Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Credit: IPS

By Rabiya Jaffery
AMMAN, Jordan, Dec 21 2020 (IPS)

Anas Shaikh is a Pakistani farmer on a mission to bring solutions to the many difficulties small and medium-scale farmer’s face in making a sustainable living.

One of the main challenges he observed has been the difficulties for farmers to sell their produce at the right time to avoid post-harvest waste and at prices that were not exploitative due to the large number of middlemen and corporations that are now involved in the agricultural supply chain.

“The agriculture community everywhere but especially in developing countries is loaded with so many difficulties, despite the crucial role farmer’s play in the economy and food security of their countries,” says George Stacey, an analyst working with Norvergence, an environmental advocacy NGO.

“There are a lot of problems contributing to this but one of the biggest is that farmers are exploited and not paid what they deserve for their produce.” Just across the border, in India, tens of thousands of farmers are currently protesting against three new agricultural laws that aim to deregulate Indian agriculture.

Even though the laws say farmers will still have price assurances, but the language is vague, and farmers are nervous about losing government support and having to sell directly to large companies. Farmers are particularly worried that they will not be able to sell their produce and go into debt.

Already, across the region, the increasing number of intermediaries, such as wholesalers and processors – as supply chains become more monopsonistic and monopolistic due to the growing influence and presence of large global companies in markets – continue to lower the returns earned by small scale farmers.

In addition the lack of road and rail connectivity and limited accessible storage or warehouse infrastructures in Pakistan and India also further increase the need to rely on middlemen.

“Lower returns continue to exploit farmers and push many further into poverty,” says Stacey. “This also impacts the quality of produce that is grown as farmers are no longer able to access many resources such as good quality of pesticides.”

Shaikh is now on a mission to use technology to find solutions to the biggest challenges small local farmers face.

He has recently founded Peepu, an easy-to-use mobile application that cuts down on the several middlemen and the time that it takes to sell agricultural products by facilitating direct transactions between farmers and traders.

Shaikh points out that the app’s simplistic interface has been designed to ensure accessibility, keeping into consideration that the target users may not all be tech-savvy.

“I have worked in the field as a small farmer and I know farmers. This is why the app has been deliberately designed in a fashion that the farmers will find it easy to use,” says Shaikh.

Peepu was launched earlier this year on Google Play in March, and is being used by more than 700 Pakistani farmers and aims to expand further in the coming months.

“Farmers are able to sell their products at the earliest possible time and at a competitive price,” says Shaikh.

“What we are trying to do is use the technology to shift the power of negotiations back to small farmers and also allow them the possibility to conduct business with anyone, regardless, without the limitations imposed by geographical proximity.”

Currently, agriculture is one of South Asia’s biggest employers. Nearly 70 percent of the region’s population is employed in agriculture and the majority of people in the region live in rural communities.

And technology, such as Peepu, can drastically help answer many of the difficulties farmers face that also have long-term social and economic impacts.

For instance, a shorter chain of intermediaries can also potentially diminish the post-harvest losses generated due to the degradation in the quality and quantity of the crop products through the stages of the supply chain from harvest to consumer use.

“Farmers directly selling to traders in a way that isn’t exploitative and without the many middlemen involved, also provides a pragmatic solution to the utilization of unavoidable post-harvest food waste which isn’t just beneficial to farmers but also important in reducing food waste and, thus, improving food security,” says Shaikh.

Several reports, such as by The World Bank, warns that ensuring food security in South Asia, as its population continues to exponentially expand, will be one of the main challenges for the region to address in the coming years.

The region is currently home to more than 1.8 billion people — with the majority living in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh — and has been the fastest-growing region for half a decade. The population of the region is expected to further increase by 40 percent by 2050, according to the UN.

And many experts agree that addressing food insecurity is going to be amongst the top policy agendas to ensure stability in what is the most populous and amongst the poorest regions of the world.

“Food availability and accessibility can be increased by increasing production, improving distribution, and reducing the losses. And the reduction of post-harvest food losses is a critical component of ensuring future global food security,” says Hina Kamal, PhD research scholar at Future Food Beacon Program, University of Nottingham.

Kamal is working with sustainable food companies to research approaches to recycling and reutilizing food waste into functional products.

“Reduction and recycling of food waste is the only possible holistic approach towards achieving sustainability for future foods”

Studies have also established the importance of policies that address securing food availability that considers the context and impacts of climate change on agriculture.

A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, states that while climate change and rising temperatures will affect food production across Asia differently, the most food insecure populations are likely to be in South Asia.

Kamal points out that the urgency of tackling food insecurity issues can led governments of developing countries to launch short term and fast tracked initiatives, without proper co-ordination resulting in slower progress and economic inefficiencies.

“This can be reversed if there is better activation of opportunities and co-ordination amongst research institutes, research and development centers, universities and private and public enterprises and ministries,” she adds. “It is innovation that, after all. increases the scope and number of emerging technological process, logistics, marketing and operating costs.”

Peepu is currently involved with the National Incubation Center (NIC) in Karachi, Pakistan’s economic center, and is seeking funding from external investors.

“While technology can be and exploitative force, it also offers a potential for small farmers to get some of their power back and have more control over how and to who they sell their crops,” says Stacey.

“It doesn’t solve the many problems small farmers experience but it can be a tool to navigate through the challenges until better policies come along that protect them.”

 

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A parent helps his children to go through work received in the study kits distributed by Education Cannot Wait (ECW) implementing partners in Uganda. ECW allocated $1 million in emergency funds to its education partners in Uganda to ensure that refugee children still continued schooling despite the nationwide coronavirus lockdown. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA/KIKUBE/RWAMWANJA, Uganda , Dec 21 2020 (IPS)

Thirteen-year-old Wita Kasanganjo is a pupil at Maratatu Primary School in the Kyangwali Refugee Settlement based in Uganda’s Hoima district. But last month, when Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni ordered the re-opening of schools for the first time since the mid-March nationwide closure, Kasanganjo was not part of the returning group of students. The government, in a cautious lifting of coronavirus lockdown restrictions, has allowed only pupils who are part of the final year or candidate classes to return to their schooling.    

“Not being in class for all this time is not fun. I miss my friends at school and my teachers too,” Kasanganjo tells IPS, saying that she looks forward to the day when the government allows all children to return to school. Kasanganjo has lived as a refugee in Uganda since 2015 when she and her mother fled from armed conflict in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province.

During the coronavirus lockdown and subsequent school closures, close to 15 million girls and boys, including children living in refugee settlements across this East African nation, were affected. And while pupils in their final years of school, estimated at 1.2 million, returned last month, more than 13 million remain at home, with some still unable to access learning materials.

The most vulnerable among these children include refugee children like Kasanganjo. According to international charity, Save the Children, Uganda hosts the largest number of refugees on the continent.

The numbers are sobering. According to the NGO, 57 percent of refugee children in Uganda are out of school, in some cases for several years. “Even for those who are able to attend school, the quality of education is severely compromised by a shortage of classrooms, teachers and materials. Class sizes average more than 150 children, with some squeezing in 250 children or more,” according to Save the Children Uganda.

Kasanganjo is one of the fortunate ones. She was enrolled in Uganda’s Primary Education under the Education Response Plan for Refugees and Host Communities in Uganda (ERP), facilitated by Education Cannot Wait (ECW).

The plan, the first of its kind globally, was launched two years ago by the Ugandan government together with local and international humanitarian and development partners. “It targets children and youth in 12 refugee-hosting districts in Uganda where more than half a million children are currently out of learning and out of school,” according to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency.

ECW, the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies and protracted crises, provided the impetus to develop the three and a half year ERP and supports its implementation with a $33 million seed funding allocation. ECW is urgently appealing to new and current donors to step up and cover the full $389 million expected cost of the ERP. So far, an additional $93 million has been mobilised.

