debt preoccupation, perhaps appropriate previously, has become a problematic distraction, diminishing the ‘fiscal space’ for addressing contagion and its consequences.

Buybacks no solution
One problematic debt distraction is the renewed call for debt buybacks from private creditors, through an IMF-managed Brady Plan-like multilateral bond buyback facility funded by a global consortium of countries. The historical evidence is clear that bond buybacks are no panacea and neither an equitable nor efficient way to reduce sovereign debt.

The contemporary situation is quite different from the one three decades ago when US Treasury Secretary Brady’s plan successfully cut losses for the US commercial banks responsible for most debt to Latin American and other developing country governments. Hence, prospects for a comprehensive arrangement involving all creditors are far more remote now. Unsurprisingly, debt buybacks have been rare since the mid-1990s.

Furthermore, private bond markets have changed significantly from what they were during the Brady era when there was last a comparable effort involving many debtor countries. Importantly, the new creditors largely consist of pension and mutual funds, insurance companies, investment firms and sophisticated individual investors. Also, today’s creditors have less incentive to participate in sovereign debt restructurings.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Many of today’s creditors are now represented by powerful lobbies, most significantly, the International Institute of Finance (IIF). Unlike before, when their efforts focused on OECD developed economies, the IIF now actively works directly with developing country finance ministers and central bank governors.

Voluntary scheme problematic
But the debt buyback proposal, to be underwritten by a multilateral donor consortium, can inadvertently encourage hard bargaining by powerful creditors who know that money is available, while retaining the option of threatening litigation. Hence, resulting buybacks are likely to cost more. The evidence shows that a country’s secondary market debt price is higher when it has a buyback programme than otherwise.

Such an approach can also encourage trading in risky sovereign bonds promising higher returns, inadvertently sowing the seeds for another debt crisis. Private investment funds are more likely to buy such bonds if there is a higher likelihood of selling them off, while still making money from the high interest rates, even when the bonds are sold at large discounts.

The proposal’s voluntary feature also creates incentives for creditors to ‘free-ride’ by ‘holding-out’, thus undermining the likelihood of success. If the scheme is expected to effectively restore creditworthiness, then each existing creditor would hold on to the original claims, expecting market value to rise as new creditors provide relief.

Maintaining a good credit rating undoubtedly enables access to international funds at relatively lower interest rates. But low-income countries typically have poor access to international capital markets, and only get access by paying high risk premia, due to poor credit ratings.

Compared to near zero interest rates in major OECD economies, African governments pay 5~16% on 10-year bonds, while Kenya, Zambia and others pay more. Borrowing costs for developing countries issuing Eurobonds more than doubled due to high interest rates.

Also, many, if not most contemporary creditors are not primarily involved in lending money. They are therefore unlikely to respond to government requests for new loans needed to grow out of a debt crisis.

New obstacles include the greater variety of powerful creditors, the unintended incentives for free-riding inherent in voluntary debt reduction, problematic precedents as well as perverse incentives for both governments and bondholders. Perhaps most importantly, debt reduction by purely ‘voluntary’ means — like buybacks, exit bonds, and debt-equity swaps – is unlikely to be adequate to the enormity of the problem.

Successful buybacks?
Only banks definitely gained from the Brady deals. Benefits were unclear for most debtors other than Mexico and Argentina, and particularly ineffective for Uruguay and the Philippines, where gains were paltry, if not negative.

Positive effects for economic growth were very small, as most buybacks failed to improve either market confidence in or the creditworthiness of debtor countries. Hence, even if private creditors participate, there is no guarantee that debtor countries will benefit significantly at the end of the long and complicated processes envisaged.

The 2012 Greek bond buybacks, backed by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF ‘troika’, effectively bailed out the mostly French and German banks owed money by Greece. Celebrated as a success, it neither restored Greece’s growth nor reduced its debt burden.

While bond buybacks can always be a debt restructuring option for consideration, Ecuador’s in 2008-2009 are probably the only one regarded as favourable to the debtor country. Wall Street observers suggest that Argentina’s recent initiative may also have a positive outcome.

Also, after successfully restructuring its commercial debt, the country is now better able to negotiate with its official creditors, particularly the IMF. These ‘successes’ have been exceptional, led by the countries themselves and ultimately settled on their terms, taking advantage of opportunities presented by global crises for comprehensive national debt restructuring.

Importantly, neither creditor consortia nor multilateral financial institutions were involved in coordinating or underwriting both restructurings, and hence could not impose onerous policy conditionalities. Thus, when able to take advantage of favourable conditions for negotiating strategic buybacks, debtor countries may be better able to benefit from them.

Urgent financing needed
Despite her earlier reputation as a ‘debt hawk’, new World Bank Chief Economist Carmen Reinhart recognizes the gravity of the situation and recently advised countries to borrow more: “First fight the war, then figure out how to pay for it.” Hence, in these COVID-19 times, donor money would be better utilized to finance relief and recovery, rather than debt buybacks.

Multilateral development finance institutions should resume their traditional role of mobilizing funds at minimal cost to finance development, or currently, relief and recovery, by efficiently intermediating on behalf of developing countries. They can borrow at the best available market rates to lend to developing countries which, otherwise, would have to borrow on their own at more onerous rates.

