Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

By PRESS RELEASE
SEOUL, Republic of Korea, Oct 23 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Following the cooperation agreement signed in December last year for the Mobilizing Article 6 Trading Structure (MATS) Program, the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) and the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) have agreed to further develop four mitigation activities with the goal of completing transactions of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs). 75% of these activities will come from GGGI’s pipeline of bankable projects across its Members and partners. Out of the four proposed activities, two will target the energy sector in Ethiopia, one will be focused on the waste sector in Nepal, and one will focus on the manufacturing sector in Cambodia.

“GGGI is excited about this important program milestone. The MATS program will support our Member and partner countries to access international carbon finance, build regulatory frameworks and institutional capacity to increase their ambition and go beyond the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs),” explained Ms. Fenella Aouane, GGGI’s Head of Carbon Pricing Unit.

“Successful implementation of the cooperative approaches under Article 6 is a new area of focus that allows for scalable and transformative changes needed to meet the global ambitions of the Paris Agreement.”

“We are thrilled to have been able to green-light development of the first batch of Article 6 Pilot activities under the MATS program, less than one year since the program was first conceived. We hope that these pilot activities will deliver concrete results for the host countries in achieving their NDC targets, while also providing lessons for various stakeholders as the Article 6 rulemaking process continues,” said Mr. Christopher Zink, Senior Advisor at the Swedish Energy Agency. “Environmental integrity is the key focus area for Sweden when it comes to testing Article 6, including scalability, additionality, conservative baselines, attribution and the avoidance of double counting.”

Through joint collaboration, GGGI and SEA will help countries to gain access to international finance, enabling them to unlock projects, which will not only contribute to reducing additional carbon emissions but will also enhance ambition in NDCs. Furthermore, both organizations will play a key role in supporting governments in establishing frameworks, that will create the enabling environment for international trading of mitigation outcomes under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

The SEA-GGGI MATS Program is a pilot project aimed at catalyzing international trading of mitigation outcomes to support increasing climate ambitions. This month’s recent agreement – as part of the project progression, selecting specific mitigation activities, will aim to enable host countries to gain access to international carbon finance, unlocking projects which will generate additional emissions reductions, ultimately enabling greater ambition in NDCs. This work will add onto the $1.6 billion USD of green investment already mobilized by GGGI since 2015. Importantly, the program will also help to establish the enabling environments with the host countries to ensure sustainable transformational change by supporting them to put in place the governance frameworks required to engage in international trading, including systems and procedures to help avoid double counting and ensure environmental integrity.

About SEA
SEA supports the Swedish Government and Society as well as external actors with facts, knowledge, and analysis of supply and use of energy in Sweden. SEA provides funding for research on new and renewable energy technologies, smart grids, as well as vehicles and transport fuels. SEA also supports business development that promotes commercialisation of energy related innovations and ensures that promising cleantech solutions can be exported. Official energy statistics, and the management of instruments such as the Electricity Certificate System and the EU Emission Trading System, are part of SEA’s responsibility.

Furthermore, SEA has long been the home of Sweden’s CDM and JI program; and is now actively participating in international climate collaborations under the Paris Agreement.

About GGGI
GGGI was established as an international intergovernmental organization in 2012 at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Its vision is “a low-carbon, resilient world of strong, inclusive, and sustainable growth” and its mission “to support Members in the transformation of their economies into a green growth economic model”. GGGI does this through technical assistance to: reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement; create green jobs; increase access to sustainable services (such as clean affordable energy, sustainable waste management); improve air quality; sustain natural capital for adequate supply of ecosystem services; and enhance adaptation to climate change.

To learn more about GGGI, see https://www.gggi.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube, and Instagram.

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Indian member of parliament and actor, Nusrat Jahan has also been targeted.

By Mariya Salim
NEW DELHI, India, Oct 23 2020 (IPS)

When a minority woman with an opinion doesn’t comply with stereotypes, she is targeted with online hate, says award-winning journalist and senior editor at The Wire, Arfa Khanum Sherwani in an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service.

Sherwani has been at the receiving end of online violence and hate, including rape and death threats, like her other women journalist counterparts, because she questions policies and performance of the present Indian government. What makes her experience of facing gendered and sexist online abuse different is the added layer of her identity: that of being a Muslim.

“The right-wing in India, like everywhere else in the world, likes to put certain communities in boxes. Muslim women are supposed to dress a certain way, speak a certain language or perhaps not speak at all. As a Muslim woman, with an opinion who does not fit their imaginary stereotypes, they use violence against me online,” Sherwani says. “When the trolls question my journalism, they make sure to question my religion and make the majority community look at my work through the lens of my religion alone to discredit my work.”

Arfa Khanum Sherwani, award-winning journalist and editor, finds her religion highlighted in online hate campaigns.

In 2018, five Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations urged India to urgently provide protection to author and journalist Rana Ayyub, who had been a target of an online hate campaign which included calls for her to be “gang-raped and murdered”. During the online assault, her contact details were made public, and there were references to her “Muslim faith”.

India has an ever-growing percentage of internet users and the various social media platforms act as a window for India’s marginalised communities to be able to express their opinions, seek an audience and build community.

Where on the one hand the internet has enabled participation in the public sphere with greater ease for marginalised groups, the increasing amount of online hate and violence, especially against women from these communities, has left them feeling vulnerable and, in many situations, threatened with physical harm.

The violence exacerbates when those with an opinion online identify themselves as women from a religious, racial or ethnic minority, or the LGBTQIA community.

In India, the increasing Islamophobia and violence against its largest religious minority, Muslims, is mirrored in the virtual spaces as well. Women from the Muslim community are targeted explicitly with slurs and sexist abuse, directed towards their religious identity.

Nabiya Khan, a 24-year-old Muslim poet and activist, is threatened online for her headscarf and Muslim identity than for her activism.

Nabiya Khan, a 24-year-old Muslim poet and activist, endured threats online.

“Some call me Jahil Jihadan (meaning illiterate terrorist, with the word terrorist here having an Islamic connotation), others ask me to remove my headscarf and then speak up against any kind of social injustice. I am often asked to go to Pakistan accompanied by rape threats of the most vile kind.”

It is not only those who are on the platforms who are targets. The spreading of false news narratives against minorities, mostly religious and caste oppressed minorities like Muslims, Christians and Dalits has often led to women from these communities, even if far removed from these platforms, at the receiving end of real-life harm.

Sexual violence against women is a tool to humiliate and punish the broader community and strip it of its honour and integrity.

In 2013, for instance, a fake video depicting Hindu boys being brutally killed by a Muslim mob, posted on the Facebook page of a Minister from a right-wing party, went viral. The post led to massive communal riots in Muzaffarnagar, in Uttar Pradesh during which scores of women from the Muslim community were raped.

Seven years later there has not been a single conviction in any of the reported cases.

The video was removed. However, it had stayed on the platform long enough for Muslim women in a village in rural India to experience irreparable harm.

A post written by Nabiya after she received rape and death threats on Facebook.

International human rights organisations, like the United Nations, have also taken cognisance of the growing vitriol online, with the office of the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Dr Fernand de Varennes having made “hate speech, social media and minorities” a thematic priority at the start of his mandate.

De Varennes, in an interview with IPS, was particularly concerned about the effect of hate speech on minority women.

“To reduce what is occurring online as strictly only a matter of gender, exacerbated and normalised by hate speech in social media, is to hide the significant role of religion and caste which contribute to the specific continuing and even increasing stigmatisation of minority women,” he said.

He added that raising awareness of the extent to which hate speech had become a mainly minority issue had become one of his main tasks for this year.

The “disease of the mind”, he says, that constitutes hate speech may pile up, with misogynist attacks against minority women finding fertile grounds to propagate, since it becomes “more acceptable” for some to spew hatred against women who belong to supposedly “despised minorities”.

The intersectionality of online violence against women needs, therefore, to be acknowledged.

Nusrat Jehan, an actor and Indian Member of Parliament, has received online threats and violence for her career and personal choices both from within and outside the community.

“I keep on getting judgements, fatwas, death threats, etc. from religious extremist groups,” says Nusrat, a public representative. She had to seek additional personal security while in the UK after receiving online threats for posing as a Hindu Goddess on her Instagram page in September this year.

“I do not pay heed to the trolls and their judgments. Yes, there need to be stricter laws for account creation etc. on these platforms, but whatever be the rules and laws, things won’t change until mindsets change,” she adds.

Social media companies need to take the violence faced by women on their platforms more seriously and proactively block and take down harmful content.

Reports by some CSOs have brought to light how “Facebook lacks clear user hate speech reporting mechanisms for Indian caste-oppressed minorities” and how despite a year-long advocacy with the company, nothing changed at their front.

The experience of many women, from marginalised communities, concerning the reporting of hate online on these platforms, whether Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, has been far from satisfactory. Many of the women have had their accounts taken down for revealing the identities of their abusers.

India does not have laws specifically dedicated to dealing with online violence against women, let alone those that are specific to women from religious and caste oppressed minorities.

Experts point out that what is needed is the implementation of existing cyber laws in India rather than the introduction of new ones.

Khanum points out that she has little trust in the law enforcement mechanisms and therefore refrains from reporting it to the authorities. One of the factors of this mistrust is her fear that, because she is Muslim, her concerns will not be treated seriously. What concerns her is the impunity – where a great deal of hate directed towards her comes from the verified social media handles of people in positions of power, political and otherwise.

The writer is a Fellow at IPS UN Bureau

 

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A child is weighed at a 'posyandu' (community-level health post) in Sidorejo village, Central Java province, Indonesia. Credit: UNICEF/UNI350112/Ijazah

By Joanne Bosworth and Jennifer Asman
NEW YORK, Oct 23 2020 (IPS)

2020 has not turned out as planned. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact populations around the world, governments have been forced to take a fresh look at their spending and how to meet additional costs of pandemic response as they expect a fall in revenue. Budget information has become even more critical.

Critical knowledge

When it comes to children, it is important to have a detailed view of spending in key areas like health, education, social protection and water and sanitation. Without this, it is difficult to know what services are supported or how money has been spent.

Although total spending on health has increased in many countries as part of the COVID-19 response, in many cases, funding for essential basic services like routine immunization has been cut, increasing the risk to children’s lives.

Access to quality budget information has enabled UNICEF to keep advocating for and supporting governments by avoiding cuts to essential investments in children’s futures. Here are a few examples:

Myanmar: When the Government of Myanmar was developing a supplementary budget for its COVID-19 response, UNICEF used the budget information on health, education and social protection presented to parliament, to make the case for protecting and expanding spending on critical programmes.

By reviewing proposed allocations and prioritizing immunization, social welfare and safe and healthy school environments, we developed an analysis that was instrumental in increasing the government’s budget in all three sectors by $176 million by mid-year.

Tunisia: After the collapse of global oil prices, the Tunisian government reduced fuel subsidies. Using information on funding for these subsidies, UNICEF demonstrated that child grants would bring greater benefit to poor children. In line with this analysis, the government also launched temporary cash transfers for at least 623,000 families with children.

Somaliland: Through the UN Joint Programme on Local Governance and Decentralized Service Delivery, UNICEF supports the use of “community scorecards” in Somaliland to monitor decentralized services such as water and sanitation, and the maintenance of community health and education infrastructure.

Communities provide real time SMS feedback to elected officials, strengthening oversight, which in turn can help inform better budget planning.

Suaafi Mahamed Abdi, 15, cleans his hands at an EU-funded, UNICEF-supported water point in Tog-wajaale, Somaliland. The clean and sustainable water system is the town’s first ever and provides clean water for 70,000 people. Credit: UNICEF/UN0300832/Knowles-Coursin

The economic fallout of COVID-19

As the pandemic continues, the impact on children is increasingly evident. As a result of disrupted schooling, according to the World Bank, children stand to lose the equivalent of $872 of their future earnings per year— a global loss of over $10 trillion.