While other refugee children may not be attending school during the lockdown, Kasanganjo is able to continue learning from home as she has been supplied with reading material distributed by the ERP partners working in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement.

When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, ECW immediately released additional funds through its first emergency response funding window for its partners to quickly set up relevant remote learning solutions and safe and protective learning environments, and to raise awareness of barrier gestures for children and youth and their communities to prevent the spread of the virus.

“In times of crisis, support to continuous learning opportunities is crucial to help protect vulnerable girls and boys who face high risks of permanently dropping out in case of a prolonged interruption to their education. Girls are particularly at risk of child marriage and early pregnancies,” said Yasmine Sherif, director of ECW. “In the face of COVID-19, rapid emergency interventions have been key to protect refugee children and youth and other vulnerable and marginalised girls and boys from an uncertain future and to preserve the gains of ECW’s longer-term multi-year investments in quality education outcomes.”

In total, ECW allocated $1 million in emergency funds to its education partners in Uganda. This includes $475,000 implemented by UNHCR and $525,000 implemented by Save the Children as part of a consortium of civil society organisations, including War Child Holland and ZOA Uganda. The consortium distributed 38,000 home learning kits and more than 900 solar-powered radios that were given to some of the poorest households to ensure children in refugee hosting communities were able to listen to lessons over the radio. The funding also supported classes to be conducted over local radio stations. 

“I have I read all the reading materials and answer all the questions. Sometimes I have challenges because I cannot get ready answers, but my mother allows me to visit some of my friends in the community so that we can do the work together. That has really worked for me,” says Kasanganjo.

Geatano Apamaku, a radio manager at Radio Pacis in Uganda’s West Nile region – which lies along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Uganda’s largest concentration of refugees, numbering 750,000, are based – believes that radio classes are more effective compared to distributing the study material and having students learn by themselves.

“We have had children call in asking teachers questions. I think this was more effective because most refugee parents are illiterate. So, they could not help their children learn,” Apamaku tells IPS. 

Dugale Severy, a teacher and refugee from South Sudan who lives and teaches in the Nyumanzi Refugee Settlement in Adjumani District, tells IPS that without education programmes for refugee children, many would never have entered a classroom after fleeing their countries. And despite the COVID-19 lockdown, he says that South Sudanese refugee children are receiving a good education.

“Because you cannot learn when you are hearing gunshots. Just like you cannot teach at your best when you are hearing bombshells. I pray that this type of education is extended to other refugee children all over the world,” explains Dugale.

Uganda’s National Commissioner for Basic and Primary Education Dr. Cleophus Mugenyi tells IPS that without funding from ECW, children in refugee settlements would not have been able to continue their education.

“It would be horrible. The children would be denied the right to education, and you know that education is a basic human right for all and it is important for everyone to make the most of their lives. So, children in refugee settlements deserve education, too,” says Mugenyi.

According to Mugenyi, funding from ECW has benefitted refugees and their host communities to improve learning facilities, construct classrooms and pit latrines, and train teachers, among others.

In fact, ECW reports that the primary gross enrolment ratio for refugee children improved from 53 percent in 2017 to 75 percent in 2019, following the Fund’s support to the ERP.

Despite this progress, more is needed as refugees are faced with precarious situations.

“Our appeal to partners is to continue mobilising resources towards this kind of education because from Uganda’s perspective, we have demonstrated that the Education Response Plan for Refugees and Host Communities in Uganda can help children to access education,” says Mugenyi.

But Uganda has done more for refugees than most countries by granting them access to land and services, freedom of movement, and the right to work. According to Save the Children, the Ugandan government has shown “global leadership in refugee policy and how we respond to refugee crises”.

According to the NGO, what happens in Uganda will determine an international framework for the refugee crisis.

“Uganda and the ERP is a test case for the willingness of the international community to back their commitments with practical actions, and ensure that the responsibility of responding to the refugee crisis is shared fairly,” Save the Children states. 

ECW is appealing to public and private donors to urgently mobilise $400 million globally. With these resources, ECW will continue to fund emergency education support during the COVID-19 pandemic and in other sudden onset crises, and help develop and roll out multi-year response plans for refugees and other children and youth in a total of 25 protracted crises around the globe.   

Meanwhile Gladys Nayema, just like Kasanganjo, is one of the many girls who will continue their home learning. “Some of our colleagues were happy when the schools were closed. They thought it was an early holiday. I didn’t. I have continued to learn from those materials from Save the Children and the government. I urge other boys and girls to read them because they are useful,” she tells IPS.

 

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Credit: Unsplash, vía Thought Catalog.

By Julie Posetti
WASHINGTON, Dec 18 2020 (IPS)

An alarmingly high number of women journalists are now targets of online attacks associated with orchestrated digital disinformation campaigns. The impacts include self-censorship, retreat from visibility, an increased risk of physical injury, and a serious mental health toll. The main perpetrators? Anonymous trolls and political actors.

These findings are among the first released in a survey conducted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) on online violence against women journalists. They paint a global picture of the deeply entrenched nature of gendered abuse, harassment and sexualized attacks against women journalists, along with the obstacles to effective solutions.

The survey, which is the most comprehensive and geographically diverse survey ever undertaken on the theme of online violence, was offered in five languages and received responses from 714 women journalists across 113 countries. It is part of a broader UNESCO-commissioned study to examine online violence in 15 countries, with an emphasis on intersectional experiences and the Global South.

The women journalists surveyed said they had been subjected to a wide range of online violence, including threats of sexual assault and physical violence, abusive language, harassing private messages, threats to damage their professional or personal reputations, digital security attacks, misrepresentation via manipulated images and financial threats.

These methods of attack are growing more sophisticated and evolving with technology. They are also increasingly associated with orchestrated attacks fueled by disinformation tactics designed to silence journalists. This points to the need for responses to online violence to grow equally in technological sophistication and collaborative coordination.

Here are the top 12 findings from the report, which was published by UNESCO to mark International Human Rights Day:

(1) Nearly three in four women respondents (73%) said they had experienced online violence.

Online attacks against women journalists have been a pernicious problem for many years. Now, these appear to be increasing dramatically and uncontrollably around the world, as our respondents illustrated.

(2) Threats of physical (25%) and sexual violence (18%) plagued the women journalists surveyed.
But these threats aren’t just directed at the women being targeted — they radiate. Thirteen percent of respondents said they had received threats of violence against those close to them.

(3) One in five women respondents (20%) said they had been attacked or abused offline in incidents seeded online.

This finding is particularly disturbing given the emerging correlation between online attacks and the murder of journalists with impunity. In related findings, 13% said they increased their physical security in response to online violence, and 4% said that they had missed work due to concerns about the attacks jumping offline. This highlights both their sense of vulnerability and their awareness of the potential offline consequences of digital attacks.

(4) The mental health impacts of online violence were the most frequently identified (26%) consequence. Twelve percent of respondents said they had sought medical or psychological help due to the effects of online violence, and 11% said they had taken days off work as a result.

Online violence against women journalists causes significant psychological harm, especially when it is prolific and sustained. But our survey also demonstrated that media employers need to do much more to support the mental health and well-being of those targeted. Only 11% of our respondents said their employer provided access to a counselling service if they were attacked.

(5) Almost half (48%) of the women reported being harassed with unwanted private messages.
This highlights the fact that much online violence targeting women journalists occurs in the shadows of the internet, away from public view where dealing with the problem can be even more difficult.

(6) The story theme most often identified in association with increased attacks was gender (47%), followed by politics and elections (44%), and human rights and social policy (31%).

This data underlines the function of misogyny in online violence against women journalists. It also spotlights the role of political attacks on the press, connected to populist politics in particular, exacerbating threats to journalism safety.