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Categories: Africa

Using Traditional and Indigenous Food Resources to Combat Years of Successive Drought

Tue, 10/27/2020 - 11:46

Sorghum and millet are helping farmers adapt to a warming climate that has seen the third successive year of drought and low rainfall across Zimbabwe. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 27 2020 (IPS)

For Zimbabwean farmer Sinikiwe Sibanda, planting more sorghum and millet than maize has paid off.

As the coronavirus pandemic has led to decreased incomes and increased food prices across the southern African nation — it is estimated that more than 8 million Zimbabweans will need food aid until the next harvest season in March — Sibanda’s utilisation of traditional and indigenous food resources could provide a solution to food security here.

Sibanda, a farmer in Nyamandlovu, 42 km north-west of Bulawayo, harvested two tonnes of millet this year, compared to less than 700 kg of maize. Some farmers did not harvest maize at all but those who planted sorghum and millet have enough food to last the next harvest season. And Sibanda is pleased to have the harvest despite the poor rainfall in the 2018/9 farming season.

She is one of an increasing number of farmers from semi-arid areas with little rain who are shifting from growing white maize to hardy, traditional sorghum and millet for food and nutrition security.

“I love maize but the frequent drought is making it difficult to grow it regularly,” Sibanda, told IPS during a visit to her 42-hectare farm in the semi-arid Matabeleland North Province of Zimbabwe. Sibanda says she now plants just 5 hectares of her farm. She used to plant 10 hectares but the high costs of seed, labour and uncertain rainfall each year has forced her to scale down.

“I learnt my lesson last season and planted one hectare under pearl millet, another under sorghum and a bigger portion under maize but millet produced the best yield,” Sibanda, who has grown pearl millet and sorghum since 2015, said.

“Drought every year has reduced maize yields and many times I harvest nothing if I do not replant mid-way through the season,” she says. “Maize needs more rain and easily wilts when we have poor rains as we did this year but I am able to harvest something with small grains.”

Even livestock farmers are turning to sorghum. Livestock breeder Obert Chinhamo is intercropping sorghum and maize under rain-fed production at his Biano Farm, 30km south of Bulawayo. He processes the sorghum and maize into silage for feeding his 300 pedigree Simmental cattle during the dry season when pastures become scarce and poor in nutrients. Chinhamo is teaching farmers to make their own feed using rain-fed sorghum.

The shift it eating millet foods has not been an easy one for Sibanda’s family. Zimbabwe is a maize-loving nation where maize flour is eaten at least thrice a day when it is available.

Though Sibanda said she enjoys millet flour, with which she makes tasty porridge and isitshwala (a carbohydrate staple food made from millet meal) even though her urbanised children do not enjoy.

“It thickens quicker than maize flour, it tastes good and is healthy too,” chuckled Sibanda.

Small grains, big on nutrition

According to Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS), “the deteriorating economy and consecutive droughts were already driving high food assistance needs; the COVID-19 pandemic and measures implemented to prevent the virus’ spread are further exacerbating an already deteriorating food security situation. Humanitarian assistance needs during the January to March 2021 peak of the lean season are expected to be above normal, with widespread areas in crisis.”

Food insecure households here require assistance to facilitate adequate dietary intake and prevent deterioration of the nutrition status of children, women and other vulnerable groups like the disabled, says United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Zimbabwe.

According to the February 2020 Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee rapid assessment, global acute malnutrition prevalence increased from the 3.6 percent to 3.7 percent at national level. The drought-prone provinces of Masvingo and Matabeleland North and South were most affected.

Figures by the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) showed that “nearly 1 in 3 children under five are suffering from malnutrition, while 93 percent of children between 6 months and 2 years of age are not consuming the minimum acceptable diet”.

Zimbabwe remains one of only 11 countries that have not implemented healthy eating guidelines at a national level, according to the Food Sustainability Index (FSI), created by Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Food for the future

The increased production of sorghum and millets could aid food security and nutrition.

Small grains are the food for the future, says Hapson Mushoriwa, Lead Breeder for Eastern and Southern Africa at the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

They are sustainable, nutritious and have a low carbon footprint, relative to maize, arising from carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emitted to the atmosphere during production, according to Mushoriwa.

ICRISAT is developing adapted varieties of six key cereals and legumes, including sorghum, pearl millet, groundnuts, and pigeon pea, among others.

Mushoriwa said these crops are bred to combine high productivity, resilience, acceptable quality attributes and market preferences.

“When you look at these six mandate crops, we label them as ‘Smart Food’ because they are good for you and highly nutritious, good for the planet (they have a low water footprint and lower the carbon footprint), good for the soils and use few chemicals,” Mushoriwa told IPS.

“These crops are good for the small-holder farmer because they survive in the hardest climates, have multiple uses, potential to significantly increase yield and untapped demand.”

A cornerstone of agriculture biodiversity

Small grains are an integral part of agriculture biodiversity which the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the U.N. says supports the capacity of farmers, to produce food and a range of other goods and services under different environments by increasing resilience to shocks and stresses.