Progress on infant mortality will be set back by between five and 15 years; and deaths from malaria are predicted to go back to pre-2000 levels with children-under-5 accounting for 70% of them. An additional 150 million children could be pushed into poverty.

We need urgent efforts to ensure children are protected from this long-term economic impact. This means ensuring vital social spending, and that funds are used effectively to help children and their families cope with and adapt to these new economic conditions.

Challenges in budget transparency have existed since before the pandemic. The 2019 Open Budget Survey examined sector budget transparency in education and health budgets in 28 countries.

While almost half of those countries provided complete information on spending objectives and how much funding was allocated to specific programmes, most provided partial information. A majority provided no information on how spending was distributed across different districts or provinces.

Essential to recovery

As the Myanmar, Tunisia and Somaliland examples show, improved budget transparency is not only central to an inclusive recovery but also encourages governments and partners to come together to identify more effective ways to achieve policy outcomes.

It is vital to monitoring spending, improving efficiency and ensuring resources are used effectively. This is particularly important now that many governments are making adjustments to spending plans or using emergency provisions where new programmes need not go through normal budget processes or controls. Making detailed, accurate and easy-to-understand spending plans transparent means citizens can monitor progress and highlight problems early on.

Building a resilient future

We are living in unprecedented times where every national and local government is forced to adapt and learn. Clear data on budgets, reprioritization and implementation of budgets will help us understand the impact of spending decisions on children’s lives.

UNICEF continues to work with governments and partners including the International Budget Partnership: to promote more open and transparent budgets, build this knowledge into longer term recovery programmes and improve the resilience of systems and services for the future.

 

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Excerpt:

Joanne Bosworth is Chief of Public Finance and Local Governance at UNICEF.

Jennifer Asman is Public Finance Policy Specialist at UNICEF.

The post Budgeting for a Better Future, for Every Child appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A photo-collage. Credit: Peter Costantini.

By Peter Costantini
SEATTLE, Oct 23 2020 (IPS)

By late September, the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States had claimed 200,000 lives. That’s equivalent to a slightly higher toll than the 418,500 United States deaths in World War II, adjusted for relative population and duration. [See note below.]

With four percent of the world’s population, the U.S. has suffered 20 percent of global COVID-19 deaths.

Tragically, most of these deaths need never have happened. They were caused primarily by the public-health equivalent of friendly fire: massive malpractice and deception by the Donald Trump administration. A Columbia University study in May estimated that over four-fifths of those deaths could have been avoided if emergency measures had been invoked nationally just two weeks earlier in March.

With four percent of the world’s population, the U.S. has suffered 20 percent of global COVID-19 deaths. Tragically, most of these deaths need never have happened. They were caused primarily by the public-health equivalent of friendly fire: massive malpractice and deception by the Donald Trump administration

Contrary to political posturing, there was never a trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy. Passively accepting mass deaths has not worked to restart economic activity. Instead, opening up too much too fast has fanned the viral flames in many areas, forcing the re-shuttering of businesses and stalling incipient recoveries.

As much of the world recognized months ago, the fastest and most effective way to restart the economy is to aggressively control the pandemic. As Federal Reserve Bank chairman Jerome Powell, a Trump appointee, told Congress: “’The path forward for the economy is extraordinarily uncertain and will depend in large part on our success in containing the virus.”

The problem was not that Trump failed to lead. Had he simply left the management of the crisis to competent public health authorities, the country would be in a much better place. Instead, despite his awareness of the dangers of COVID-19, his demagogic helmsmanship steered the country 180 degrees off course on a perilous bearing.

The President’s white nationalism and “America First” rhetoric have mutated into an exceptionally dimwitted strain of American exceptionalism. Call it the Sinatra Doctrine: Trump did it his way. Consequently, many borders are closed to U.S. travelers. His Republican régime is now scorned by much of the world as a rabble of incompetent, racist, corrupt bullies whose hubris has turned the richest and most powerful empire in history into a rogue government stewing in its own juices. Many in Trump’s flock have elevated the freedom to not wear facemasks into a cause nearly as sacred as their right to open-carry assault rifles into legislative chambers.

As Dr. Joseph Varon, chief medical officer of a Texas hospital, put it: “I’m pretty much fighting two wars: a war against COVID and a war against stupidity. And the problem is that the first I have some hope about winning. But the second one is becoming more and more difficult to treat.”

With minimally competent leadership and international cooperation, however, the U.S. could have dramatically diminished the catastrophe. But it would have required the Trump administration and Senate Republican leadership to learn from countries that have taken the most effective public health and economic paths, and to share the advances made here. The U.S. government would have had to join the global fight to protect vulnerable communities and economies, rather than C-suites and share prices.

A tentative consensus is emerging in much of the world that the best way to keep families and firms safe and solvent and to rekindle economic growth is to confront the pandemic early and systematically with all the resources and resolve that would be mustered for a military conflict.

This approach requires complementary policies: a comprehensive public health model that integrates massive testing and contact tracing, combined with an approach to economic relief and recovery that marshals the fiscal resources necessary to preempt mass unemployment by covering payrolls before workers are laid off. These measures mutually reinforce each other: strong early health interventions make it possible to quash the pandemic rapidly and allow the economy to begin reopening sooner, while effective economic relief for afflicted families relieves the desperation to get back to work that has led to premature restarts, resulting in renewed outbreaks.

These models, however, are based on multilateralism in the world and inclusivity within the country, both alien to Trumpism. Excluding millions of “essential workers” and vulnerable families in marginalized communities at home, and billions of people in poorer countries with underfunded public health systems, risks undercutting those remedies and allowing the pandemic to continue ravaging humanity.

 

Public health

The public-health piece of this global model has been crystalized by former World Bank president Jim Young Kim, a veteran of campaigns against cholera in Haiti and Ebola in West Africa.

Kim argued that stopping COVID-19 requires orchestrating “[f]ive elements, five weapons: social distancing, contact tracing, testing, isolation, and treatment.” With this model, countries including South Korea, Singapore, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and Germany have “gained control over the virus.” These countries have recognized that the novel coronavirus “is sneaky, nasty and durable – and that it has to be hunted down” using “large teams of public-health workers … on a war footing.”

This approach incorporates the insights of the battles against SARS, MERS and other previous epidemics.

While China initially tried to cover up the epidemic, it soon made an about-face and contributed significantly to global efforts. The WHO made some questionable judgements, but has continued to play a key role, providing international coordination and assistance to countries that need it.

The Trump administration, for its part, failed to learn from China’s early denials, which it praised. Many months later, it continues to deny the seriousness of the pandemic, with fatal consequences.

Trump has initiated U.S. withdrawal from the WHO, which would deprive the organization of its biggest source of financing. He has rejected international cooperation on developing vaccines, and pressured government agencies to approve a U.S. vaccine before the U.S. presidential election.

Prior to the crisis, the Trump administration had cut two-thirds of U.S. public health staff based in China, and disbanded the National Security Council directorate charged with pandemic response.

When the pandemic hit, Trump failed to scale up testing and contact tracing to track down recently exposed people. He abdicated his powers to accelerate and coordinate production of tests, personal protective equipment, and medical equipment. Instead, his boondoggles such as Project Airbridge enriched medical supply companies while failing to deliver supplies to hard-hit states.

Trump’s political gyrations have produced a CT scan of the internal weaknesses of U.S. health and social services. The absence of federal standards have fragmented requirements for mask-wearing and social distancing into a patchwork of disparate state regulations. Reflecting the deep inequalities in American society, low-wage workers in “essential” industries, communities of color, immigrants and prisoners have suffered disproportionately.

Inclusivity, though, is not simply an imperative of a just society, but also a necessity for defeating a pandemic: the more groups excluded, the larger the sacrificial population in which the virus can regenerate itself.

Unpayable bills for tens of thousands of dollars that some patients have received for their treatment highlight the country’s lack of universal health insurance and affordable medical care, shortcomings almost unknown in other wealthy countries. Containing COVID-19 is much harder when many working and unemployed people can’t afford to pay for testing and treatment.

Nevertheless, the Republican machine has continued trashing protections for all these groups. It is poised to extirpate what’s left of the Affordable Care Act, and has hamstrung occupational safety and health agencies. It has turned the process for developing a vaccine into a private-sector, America Only horse race.

Yet most developing countries don’t have the capacity to produce vaccines. No less a competitive capitalist than Bill Gates, Jr. argued: “We need to get most of the world vaccinated to bring the pandemic to an end. … [T]he disease will keep coming back into the developed countries if we don’t end it in the entire world.” The process of vaccine development and production, he said, involves many countries. “[T]here’s no doubt that only cooperation will get us out of this thing.”

Inclusivity, then, is indispensable domestically and internationally. And the “war footing” essential to implementing Kim’s response model requires public solidarity to override private profit.

 

Economic relief and recovery

The economic-recovery component of the global model is not just a matter of deploying better social safety nets: it’s about preventing people from falling out of the economy into those nets in the first place. And it requires scaling up responses to the magnitude of the moment.

“The coronavirus pandemic is a human tragedy of potentially biblical proportions,” emphasized former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, and the response must be to mobilize as for a war. “The key question is not whether but how the state should put its balance sheet to good use. The priority must not only be providing basic income for those who lose their jobs. We must protect people from losing their jobs in the first place. If we do not, we will emerge from this crisis with permanently lower employment and capacity, as families and companies struggle to repair their balance sheets and rebuild net assets.”

Several European and Asian countries have adopted corresponding policies. Denmark’s approach provides a clear example. The Danish government took over the payrolls of companies harmed by the pandemic, preventing workers from being laid off, and guaranteed at least three-quarters of their salaries up to a living-wage level. For those already out of work, the plan improved and extended benefits. For businesses, the plan covered some fixed expenses and deferred taxes. The economic measures accompanied a strict public-health lockdown.

The three-month program cost slightly more per capita than the first U.S. relief package. Yet it had strong support across the whole Danish political spectrum, including from labor unions and employer associations.

Thanks to the interaction of the public health and economic measures, the country was able to reopen its economy more quickly than most of Europe and keep monthly joblessness no higher than six percent, while in the U.S. it reached 14.7 percent. The pandemic-induced drop in economic output is predicted to be a little more than half that of the whole Eurozone.

Many other European nations, including Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and Spain, have also implemented similar programs to keep workers on payrolls of distressed firms, as have Asian countries including South Korea and Singapore.

The U.S. economic response, by contrast, foundered on the weaknesses and fragmentation of existing safeguards, and was later dragged down by Republican stonewalling.

U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Chair Jerome Powell called the economic hit from the pandemic “without modern precedent” and cautioned that that the recovery might be slow. “Additional fiscal support could be costly,” he said in a speech, “but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery.” Former Fed Chairs Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke have also vocally advocated for aggressive fiscal and monetary policies to revive the economy, and downplayed concerns about the deficit and debt.

Economic relief packages pumped over $3 trillion dollars into the economy and initially helped to stabilize households and firms. But rather than keeping workers employed, most of the funding went to augmenting unemployment insurance for those laid off. In the U.S., this program is administered by the states, however, resulting in a fragmented bureaucracy. Average benefits are smaller amounts and of shorter duration than in most other wealthy countries.

In the face of the pandemic, some states’ administrative machinery has been unable to handle the surge in unemployment claims. An estimated forty percent of people who applied for benefits were not receiving them in late September.

A particularly acute consequence of much unemployment in the U.S. is the loss of health insurance. Coverage is typically tied to employment, so when workers are laid off, they lose their access to health care in the middle of a pandemic.

Although Democrats in the House of Representatives have passed two versions of another major relief bill, the White House and Senate Republicans have stalemated negotiations with demands for substantial benefit cuts.

As a result, millions of low-wage workers are confronting debilitating crises: hungry children, unpayable medical bills, and looming eviction or foreclosure, sometimes leading to homelessness. Long-term unemployment is reportedly rising for those laid off or furloughed because of the pandemic. As usual in the U.S., these setbacks have hurt families of color and mothers of school-age children disproportionately.