(7) Forty-one percent women respondents said they had been the targets of online attacks that appeared to be linked to orchestrated disinformation campaigns.

Women journalists increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs of digital disinformation campaigns which leverage misogyny and other forms of hate speech to chill critical reporting.

(8) Political actors were the second most frequently noted sources (37%) of attacks and abuse after “anonymous or unknown attackers” (57%).

The role of political actors as top sources and primary perpetrators of online violence against women journalists is an alarming trend confirmed by this survey. Meanwhile, the proliferation of anonymous and pseudonymous “troll” accounts complicates the process of both investigating the perpetrators and efforts to hold them to account. A lack of transparency and limited responsiveness by the platforms, especially those where attacks are prolific, compounds this problem.

(9) Facebook was rated the least safe of the top five platforms or apps used by participants, with nearly double the number of respondents rating Facebook “very unsafe” compared to Twitter. It also attracted disproportionately higher rates of incident reporting among the respondents (39% compared to Twitter’s 26%).

Considering the role of Facebook and Twitter as major vectors of online attacks against women journalists, the levels of reporting to the social media companies demonstrated by the survey respondents appear relatively low. This likely reflects both a sense of futility frequently associated with such efforts, as well as a general reluctance among the women surveyed to raise these issues externally. In addition, the finding underscores the urgent need for major internet companies to fulfill their duty of care and more effectively tackle online violence against journalists.

(10) Only 25% of respondents reported incidents of online violence to their employers. The top responses they said they received were: no response (10%) and advice like “grow a thicker skin” or “toughen up” (9%). Two percent said they were asked what they did to provoke the attack.

The respondents demonstrated the existence of a double impediment to effective action to deal with online violence experienced in the course of their employment: low levels of access to systems and support mechanisms for targeted journalists, and low levels of awareness about the existence of measures, policies and guidelines for addressing the problem.

(11) The women journalists surveyed most frequently indicated (30%) that they respond to the online violence they experience by self-censoring on social media. Twenty percent described how they withdrew from all online interaction, and 18% specifically avoided audience engagement.

Such acts, which could be considered defensive measures employed by women to preserve their safety, demonstrate the effectiveness of online attack tactics: They are designed to chill critical reporting, silence women and muzzle truth-telling.

(12) Online violence significantly impacts the employment and productivity of the women respondents. In particular, 11% reported missing work, 38% retreated from visibility (e.g. by asking to be taken off air and retreating behind pseudonyms online), 4% quit their jobs, and 2% even abandoned journalism altogether.

While some of these numbers might appear small, this is a significant indicator of the perniciousness of the problem. This data also demonstrates the negative implications of online violence for gender diversity in (and through) the news media.

Ultimately, this survey’s first results illustrate that online violence against women journalists is a global phenomenon that demands urgent action. For freedom of expression to be sustained, for diversity in journalism to flourish, and for access to information to be equal, women journalists must be seen and heard.

The climate of impunity surrounding online attacks raises questions that demand answers. Impunity emboldens the perpetrators, demoralizes the victim, erodes the foundations of journalism, exacerbates risks to journalism safety and undermines democracy.

Based on these disturbing findings, nine recommendations for action are offered in the full report, targeting governments, the social media platforms and media industry employers.

 

This story was originally published by IJNET, International Journalists’ Network

 

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Shkula Zadran, Afghanistan’s Youth Representative to the United Nations, addresses U.N. Security Council. She said her generation have been the main victims of the war in Afghanistan. “We are being killed, our dreams are being buried everyday,” she told the Security Council. Courtesy: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Dec 18 2020 (IPS)

While Afghanistan ends a historic year, filled with the hope for peace as the government and Taliban sat down for almost three months of consecutive peace talks for the first time in 19 years, it was also a year filled with violence with provisional statistics by the United Nations showing casualties for this year being higher than 2019.

Yesterday, Dec. 17, in a virtual meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Deborah Lyons, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), praised the peace efforts on the close of “one of the most momentous years that Afghans have endured”, while also highlighting the causalities of the year.

She said that the Afghanistan government and the Taliban had “made incremental but genuine progress in their peace talks”. They agreed on a preliminary deal, reportedly the first written agreement after 19 years of conflict.

“These developments are an early but a positive sign that both sides are willing and able to compromise when needed,” Lyons said.

Talks continued uninterrupted in host country Qatar for almost three months, but are currently in a three week recess.

However, despite the talks, the Taliban has refused to a ceasefire and continued its war on the Afghanistan government.

It was, however, reported this week that a top U.S. general held recent talks with the Taliban in Doha, urging a reduction in violence as this risked the peace process. 

Lyons also raised the issue, stating that the “unrelenting violence remains a serious obstacle to peace and a threat to the region.” She added that one Afghan official had told her recently, “the sense and perception of violence and insecurity is higher now that ever”.

While UNAMA is still compiling this year’s data, Lyons provided some provisional statistic on the impact of the violence.

“In October and November, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) caused over 60 percent more civilian casualties than in the same period last year. In the third quarter of 2020, child casualties rose 25 percent over the previous three months; while attacks against schools in this same period increased fourfold.

“In the first 11 months of 2020, targeted killings by anti-government elements rose by nearly 40 percent compared to the same period in 2019,” she said, adding that it was no surprise that the Global Peace Index for 2020 listed Afghanistan as the least peaceful nation in the world for a second year in a row.

She highlighted some of the conflicts experienced over recent months — two separate rocket attacks in Kabul, an attack on Kabul University, and the increased conflict in some areas — and said these served to heighten fears around the emergence of new terrorists threats.

She called for all countries to continue to pressure all parities to the conflict to bring about a sustained reduction in violence. “I except this will be a top priority when the negotiations resume,” she said.

Meanwhile, Shkula Zadran, Afghanistan’s Youth Representative to the U.N. also briefed the Security Council.

She said that “while it is very difficult to represent a generation born and raised in violence and conflict,” she was honoured to speak on behalf of Afghan youth, including those who were killed in the terror attack on Kabul University and other education centres.

“I have met their families. Their pain is beyond our imagination. I have promised them that I will be their voice and I am fulfilling my promise,” Zadran, who spent her childhood as a refugee in Pakistan, told the Security Council.

“I’m representing a generation who have been the main victims of this proxy war. We are being killed, our dreams are being buried everyday.”

She called for the end to the daily killings of Afghan youth who are a majority of the country’s population as two thirds of citizens are under the age of 25.

“Terrorists are afraid of Afghan youth. And that is why they are targeting our education institutions.

“They know that an educated and informed generation will never allow terrorism and extremism to grown in their country,” Zadran said.

Zadran said that as an Afghan youth representative, her message to terrorists and their supporters was clear and obvious.

“You tried to bury us. You didn’t know that we were seeds.”

Zadran said that the youth supported the end of the conflict through the peace negotiations.

Lyons said Afghanistan’s youth were a key constituency, and were also the most educated generation of youth in the country’s history.

“Young Afghan’s have clear views on the future of their country, and we must do all we can to amplify their voices.”

“Through our youth-focused local, peace initiatives, which are conducted throughout Afghanistan, UNAMA has provided a platform for the youth of Afghanistan to have their say on peace,” Lyons noted.

“Most recently, in the rural province of Faryab, young participants issued their own declaration with strong recommendations, specifying an immediate ceasefire, setting out the role of Islam under Afghanistan’s constitution, identifying the all-important sustainable development goals and emphasising the need for transitional justice.

“These are the young people of Afghanistan, their voices deserve to be heard,” Lyons said, adding that cooperation throughout the region of Central and South Asia will be essential for enduring peace.

Lyons also noted an increasing commitment among regional players for peace in Afghanistan as this was linked to attaining peace within the region.

“Increased trade and connectivity will build the foundation for peace and regional prosperity,” Lyons said, adding it was important to support regional efforts, including the regional efforts on drug trafficking and transnational organised crime as these were considered two serious threats to peace.