The erosion of agro-biodiversity, combined with an emphasis on input-intensive cropping systems has, arguably, lowered the resilience of food systems in the global South, says Katarzyna Dembska, a researcher at the BCFN Foundation, an independent and multi-disciplinary think tank that analyses the economic, scientific, social and environmental factors about food.

Dembska said the utilisation of traditional and indigenous food resources in Africa namely; barley, millet, sorghum, millet cowpea and leafy vegetables should be emphasised for achieving food security and nutrition.

“The under-utilised food resources have a much higher nutrient, and in times of high climate uncertainty, the diversification of staple crops can guarantee food system resilience,” Dembska told IPS.

Despite their proven nutritional value exceeding that of maize, their popularity as a cash crop cannot rival maize production even during a drought.

With annual rainfall of between 200 and 600 mm in Matabeleland region, rain-fed agriculture continuously fails. FEWS states that maize production has been poor, “estimated at nearly 40 percent below average in 2019 and 30 percent below average in 2020”.

The 2020 national maize production is estimated at over 900,000 metric tonnes. However, government statistics show that Zimbabwe’s sorghum and millet production remains well behind that of maize at 103,700 tonnes and 49,000 tonnes respectively in the 2018/2019 season.

Resolving policy disparities in terms of producer prices for small grains as well as incentives to support availability of inputs, viable output markets and value addition could boost production and adoption of small grains, said Martin Moyo, ICRISAT Zimbabwe country representative.

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Categories: Africa

The United Nations, 75 Years Young: Engaging Youth Social Entrepreneurs to Accelerate the SDGs

Mon, 10/26/2020 - 18:39

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, Oct 26 2020 (IPS)

This year, the United Nations is marking its 75th anniversary – a milestone of extraordinary economic and social progress in Asia and the Pacific. While the Organization enjoys a lifespan almost equal to the world’s improved average life expectancy, the future lies with those who have recently embarked on theirs: our young people.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

As they continue breaking ground with entrepreneurial spirit to address defining issues of our time like climate change, technology and inequality, our investments in them will win the battle for sustainability.

Young entrepreneurs have been a source of innovation and economic dynamism, creating jobs and providing livelihoods to millions. To achieve and accelerate action on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we urgently need their expertise and voices on creating solutions to social and environmental challenges, as well as economic opportunities.

Yet, they have needed no prompting: the social entrepreneurship movement has emerged in Asia and the Pacific in response to pressing issues, including COVID-19. Spearheaded by the region’s young people with a strong sense of social justice, social entrepreneurs are providing innovative, market-based solutions that break the mold of traditional models focused on economic growth. But we must do more to truly realize the transformative potential of young social entrepreneurs.

First, we need to ensure that the next generation of business leaders think about social purpose as well as profit. To achieve this, education will be critical. Governments play a key role, like the Government of Pakistan’s Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. The Centre’s mission is to support students and young entrepreneurs identify innovative business solutions to urgent problems related to the SDGs.

Second, we need to scale up innovative financing solutions. It is encouraging to see governments embracing impact investing as a policy tool to provide much-needed finance to young social entrepreneurs. As an example, ESCAP supported the Government of Malaysia to launch the Social Impact Exchange. The Exchange mirrors a traditional stock exchange and links social purpose organisations to impact investors.

ESCAP and its partner the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) are also supporting organizations like iFarmer in Bangladesh. The joint effort has supported iFarmer in creating a digital app to establish a profit-sharing model between urban investors and rural women farm entrepreneurs that involves the purchase and management of livestock. After successful livestock management (raising and selling cattle), the investor and woman entrepreneur share the profits, while iFarmer receives support through a management fee.

Third, as we are living in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, digitally savvy young social entrepreneurs hold much promise. While Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies pose challenges to the economy – most notably relating to jobs and the future of work – they also have the potential to spur mass entrepreneurship and new ways of doing business. ESCAP is currently supporting FinTech start-ups like Aeloi Technologies to develop digital finance and green solutions for women entrepreneurs. Aeloi’s goal is to make impact funding for women microentrepreneurs accountable and accessible using digital tokens, providing an assured digital link between funders and carbon offset providers. They work specifically with the electric minibus sector in Kathmandu, Nepal. Their system helps ensure that each $1 of investment is used towards building renewable energy powered transportation by providing real-time climate and social impact tracking.

The United Nation’s 75th anniversary comes at the critical juncture of a new decade to accelerate the SDGs and recover from an unprecedented crisis. The need for innovative solutions and stronger cooperation across all stakeholders, particularly the youth, is clear.

In this context, the UN family’s anniversary event in Asia and the Pacific will bring together young social innovators and entrepreneurs from across the region whose ideas, platforms and businesses have made an impact. These innovators will discuss how technology and innovative solutions of today can be scaled up to build back better towards more inclusive, resilience and green economies and societies.

We stand ready to support these young people and their innovative solutions for tackling inequality and promoting inclusion, economic empowerment of women and girls and moving towards decarbonization and tackling air pollution. In many ways, it is they who are carrying the mantle of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The post The United Nations, 75 Years Young: Engaging Youth Social Entrepreneurs to Accelerate the SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

The post The United Nations, 75 Years Young: Engaging Youth Social Entrepreneurs to Accelerate the SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Good data is the key to a sustainable post-COVID Pacific

Mon, 10/26/2020 - 14:03

By Stuart Minchin
Oct 26 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Good data and statistics make essential contributions to building resilient and strong democratic societies. Decisions based on empirical data rather than anecdote or opinion are the foundation for good policy and planning. A focus on science and evidence-based data has been the cornerstone of SPC’s work for over 70 years. And as our understanding of the complexities and interconnected nature of our world increases, the need for good data has become ever more critical.