Although by now most of the economy is functioning again at some level, legislation has been proposed in Congress to create robust paycheck protections. In future downturns, its proponents say, it could serve as an “automatic stabilizer” to take the load off of unemployment insurance systems.

Facing the current resurgence of COVID-19 and the threat of future pandemics, the next U.S. administration should explore ways to implement global-consensus public health and economic measures as soon as possible. It will also have to address long-standing demands for universal health insurance, mandatory sick days, and more functional unemployment relief.

Internationally, the U.S. should quickly rejoin the World Health Organization and double its old contribution. To provide financial support for restarting the economies of developing countries, restructuring of debt could help free resources for the desperate needs left in the wake of the pandemic. Another avenue worth exploring to provide sustainable non-debt financing is the creation of Special Drawing Rights through the International Monetary Fund.

The next U.S. administration could restore faith in its ability to learn from its mistakes if, in cooperation with the global community, it can create robust new systems of public health protection and economic regeneration inclusive of all its communities and all nations.

Note: World War II lasted 45 months; the COVID-19 pandemic death toll reached 200,000 after eight months. The U.S. population in 1942 was 134,900,000; in 2020 it is 331,000,000.The average monthly toll for the U.S. in World War II was equivalent to 22,822 deaths, in proportion to the 2020 U.S. population; the pandemic monthly toll for the U.S. as of September 2020 has been 25,000 deaths.

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By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 23 2020 (IPS)

No one died of hunger during the worst drought in Brazil’s semiarid ecoregion, between 2011 and 2018, in sharp contrast to the past when scarce rainfall caused deaths, looting, a mass exodus to the South and bloody conflicts.

Social programmes such as Bolsa Familia (family grant), an expansion of pensions for retired peasant farmers and assistance to low-income disabled and elderly people helped the poor overcome their vulnerability in the semiarid region, where more than 27 million people live in 1,127,953 square kilometres, slightly larger than the size of Bolivia.

But without the water supply solution represented by tanks and other devices to collect the scant rainwater, the tragedies of the past would certainly be repeated in the semiarid region, which occupies most of the Brazilian Northeast and northern strips of the Southeast.

 

 

More than 1.1 million tanks that harvest rainwater from rooftops ensured human consumption. The 16,000 litres held by each tank were used up during the unusually long dry periods, but the system made the distribution of water by tanker trunks, generally carried out by the military, more efficient.

In addition, the “technologies” or different ways of storing water were disseminated to more than 200,000 families in order to ensure food production on family farms, which total 1.7 million in the semiarid region.

The distributed water infrastructure guarantees better quality food for the farmers themselves, supplies towns and cities in the country’s interior and boosts the local economy.

According to the Articulação Semiárido Brasileiro (ASA), a network of more than 3,000 organisations, including trade unions and farmers’ associations, cooperatives, non-governmental organisations and social movements, some 800,000 small farms are still in need of tanks that collect water for agricultural production in order to universalise this technology.

ASA, created in 1999, promoted the One Million Rural Water Tanks programme, which was made a public policy by the government in 2003. It then expanded the initiative into the One Land, Two Waters Programme, which incorporated rainwater harvesting for crops and livestock.

The basic principle is “coexisting with the semiarid”, instead of insisting on the old failed strategies of “combating drought”, based on the construction of large structures that do not serve the scattered rural population, who are the most affected, but rather favour the large landowners.

Coexistence is not limited to the water question, but extends to education, knowledge of local conditions, ecological forms of production, and clean sources of energy.

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During the lockdown, the plight of migrant children, who walked hundreds of miles to reach home, aroused national consciousness. But what happened after that? | Picture courtesy: Needpix.com

By Shantha Sinha
Oct 22 2020 (IPS)

A right is an entitlement and it has three basic principles, without which rights cannot be enjoyed. The first principle is that of universality: A right has to be enjoyed by all citizens, including all children. There cannot be a distinction between a Dalit or an Adivasi child and a child who is better endowed.

The second principle is that of equality: Rights have to be equally available to all. For example, there cannot be different types of schools for different children. In order to adhere to the principle of equality, you have to also link it to the principle of social justice and commit additional resources, support, and attention to those children who have been left behind for them to enjoy their rights equally.

Third, and the most important aspect of a right, is that it is a state obligation; only the state can protect rights as it is a transaction between the state and the citizen. We have to ensure that the rights of all children are equally protected, and the state fulfils its functions and duties towards the protection of children’s rights.

If a tradition comes in the way of child rights, then we should eliminate that tradition. Every society requires tradition and culture, but let’s create new traditions and a culture that respects children and allows society to move forward

When we talk about child rights, we are talking about all age groups. If rights are denied to one age group, it will have an impact on another age group. For example, if the rights of a 15-year-old are denied and she gets married early and is not provided sufficient food, this will impact both her health and that of her future children. All age groups are important, all rights are equally important. You cannot, for example, prioritise hunger and then move onto education. There is an interdependency of rights and there is an interdependency of ages that needs to be understood.

And finally, it is my opinion that you cannot deprive a child their rights in the name of tradition and culture. They are used as an argument to justify failure to guarantee rights to children. In my view, if a tradition comes in the way of child rights, then we should eliminate that tradition. Every society requires tradition and culture, but let’s create new traditions and a culture that respects children and allows society to move forward.

 

How do you plan for each child?

We have forgotten the real issues

After the lockdown was imposed, we saw the plight of migrant children who marched hundreds of miles to reach their homes. This aroused the national consciousness. But what happened after they came back home? We know that they were locked in sweatshops and abandoned by middlemen during the lockdown. But where are they now? What is happening to them? They have been rendered invisible along with their anxieties and concerns.

Debates about online education have since captured the headlines. But what about the issues of hunger, poverty, disempowerment, and humiliation? Are children responsible for their poverty or for being trafficked? Who is responsible for these children? Why are we making excuses and saying that they have to work because they are hungry? Why are we justifying what children are going through? Is it not the state’s responsibility to protect these children and ensure them their rights?

There are a dozen acts in place, and people will have to be energised to reach out to these children to see that they are taken care of. The money that is allocated to these efforts is just not enough. The state must put in more resources into each and every one of the institutions they have created to protect children. This should be the discourse, but we have diverted our attention away from the real issues.

 

The pandemic has caused the child protection system to collapse

The decade from 2006 to 2016 was an important one for child rights. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) was established, the Right to Education Act (RTE) made education a fundamental right for all children, the Juvenile Justice Act and Prohibition of Child Marriage Act were amended. There was a process of social mobilisation that engaged with the system, from the grassroots to the centre and brought together politicians, bureaucrats, activists, academia, judiciary, and so on. There were flaws but some phenomenal gains were also made in this decade.

But since the pandemic hit, these gains seem to have vanished. It is almost as though there is amnesia—no laws, no systems, and the children who need protection are not being talked about. The entire system has collapsed. We need to preserve the gains that we made and move forward.

 

Shantha Sinha is a leading child rights activist and the founder-secretary of the MV Foundation

 

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

The post Child Protection: the Pandemic has Left the Most Vulnerable Children Invisible appeared first on Inter Press Service.

The crisis in the Sahel has been further exacerbated by both climate change, as well as the current coronavirus pandemic. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 2020 (IPS)

The European Commission this week pledged $27.8 million in humanitarian support to the Sahel region as floods and the coronavirus pandemic exacerbate the stability in a region deeply in conflict.

While the figure is less than 2 percent of the $2.4 billion that the United Nations has appealed for, Amnesty International researcher Ousmane Diallo told IPS that despite past donations from international development partners to Sahelian countries, the situation hasn’t improved over the years.

Diallo, a Sahel specialist at the human rights organisation, spoke to IPS a day after European leaders gathered to discuss the fast deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Central Sahel.

In June, Amnesty International released a report that pointed out a range of concerns in the region that have been exacerbated by the pandemic: human rights violations, food insecurity, and enforced disappearances among other concerns.

At the meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 20, the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres appealed for $2.4 billion for the remaining months of 2020 and for providing emergency assistance in the region throughout next year.

“The Sahel is a microcosm of cascading global risks converging in one region. It is a warning sign for us all requiring urgent attention and resolution,” the Secretary-General said.

To highlight the extent of the crisis, he shared that in the less than two years, internal displacement in the region has increased 20 times.

Diallo of Amnesty International echoed similar concerns and added that a “a plethora of armed groups acting in the Sahel have increased over the years.”

“This is because the structural issues have not been challenged,” Diallo told IPS. “Because there have been a lot of donations given to Sahelian countries, many activities done by international development partners, but the situations on the ground haven’t improved. There are more internally displaced persons (IDPs) on the ground, and more refugees.”

“This is a crisis on multiple fronts, [and] next to its growing complexity, it’s also a crisis which remains seriously underfunded,” Janez Lenarcic, Commissioner for Crisis Management at the European Commission, said while announcing the pledge. “As such, the need to protect the most vulnerable from these pressing plights has never been greater.” 

The crisis in the region has been further exacerbated by both climate change, as well as the current coronavirus pandemic, according to both Diallo and the speakers at the high-level meeting.

Mark Lowcock, the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said climate change in the Sahel region is accelerating faster than anywhere else in the world.One key concern, he said, is that the “root causes that drive humanitarian needs” — such as chronic poverty, underdevelopment, impact of dramatic development growth, and climate change among other issues — are not being properly addressed

Diallo told IPS that on top of climate change posing a security and development challenge in the region, another concern is that of resources: despite an increasing population, resources remain limited.

With massive floods leading to thousands of casualties in cities across the Sahel region this year, one must consider issues beyond the scope of human rights and humanitarian [needs], and consider links to governance, urbanisation and city planning, Diallo added.

“Over the last 30 years, we’ve had more cities, more urbanisation, and more people living in the cities in the Sahelian countries than they used to 20-30 years ago, but the adaptability of cities to climatic [changes] is very limited,” Diallo told IPS.   

Speakers at the high-level meeting highlighted the need for a comprehensive and holistic approach to resolving the crisis.

Giovanie Biha, Deputy Special Representative for West Africa and the Sahel, U.N. Office for West Africa and the Sahel, said the August coup in Mali is “testament to the fragility of newly-acquired democratic gains”.

“There is a need for a paradigm shift beyond a largely military approach to the fight against terrorists,” Biha said at the meeting. “Successfully addressing the multi-dimensional challenges facing the Sahel will require a whole-of-society approach.”

“We need to redouble efforts in supporting national governments and recognise that development is never a linear process, especially when faced with interlinked challenges compounded by the pandemic,” she added, further calling for innovating solutions to address the crisis.

Lowcock highlighted the need for a higher investment in concerns such as women’s rights, and safe water, among others.

“It’s important that we have a comprehensive response to this: there needs to be a security response but it has to be done in a way that protects and supports the local communities,” he said.

 

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Credit: United Nations

By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury
HONOLULU, Hawaii, Oct 22 2020 (IPS)

I will begin by presenting to you excerpts from the message from UN Secretary-General António Guterres on the International Day of Non-Violence.

I quote: “In marking the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, this International Day highlights the remarkable power of non-violence and peaceful protest. It is also a timely reminder to strive to uphold values that Gandhi lived by: the promotion of dignity; equal protection for all; and communities living together in peace.

On this year’s observance, we have a special duty: stop the fighting to focus on our common enemy: COVID-19. There is only one winner of conflict during a pandemic: the virus itself. As the pandemic took hold, I called for a global ceasefire. Now is the time to intensify our efforts. Let us be inspired by the spirit of Gandhi and the enduring principles of the UN Charter.” End of quote

At the outset, let me thank the Gandhi International Institute for Peace (GIIP) and its dynamic President Mr. Raj Kumar for organizing the observance of the International Day of Non-Violence and of the 15th Mahatma Gandhi Day Celebration by the Institute.