Lyons said that any sustainable peace needed to be owned by Afghan’s diverse society. “This is only possible if the process is inclusive from the outset, with meaningful participation by all constituencies, including women, youth, minorities, victims of conflict, and religious leaders,” Lyons said.

She added that the ongoing security transition, with the international troop withdrawal, added to the anxiety of the Afghan population. She said in the coming months this larger security transition will become a central topic in the dialogue among Afghan officials, regional countries and the international community.

She, however, pointed out that the $3 billion raised in financial support for the country during a donor conference in Geneva was remarkable within the context of the current financial environment.

Lyons said that the full security transition, peace negotiations, the health and socio-economic challenges of COVID, the ongoing commitment of the international donors and the expected results of even more regional cooperation meant that Afghanistan would continue to move forward in this new year.

“By all accounts this was a big year. But a bigger year lies ahead,” she said.

 

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A mother homeschools her children in Shamva district, Zimbabwe, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 10,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa; Zimbabwe and South Sudan among most vulnerable. Credit: WFP/Tatenda Macheka

By Kundhavi Kadiresan
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 18 2020 (IPS)

Africa, compared to Asia, Europe and the US, has largely escaped the devastating death toll of COVID-19, accounting for a fraction of the world’s 63 million cases.

Instead, the continent has been uniquely affected by the pandemic’s impact on food supply chains, revealing underlying vulnerabilities that threaten to bring a different crisis and leaving the spectre of famine looming over several African countries.

As donors, NGOs and research organisations rally to support governments in preventing a rise in extreme hunger and poverty, we have an opportunity to transform Africa’s food systems for the better at a time when the entire world has reached an inflection point for the sustainability of food systems.

In tackling the secondary impacts of the pandemic, Africa can build greater resilience to global shocks, leapfrogging other regions by reconfiguring a food system that the continent – and the world – has long since outgrown.

This could provide a blueprint for other regions and countries in the run-up to a milestone UN summit in 2021 and help the rest of the world to leverage food and agriculture for better health, climate action and opportunities for equality.

Such a roadmap should start by recognising that the diet, nutrition and health of a population underpins all other indicators of progress and prosperity.

With this in mind, agriculture should be situated at the heart of any national or regional strategy for development and economic growth.

Since it was launched in 2003, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) has set out clear targets for agriculture as a driver of other goals and includes more than 40 countries among its signatories.

As of 2015, public spending on agriculture across Africa under CAADP had increased by more than seven per cent a year to support more and better livelihoods, stronger food security and greater resilience.

It also provides a clear, shared vision around which partners, such as agricultural research networks like CGIAR, can unite to play their part.

Such an integrated, coordinated approach, both between governments and partners, will be essential in delivering the next decade of the programme to accelerate the transformation of African agriculture.

But while a high-level framework like CAADP is crucial for bringing together partners in pursuit of common goals, each country, district and neighbourhood will also need solutions appropriate to their specific contexts.

The world may be connected by its common need to produce sufficient healthy food in a sustainable way, but the means through which this is achieved varies enormously according to social and environmental factors.

Developing more innovations that fit geographical needs will allow food systems to be more responsive, adaptive and impactful.

Over the last 20 years, for example, CGIAR has developed 52 separate innovations across sustainable livestock, crop breeding and natural resource management in Ethiopia alone. By tailoring them to the specific challenges faced by smallholders, women and youth, these solutions have reached an estimated 11 million rural households.

Going forward, initiatives like the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program, led by CGIAR and funded by the African Development Bank, will integrate expertise from across research areas to continue to scale up the uptake of appropriate new technologies.

Working in 30 countries, TAAT is forecast to increase raw food production by 120 million tons per year, helping to lift about 40 million people out of poverty, by focusing on national needs across different crops and livestock, and different challenges from crop pests to soil fertility.

Finally, in reforming agriculture, Africa has the opportunity to address systematic and long-term inequality, particularly when it comes to gender inequality.

Women in Africa continue to carry out around 40 per cent of agricultural labour yet their frequent exclusion from financial services, land rights and equal opportunities for training holds back Africa’s agricultural development.

CGIAR’s COVID-19 Hub enables researchers to work collectively, while also drawing lessons learned from research across the CGIAR System that can both support the pandemic recovery, and also identify opportunities to close the gender gap.

For example, one study demonstrates the challenges women livestock keepers faced compared to men as a result of a shortage of livestock feed during the pandemic, and offered solutions that could unlock the potential of women, building resilience not only for women but also for their families and their communities.

Arguably, if research into the connected relationship between human, animal and environmental health had been better funded, the world may not be facing today’s COVID-19, health and hunger crisis.

But if there is one lesson to learn, it should be that investing now in agricultural research could help prevent the next disaster, in Africa and around the world.

It is clear now that the needs of a 21st century food system stretch further than ever, and we must rise to the challenge of redesigning a food system for Africa itself and by Africa for the world.

 

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To increase access to electricity through lower prices and cleaner energy matrices it is imperative that the region embark on an energy integration program. Credit: Bigstock.

By Andrés Chambouleyron
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 17 2020 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated an evolution across Latin American electric utilities. The need for utilities to manage structural issues derived from increased deployment of Renewable Sources of Energy (RSE) such as wind and solar and Distributed Energy Resources (DER) has rapidly increased. Technology is unleashing major disruptions and challenges. In many ways, Latin America’s traditional electric utilities are in crisis. 

Electric sector reforms throughout Latin America in the 1990s led to widespread adoption of liberalization measures and a paradigm of unbundling of generation, transmission and distribution in the sector. But now, there is a pronounced paradigm shift for the region’s utilities.

By allowing countries with temporary deficits (surpluses) to import (export) clean power (from or to) countries with low renewable density thus helping move faster towards decarbonization

Intermittent RSE, and more importantly, photovoltaic (PV) distributed generation (DG) and electric mobility (EV) have upended the decades-old system. In the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, there are clear directions companies and regulators should take to address the 3 Ds: decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization.

Indeed, unlike traditional thermal or hydro generation, intermittent RSE and DER require increasing network and operational (System Operator or ISO) flexibility from both supply and demand.

Most notable is the critical need to accommodate steeper and steeper (up and down) ramps resulting from more and more intermittent RSE coming off and on line as they take on larger shares of electricity supply. 

The increasing adoption of intermittent RSE in Latin American countries will permanently alter the electrical landscape requiring modifications in every step of the sector’s vertical structure. The first challenge, by definition, is how to deal with intermittency. 

Intermittency requires back-up traditional generation to come off (on)-line whenever the sun starts (stops) shining and the wind starts (stops) blowing.

The larger the share of intermittent RSE over total generation the steeper the slope of both down and up ramps during sunup and sundown (i.e. the duck’s “belly” becomes larger, see below) requiring faster and faster back-up generation to allow/replace PV solar panels or wind mills that go on/off line. 

Alternatively, back-up generation can be (and it is already being) replaced by storage. Batteries charged during peak hours can later replace solar panels whenever the sun comes down (or wind stops) injecting energy into the grid hence shaving the evening peak (See below) thus replacing alternative traditional (and more expensive) thermal or hydro generation as the next graph shows.

 

 

Once the intermittency problem has been dealt with and solved, RSE have enormous advantages vis à vis traditional generation, namely: they are (becoming) more economical, they have zero marginal costs as natural resources (i.e. sun and wind) are of unlimited supply, they do not pollute the environment and, combined with storage, they can contribute to reduce network congestion and losses during peak hours. They may require, however, additional investment in transmission and/or storage to fully exploit their potential. 

Intermittent RSEs in Latin America are normally located in low densely populated areas sometimes thousands of miles away from energy consumption centers.