To get a sense of the kind of positive impact good data can have on our region, look no further than the field of education. Despite the clear need, good quality data on education systems has not always been readily available in the Pacific. This gap has had significant implications for the development and monitoring of education throughout the region. To address this challenge, SPC’s Educational Quality and Assessment Programme (EQAP) has focused its efforts on re-developing and enhancing education management information systems.

This has been no small task. Our Pacific nations rich traditions and culture also mean that each approaches education in a slightly different way. And yet, for data to be meaningful it must be consistent and measurable against a common baseline.

A key strategy for EQAP, therefore, has been to assist Pacific Island countries and territories by supporting the coordination and development of their unique national education targets, while ensuring that national education databases can collect data on common themes in order to provide a more complete picture of the trends, struggles and opportunities for the region.

SPC puts a strong emphasis on the importance of partnerships and this publication is no exception to that tradition. The EQAP team has worked with stakeholders across the region to gather and sort the critical information it contains. However even the best regional data cannot be fully utilized unless it is widely used and shared, not only in the Pacific, but as a part of the global knowledge base of education data. EQAP, with the support of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), has therefore partnered with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) to ensure that Pacific educational data becomes part of the international conversation.

The culmination of all this work will come with the soon to be released, 2020 Status of Pacific Education Report that will allow Pacific nations to see their progress, find areas of common challenges and inspire innovative ways to reach both national and regional ambitions for education.

Data is about more than just numbers and statistics. Its’ collection, organisation and analysis provide insights and information, but it also inspires cooperation and better communication. These tools will be essential for the Pacific to reach its sustainable development goals, whether in geosciences, oceans, land resources, health or education.

Stuart Minchin

Stuart Minchin
Director-General
Before he joined the Pacific Community (SPC) on 23 January 2020, Dr Minchin previously served as Chief of the Environmental Geoscience Division of Geoscience Australia, a centre of expertise in the Australian Government for environmental earth science issues and the custodian of national environmental geoscience data, information and knowledge. He has represented Australia in key international forums and has been the Principal Delegate to both the UN Global Geospatial Information Management Group of Experts (UNGGIM) and the Intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO).

The post Good data is the key to a sustainable post-COVID Pacific appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Stuart Minchin, is Director-General Pacific Community (SPC)

The post Good data is the key to a sustainable post-COVID Pacific appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Reaching Remote Women Through Inclusive Technology

Mon, 10/26/2020 - 11:40

Reaching remote communities. Credit: UnSplash / Ashwini C.

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, Oct 26 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted the way people value working from home, career building, and their overall approach to utilising downtime.

It has blurred out the lines between hobby, casual reading, and how time is spent away from work.

Despite a myriad of negative impacts, it has opened doors to career reboots and gaining skills for people who otherwise would have been left out.

COVID19 has made work from home the ‘new normal’, and around the globe, people are adapting to a life where a significant portion is spent online.

About two-thirds of businesses that have adopted remote work policies and plan to keep at least some of those policies in place long-term or permanently.

Research published in Business Insider in June 2020 stated that about 67% of companies polled in and work from home is expected to be permanent or long-lasting.

The report also noted that where offices that do remain will probably shrink: 47% of respondents said their organisations were likely to reduce their physical office footprint.

While this creates opportunities online, rural and poor communities, the technology gap exists could be locked out.

Companies that were already working in the career growth sector like Udemy and Coursera have gained incredible traction and growth during the pandemic.

The San Francisco-based company, Udemy.co which one of the prominent platforms in the “massively open online course” (MOOC) movement, released its data highlights that it saw a more than 400% spike in course enrolments for individuals between February and March.

Business and government use increased by 80%, while instructors created 55% more new courses.

Coursera Blog mentions similar proceedings as well. They have already activated more than 220 programs for governments across 70+ countries and 25 US states, and these programs have benefited more than 200,000 learners.

Another similar platform, Fuzia also delivers value-added methods to boost and empower creative women through the fusion of cultures and ideas.

Creating inclusive technology. Credit: UnSplash / Pongsawat P.

They are working to provide people from all walks of life a means to gain essential knowledge to ramp up their careers and find new alternatives to traditional options.

Anyone with access to the internet can have access to training facilities for free from this platform. Besides career development training, this platform also helps with hobby building, turn a passion into a side business, and entrepreneurs to launch their dream initiatives.

A teacher, artist, and calligrapher Fuziaite, Ravleen Kaur from Delhi, India, who participated during the lockdown comments: “Fuzia is a significant platform in my life. It helped me in promoting my work. Being the winner, in one of the contests, is a dream come true.”

Due to the switch to internet-based education, business and work, a study carried out by Statista on Digital users Worldwide shows that almost 4.57 billion people were active internet users as of July 2020, encompassing 59 percent of the global population.