The theme of my keynote speech today is “Mahatma’s Non-Violence: Essence of The Culture of Peace for New Humanity”

The Mahatma affirmed that he was not a visionary but a practical idealist. He affirmed that “Non- violence is the law of our species, as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law – to the strength of the spirit.”

It is said that “he was the first in human history to extend the principle of non-violence from the individual to the social and political plane.” He entered politics for the purpose of experimenting with non-violence and establishing its validity.

Ambassador Chowdhury

The Mahatma had said that “Nonviolence is the greatest and most active force in the world. One cannot be passively nonviolent … One person who can express ahimsa in life exercises a force superior to all the force of brutality.” I believe whole-heartedly that Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of nonviolence or Ahimsa has found true reflection in the life of a great son of the United States, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s own struggle for equality and justice.

Dr. King considered his Nobel Peace Prize as “a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the critical political and racial questions of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression without resorting to violence“. I reiterate this mainly to highlight the need for revisiting those words in view of what is happening in many parts of our world, including in this country.

As I have stated on many occasions, my life’s experience has taught me to value peace and non-violence as the essential components of our existence. Those unleash the positive forces of good that are so needed for human progress. Peace is integral to human existence — in everything we do, in everything we say and in every thought we have, there is a place for peace.

It is important to realize that the absence of peace takes away the opportunities that we need to prepare ourselves, to empower ourselves to face the challenges of our lives, individually and collectively. This intellectual and spiritual inspiration is implanted in me through the Mahatma’s life and his words.

The United Nations Charter emerged in 1945 out of the ashes of the Second World War. The UN Declaration and Programme of Action on Culture of Peace was born in 1999 in the aftermath of the Cold War. I was the chair of the nine-month-long negotiations from 1998 to 1999 that produced the Programme of Action on Culture of Peace.

For more than two decades, I have continued to devote considerable time, energy and effort to realizing the implementation of this landmark, norm-setting decision of the UN. For me, this has been a realization of my personal commitment to peace inspired by the Mahatma and my humble contribution to humanity.

My work took me to the farthest corners of the world and I have seen time and again how people – even the humblest and the weakest – have contributed to building the culture of peace in their personal lives, in their families, in their communities and in their countries – all these contributing to global peace one way or the other.

The focus of my work and advocacy has been on advancing the culture of peace which aims at making peace and non-violence a part of our own self, our own personality – a part of our existence as human beings. I believe this will empower ourselves to contribute more effectively to bring inner as well as outer peace.

In simple terms, the Culture of Peace as a concept means that every one of us needs to consciously make peace and nonviolence a part of our daily existence. We should know how to relate to one another without being aggressive, without being violent, without being disrespectful, without neglect, without prejudice.

We should not isolate peace as something separate or distant. More so, in today’s world so full of negativity, tension, poverty and suffering, the culture of peace should be seen as the essence of a new humanity, a new global civilization based on inner oneness and outer diversity.

In my keynote address on “Human Security – an Essential Element for Creating the Culture of Peace” at the Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, in August 2007, inspired by Mahatma’s eternal words “Be the change that you want to see in the world,” I underscored that “Peace is a prerequisite for human development.… We all must undertake efforts to inculcate the culture of peace in ourselves. We cannot expect the world to change if we do not start first and foremost with changing ourselves – at the individual levels.”

The objective of the culture of peace is the empowerment of people, as has been underscored by the global leader for peace and Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda. As we say “Peace does not mean just to stop wars, but also to stop oppression, injustice and neglect”. The culture of peace can be a powerful tool in promoting a global consciousness that serves the best interests of a just and sustainable peace.

I am encouraged that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the UN in 2015 includes, among others, the culture of peace and non-violence as well as global citizenship as essential components of today’s education.

This realization has now become more pertinent in the midst of the ever-increasing militarism and militarization that is destroying both our planet and our people. The Mahatma asserted that “One thing is certain. If the mad race for armaments continues, it is bound to result in a slaughter such as has never occurred in history. If there is a victor left, the very victory will be a living death for the nation that emerges victorious. There is no escape from the impending doom save through a bold and unconditional acceptance of the nonviolent method with all its glorious implications.”

Dr. King had advised us rightly, “… I suggest that the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence become immediately a subject for study and for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict, by no means excluding the relations between nations.”

The last decades of violence and human insecurity should lead to a growing realization in the world of education today that children should be educated in the art of peaceful, non-violent, non-aggressive living.

Never has it been more important for the next generation to learn about the world and understand and respect its diversity. I want to underscore one particular aspect in this context. In the culture of peace movement, we are focusing more attention on children because that contributes in a major way to the sustainable and long-lasting impact on our societies. As the Mahatma’s words highlight, “Real education consists in drawing the best out of yourself.”

An essential message that I have experienced from my work for the culture of peace is that we should never forget that when women – half of world’s seven plus billion people – are marginalized, there is no chance for our world to get sustainable peace in the real sense.

Women bring a new breadth, quality and balance of vision to a common effort of moving away from the cult of war towards the culture of peace. “Without peace, development cannot be realized, without development, peace is not achievable, but without women, neither peace nor development is possible.”

I believe the culture of peace is not a quick-fix. It is a movement, not a revolution.

Let us remember that the work for peace is a continuous process. Each one of us can make a difference in that process. The culture of peace cannot be imposed from outside; it must be realized from within.

 

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The post Mahatma’s Non-Violence: Essence of Culture of Peace for New Humanity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations and Founder of The Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP), was the keynote speaker at the observance of the International Day of Non-Violence on the 15th Mahatma Gandhi Day Celebration, organized virtually by the Gandhi International Institute for Peace (GIIP)

The post Mahatma’s Non-Violence: Essence of Culture of Peace for New Humanity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Water tanks installed in homes in a Bulawayo suburb. The city has been facing a decades long water crisis. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 21 2020 (IPS)

Dotted across the Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo, the water tanks installed in private residences is evidence that years of a water crisis, that has seen some suburbs here going for months without running water, has not spared anyone. The large plastic drums, locally called Jojo tanks after the company that manufacturers them, and which have a storage range of up to 10,000 litres, have assumed a class status of sorts in Bulawayo.

Desperate residents, like Philemon Hadebe, who can afford to have responded to the water crises by installing the giant tanks in their residences.

Such tanks are traditionally used to harvest rain water and also store groundwater, but in COVID—19’s new normal, everything has been upended.

“This is about survival,” Hadebe told IPS.

“You cannot go for weeks without water in a house where you have kids that’s why I bought this thing,” he said pointing to the 2,500 litre water tank in his yard.

“I let the water run whenever it is made available (in the taps) and it has helped a lot to stock up for when the taps run dry for days and even weeks,” he said.

Is he is not concerned about the water bill?

“You have no time to worry about the water bill. These are desperate times,” Hadebe said. It’s despite the fact that the local municipality has lamented the failure of residents to settle their bills, which the council says has crippled service delivery.

Those residents who cannot afford bulk storage use any container available, including 2-litre plastic containers. But when these  run out, they turn to unprotected water sources, a practice city health officials say has resulted in a spike of waterborne diseases such as typhoid and dysentery.

Last week, the city’s health department reported an increase in diarrhoea cases, with residents saying the municipality has done little to solve the decades old water crisis.

The local authority blames water shortages on a range of factors that include low levels in supply dams, breakdown of infrastructure installed before the country’s independence in 1980 and also constant power outages said to cripple pumping water from dams.

“The water crisis is man made,” said Emmanuel Ndlovu, coordinator of the Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BUPRA).

“Bulawayo has always faced a perennial water problem which has been met with a tepid preparedness by council. Every year the city is plunged into a crisis. The last such crisis was in 2007 but the current one has been the worst ever,” Ndlovu told IPS.

While some residents are installing water tanks, this comes at a steep cost.

Prices of water tanks range from about $1,000 for a 10,000 litre tank to $280 for 2,500 litres and $460 for 5,000 litres.

Business has been brisk for the manufacturers, but this has come at a huge cost for the city’s efforts to save the little water left in supply dams.

Early this month, the city’s town clerk Christopher Dube highlighted the extent of the water crisis, telling local media that the city had run out ideas.

“We no longer have water in the city while consumption has increased. Residents have also resorted to buying Jojo tanks (bulk water containers) and whenever we shut supplies we do so because our reservoirs would have run dry,” Dube said.

The municipality says stocking water by residents has led to a citywide increase of water consumption, and fines imposed on excessive water used have not deterred residents such as Hadebe.

Other residents have resorted to sinking boreholes in their homes, and selling the water. But concerns have previously been raised by municipality about the haphazard and unregulated groundwater.

As part of long-term efforts to address the water crisis, and which might render domestic bowsers redundant, the African Development Bank (AfDB) is supporting the city with a $33 million grant under the Bulawayo Water and Sewerage Services Improvement Project (BWSSIP).

According to the AfDB, the grant will “rehabilitate and upgrade water production treatment facilities, water distribution, sewer drainage networks and wastewater treatment disposal facilities in the southwestern part of the city”.

City mayor Solomon Mguni told IPS he could not discuss the issue, but in a council report last month he blamed the crisis on “vandalism of infrastructure and power outages which interrupt pumping”.

For now, residents with the financial clout are creating their own domestic solutions albeit at a cost for the long term sustainability of already strained water sources.

Pressure groups however insist the city could have done better.

“Despite the fact that water account is a the cash cow for the Bulawayo City Council, there is less investment in water resources,” Ndlovu said.

Meanwhile, the country’s meteorological services department has forecast above normal rains this season, which could provide not only relief to the parched city, but could also be bad news to Jojo tank retailers.

 

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On 31 January 2018, the Government of Brazil deposited the formal instrument of ratification with the International Labour Office for ratification of the Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, 2011 (No. 189) . Accordingly, Brazil became the twenty-fifth member State of the ILO and the fourteenth member State in the Americas region to ratify this Convention. It is estimated that there are about seven million domestic workers in Brazil, six million of them women, and more than in any other country in the world. Moreover, the majority of domestic workers are women, with indigenous peoples and persons of African descent being over-represented in the domestic work sector. But how has the Convention been implemented?. Credit: International Labour Organization (ILO), Geneva

By Waldeli Melleiro and Christoph Heuser
SAO PAULO, Brazil, Oct 21 2020 (IPS)

The inclusivity of Brazilian society is put to the test as the coronavirus pandemic highlights a labour sector ripe with historical and structural inequality: domestic work.

The first death of COVID-19 in Rio de Janeiro was emblematic of the country’s inequities: a domestic worker who caught the new coronavirus from her employer. Much has since been written about the Brazilian government and its catastrophic inaction during the pandemic.

But the new normal also highlights a sector that has always been present in Brazil but with little public attention. A sector, in which the historical and structural inequality in Brazil is very much represented: domestic work.

With about 6 million female workers, domestic work is the second-largest occupation for women in Brazil. They are mostly black (about 65 per cent) and many are over 45 years old (46.5 per cent).

They start working sometimes as teenagers or even children, and because they lack access to most labour rights and social protection, even after 50 years or more of continuous work they still do not have the right to retirement and well-deserved rest.

They live far from their workplaces, often earn less than the legal minimum wage of around 200 USD per month, and are nonetheless often responsible (45 per cent of them) for the income of their families.

Among the poorest of these workers (less than 1,5 USD/day), 58.1 percent are heads of household, which gives an indication of the extreme poverty in which their families live.

The lack of labour protection

Domestic workers have long been fighting for recognition of the value of their work and for labour rights. The struggle in Brazil goes back to the 1930s, with the founding of the Professional Association of Domestic Employees of Santos.

In 1988 the new Constitution guaranteed paid leave and a 13th month of salary, among others. But domestic workers continued to have fewer rights than those in other professions.

Several further rights were only obtained in 2013 under the former administration of Dilma Rousseff, including the limiting of working hours to eight per day and 44 per week, the right to recognition of overtime, and paid retirement.