The combination of faraway locations, more geographically scattered and smaller installed capacities generate more capillarity in transmission networks that in turn requires more investment in transmission lines, each of them of smaller capacity. But, it is important to note that storage can help overcome some of these problems. 

To a certain degree, the intermittency problem inherent to RSE has been solved by (thermal and hydro) back-up generation and increasingly by storage. The increased investment in RSE will require additional investment in transmission capacity because of their more remote and more scattered location.

This additional investment need may, however, be mitigated by additional investment in storage that will help stabilize power flows thus reducing congestion and losses. 

There is also rapidly emerging technology and what many see as an opportunity for Distribution Companies (DistCos) to island sections of the network with microgrid technology and to promote smaller projects close to loads when possible. In this manner, the microgrid would be more manageable. 

A slightly different technological challenge to electric utilities will be posed by Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and electromobility (EV).

Among DER, DG adds to the intermittency problem but it is now faced directly by the(DistCos). As hundreds or even thousands of PV rooftop panels come on and off-line injecting power into the distribution grid (or charging batteries or an EV) DistCos have now to manage intermittency 

in their own grids probably resorting to a Distribution System Operator or DSO and eventually also to a Transmission System Operator of TSO as the number of real time transactions multiplies by hundreds or even thousands.

The former duck chart at the generation level now also appears at the distribution level forcing DistCos to deal with their own duck belly and to run their own dispatch with a DSO and eventually also a TSO.

EV poses the challenge to DistCos of multiplicity of real-time transactions as does storage but with an additional problem: EV requires a different distribution network design as users charge EV batteries all around the distribution network, switching places all the time thus altering load factors and requiring additional investment in distributions lines and transformation substations to cope with this additional moving demand.

But, here again, emerging technology being implemented in some areas such as California have begun to seek to use EVs as storage for home usage during outages.

 

A sustainable electricity network

 

The traditional vertically separated electricity utility is clearly in crisis. New renewable sources of generation coupled with DG plus storage and EV are driving needed evolution of the traditional vertically disintegrated paradigm in the region’s electric sector.

Finally, to increase access to electricity through lower prices and cleaner energy matrices it is imperative that the region embark on an energy integration program. By allowing countries with temporary deficits (surpluses) to import (export) clean power (from or to) countries with low renewable density thus helping move faster towards decarbonization.

What is crystal clear is that the COVID pandemic and its aftermath should be embraced as a catalyst for the long-needed reform in Latin America’s power sector by addressing these key technological challenges. 

Out of crisis, opportunity. 

 

The post Latin American Electric Utilities COVID-accelerated Evolution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Andrés Chambouleyron is Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute of the Americas and Managing Director at Berkeley Research Group

The post Latin American Electric Utilities COVID-accelerated Evolution appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Yvo de Boer
THE HAGUE, Dec 17 2020 (IPS)

When it comes to international environmental diplomacy, America has a chequered past. It stood at the forefront of the international battle to fix the ozone hole and has shaped many key international agreements.

Sadly, US positions are not always built on solid political ground at home. Twice, in the climate change process, this has led to the United States forging an agreement, only to then walk away. This happened with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which then Vice-President Gore flew to Japan to sign in the full knowledge that a Republican dominated Senate would never ratify the deal. It happened again five years ago, with former President Obama closing that landmark deal (and John Kerry signing at the UN), only for President Trump to tear it up a few weeks later.

Yvo de Boer

With such a background the international community is a little nervous when a new Democrat administration takes the helm laden with robust statements and bold promises, as President-elect Biden is doing now. But, as is so often the case, the prodigal son will get the benefit of the doubt (again) and for good reason!

Let’s look at what those reasons are.

No-one would argue the fact that the United States are a political powerhouse and an economic superpower. This makes having the US in the climate action tent critically important. But why? Is this about political posturing, or is there something more?

When the Biden administration chooses to take an ambitious lead on climate action, the world is wise to take heed. Clear signals from politicians on where the new administration plans to go, have an enormous power in the market. An example. Wind and solar energy made it to where they are today in a hostile economic environment where the playing field was everything but level.

Environmental cost is not internalised and fossil fuels are still subsidised to a huge degree. What helped to push wind and solar to the current competitive strength is the hope that, in the long term, things will change and new (climate) challenges be recognised, thus creating a viable market for these technologies.

If you are building things (powerplants, factories or refinery’s) with a technical lifetime of 40 years, you do well to think about how friendly or hostile the operating environment is likely to be over that time period. So a political statement sends strong market signals. Especially if it comes from a superpower and even more so when others are pointing in the same direction.

How the market responds to political signals has ramifications around the globe. Our economy is now truly global. This means that when key market players take a course, set an standard or make demands on their suppliers, this resonates around the world. The EU agreeing auto standards with European manufactures immediately sets a trend that Japan and Korea must follow because the European market is so big. American companies like Wall Mart have hundreds of thousands of suppliers around the world. So a direction taken at a corporate HQ is delivered-on in pretty much every country on our planet. The standards the US and other major players set become imperatives, or things you choose to ignore at your own peril.

Another important point is that climate action has increasingly become a race to the top that is driven by innovation. Innovators smell a climate market and they are rushing to seize the opportunities. Opportunities around electric vehicles, energy efficiency, clean technologies, low-asset business models, you name it. America has long stood at the forefront of discovery and innovation. Many of the key technologies we apply today have at least part of their roots in America. So the signals politicians send and how the corporate community responds, creates an innovation catalyst that will transform business opportunities both in the US and around the world.

A final point to mention here is America’s proud history in working together with other nations, providing them with the finance, technology and capacity support they need in order to climate proof their energy systems, industry and infrastructure. Reducing emissions in the economic powerhouses of today is obviously critical. But with much of future economic growth and population increase of the future set to happen in Africa and South East Asia, we need to fix the future, not only the past.

Five years after the Paris Climate Accord was reached, the international process is now in full implementation mode. The purpose of the negotiations will be to ensure that countries individually are delivering what they have promised and that the collective impact of their efforts is enough to keep global temperature increase below the agreed level.

The United States returning to the international process at this time is critical to ensuring that especially the major players show leadership, both at home and abroad. At the end of the day, ensuring this happens is in the US’s own interest for a number of reasons. First because the US has in recent years always considered action by others, especially China, as a precondition for its own engagement. Second because bold global action will ensure all nations pull their weight toward a common goal. Third because that global action will create the opportunities for the innovation economy of the future President-elect Biden is seeking to deliver, as opposed to the manufacturing economy of the past.

The model outgoing President Trump held up is what should make America great again.

The author is President of the Gold Standard Foundation and former Secretary of the UN Climate Convention.

 

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GGGI has been working closely with the Provincial Government of Central Kalimantan supporting effective policymaking and planning to drive reduced deforestation and peatland degradation in the province, particularly in Utar Serapat which consists of 107,000 ha of peatlands. GGGI also supports Central Kalimantan in mobilizing public and private investment for sustainable and inclusive landscape-based projects designed to achieve low carbon development in the province.

By Frank Rijsberman, Ingvild Solvang, Kristin Deason, Julie Godin, Hanh Le, Siddhartha Nauduri, and Marcel Silvius, Global Green Growth Institute
Dec 17 2020 (IPS-Partners)

In the wake of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, there are both challenges and opportunities in ensuring that COP26, a UN climate change summit, builds confidence in the Paris Agreement as an effective tool to avoid climate crisis.

As 2020 comes to a close, the date is fast approaching for all parties to the Paris Climate Agreement to submit their updated commitments, or NDCs, that specifically delineate how each country will meet the common climate goals within the United Nations framework.

Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, COP26 climate talks was postponed to 2021, and instead a series of virtual events including the Climate Ambition Summit was held on December 12, 2020, where countries could give updates on their adjusted NDCs.