In the case of Fuzia, users come from South Asian countries. For example, in India alone, there are over 560 million internet users. India is the second-largest online market in the world, ranked only behind China. It is estimated that by 2023, there would be over 650 million internet users in the country.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimated that about 60% of Indian internet users viewed vernacular content, and only about a quarter of internet users were over the age of 35 years in 2019.

The WEF also estimated that 1.1 billion Indians would have access to the internet by 2030, with 80% of the subscriber base primarily accessing the internet on mobile devices. The profile of India’s internet user base was predicted to diversify by 2030 with 80% of users accessing vernacular content and with users over 25 years, making up 45% of the total subscriber base.

Fuzia (https://www.fuzia.com), a platform founded by Riya Sinha and Shraddha Varma, has created a space where users can network, have a conversation, share their creativity, find work opportunities and study online provides a safe space for their community.

They ensure that profanity and hate speech is eliminated and so the engagement, which includes pre-teens to seniors, is affirming and positive.

They too provide an opportunity for people wishing to develop skills in various ways. Their English courses are popular, including short courses on spoken English, 70 common English phrases, daily vocabulary, common mistakes, and ways to improve with online English courses. All are fully supported by video content.

Those who do the courses find it fun and engaging. Sanna Sher (21) from Pakistan who is a native Urdu speaker, living in the United States comments that: “Learning to speak English confidently and fluently has been my goal for a long time. I found Fuzia, and this has made my learning much easier. The video clips and instructions are easy to understand, and I can access these anytime I wish, from the comfort of my home.”

There are speakers from various nations and various dialects who use the Fuzia platform. Under the discussion topics and threads, the users also help each other with tips to learn a lesson well.

The courses are also supported by video clips, provided by trained teachers and instructors.

“I was hesitant and worried that I might be judged for not understanding English well. But I see that there are many, in similar situations like me. This has given me the courage to reach out for help and engage in discussion. During COVID19 lockdown, I have made multiple friends, and together with Fuzia, we have learned to speak better,” Sher says.

As the majority of users use mobile phones the content has been designed to be short and practical. In fact, a mobile phone with a basic connection and a pair of headphones is enough to study, work, or learn from any location even while travelling, working at home, or carrying on with daily activities.

They have teamed up with industry leaders to provide free, state-of-the-art courses including practical skills like writing and others which can assist with societal issues like identifying and managing domestic abuse and violence, LGBTQI issues and others.

The post Reaching Remote Women Through Inclusive Technology appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Not in Our Name, Never in Our Name: A Conversation with Muslim Faith Leaders Echoing the Wisdom of a Pontiff

Mon, 10/26/2020 - 11:11

UN Secretary-General António Guterres meets religious leaders April 2020 at Gurdwara Kartapur Sahib in Punjab province in Pakistan. Religious leaders of all faiths are being urged by the Secretary-General to join forces and work for peace around the world and focus on the common battle to defeat COVID-19. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Professor Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Oct 26 2020 (IPS)

As the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Al-Tayeb said on October 20: “As a Muslim and being the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, I declare before Almighty God that I disassociate myself, the rulings of the religion of Islam, and the teachings of the Prophet of Mercy, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), from such heinous terrorist act and from whoever would embrace such deviant, false thought.

At the same time, I reiterate that insulting religions and abusing sacred religious symbols under the slogan of the freedom of expression, are forms of intellectual terrorism and a blatant call for hatred. Such a terrorist and his likes do not represent the true religion of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Likewise, the terrorist of New Zealand, who killed the Muslims while praying in the mosque, does not represent the religion of Jesus, peace be upon him. Indeed, all religions prohibit the killing of innocent lives”

The above words of the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Al-Sharif — Sunni Islam’s intellectual headquarters, long standing knowledge base and one of its political epicenters — were shared at an ongoing conference hosted by the St Egidio Community, entitled “No One is Saved Alone Peace and Fraternity”.

In turn, these words were read out at this meeting, by Judge Mohammed Abdel Salam, the first Muslim to ever present a Papal Encyclical (in October 2020), and the first Muslim ever to be decorated as Commander with a star medal (Commenda con Placca dell’ordine Piano), by the Pope, for his great role and efforts in promoting interreligious dialogue and the relationships between Al-Azhar and the Catholic Church (in March 2019).

Judge Mohammed Abdel Salam is the Secretary General of the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, and represents the Grand Imam on the World Council (governing board) of Religions for Peace, a 50 year-old multi-religious organization representing all the world’s religious institutions and faith communities – in effect, a “UN of religions”.

And yet these words seem to have to be repeated again and again. Many Muslims live in fear that each and every day’s news potentially bears yet another heinous act of violence whose mad perpetrator(s) claim(s) is done for or inspired by “Islam”.

Many Muslims still hear two comments again and again from within the western hemisphere: “where is the condemnation?”, and even more insidiously, an assertion that “there must be something in the religion that makes these repeated acts of violence …possible”.

Some western government-sanctioned narratives go so far as to describe “Islamic extremism”, further compounding a sense of victimisation by many Muslims, and adding to the ‘spin’ that the religion itself is capable of extremism.