Despite these advances, many female workers are still excluded from many of those rights, which are guaranteed only to those who work at least three days a week in the same job. And even where the conditions are met, many employers persistently fail to respect workers’ rights, while monitoring compliance is difficult.

Those who work for the same employer for one or two days a week, known as day workers, remain completely unassisted by the law and social protection.

Furthermore, the degree of informality in domestic work is very high: In 2018, only 27 percent of women workers had a formal contract, if we are adding those paying individually even without having a formal contract, only 39 percent contributed to social security.

Thus, the vast majority of female domestic workers are not entitled to unemployment insurance, sickness benefit and retirement.

The new normal of work during and after the pandemic

Domestic work is one of the occupations most affected by the pandemic.

Many workers are in high-risk age groups; their working conditions expose them to more possibilities of contamination; they use public transportation over long distances; they care for elderly people or children with unavoidable physical proximity; and they often have to work without proper protective masks, gloves, or alcohol gel.

Or even worse: in order to keep their jobs and limit contamination, some stay for days and weeks on end in the homes where they work, away from their families.

As the pandemic took hold, the government allowed employers of domestic workers to suspend the contract for up to two months, with two months of secure employment after the suspension. It also allowed partial employment.

But this only helped the minority of domestic workers with such a contract. Most have precarious positions and many of those, especially day workers, have been dismissed and left without income and vulnerable.

The government also started paying 600 reals (around 109 USD) per month for those in need, for example informal workers, rising to 1,200 reals (218 USD) per month for some cases, for example single mothers. However, many women had difficulty in registering and accessing this aid.

Despite the pandemic, domestic workers are standing firm in the fight for labour rights. In March 2020 Fenatrad (National Federation of Domestic Workers) launched a campaign under the slogan “Take care of those who take care of you, leave your domestic worker at home, with paid wages.”

According to Luiza Batista, president of Fenatrad, there was good coverage in social networks, but in practice there was little adhesion by employers. Fenatrad has been carrying out an intense programme of denunciation and negotiation.

The group has also campaigned against a controversial measure by some state governments, for example Pará, to declare domestic work as an essential service during lockdown, forcing workers to continue working.

This measure was reversed after pressure from Fenatrad to specify what functions within domestic work are essential. The category was refined to include only nannies, careers for the elderly, and those caring for people with special needs and whose employers are keyworkers, e.g. in the health or security sectors.

Still the question remains: if domestic work is essential why it is not valued? It is fundamental work, but it is marginalized and carries the prejudices of a society in which social rights are not within reach for everyone.

The pandemic stresses the importance of domestic work and at the same time showed its precariousness as well as the inequality within the Brazilian society. It is time to reflect on the need for change in paid domestic work, aiming at a fair and inclusive society.

The new normal should recognize and value domestic work, including adequate labour rights as an important step on the long way to a more just society.

Source: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), Brazil

 

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Excerpt:

Waldeli Melleiro is a project manager at the Brazil Office of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and Christoph Heuser is the resident representative at the FES Brazil Office.

The post The Plight of Domestic Workers in Brazil appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Anna Shen
NEW YORK, Oct 21 2020 (IPS)

The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic continues: as more people around the world lose their livelihoods, human trafficking is on the rise. Support services for survivors have been shut, and past gains to combat it have been reversed. Funding has dried up.

Harold D’Souza

Consider the following: Human trafficking is global — according to the UN, there are now 40 million victims globally. The United States has also been ranked as one of the top three nations of origin for human trafficking, according to a US State Department Report.

Human trafficking survivor Harold D’Souza is no stranger to the perils of modern-day slavery, much of it invisible, right in front of our eyes. In 2003, Harald left his job in India as a manager for a tech company and was promised a $75,000 business development job at his friend’s factory. When he arrived in the US, there was no job. What began was an 11-year journey, “pure hell,” as he described it.

He and his wife were forced to work in a restaurant seven days a week for as much as 16 hours a day. Eventually his employer took his legal documents and forced him to take a six-figure loan from a bank and kept the money. During their ordeal, they were verbally and physically abused, his wife was sexually assaulted, and eventually, the employer hired a hitman to kill Harald. Today, the perpetrator is still free, as US laws fall short.

The D’Souzas were one of a few lucky ones to beat the odds. After a four-year ordeal, the D’Souza’s escaped their situation and started a new life. It was not easy to overcome the trauma and scars.

D’Souza committed to help victims, founding Eyes Open International, which focuses on combating modern-day slavery. He was appointed by President Obama to the US Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, and lectures globally on the topic.

He spoke to Anna Shen about the state of human trafficking, his 10-day trip across parts of the US meeting survivors, a film about his life, and more.

Q. What is the current state of affairs with human trafficking in the US?

With the pandemic, it has increased. The perpetrators are more aggressive, and law enforcement has so much on their hands, and governments are busy. Victims are more economically unstable and they become victims of labor and sex trafficking. I am so shocked – I tell Indians not to come to the US, and they are willing to pay money to an agent. There are so many agents manipulating them. The agents are charging anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 and people are paying.

Q. What happens once to a person once they pay a trafficker?

Once they get to the US, out of ten, two do not reach the US – eight die on the way, they are caught or deported. This year, 311 Indians were deported from the Mexican borders. It is horrific. A lot of people in India got deported – that is why I am going to India in a few days, to educate people. America is the destination, but India is the source. India, Pakistan, Nepal and Mexico are the origins of the trafficking. There is a saying in India, “Going to America is like going to heaven.” Nobody is sharing the actual facts about what happens here.

Q. You just took a 10-day road trip to meet with the survivors of human trafficking. What did you learn?

A. Over ten days, I drove through Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Indianapolis and Chicago. What I learned was that during the pandemic nobody goes to meet the victims, so they cannot get help and are more isolated than ever. Pantries and churches are closed. Most of them are undocumented and do not get the stimulus package. Many are suicidal and live in constant fear.

Perpetrators are getting smarter and are one step ahead of the enforcement agencies. Victims are out of the house looking for any odd jobs or help, so perpetrators driving around can find them more easily and exploit them. They might be standing on a street corner, asking for work or donations. There is a statistic that if a girl is out on the street looking for help, within 24 hours she will be picked up and become a victim of sex trafficking.

Q. Your perpetrator never came to justice. What can be done to prevent that in the future?

Our focus has always been on victims – most perpetrators are very affluent and high status. When you prosecute one perpetrator you save 100 victims. There are very few laws to protect the victims, and very few successful laws to prosecute perpetrators, who also know how to successfully fight their cases.

Laws have to be changed and penalties have to be stiffer. Media plays a very big role, as coverage will intimidate perpetrators. Also, victims need to talk, but this requires courage.

Q. There is so much focus on the police these days, how should they be trained?

A. Law enforcement are overwhelmed these days with so many issues. However, they need to be trained to recognize trafficking in front of them. At the moment, the governor of Ohio is training police officers to recognize human trafficking in front of them. For example, recently an officer stopped someone for speeding and sees five people in the car, he questioned them where they were going. They found one passenger in the car was a sex trafficking victim and they rescued her. The training needs to be global, but it has to come from the top leadership. Police also need to be “trauma informed,” which means recognizing when they are speaking to a victim who may be in the car with their perpetrator, and may speak in a certain way to the police officer.

Q. Focusing on the human side, can you tell me what you’ve learned about victims in general?

A. There is so much focus on getting them free, but going a step further, who is the person underneath all of this? Nobody asks them what their dreams are. Every individual on this planet has dreams, talents. No NGO or counselor or law enforcement agency asks about their dreams – this person once wanted to be a doctor, or an actor. Once society knows they are a victim or survivor, they are stigmatized. So many people won’t say a word because they are afraid they won’t move ahead or be able to live a normal life.

I still cry at night and feel I failed and as a grown-up man I still faced it and ask myself, “What did I do to get in that place?” I still struggle and go to counseling. Trauma has no expiration date. But with God’s blessing, I am still here to tell the story. My focus is on prevention, education, protection and empowerment of community members, especially vulnerable populations globally.

When I’m honest, no one can stop me. I will help, and no perpetrator will stand in my way. I don’t know where I got it. I thank God every day.

 

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Women farmers irrigate crops of onions and other vegetables. They participate in a special programme to improve Senegal's food security. Credit: FAO

By Mario Lubetkin
ROME, Oct 21 2020 (IPS)

The month of October 2020 will be recalled as one of the most important moments in raising awareness about world food security, whether in the global debate or in the search for possible concrete solutions.

On October 9, the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP), and a few days later, on 16 October, during FAO’s World Food Day, prominent world personalities and leaders, including Pope Francis, called for effective and sustainable solutions to hunger problems.

The world produces enough food for everyone, so it is unacceptable that 690 million people are undernourished, 2000 million do not have regular access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food, and 3000 million cannot afford a healthy diet
Maximo Torero, FAO’s Chief Economist

Meanwhile, in parallel, leading experts released a series of studies that indicate ways to move towards the resolution of this fundamental issue for the future of humanity.

The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, acknowledged that these declarations make “the eye of the international community turn to millions of people who suffer from food insecurity or who are at risk of suffering from it.”

According to QU, what is needed now is “intelligent and systematic action” that provides “food to those who need it and improves what they already have”, taking measures to “prevent crops from rotting in the fields due to lack of efficient supplies”, promoting the use “of digital tools and artificial intelligence in order to predict dangers to production, automatically activate harvest insurance and reduce climate risk.” 

In addition, we should act to “save biodiversity from continuous erosion”, turn “cities into the farms of tomorrow” and governments should implement policies to make healthy diets more accessible.

David Beasley, WFP Executive Director, reflected on the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to the Organization and stressed that it “has focused global attention on the hungry and the consequences of conflict.”

Meanwhile, he added, “the climate shock and economic pressures have further aggravated the situation”, and currently “the global pandemic and its impact on economies and communities is pushing millions of people to the brink of starvation.”

According to a recent FAO report, 690 million people (about 8.9 percent of the world’s population) suffer from hunger and the effects of COVID-19 may increase this figure by 130 million people before the end of 2020.

Pope Francis recalled that “it is not enough to produce food, but it is also important to ensure that food systems are sustainable and provide healthy and affordable diets for all”, seeking “innovative solutions that can transform the way we produce food for the well-being of our communities and our planet, strengthening recovery capacity and long-term sustainability.”

The Catholic pontiff described hunger “not only as a tragedy but a shame,” calling for concrete policies and actions.

He suggested that “a brave decision would be to establish, with the money used for arms and other military expenses, a world fund to be able to definitively defeat hunger and help the development of the poorest countries” and, in this way, avoid “many wars and the emigration of so many of our brothers and their families who are forced to abandon their homes and countries in search of a more dignified life.”

In October, a group of renowned international organizations and think tanks, including FAO, called on donor countries to double investments to eradicate hunger by 2030. In 2015, the international community at the United Nations headquarters in New York set 2030 as the year in which to reach the global goal of eliminating hunger and poverty, as well as to achieve other major Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

According to the study, donors must spend an additional $ 14 billion on average a year by 2030, which is equivalent to doubling current spending for food security and nutrition.

According to FAO’s Chief Economist, Maximo Torero, “the world produces enough food for everyone, so it is unacceptable that 690 million people are undernourished, 2000 million do not have regular access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food, and 3000 million cannot afford a healthy diet.”

If the contributions of the richest countries are doubled as requested, “with technology, innovation, education, social protection and trade facilitation” hunger can be overcome within the deadlines set by the international community, said the expert.

David Laborde, a scholar at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), argued that in addition to the contribution of donor countries, the poorest countries must increase spending from their own budgets to achieve the SDGs “and double the income of 545 million of small-scale farmers and limit agricultural emissions in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement.”