Much has happened in recent months. While the Republic of Korea did not show very ambitious NDC targets earlier this year, President Moon Jae-in announced net zero ambitions for 2050. Likewise, China made a net zero pledge for 2060. The European Union announced enhanced ambitions to cut emissions by 55% from the 1990 level by 2030.

Many other states made commensurate pledges to tackle the climate crisis. A Race to Resilience was also launched by mayors, community leaders and insurance companies committed to safeguarding the lives and livelihoods of four billion vulnerable people by 2030, which aligns in particular with the priorities of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

While these commitments are positive and more ambitious than earlier NDCs, they are still not ambitious enough to meet the 1.5 degree target and protect people and nature from climate change. UK Minister Alok Sharma has called out the world leaders’ failure to show necessary levels of ambition.

Reflecting on priorities ahead of next year’s COP26, the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) will continue supporting its Members’ and Partners’ NDC enhancement and implementation through climate and carbon finance mobilization. However, a key area of focus in 2021 will be to build synergies between climate solutions and green COVID19 recovery.

It is critical to ensure that the unprecedented economic stimulus packages result in lasting shifts toward green development pathways with explicit focus on employment potential and other socio-economic co-benefits.

The tens of trillions mobilized to recovery efforts provide a big and perhaps last chance to solve the unprecedented challenges as leverage vanishes with rising debt levels and dried-up public funding.

Green recovery packages must be put to work to decarbonize the economy. Renewable energy is now the cheapest form of energy, especially when taking account of the extended costs of our reliance on fossil fuels so far.

Circular economy options can drastically reduce waste, and alternatives to fossil fuel are available in the bioeconomy, and nature-based solutions hold tremendous untapped climate mitigation potential with employment and adaptation co-benefits. New technologies are pushing opportunities. Hydrogen can take up where RE cannot reach, and Artificial Intelligence can push energy efficiency and effective production.

These are trends moving us in the right direction. Explicit focus is required to highlight the economic multipliers and social co-benefits of climate action.

In our collaborative Green Growth Program with the Government of Indonesia, we are promoting nature-based solutions that help halt deforestation, restore carbon rich wetlands and soils, improve land productivity and water security, and deliver improved livelihoods as well as enhanced climate mitigation and adaptation actions.

Continued and improved investments in biomass-based and solar energy-based electricity generation brings more and higher quality jobs, food security and climate resilience.

In Vietnam, GGGI works with the government to enhance its NDC ambitions through promoting sustainable urban cooling, energy efficiency digital solutions and increasing green investments with innovative financial instruments such as carbon financing or green bonds through collaborating with the Government of Luxembourg.

To verify the employment potential of renewable energy, GGGI’s employment assessments in countries like Indonesia, Rwanda and Mexico show that renewable energy, Solar PV in particular, employs more people per unit of investment compared to fossil fuels-based technologies. A global solar-powered irrigation program, including Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Uganda will improve livelihoods, food security and climate resilience.

While supporting several governments with their NDC revision processes into 2021 with the NDC Partnership and others, technical analysis incorporating employment potential and safeguarding of poor and vulnerable communities is key.

GGGI is supporting several SIDS countries in this regard – Saint Lucia is using a modeling approach to explore how reforming fossil fuel subsidy and taxation schemes can lower fossil fuel consumption while ensuring that vulnerable populations are not negatively impacted. In Antigua & Barbuda, GGGI is developing programs to ensure the inclusion of all segments of the population are included in the transition to renewable energy.

Focusing on green recovery packages and climate action simultaneously means a more effective integration of NDCs and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While the Covid-19 pandemic has placed emphasis on the socio-economic aspects of climate action, and the importance of assessing and including long-term health and vulnerabilities of the local communities into planning processes, the notion that we must marry sustainable development and climate ambitions have been made evident by the successes and failures of climate action to date.

As the world recovers with the introduction of vaccines, and business and economic activities resume, a change in trajectory towards a green recovery should be at the center of focus. Looking ahead to COP26 in Glasgow next year, it is essential that the world does not bounce back to business as usual.

 

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We never imagined that we would witness food insecurity being an issue in developed countries such as the US. Credit: Stephen Leahy/IPS.

By Esther Ngumbi and Ifeanyi Nsofor
URBANA, Illinois / ABUJA, Dec 17 2020 (IPS)

Food insecurity across the U.S. continues to be on the rise because of the effects of COVID-19. According to Feeding America, over 50 million Americans will experience food insecurity, including 17 million children. 

We both grew up in countries referred to as “developing countries,” Ifeanyi in Nigeria and Esther in Kenya. At the time, we never imagined that we would witness food insecurity being an issue in developed countries such as the U.S. like we are now. As thought leaders in global health and food security, we are compelled to amplify this inequity in the world’s richest country.

The last few months, clearly, have changed our perception of food insecurity and the narrative around it is changing.

COVID-19 is very well linked with food insecurity and failing to have a food security expert working alongside the other advisory council members would undermine the ability of the country to effectively tackle these tightly linked issues

Moreover, even as we celebrate the arrival of the vaccine, COVID-19 continues to claim the lives of many Americans, while bringing the possibilities of new lockdowns, hence, we can certainly expect food insecurity to continue to be a problem.

Impressively, measures that were in existence before the pandemic in the U.S. such as foodbanks and other Federal benefits such as SNAP and WIC that Americans have access to in order to assist with food insecurity have helped to make a difference.

Through the pandemic months, we have also witnessed a rise in resources available to citizens who at one point or another need help with finding food. From the U.S. Department of Agriculture hotline that can connect citizens to available pantries, interactive maps that reveal where help and your local food bank is, to databases of pantries and non-profit subsidized grocery to food finder apps.  But the truth is these resources were designed to be supplemental.

Much more needs to be done. Here’s where to start.

First, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris should include a food security expert in the COVID-19 Advisory Council. The responsibility of the expert should be to provide advice on ways to address the current COVID-19 food insecurity in the U.S.

COVID-19 is very well linked with food insecurity and failing to have a food security expert working alongside the other advisory council members would undermine the ability of the country to effectively tackle these tightly linked issues. Moreover, this person should preferably be a person of color, the population that has been impacted most by food insecurity.

Second, develop a multi-stakeholder comprehensive food security plan as part of epidemic preparedness plans for the next pandemic.

This is imperative because no one knows when the next pandemic could occur. A major lesson from COVID-19 and the city lockdowns which followed is that during pandemics there would be life losses, job losses, schools will be closed, and some families would need food support.

The major idea is to use lessons from COVID-19 to estimate those who may be in need of food support and group them based on ethnicities, postcodes, states etc. This plan should involve government agencies, food banks, non-profit organizations, faith-based organizations, schools, university institutions and other community groups.

Third, food banks should improve their process to enable long-term storage of nutritious foods such as green vegetables, fruits, proteins, milk etc. According to Feeding America, these classes of nutritious foods are the most requested at food banks. However, due to challenges with storage, those in need hardly have these requirements met.

Fourth, prioritize the needs of under-five children and women of child-bearing age. Worryingly, science and available evidence from a comprehensive review of 120 studies done by the UN FAO suggests a correlation between food insecurity and malnutrition.

Furthermore, according to World Health Organization, and available scientific data evidence, mostly obtained from studies done in developing countries, childhood malnutrition is considered a major public health concern with long lasting impacts including impaired cognitive development, enhanced risks of acquiring other diseases, and suboptimal economic productivity.

With the risk of irreversible stunting in children and its consequences on school performance, future earning capacity and contributions to the economy, children must receive the right nutrition at the right time.

Likewise, women of child-bearing age require to be well nourished to ensure they have adequate blood, healthy milk and not anemic. Anemia in women who plan to get pregnant has adverse consequences such as intrauterine growth retardation of the fetus, low birth of their babies and more likelihood of going into shock from bleeding after birth or even death.