No religion is itself intrinsically capable of anything. People live religion. In his latest Encyclical “Fratelli Tutti”( in Chapter 8 “religion and fraternity”), the Pontiff focuses on “Religions at the service of fraternity in our world” and emphasizes that terrorism is not due to religion but to erroneous interpretations of religious texts, as well as “policies linked to hunger, poverty, injustice, oppression” (paragraphs 282-283).

The Encyclical maintains that a journey of peace among religions is possible and that it is therefore necessary to guarantee religious freedom, a fundamental human right for all believers (paragraph 279).

Muslims – leaders, laypeople, communities, and multiple institutions – have condemned, continue to condemn and will always condemn violence in the name of their faith.

Imam Sayyed Razawi, the Secretary General of the Scottish Ahl al-Bayt Society, and a Trustee of Religions for Peace, notes that “since Islam does not teach harming others, a question that arises is what was the motivation of an individual who had a claim to being Muslim, to violate the parameters of the laws of his faith and country in committing such an act?

There is no doubt Muslims, be they in France or across the world, hurt, when their Prophet is seemingly insulted. However, it does not justify breaking the very principles laid down in Islam to prevent such acts”.

Both Judge Abdel Salam and Imam Razawi, are of similar age. The former, living in the Arab world, the latter, living in the West. Both are Muslim leaders, and both are well versed in Islamic Jurisprudence, and learned about Islamic traditions. Both continue to iterate, in multiple speeches, conferences and contexts, that what inspires them, is to serve humanity.

Imam Sayed Razawi continues to note that serving humanity leads us down a pathway which has various labels, though amounting to roughly the same thing: interfaith, inter religious dialogue, and/or multi faith collaboration. The ultimate aim and purpose have always been, and remains, how best to live harmoniously with others.

For both these Muslim leaders, and millions of other Muslims, the inspiration to maintain that such atrocities are not in our name, comes from the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). A man who even before prophecy was working with peoples of various faiths and backgrounds. A merchant, whose employer was a woman – later to become his wife when she proposed to him- and who believed passionately in being truthful and trustworthy.

“So much so” Razawi maintains, “that Jews, Christians, and pagans alike would entrust him with that which they held valuable to themselves, with the belief it would be safe. As a Prophet, Muhammad developed a city where Muslims lived side by side with Jews, Christians, Sabians and pagans. These lessons lead to the formation of a civilisation on the very same principles: coexistence and peace.”

Both the Imam and the Judge speak of their hurt when evil acts such as what has been witnessed in Paris take place. Both maintain, again, alongside countless others, that “it is important to repeat and continue to repeat that these are not the teachings of Islam, nor its Prophet or the interpretations of core Islamic principles”.

These atrocities are against what they believe, what they live, and what they preach, which is: peaceful coexistence, reconciliation and obeying the laws of the land one lives in, not to mention the need to uphold virtues such as compassion, love and forgiveness.

Both maintain that acts of violence are not reflective of a religion whose leaders have categorically emphasised the need for “loving thy neighbour”, because, as Imam Razawi states “either a person is your brother in faith, or your equal in your humanity.”

So why would an act be committed which is contrary to the very faith the actor confesses to be?

This is the question secular policy-makers may not ask. Or perhaps they do ask behind closed doors in rooms bursting with indifference to religion and religious sentiments.

Or yet again, maybe this is a question asked by religious ‘technocrats’ (those working on religion in secular spaces) and/or secular bureaucrats keen on instrumentalizing religious sentiments for ‘national security’ concerns.

But this is the question that every faith leader asks – and asks repeatedly. The answers lie, again, in what the “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together”, calls for, which the Catholic Pontiff also concludes his Encyclical with: “we were made for love” (Paragraph 88), and love builds bridges.

But how can we build bridges with love? Religions for Peace has been doing this work through 96 national and regional Inter-Religious Councils, with representatives of all faith traditions, for five decades.

In 2019, 250 religious leaders committed to building these bridges with and through service to the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda.

When Covid-19 hit, Religions for Peace set up a Multi-Religious Humanitarian Fund dedicated to supporting faith communities work to serve all, together. The religious leaders understood that there is no point to working to realise the SDGs, without a mechanism to collate and coordinate their efforts, geared towards serving social cohesion (in a world gone awry), within our new normal: humanitarian crisis.

Confronting Covid is an opportunity to work together across religious and institutional differences to build bridges of love. The humanitarian call is being heeded today like never before, by the first responders in crisis situations – i.e. religious institutions and NGOs. But few of these religious NGOs are actually collaborating, meaning jointly investing their resources, to serve together.

We can keep on having meetings to speak to building back better, and the uniqueness of faith (or business or civil society actors), and still face countless acts of violence (attributed to religion) from those whose sense of marginalization is intensifying.

We can choose to continue to serve our own organizational and territorial visibility and interests, while hundreds of thousands continue to die, and millions suffer, from a shared ecosystem of planetary degradation.

Or we can serve the multi-religious call – the multi-religious imperative – and actually pool our financial, human and spiritual resources together – to build bridges with love. The choice is ours.