In order to advance on these reflections that allow more concrete solutions, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, proposed the holding of a Summit on food systems, whose preparatory meeting will be held in Rome before the boreal summer of 2021, and the final meeting of Heads of State and Government or their high representatives will take place in September of next year in New York.

According to Queen Letizia of Spain, it is necessary to reconsider “current food production models from the perspective of social, economic and environmental sustainability.” In her opinion, it is also a “public health priority linked to the degradation of the environment in its broadest sense, to the loss of agro-biological diversity, to food waste and to the duty to ensure decent livelihoods for the workers in the food system,” recalling the growth trends of malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity.

In the search for ways to build synergies between countries, in order to face the effects of COVID-19 on food security and its possible future solutions, the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, recalled the initiative that his country presented to the FAO.

It is a proposal aimed at creating a coalition of nations on food, which has already been welcomed by about 40 countries from all regions, to exchange experiences of what is happening, identify where the areas of greatest risk are, explore the best ways to face these effects and prepare for the post-COVID-19 phase in this sector.

“An adequate and balanced diet must be within the reach of everyone, together with the old connection with culture, tradition and land,” fighting “the hateful action of food waste”, calling on the international community to assume protection” of the precious goods that Earth offers us” to safeguard it “for future generations.”

The post Food Security Bursts Onto the Global Agenda appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Mario Lubetkin is Assistant Director General at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

The post Food Security Bursts Onto the Global Agenda appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Thailand’s COVID-19 response cited as an example of resilience and solidarity. Credit: UNDP

By Gita Gopinath
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 20 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread with over 1 million lives tragically lost so far. Living with the novel coronavirus has been a challenge like no other, but the world is adapting.

As a result of eased lockdowns and the rapid deployment of policy support at an unprecedented scale by central banks and governments around the world, the global economy is coming back from the depths of its collapse in the first half of this year. Employment has partially rebounded after having plummeted during the peak of the crisis.

This crisis is however far from over. Employment remains well below pre-pandemic levels and the labor market has become more polarized with low-income workers, youth, and women being harder hit.

The poor are getting poorer with close to 90 million people expected to fall into extreme deprivation this year. The ascent out of this calamity is likely to be long, uneven, and highly uncertain. It is essential that fiscal and monetary policy support are not prematurely withdrawn, as best possible.

In our latest World Economic Outlook, we continue to project a deep recession in 2020. Global growth is projected to be -4.4 percent, an upward revision of 0.8 percentage points compared to our June update.

This upgrade owes to somewhat less dire outcomes in the second quarter, as well as signs of a stronger recovery in the third quarter, offset partly by downgrades in some emerging and developing economies. In 2021 growth is projected to rebound to 5.2 percent, -0.2 percentage points below our June projection.

Except for China, where output is expected to exceed 2019 levels this year, output in both advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies is projected to remain below 2019 levels even next year. Countries that rely more on contact-intensive services and oil exporters face weaker recoveries compared to manufacturing-led economies.

The divergence in income prospects between advanced economies and emerging and developing economies (excluding China) triggered by this pandemic is projected to worsen.

We are upgrading our forecast for advanced economies for 2020 to -5.8 percent, followed by a rebound in growth to 3.9 percent in 2021. For emerging market and developing countries (excluding China) we have a downgrade with growth projected to be – 5.7 percent in 2020 and then a recovery to 5 percent in 2021.

With this, the cumulative growth in per capita income for emerging-market and developing economies (excluding China) over 2020-21 is projected to be lower than that for advanced economies.

This crisis will likely leave scars well into the medium term as labor markets take time to heal, investment is held back by uncertainty and balance sheet problems, and lost schooling impairs human capital.

After the rebound in 2021, global growth is expected to gradually slow to about 3.5 percent into the medium term. The cumulative loss in output relative to the pre-pandemic projected path is projected to grow from 11 trillion over 2020-21 to 28 trillion over 2020-25.

This represents a severe setback to the improvement in average living standards across all country groups.

There remains tremendous uncertainty around the outlook with both downside and upside risks. The virus is resurging with localized lockdowns being re-instituted. If this worsens and prospects for treatments and vaccines deteriorate, the toll on economic activity would be severe, and likely amplified by severe financial market turmoil.

Growing restrictions on trade and investment and rising geopolitical uncertainty could harm the recovery. On the upside, faster and more widespread availability of tests, treatments, vaccines, and additional policy stimulus can significantly improve outcomes.

More Action is Needed

The considerable global fiscal support of close to $12 trillion and the extensive rate cuts, liquidity injections, and asset purchases by central banks helped saved lives and livelihoods and prevented a financial catastrophe.

There is still much that needs to be done to ensure a sustained recovery. First, greater international collaboration is needed to end this health crisis. Tremendous progress is being made in developing tests, treatments and vaccines, but only if countries work closely together will there be enough production and widespread distribution to all parts of the world.

We estimate that if medical solutions can be made available faster and more widely relative to our baseline, it could lead to a cumulative increase in global income of almost $9 trillion by end 2025, raising incomes in all countries and reducing income divergence.

Second, to the extent possible, policies must aggressively focus on limiting persistent economic damage from this crisis. Governments should continue to provide income support through well targeted cash transfers, wage subsidies, and unemployment insurance.

To prevent large scale bankruptcies and ensure workers can return to productive jobs, vulnerable but viable firms should continue to receive support—wherever possible—through tax deferrals, moratoria on debt service, and equity-like injections.

Over time, as the recovery strengthens, policies should shift to facilitating reallocation of workers from sectors likely to shrink on a long-term basis (travel) to growing sectors (e-commerce). Workers should be supported through this adjustment with income transfers, retraining, and reskilling.

Supporting reallocation will also require steps to speed up bankruptcy procedures and resolution mechanisms to efficiently tackle firm insolvencies. A public green infrastructure investment push in times of low interest rates and high uncertainty can significantly increase jobs and accelerate the recovery, while also serving as an initial big step towards reducing carbon emissions.

Emerging market and developing economies are having to manage this crisis with fewer resources, as many are constrained by elevated debt and higher borrowing costs. These economies will need to prioritize critical spending for health and transfers to the poor and ensure maximum efficiency.

They will also need continued support in the form of international grants and concessional financing, and debt relief in some cases. Where debt is unsustainable it should be restructured sooner than later to free up finances to deal with this crisis.

Lastly, policies should be designed with an eye toward placing economies on paths of stronger, equitable, and sustainable growth. The global easing of monetary policy while essential for the recovery should be complemented with measures to prevent build-up of financial risks over the medium term, and central bank independence should be safeguarded at all costs.

Needed fiscal spending and the output collapse have driven global sovereign debt levels to a record 100 percent of global GDP. While low interest rates alongside the projected rebound in growth in 2021 will stabilize debt levels in many countries, all will benefit from a medium-term fiscal framework to give confidence that debt remains sustainable.

In the future, governments will likely need to raise the progressivity of their taxes while ensuring that corporations pay their fair share of taxes, alongside eliminating wasteful spending.

Investments in health, digital infrastructure, green infrastructure and education can help achieve productive, inclusive, and sustainable growth. And expanding the safety net where gaps exist can ensure the most vulnerable are protected while supporting near-term activity.

This is the worst crisis since the Great Depression, and it will take significant innovation on the policy front, at both the national and international levels to recover from this calamity. The challenges are daunting. But there are reasons to be hopeful.

The exceptional policy response, including the establishment of the European Union pandemic recovery package fund and the use of digital technologies to deliver social assistance is a powerful reminder that well-designed policies protect people and collective economic wellbeing.

At the IMF we have provided funding at record speed to 81 members since the start of the pandemic, granted debt relief, and called for extended debt service suspension for low-income countries and for reform of the international debt architecture. Building on these actions, policies for the next stage of the crisis must seek lasting improvements in the global economy that create prosperous futures for all.

Source: IMF Blog

 

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Excerpt:

The IMF says poor are getting poorer with close to 90 million people expected to fall into extreme deprivation this year

 
Gita Gopinath is the Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The post A Long, Uneven and Uncertain Ascent appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana and Chihoko Asada Miyakawa
BANGKOK, Thailand, Oct 20 2020 (IPS)

In the fight against COVID-19, success has so far been defined by responses in Asia and the Pacific. Many countries in our region have been hailed as reference points in containing the virus. Yet if the region is to build back better, the success of immediate responses should not distract from the weaknesses COVID-19 has laid bare. Too many people in our region are left to fend for themselves in times of need. This pandemic was no exception. Comprehensive social protection systems could right this wrong. Building these systems must be central to our long-term recovery strategy.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

Illness or unemployment, pregnancy or old age, disability or injury should never be allowed to push people into poverty. During a pandemic, social protection schemes facilitate access to health care and provide lifelines when jobs are lost, rescuing households and stabilizing economies. This has been recognized by governments in the face of COVID-19. Over three hundred new social protection measures have been taken across forty countries in the region. Existing schemes have been strengthened, ad hoc packages rolled out and investment increased.

This recent appreciation for social protection is welcome. It must be maintained, because the most effective responses to COVID-19 have been from countries which had robust social protection systems in the first place. The logistics of taking measures during an unfolding crisis are complicated; setbacks and delays inevitable. Well-resourced social protection systems built over time are just better placed to deal with the unexpected. However, these systems still do not exist in many of parts of our region.

A recent report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), The Protection We Want, finds that more than half the region’s population has no coverage whatsoever. Only a handful of countries have comprehensive social protection systems and public spending in this area remains well below global average. In many countries in South Asia and the Pacific, public expenditure on social protection is as low as 2 per cent of GDP.

Where social protection systems do exist, their coverage is riddled with gaps. The youngest, least educated and poorest are frequently left uncovered by health care in the region. Many poverty targeted schemes never reach families most in need. Maternity, unemployment, sickness and disability benefits are the preserve of a minority of workers in the formal economy, leaving 70 per cent of workers locked out of contributory schemes. Lower labour force participation among women accentuates gaps in coverage. Population ageing, migration, urbanization and increasing natural disasters make social protection ever more urgent.

Chihoko Asada Miyakawa

Investing in a basic level of social protection for everyone – a social protection floor – would immediately improve livelihoods. United Nations’ simulations across thirteen developing countries in the region show that universal coverage of basic child benefits, disability benefits and old-age pensions would slash the proportion of recipient households living in poverty by up to eighteen percentage points. The decrease in poverty would be greatest in Indonesia, followed by Sri Lanka and Georgia. Purchasing power would surge in recipient households supporting increases in per capita consumption in the lowest income groups. In 9 out of 13 countries analysed, more than a third of the population currently living in poverty would no longer be impoverished.

These phenomenal development gains are within reach for most countries in Asia and the Pacific. Establishing basic schemes for children, older persons and persons with disabilities would cost between 2 and 6 per cent of GDP. It is a significant investment, but affordable if we make universal social protection systems a fundamental part of broader national development strategies.

Yet it is not only the level of funding that matters, but the way the funds are spent. To achieve universal coverage, we need a pragmatic mix of contributory and non-contributory schemes. This would deliver a vital minimum level of protection regardless of previous income and support a gradual move to higher levels of protection through individual contributions.

New approaches to funding participation can extend social protection to workers in the informal economy. Schemes that reward unpaid care work and are complemented by subsidized childcare services can form a decisive step towards more inclusive and gender equal societies. And new technologies, including phone-based platforms, can accelerate delivery across populations.

As we focus on building back better in the aftermath of the pandemic, our region has an opportunity to make universal social protection a reality. In so doing, we could bring an end to the great injustice that leaves the vulnerable in our societies most exposed. Governments from across Asia-Pacific will convene later this month at ESCAP’s Sixth Committee on Social Development to strengthen regional cooperation in this area. Let us seize the opportunity to accelerate progress towards universal social protection, and reduce poverty and inequality in Asia and the Pacific.

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

Chihoko Asada Miyakawa is the ILO Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific.