Lastly, encourage families to form groups and run all seasons sustainable community gardens. There is a need to have community greenhouses that can be used to grow food past summer months. This would enable them grow fresh vegetables, poultry (for proteins) and cows (for milk).

At this time, many US States are going through the winter season, and food gardens that millions of Americans relied upon during summer have no sustainability during cold seasons.

A recent UNICEF report on the persistence of child poverty above pre-COVID levels in high income countries highlights why all year around community gardens should be an alternative source of fresh foods as the country recovers from this pandemic.

COVID-related food insecurity is widening health and social inequities in the U.S. The in-coming Biden-Harris administration should make this a priority. It is an ethical thing to do.

 

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute, New Voices. She has published scores of OpEds including a letter to the Editor at the New York Times.     Dr. Ifeanyi McWilliams Nsofor is a graduate of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He is a Senior New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University. Ifeanyi is the Director Policy and Advocacy at Nigeria Health Watch.

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A saffron farmer in Kashmir poses with saffron crocus flowers. The most expensive spice in the world is derived from the sigma of the purple flower. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Peerzada Ummer
SRINAGAR, India , Dec 17 2020 (IPS)

Walking in the middle of fields of delicately-scented purple saffron crocus flowers, 36-year-old Mubeen Yasin, a saffron farmer from the southern region of Indian Kashmir, is not optimistic that in a few years time the scenery will remain as beautiful as it is today.

Located in the southern region of an otherwise violence-strewn Kashmir valley, the town of Pampore — which is also called Saffron Town — is famous for its saffron and remains one of the few places in the world where the saffron crocus still grows. The most expensive spice in the world is derived from the sigma of the purple flower — its bright orange-red strands. Once dried, these harvested sigma are sold as saffron strands.

In Pampore more than 19,000 families are directly dependent on this crop for their livelihoods.

However, over the last decade the area has seen an unprecedented boom of cement manufacturing plants, which are proving lethal for Kashmir’s famed saffron crop.

As these cement factories mushroom across the landscape, they have impacted the saffron harvests, according to Fayaz Ahmad Dar, a research scholar.

A few years ago Dar conducted research on the ill effects of the cement industry on Kashmir’s saffron crop.  He found that over 200 hectares of saffron fields were under severe threat from cement factories and as a result saffron production had been affected in fields located near cement plants, reducing production from the normal 3,000 grams to as low as 1,400 grams per hectare. 

“The losses were related to the amount of dust fall from the cement factories, similarly studies on impacts of cement pollution on morphology of saffron and its productivity revealed negative impacts on both parameters. Since most cement factories are located around the only area where saffron is grown on a large scale in the valley it has adversely affected the plant,” Dar said in his research.

However, Yasin, like other farmers, fears that new plans of industrialisation for the region by the Indian government will devastate saffron cultivation. 

While the government has stressed that it will not use any agricultural land for industrialisation, Yasin is not convinced saffron farmers will not be affected.

“The government is planning massive industrialisation in Kashmir. The lands, which were till now fertile, will now turn barren. The few cement factories have destroyed the saffron crop beyond imagination. Now imagine if industries in hundreds would come up here, what would be the scenario?” Yasin tells IPS.

Repeal of land laws

Kashmir was previously India’s only state with a special status and limited autonomy. And only permanent residents of this Himalayan region were eligible to sell and purchase land and property.

But after the removal of the region’s autonomy last year, this was set to change. On Oct. 27, through government order, Kashmir’s land laws were repealed and the new guidelines now allow all Indian citizens to purchase land and property in the region.

Days after the rules were amended, the government ordered the transfer of more than 3,000 acres of land to the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade in order to invite investment and generate employment in the region.

On Oct. 31, Hurriyat Conference, an amalgam of separatist outfits demanding Kashmir’s freedom from Indian rule, announced a day-long strike against the new laws. The conglomerate claimed in its official handout that the Indian government, by repealing the old laws, was planning to change the demography of the region where Muslims are more than 67 percent of the total population.

Government’s response

Kashmir’s Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha has clarified that the government wants employment generation in the region and that is the reason the old laws were repealed. He stated that no agricultural land will be acquired in the process. 

“I want to say this forcefully and with full responsibility that agricultural land has been kept reserved for farmers; no outsider will come on those lands. The industrial areas that we have defined, we want that like rest of the country, here too industries come so that Jammu & Kashmir also develops and employment is generated,” Sinha said in a statement last month.

Potential environmental impact

But environmentalists and Kashmir’s civil society groups believe the move could drastically impact the biodiversity of the region where more than 19 percent of the land is covered by thick forests and has 1,300 water bodies and an estimated 147 majestic glaciers.

Dr Arshid Jahangir, who teaches Environmental Studies in University of Kashmir, told IPS that the possible construction large scale industries and subsequent overpopulation in Kashmir would have a direct impact upon the local resources of the region and could turn an otherwise picturesque valley into a concrete jungle.

“The  number of brick kilns, cement factories, and aggregate crushing units will  increase as you need more materials for the infrastructure build. Now imagine the level of pollution in a place which from all sides is surrounded by mountains and is completely landlocked. It will be a disaster in the making,” said Jahangir.

According to Tavseef Mairaj, a Kashmiri  research  scholar from the Institute of Waste Water Management and Water Protection at Hamburg University of Technology, Germany, Kashmir’s food system and food sovereignty will be among the worst affected due to the new land laws.

“Our food system is already under stress due to land use change, water scarcity, and extreme weather events. The area of land under agriculture decreased from 56 percent to 40 percent from 1992 to 2015, with a further reduction of 17 percent from 2015 to 2019. Now with the opening of land ownership to big industry, there will be further changes in land use patterns, resulting in dependence on external supplies for our food security,” Mairaj told IPS.

He said that water resources are vital for the sustenance of the food system and rapid industrialisation will endanger these resources in more ways than one.

“The area under open water has decreased by almost 50 percent in the same time period, from 4.9 percent to 2.5 percent, which is alarming given the importance of water to our food sovereignty, which mainly depends on our rice produce.

“Kashmir is already seeing the effects of non-industrial waste on our rivers and lakes due to improper waste management infrastructure. Industrial waste in comparison will be a herculean task to manage in a place like Kashmir,” Tavseef said.

Professor Nisar Ali, a leading economist from Kashmir, told IPS that Kashmir can never be a suitable place for massive urbanisation and ruthless industrialisation. 

“I remember in 1973, then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was on a tour in Kashmir. She was accompanied by her finance minister who in one public rally announced the setting up of mega industries in Kashmir valley. Minutes later, in the same public event, he was rebuked by none other than Ms Gandhi herself who conveyed it to her minister that Kashmir’s scenic beauty and fragile ecology should never be disturbed by the setting up of massive industries.

“More than 40 years later, the situation seems entirely different. It appears that the government is no longer concerned about the environmental aspects of the decisions it is making vis-a-vis the industrialisation and  giving land to non-residents in Kashmir,” Ali said.

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Indigenous Peoples, advocates and members of IPMSDL call for continuing struggle for self-determination to combat imperialist plunder and state-terror. Credit: Carlo Manalansan, International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL)

By Beverly L. Longid
QUEZON CITY, Philippines, Dec 17 2020 (IPS)

Rights are earned through hard-fought struggles. And for Indigenous Peoples (IP), its fulfillment comes from the collective and continuous defense of ancestral land and territory, and assertion of their ways of life and the right to self-determination.

As the pandemic ravages and the global crisis deepen, the world’s superpowers and the oppressive governments and systems continue to intensify widening inequality. Exacerbated neglect and discrimination to their access to health and basic services has been a grave threat to the 476 million Indigenous Peoples across the globe — the tip of the iceberg of today’s social and economic inequities.