The post Not in Our Name, Never in Our Name: A Conversation with Muslim Faith Leaders Echoing the Wisdom of a Pontiff appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Azza Karam serves as the Secretary-General of Religions for Peace (#Religions4Peace – www.rfp.org) and is a Professor of Religion and Development at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The post Not in Our Name, Never in Our Name: A Conversation with Muslim Faith Leaders Echoing the Wisdom of a Pontiff appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Q&A: Why are Stillbirths still Societal Taboo?

Mon, 10/26/2020 - 10:26

There are nearly two million stillbirths every year. Credit: UNSPLASH/Claudia Wolff

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 26 2020 (IPS)

Societal taboo and a lack of understanding about stillbirth can cause the issue to be neglected among health practitioners, according to Dr. Danzhen You, a senior adviser on Data and Analytics at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

She shared her insight with IPS after a U.N. high-level meeting organised to raise awareness and to end preventable stillbirths last week.

There are nearly two million stillbirths every year, according to a joint statement released ahead of the event by UNICEF, the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the World Bank Group and the Population Division of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

At the talk, WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for an end to the stigma surrounding stillbirths and for higher investments to prevent them. In the last 20 years, he said, 14 countries, including Cambodia, India and Mongolia have been able to reduce their stillbirth rate by more than half.

But this growth regressed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

With reference to the mothers who suffer from stillbirth, he said: “They need support, not shame.”

Christine Wangechi from Kenya, who suffered a stillbirth last year, said during her trauma, she was not aware that there are other women who had similar experiences.

She said her experience was very “silent” and that she hopes that in speaking publicly, she can help other grieving mothers feel less alone.

Istiyani Purbaabsari, a midwife from Indonesia who spoke at the event, also added that a lack of awareness may be impeding the progress on lowering stillbirths.

The stigma, combined with the lack of awareness or communication about the issue, means it remains left out of conversations, according to You of UNICEF, who is also the Coordinator of the U.N. Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.

Excerpts of the interview with You follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): According to UNICEF, the issue of stillbirths remains low as a priority on the global public health agenda. Why has it not been a priority in these conversations?

Dr. Danzhen You (DY): With two million babies stillborn every year, the burden of stillbirths is enormous. They are invisible in policies and programmes and under-financed as an area requiring intervention.

Most people (including some clinicians) do not have a common understanding of what a stillbirth is; definitions vary across and within countries and cultures. The death of an unborn baby remains a taboo topic in many cultures. Communications work has been insufficient in raising awareness among communities, health professionals, and policy makers about the burden of stillbirth, including numbers, preventability, and the pain and grief it causes to women and families

There is also a lack of understanding of stillbirths, leading to fatalism, guilt and blame. Many clinicians are not aware that most stillbirths are preventable with known interventions; many families and communities also do not realise this, meaning it is often the woman who is blamed or feels responsible for the loss.

IPS: How do the stigma and misconceptions surrounding stillbirth hamper the efforts to end stillbirths?

DY: Stillbirths are often regarded as inevitable events and may be grouped with miscarriages for reporting. In some cultures, stillbirths are perceived as the mother’s fault, resulting in public shaming or individual feelings of guilt or shame that prevent public mourning of their loss.

Moreover, the lack of opportunity to publicly grieve can cause stillbirths to be considered “non-events”. In some countries, stillbirths are perceived as rare, accounting for a negligible fraction of the burden of disease in countries or at global level.

These social taboos, stigmas and misconceptions often silence families or impact the recognition and grieving of stillbirths, contributing to their continuing invisibility.

IPS: How has the coronavirus pandemic affected the issue of stillbirths?

DY: The world is currently scrambling to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic might be leading to disruptions in health services. Our analysis shows that the response to the pandemic could worsen the situation by potentially adding nearly 200,000 stillbirths to the global tally over a 12-month period in 117 low and middle-income countries in a scenario with severe health service disruptions (around 50 percent) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This number may underestimate the additional stillbirth burden that could occur.

However, we were missing opportunities to prevent families from experiencing the pain of stillbirths even before the pandemic. Few women received timely and high-quality care to prevent stillbirths. In half of the 117 low and middle-income countries analysed, less than two to 50 percent of pregnant women received key interventions that could prevent stillbirths. For example, coverage for assisted vaginal delivery – a critical intervention for preventing intrapartum stillbirths – is estimated to reach less than half of pregnant women in low-and middle-income countries.

IPS: What are some challenges that remain with gathering statistics on the issue?

DY: The targets specific to stillbirths were absent from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and are still missing in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Many countries do not have a defined stillbirth target. Among the 93 countries that have reported on their progress using the Every Newborn Action Plan tracking tool, only 30 have a defined stillbirth target, compared to 78 countries with a neonatal mortality target.

Stillbirths are largely absent in worldwide data tracking, rendering the true extent of the problem hidden. Sixty two countries had either no stillbirth data or insufficient quality data. While the causes of neonatal death are tracked globally by WHO, there are no such data for stillbirth.

IPS: What do you think is the way ahead?

DY: Progress is possible with sound policy, investment and programmes. For example, Southern Asia, which has the second highest stillbirth rate of all regions in the world, has reduced the stillbirth rate by 44 percent since 2000.

We must do better, faster, or 20 million babies will be stillborn by 2030. There is hope, but only if we act now, collectively, by raising voices, increasing awareness, reducing stigma, taboo and misconception.