 

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The world was shocked by the unexplained deaths of hundreds of elephants across Botswana. While Botswanan officials have said they have identified what killed the animals as cyanobacteria, some wildlife experts and conservationists have questioned the government’s claim, saying many questions remain. Courtesy: Elephants Without Borders (EWB)

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA , Oct 20 2020 (IPS)

When hundreds of elephants died in the space of a few months in Botswana earlier this year, conservationists were shocked. Wildlife experts said it was one of the largest elephant mortality events in history.

But that shock quickly turned to exasperation over what they said was the government’s slow, botched and untransparent investigation into the incident.

Now, Botswanan officials have said they have identified what killed the animals – cyanobacteria, a naturally occurring bacteria which can produce lethal doses of toxins – in water the elephants had drunk and bathed in.

But some wildlife experts and conservationists have questioned the government’s claim, saying many questions remain and have criticised the lack of transparency from authorities amid fears of a deliberate rolling back of years of pioneering conservation work in the south African state.

“Questions remain. The whole way this has been handled is indicative of the approach of the Botswana government to transparency and openness,” Mary Rice of the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), told IPS.

Between March and June, hundreds of elephants – the Botswanan government’s official figure is 350, but some conservation groups claim it is as much as 700 – died in the country’s Okavango Delta.

Many of the dead elephants were found near natural watering holes, others on trails. Some had collapsed on their chests, suggesting their death had been fast and sudden. Horrific scenes were also reported of dying elephants running around in circles, or with paralysed limbs.

Despite being alerted by conservation groups to the problem, it was June before the authorities said they were investigating.

International and local conservation groups criticised the government for its slowness to respond to the incident as carcasses – and vital evidence – rotted or were scavenged.

They also attacked its failure at the time to obtain proper samples or send them off quickly enough to expert laboratories to determine the cause of death and the sometimes confusing information given out by officials over what had been ruled out as the cause of the deaths and where samples had been sent for testing. 

It was only late last month when the government announced that it had determined the cause of the death that it was finally confirmed samples had been sent to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Canada, and Europe. It is still unclear exactly where and how it was established that the neurotoxins were behind the deaths.

The authorities’ slow response and lack of transparency in its handling of the investigation has sparked speculation the government may be hiding something related to the deaths.

One conservationist working with elephants who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity, said: “Because of the government’s actions, we are unlikely to ever discover the real reason so many elephants died in Botswana. We have to assume that the government has therefore achieved its objective.”

Others say that it has at the very least given rise to some doubts the right conclusion has been drawn.

Dr Niall McCann, biologist and co-founder of the conservation group National Park Rescue, told IPS: “The lack of transparency in this process has left room for doubt. The Botswana government’s explanation is a plausible one, but it doesn’t make it right. The likelihood that it is something else is still there. It could be another disease or some other poisoning.

“The cause can only be definitively confirmed by examining the brains of the elephants in detail, but there is no chance of this now. The government’s initial slow response means that we will probably never find out for sure what killed the elephants.”

McCann is far from alone in raising questions over the government’s claim.

Many experts have pointed to the fact that only elephants appear to have been affected while it would be expected other animals drinking the water would have been killed.

Rice said: “The big question is, why weren’t other species affected?”

Others have asked why it would only occur in one small area.

One expert on elephant disease, who asked not to be named, told IPS: “This theory is severely compromised by the extreme localisation – if correct [animal deaths] would have appeared across the region.”

Dr Pieter Kat of conservation group LionAid, who has extensive experience of wildlife diseases in Africa, wrote in a Facebook post that the government had failed to provide essential scientific information to support their claim that cyanotoxins were responsible for the animals’ demise.

“The Botswana government has a long way to go to convince that the highly specific mortalities among elephants were directly related to neurotoxic cyanotoxins,” he wrote.

When contacted by IPS about the elephant deaths, Botswanan government officials did not respond.

However, announcing their findings at the end of last month, government representatives suggested that individual species can be affected by neurotoxins in different ways – something experts say may be possible – or that because the quantity of water, and depths they drink from, is so much greater than other animals they may have been affected differently.

Mmadi Reuben, the government’s principal veterinary officer, admitted though: “There are a lot of questions that still need to be answered.”

This comes amid growing worries among conservationists over the government’s attitude to the fate of what is the world’s largest elephant population.

There are more elephants in Botswana than in any other country. Measures to protect large wildlife, including hunting bans and “shoot-to-kill” policies to deter poachers, have seen the population grow from 80,000 in the late 1990s to an estimated 135,000 today.

But conservationists have raised the alarm over a rise in poaching since Mokgweetsi Masisi became president two years ago.

Having promised to reduce the number of elephants in the country amid rising human-wildlife conflicts as the human population grows, Masisi last year lifted a ban on hunting elephants.

The ban had been introduced five years previously by his predecessor, Ian Khama, whose conservation efforts won international praise.

According to research published by conservation group Elephants Without Borders (EWB), there was a nearly six-fold rise in elephant poaching in the country between 2014 and 2018.

Not long after taking office Masisi gave stools made from elephant feet to the leaders of Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, all of whom had been pushing for a ban on the sale of ivory to be lifted.

McCann said: “Re-instating elephant hunting, giving parts of elephants as gifts to foreign officials – these were statements.”

There have even been suggestions that the government’s concerns over human-elephant conflict could have been behind the botched investigation.

One conservationist who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity said: “Human-wildlife conflict is a major problem in Botswana. The authorities were slow to act on this at the start because they did not want to be seen to be devoting lots of resources to elephants at a time when they were dealing with a human pandemic.”

Others see the government’s handling of the incident as part of a wider, more sinister, and tragic approach to the country’s wildlife by a corrupt regime in league with poachers and wildlife traffickers.

They told IPS: “Africa’s least-corrupt wildlife haven and luxury tourism destination, known for its friendly, international cooperation and positive conservation models, appears to be entering an era of secrecy, exploitation and xenophobia.

“A culture of secrecy …. is a tragedy for conservation, which requires a culture of openness and international cooperation to function.

“Individuals in the Botswana government are absolutely in the pockets of the poachers, as are some of the police.”

On September 22, 27 Botswana Defence Force soldiers were arrested for wildlife trafficking, having just returned from the Okavango Delta region.

However, not everyone sees nefarious motives at the highest levels as being behind the way the investigation has turned out.

Philip Muruthi, a conservation expert at the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), told IPS that while he felt officials in Botswana could have moved sooner on the investigation and been more transparent about its progress, “the Botswana government is serious about conservation. There are serious people there [in state administration] working on conservation”.

He said that the explanation the government gave for the elephant deaths was plausible. “This has happened before, and while it is not a very common thing in Africa it does occur,” he said.

But if the government’s claim is true, its implications for African wildlife in the near and mid-term future could be significant.

Threats to wildlife from natural biological phenomena are being exacerbated by climate change and rising temperatures, scientists say.

Unusually warm weather was linked to the deaths of 200,000 critically endangered Saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan in 2015. They were killed when a naturally occurring bacteria in their nasal passages became lethal amid high daily temperatures and humidity.

Scientists say that harmful algal blooms are also increasing in size and frequency around the world as climate change pushes up global temperatures. This is especially important in southern Africa where they are rising at twice the global average, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

McCann agreed. He said: “Higher temperatures exacerbate existing problems, in the case of algal blooms by promoting the proliferation of bacteria. Climate change is a threat multiplier, and we will see more of these events occur. As time goes on, there are likely to be more and more problems with watering holes in Africa.”

 

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El Helicoide, a building in Caracas, Venezuela, currently headquarters of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN). Credit: Flakiz/Flickr

By Andrés Cañizález
CARACAS, Oct 20 2020 (IPS)

In mid-September, the United Nations Human Rights Council approved the renewal, for another two years, of the mandate of the Fact-Finding Mission to determine and document the existence of crimes against humanity in Venezuela, under the government of Nicolás Maduro.

In this way, the Council endorsed the work that this independent mission had already been conducting for one year. Weeks before, the team of experts had released a devastating report, prepared after reviewing slightly over 3,000 cases of which it rigorously documented 233.

In order to fully understand what is happening in Venezuela in terms of Human Rights, it may be convenient to pay close attention to one story, one of the many that make up this report. Due to our professional bias, we have stopped at a case clearly linked to freedom of expression and information.

Andrés Cañizález

For this piece, I have picked the events involving Pedro Jaimes Criollo, described in the UN report as from paragraph 727. This case clearly exposes the repressive policy on expression and information. Tweeting just turns out to be a crime, as the government of Nicolás Maduro understands it.

An aviation aficionado, this Venezuelan tweeter’s handles were @AereoMeteo and @AereoMeteo2. Disseminating meteorological and aeronautical information was his hobby, until May 2018.

On May 3, 2018, strikingly a date on which free speech is celebrated (World Press Freedom Day), Pedro Jaimes tweeted the flight path of the presidential plane on which Nicolás Maduro was headed for a ceremony in Aragua State, at the center of the country.

As underscored in the UN report, the tweeter obtained information in the public domain about the models of planes used by the Office of the President of Venezuela, data available on Wikipedia, and tracked the flight using the (equally open and public) FlightRadar24 app.

As of May 2018, there was no law or executive order in force classifying flight information as confidential.

A week after his tweets, Pedro Jaimes was arrested without any warrant by the National Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional, SEBIN). He was arriving at his home. At the time of his arrest, he was beaten, and so was his sister as she tried to step in. When his family showed up at the SEBIN headquarters in El Helicoide (a 1950s spiral-shaped building), Caracas, officials denied that Pedro was being held there.

Several days after his arrest, this time carrying a search warrant, the SEBIN took some communications and computer equipment from his home. He was charged with using such equipment to interfere with radio communications from planes and airports; he was also indicted of revealing state secrets on Twitter.

In the report, the UN experts indicate that they have reviewed the handbooks of the equipment seized from the tweeter and that, with those devices, it was not possible either to transmit radio signals or to interfere with communications.

Pedro Jaimes Criollo, who did nothing but write tweets based on public information, was subjected to interrogations in which he was beaten with sticks or wooden bats wrapped in plastic or cloth, which leaves no marks. A bag was placed over his head and insecticide was sprayed inside, suffocating him. He was also administered electroshocks.

He was kicked in the head while on the floor, causing him to partly lose his hearing. SEBIN officials threatened to rape him with a wooden stick they had at hand.

That same month of May 2018, Provisional Prosecutor Marlon Mora filed charges against Pedro Jaimes at the Third Miranda State Control Court ([Tercer Tribunal de Control del Estado Miranda] a trial-level category), with Judge Rumely Rojas Muro presiding. He was charged with interference in operational security, revealing state secrets, and digital espionage. Although he was arrested a week after his tweets about Maduro’s flight, the prosecution claimed that he had been apprehended in flagrante delicto.

After over a month, during which time the government did not reveal the holding place of the tweeter despite the fact that his family filed for injunctive relief on several occasions, Pedro was able to call his sister, on a telephone provided by a guard at El Helicoide, to tell her where he was being held.

During the court proceedings on his matter, he was not allowed to appoint his defense lawyers, was denied access to his own docket, and the basis of the indictment was the interviews with the very SEBIN agents who had detained and tortured him.

Long held in abject conditions, for some time, even without access to a bathroom to relief himself, Pedro Jaimes was released while standing trial in October 2019. His matter has since been deferred a dozen times.

“As of the time of writing, Mr. Jaimes continued to await trial, with precautionary measures including monthly presentation at court and a prohibition on leaving the country. He continued to suffer from psychological symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and physical trauma,” reads the UN report, released in mid-September.

His crime? Tweeting. His case, not being a unique or standalone story, epitomizes the lack of freedom and the repressive system that prevail today in Venezuela.