The post Q&A: Why are Stillbirths still Societal Taboo? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

Can Agroecology Feed the World?

Fri, 10/23/2020 - 20:41

Credit: KMP in the Philippines, supported by the Agroecology Fund

By Elena L. Pasquini
ROME, Oct 23 2020 (IPS)

Producing food and ensuring nutrition security, protecting the environment and restoring biodiversity, building sustainable and fair food systems: That’s the promise of agroecology.

It is a dream? Or an economically feasible model that can feed a growing world population, expected to increase by 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, reaching 9.7 billion in 2050?

“Some people have been saying: Maybe it is more sustainable or it’s more resilient, but it’s not as productive and not as economically viable. This has been [shown] to be untrue, even in Europe,” Emile Frison, member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, told Degrees of Latitude.

“There are many examples throughout the world now, either at individual farms or at [the] community level or even at [the] regional level, where agroecological practices have been implemented and are showing their potential from … different points of view, including the economic point of view,” he said.

Since 2016, the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has been the largest-scale example of how agroecology can be applied to increase yields and improve the economic condition of farmers. Zero Budget Natural Farming involves 500,000 peasants in the practice of community-based natural farming: no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, preservation of the health of the soil, landscape regeneration, biodiverse productions, intense training of farmers, and the involvement of communities.

The Government of Andhra Pradesh aims to cover 6 million farmers by 2024 and the entire cultivable area of 8 million hectares by 2026. The programme was implemented because of the high rate of farmers’ debt, which has been linked to high suicide rates. More than a quarter of a million farmers have committed suicide in India in the last two decades. The strict measures adopted to prevent the spread of the coronavirus are exacerbating the suffering of farmers crippled by debt.

“India as a whole is a place where there have been hundreds of thousands of farmer suicides, farmers’ deaths … In the circle of purchasing expensive inputs and having crop failure, many hundreds of thousands of farmers have committed suicide over the years: there [has] been a lot of migration from the rural areas into the urban areas,” Daniel Moss, Executive Director of the Agroecology Fund, told Degrees of Latitude.

In an attempt to find solutions for sustaining their land and growing food more safely, thereby promoting their own good and that of consumers, “constituency organizations, primarily of women that have been very concerned about health and nutrition and farming issues” have pressured the Andhra Pradesh government to find a solution, Moss explained.

The ambition of “Zero Budget” is to end farmers’ heavy indebtment by dramatically reducing production costs, as well as not relying on credit and purchased chemical inputs. According to Frison, a study of the initiative has shown that productivity was 20 percent higher in agroecological farms than in farms using conventional agriculture techniques, industrial synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides. The agroecological farms also economically performed 50 percent better because of the lower costs of production and the capacity to sell at higher prices on the market, due to consumers’ recognition of the better quality of the products. A survey of 97 Zero Budget farmers reported increased yield, seed diversity, product quality, household food autonomy, income, and health, along with reduced farm expenses and credit needs.

However, India is not the only example of agroecology scalability. The Association of Organic Movement Federation of Kyrgyzstan – BiokG – is developing a network of organic “aymaks,” or groups of farmers. The project, supported by the Agroecology Fund, is based on collaboration among farmers to “develop a system of self-assessment of organic farms production quality, productivity and income generation, as well as their development related to organic agriculture technologies introducing, with respect to national traditions and heritage,” AGF explained. It started locally, at the village level, but expanded into a nation-wide network and could potentially spread to neighbouring countries. “That’s the idea of what we call [the] agroecology movement: there’s a lot of evidence and learning that may happen in one place [that can ripple…],” Moss said.

The lock-down has shown that supplying the urban population is also a challenge, particularly in times of crisis. Providing food from local producers, however, proved to have worked during the harsh months of the pandemic, even in a country where the confinement measures have been very strict, like the Philippines. However, also in the ordinary life of a city, agroecology seems to be able to reach consumers, thereby offering an alternative. In Nairobi, for example, there has been a whole re-introduction of traditional green leafy vegetables that were lacking in the supermarkets.

Mexico and West Africa – namely, Senegal – are among those places that seem encouraging for the advancement of agroecological practices. What’s key is to support civil society organizations in working together and putting pressure on the government, as there are often good practices that are not implemented, according to the director of the Agroecology Fund, which undertook a workshop specifically in Andhra Pradesh to understand how the government implemented the model investing hundreds of millions in training programmes to support agroecology.

“We believe very strongly in the power of the co-generation and possibly of moving things forward together,” Moss said. “We fund coalitions of organizations because we know that agroecology is that kind of field that really requires interdisciplinary solutions.” From nutritional aspects to farmers’ income, from the involvement of consumer organizations and policymakers, to power decentralization and the engagement of local decision-makers, agroecology is a model that requires collaboration and knowledge sharing.

The capacity of agroecology to feed a growing population remains in question but, according to Frison, is a mere matter of profit: “The fact that we need more fertilizers and pesticides to meet the demand is misinformation being circulated by vested interests that want to continue to sell pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.”

“If we are really trying to advance agroecology as the new food system, or the way the food has to be produced, it’s our responsibility to show that it could actually feed the world population, which is growing quite quickly,” Moss added.

The post Can Agroecology Feed the World? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Categories: Africa

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