The post Venezuela, Twitter, and Crimes Against Humanity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Andrés Cañizález is a Venezuelan journalist and Ph.D. in Political Science

The post Venezuela, Twitter, and Crimes Against Humanity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Stefania Giannini
PARIS, Oct 20 2020 (IPS)

School reopening doesn’t mean that education is back on course. For a start, schools remain closed in over 50 countries, affecting more than 800 million students. The poorest ones may never make it back to school, driven by poverty into child labour or early marriage. Distance learning has been out of reach for one third of the 1.6 billion students affected worldwide by school closures. They may disengage altogether if school closures continue.

Stefania Giannini

The health crisis is at risk of eroding decades of progress. For the first time since its conception, the Human Development Index is slated to decline, with education accounting for one third of its measure. At least 24 million students from early childhood through secondary school and university are at risk of dropping out because of COVID’s economic impact alone. Young children have missed out on vital health, nutrition and early learning in critical pre-school years. Youth have seen skills’ training centres shut down without any alternative. Learners with disabilities were left without support. Girls have faced heightened exposure to violence and early marriage. Adults’ literacy programmes were interrupted. University students couldn’t afford to continue their studies. The world was already facing a learning crisis before the pandemic. Now it could turn into a generational catastrophe if governments and the international community fail to prioritize education as a springboard of the recovery.

But as it stands now, education is not being prioritized. Education and training is receiving a nearly invisible share of stimulus packages set up by countries to support recovery from the COVID-19 crisis – 0.78 percent or USD 91.2 billion according to UNESCO’s preliminary research. Europe and North America allocated the largest amount to education (USD 56.9 billion) followed by Asia and the Pacific (USD 30.5 billion), while other regions may have spent around USD 3.8 billion altogether. The IMF policy tracker finds that only 37 out of 196 countries and territories cover education or training in their fiscal measures, especially stimulus packages. Leaders hardly referred to education when they met virtually at the UN last month to set priorities on financing for development post-COVID-19.

This does not stand up to economic logic. The recovery cannot be a competition for funds but one that builds on the connections between education, health, jobs and fighting poverty and inequalities. Access to education has lifetime repercussions on well-being, earnings and gender equality. Fiscal space is shrinking everywhere, but at minima, education budgets must be protected, if not increased to maintain the same level of spending. It is morally unacceptable to make governments choose between funding essential public goods and servicing debt.

There is a cost to every lost school day. Education will take time to recover from a universal disruption. The pandemic will notch up the funding gap for education by one third to as much as USD 200 billion annually in low and middle-income countries. The recovery requires investing now in campaigns to re-enrol the most marginalized students, in catch-up and second chance programmes and in health and hygiene facilities to ensure children and teachers are safe in school. As the pandemic curve is far from flattening, investments will be needed in remote and online learning options as they become an inevitable part of the “new normal”.

But by making the right investment choices now, rather than waiting, the additional funding gap incurred by the pandemic could be reduced by three-quarters. Aid to education, that was already losing steam as a priority among many donors, accounting for less than 11% of total official development assistance, could decline by 12% as a result of COVID-19. It must be stepped up. Children and youth are paying a high price for the health crisis. The pandemic cannot sound the death knell of their education – and their future. We can’t let our education systems break down in the name of a recession or a pandemic.

As an international community, we are calling on world leaders to make pledges to protect their education budgets and act in solidarity to support those farthest behind. We are convening a global meeting hosted by the Ghana, Norway and the United Kingdom this 22 October where we need to rally around the call to #PowerEducation and protect learning. Governments and the international community have it their power to prevent an educational fallout that will deepen inequalities and set back human development everywhere, threatening the already fragile social fabric of our societies. The COVID-19 generation deserves a better deal for the future, and this starts with the promise of a decent quality education.

Stefania Giannini is Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO

 

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 20 2020 (IPS)

Limited liability protection for shareholders in joint stock companies was introduced to encourage investments in them. However, it has encouraged irresponsibility, causing much harm while generating profits without responsibility.

Limited liability limits responsibility
Columbia Law School’s Professor Katarina Pistor has extended her critique of the legal system to emphasize the implications of such limited liability. Limited liability encourages shareholders not to pay attention to the harm corporations they invest in may do.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Instead, as emphasized by Milton Friedman, shareholders should focus on returns to investment, and not be distracted by other considerations, especially the notions of corporate social responsibility and stakeholderism.

Chicago University’s Professor Luigi Zingales has emphasized that companies are not just value-neutral institutional or contractual arrangements. Instead, they have obligations to serve the public good or otherwise benefit society, to reciprocate for privileges provided by the state.

“Historically we know that corporations were born as public institutions with a special privilege granted by the state… Even today, … the privilege of limited liability, especially with respect to tort claims, is an extraordinary privilege granted by the state.”

The limited liability of these companies has allowed them to pursue profits with impunity, and to blatantly violate ethics and moral restraint, with little accountability to other ‘stakeholders’, i.e., with interests in the company’s activities and operations, including their consequences.

Limited liability effectively provides a legal guarantee to prospective shareholders intended to encourage investments in joint stock companies. Legal protection thus exempts shareowners from responsibility for the harm their corporations cause.

Limited liability companies
This amounts to a privileged legal exception granted by the state, effectively tantamount to an economic subsidy. Indeed, limited liability has long lay at the heart of the joint stock company. The corporation itself may face liability, but not shareholders who get to keep the profits they get.

Shareholders can, of course, lose money on their shareholdings, but they also profit without liability even if their companies harm others, cause ecological damage — e.g., water or air pollution, or greenhouse gas emission — and deliberately conceal and deny the dangers and costs of corporate practices which may involve corruption or other abuses, whether legal or otherwise.

In effect, shareholders bear virtually ‘no liability’ legally, and have no legal responsibility to other ‘stakeholders’. Unintended beneficial ‘side effects’ or ‘externalities’ for others were acceptable, but corporate governance should not be distracted and undermined by such considerations.

Shareholders are shielded from the consequences of the harm — or ‘negative externalities’ — that corporations inflict on others and on nature with the protection of ‘limited liability’. Under this legal dispensation, company shareholders are absolved of liability, regardless of the human and environmental costs caused by their activities, products or services sold.

Hence, limited liability has long been at the very core of their business models. Those running such limited liability companies have been quite aware of at least some of their ‘negative externalities’, or harm they cause, as such externalities are actually at the core of their profit maximizing strategies.

Thus, cost-saving or efficiency considerations typically involve skirting legal regulations, ‘passing on’ or ‘socializing’ costs, minimizing tax exposure, extracting non-renewable valuable resources, otherwise harming the environment, and other ‘socially irresponsible’ conduct.

Off the hook
In case after case of corporate crime, shareholders have been let off the hook: from the 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, which killed hundreds of thousands, to the health consequences of the use of tobacco, asbestos and other toxic and carcinogenic substances.

More recently, shareholders of Boeing, responsible for two airplane crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people, made US$43 billion from share repurchases during 2013-2019 when the firm ignored safety standards in order to cut costs. Meanwhile, the families of those who died will be compensated from a US$50 million disaster fund, i.e., about under US$150,000 per victim, much less than 0.2 per cent of the share repurchase gains.

A lawsuit against the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, the company believed to have profited most from the US opioid epidemic, is trying to hold beneficiaries of corporate misconduct accountable. Apparently, Purdue hired McKinsey as consultants to “turbocharge” opioid sales, willfully encouraging addiction, knowing it would lead to many deaths.

Nevertheless, fearing liability, some family members have reportedly moved much of their money to Switzerland. However, they need not fear as US courts have long protected influential shareholders from the victims of such corporate abuses, a norm unlikely to be reversed by senior judicial appointments in recent years.

Internalising externalities
Limited liability has often been criticised for preventing markets from properly pricing risks posed by corporate activities known to or suspected of causing substantial harm. But this, of course, presumes that assessing and pricing risk and harm by markets is straightforward, unproblematic and uncontroversial.

Property rights, it is claimed, increase efficiency by ensuring that owners bear the costs of the profit-seeking activities their assets are engaged in. Yet, limited liability protects investors from having to bear the full costs of their consequences while retaining profits so generated. Unsurprisingly, shareholders will defend such privileges and resist efforts requiring them to bear such costs.

‘Command and control’ or top-down regulation is dismissed as ineffective, costly and inefficient by the ideology of shareholder market capitalism. Meanwhile, market deterrents, e.g., via taxation, are opposed as governments are dismissed as incapable of setting optimal tax rates.

Shareholders also try to avoid liability by locating assets in safe havens, and by persuading governments to protect them, even threatening sanctions against those seeking to undermine such protection. But laws that allow investors to do harm with impunity also undermine the very legitimacy of the economic and legal system besides the very conditions for humanity’s survival.

 

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Members of a women-farmers’ collective demonstrate use of a devices that sends daily bulletins on weather patterns, crops and other matters of importance to farming communities in rural India. Inexpensive technology can have a life-changing impact on rural women. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 19 2020 (IPS)

Access to technology which is relatively inexpensive to deploy can have a life-changing impact for rural women, social scientist Valentina Rotondi told IPS.

Rotondi shared her insight during a presentation of her research titled “Digital rural gender divide in Latin America and the Caribbean” to mark International Day of Rural Women on Thursday, Oct. 15.

At the presentation, Rotondi said her team studied the impact of the digital gender gap and access to technology on women’s health. Their research focused specifically on access to reproductive and sexual health for women in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Access to mobile phones can be a vehicle for improving health and reproductive health for women living in those remote areas,” Rotondi told IPS. “Women living in remote areas can get access to information regarding their pregnancy or their health. As a result, getting access to this information and reducing their travel time to hospital, improves the health status of their babies.”

The research was carried out by the University of Oxford, and the webinar was co-organised by  the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the Inter-American Development Bank  and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Manuel Otero, Director General of IICA, said in his opening remarks that the observation of International Day of Rural Women was to celebrate the far-reaching “direct implications” and “deep roots” that rural women hold in the lives of those around them. 

“Women in rural territories deserve and need to be applauded, because they are the ones that guarantee rootedness, and are also at the core of family and productive life,” he said.

Otero added that rural women played a key role in ensuring food security and, ultimately, the whole purpose of agricultural development and rural wellbeing.

And yet, often they remain invisible in larger society.

Calling them the “guardians of our rural territories”, Otero said that last week’s celebrations were a part of the framework to gain recognition for such a vital section of society.

“We want to encourage public discussion which is necessary in order to push for development and implementation of high quality policies that would, once and for all, improve the situation for the women who live out in the countryside,” he said. 

At the talk, Rotondi added that while it is very low-cost to implement the kind of technological access that provides women with information about reproductive health, their impacts can be life-changing.

“The impact of those kinds of technology, which are really cheap and [help] connect [the women] to others, are big enough and could really be a vehicle for sustainable development,” she said. 

According to their research, narrowing gender gaps in mobile phone adoption can further narrow gender gaps in internet access, which might be “pivotal” in terms of health of improvement.

Rotondi further cited research that found  access to mobile phones can improve women’s financial resilience , which in turn improves their outcomes.

She shared the findings of their study that support this analysis:

• Women living in rural areas are the least “connected” group.
• The digital gender divide, which hampers women’s ability to access information and communication technologies, was narrowing in Latin America and the Caribbean  until a few years ago
• In 17 of the 23 countries analysed, women are less likely than men to report owning a mobile phone
• Countries that report a narrow digital gender gap also have lower gender gaps in vulnerable employment, youth unemployment and labor-force participation

The digital divide between men and women has been further impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

“In this pandemic situation, whereby schools are closed, people who have access to mobile phones and the Internet might be able to continue education, but those without this technology cannot,” Rotondi added.

Otero of IICA added that the current pandemic has made it more challenging  for the rural women who are even less connected, highlighting the invisibility of rural women and their work.

“It’s not enough to talk about access to land ownership, productive resources, finances, education, training, health, and justice” he said. “In particular, we [must] focus on the issue of connectivity. The pandemic has shown us that [having a] cell phone opens up almost every type of possibility, the ability to study, to sell or to buy – and therefore to work.”

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