For those already faced with food insecurity due to loss of ancestral lands, access to food and livelihood became everyday challenges. And while the mobility of indigenous villages are limited, there are no breaks for extractives, logging, government and private projects, and militarization in indigenous territories.

Wealth outpours to secure corporate profit at the expense of indigenous rights to land and environment protection. Imperialist plunder dominates over people’s health and lives.

The railroading of public hearings for the Teesta dam, a China-funded hydropower project approximately worth $1 billion, poses threats to the earthquake-prone environment and customary rights of Lepcha people in Sikkim, North East India.

The $ 700 million Papar Dam in Sabah, Malaysia remains a threat to indigenous communities of Papar and Penampang. In the Philippines, contractors of the $ 250 million China-funded Kaliwa Dam resume operations despite the lockdown.

Global Coordinator Beverly Longid shares how international solidarity is key to reclaim Indigenous Peoples rights. Credit: Carlo Manalansan, International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL)

Mining in ancestral lands is now the key economic driver in Amazonian countries as the price of gold rises in time of the pandemic. An estimate of 1.5 million Indigenous Peoples depending on Amazon forest faces the attacks of criminal groups and illegal miners.

The oil spill in Coca and Napo river in Ecuador affecting 200,000 Kichwa and Shuar people remains. In India’s Assam and Manipur, permits for coal and mineral mining and exploration in wildlife centers and IP lands are hastened in the name of “seamless economic growth.”

Five-star Marriott Hotels and Resort is on its way to displace around 11,000 Juma cultivators and six villages of indigenous Mro Community in Chittagong Hill Crest, Bangladesh. Arguing the Kenyan government’s forest conservation programs, the Kenya Forest Services has demolished over 300 Ogiek homes in Mau Forest and burned 28 homes in Embobut Forest.

In countries with most aggressive projects encroaching ancestral lands, fear and terror has been the weapon of the State’s laws and armed forces to silence all resistance.

Around 40% of land defenders killed around the world belong to indigenous communities even though they make up only 5% of the world’s population. And with fascists and autocrats spewing racism, IP’s are in greater danger.

The call grows to pull out heavy military deployment in indigenous lands, which resulted in a wide array of human rights violations. Militarization not only enables plunder and land encroachments, it erodes all safeguards to protect the collective rights and rights to self-determination and governance.

In Karen territory in Burma, 1,500 villagers mobilized after Burmese soldiers killed and robbed an indigenous Karen woman in July. Another murder of West Papuan in palm oil plantation by the Indonesian military this May added to at least 100,000 West Papuans who have been killed since the Indonesian takeover in the 1960s. Militarization in Lumad communities in the Philippines aggravated forced evacuation and closure of indigenous Lumada schools.

Indigenous elders and vocal anti-mining leaders, such as Domingo Choc Che from Guatemala and Bae Milda Ansabo from Mindanao, suffered brutal murder with impunity.

In Indonesia, indigenous farmers Dilik Bin Asap and land rights activist James Watt are now jailed for harvesting fruits from a plantation company that has encroached on their lands.

Charges of illegal possession of firearms have been an old trick by the police as happened to Betty Belen, indigenous leader who led a barricade against the entry of Chevron Energy company’s geothermal power project in her village.

The United Nations identified criminalization and repressive counter-insurgency laws as a tool against IP defending and exercising rights to their lands. Indigenous leaders and members of Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) have hit on the systematic and fully-funded State-terror to smash any dissent and resistance using online and public vilification, terrorist-tagging and harassment.

Together with massive disinformation and fake news, all these fuels ethnic divide and discrimination towards IP and their struggles.

In the commemoration of the annual International Human Rights Day, the painful state of Indigenous Peoples brought about by imperialist powers with tyrants and militarized governments benefitting from plunder, need to be challenged.

Let us build our movement for international solidarity to defend IP lands and life from imperialist plunder and State-terror. To honor our brave ancestors who paved the way, and to build a better future for the next generation, let us unite to reclaim our rights!

 

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Excerpt:

Beverly L. Longid is the Global Coordinator of International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL). Beverly is an indigenous Igorot belonging to the Bontok-Kankanaeys tribe from Sagada, Mountain Province in the Philippines. She is also the International Officer of Katribu - National Alliance of Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines, and Co-Chair of CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness. The IPMSDL Global Secretariat is currently based in Quezon City, Philippines.

The post Reclaim Your Rights: Defend Indigenous People’s Lands appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By External Source
Dec 16 2020 (IPS-Partners)

María Victoria Angulo is Colombia’s Minister of Education. She holds a Master´s Degree in Development Economics from the Universidad de Los Andes and a Master´s Degree in Specialized Economic Analysis from Pompeau Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain). The minister has more than 20 years of experience in educational policy development.

Education Cannot Wait recently announced US$12.4 million in catalytic grant financing for a multi-year resilience programme in Colombia. The initial programme will run for three years, with the goal of leveraging an additional US$70.5 million in co-financing from national and global partners, the private sector and philanthropic foundations. The programme will reach at least 30,000 children through early childhood education, 90,000 children through primary education, and 30,000 children through secondary education.

ECW: Colombia has set an example for the world in welcoming Venezuelans who have fled instability and insecurity back home. One important component of that response has been to receive over 350,000 Venezuelan children and adolescents into the country’s school system, mainly in public schools. It would be useful to highlight good practices that your Ministry has put in place that could help other countries respond in a similar positive manner.

Minister Angulo: In Colombia, education is a fundamental right and a public service, consecrated in our Political Constitution. We recognize that “Children’s rights prevail over those of everyone else”, regardless of nationality, migration status, race, sex and political and religious beliefs, among others. So, we recognize that equal rights includes all foreign citizens in our country.

One of the first actions we took in our country, and in particular in the education system, was to make the requirements to access the education system more flexible for children with Venezuelan origin in regards to documents and records. As a consequence, we have seen a 1,067 per cent increase in enrollment, from 34,030 Venezuelan students in 2018 to 363,126 in 2020.

Credit: Andrés Felipe Valenzuela

This exponential increase in enrollment has led us to generate innovative and transformative actions, in addition to the lines of work established in the National Development Plan “Pact for Colombia, Pact for Equality” 2018-2022, where education quality, coverage increase, school permanence and the protection of complete educational trajectories have been prioritized.

In this context we can highlight the following good practices:

• Migration regularization: We are very close to officially telling the country the results of the joint work the Ministry has advanced with other government sectors to create the Special Permanence Permit for the Education Sector which will be a migration regularization tool for those students enrolled in the education system, (preschool, primary and secondary education) to facilitate access, continuance and promotion within the education trajectory for students with migrant status who do not have a valid identification document in Colombia; this applies to close to 85 per cent of migrant enrolled students with Venezuelan origin.

This innovative process, unique in the world, will allow these children and youth to overcome the barrier of a lack of identification documents, and allow them not only to have access to education services, but also to health and social protection services offered by the Colombian government, under the same conditions as Colombian citizens.

• Grade Leveling: Given that the Colombian and Venezuelan education systems are different, the measures taken in the ‘Strategy for Attending Migration from Venezuela’ – established in the policy document CONPES 3950 – have allowed the Ministry to advance in different fronts like designing proficiency tests and grade leveling processes.

With Decree 1288 of 2018, we have also advanced in terms of strategies of school grade accreditation. This decree established that Venezuelan children and youth can validate grades through evaluations or academic activities in the schools they are attending, with no additional cost. This process allows grade validation for preschool, primary and secondary education until 10th grade. In the case of 11th grade, the process must be done with the Colombian Institute for Education Evaluation (ICFES).

• Improvement in validation processes: To facilitate the validation of primary and secondary education studies, the National Ministry of Education has updated its orientations to define leveling strategies and proficiency tests for Venezuelan migrant and returned Colombian students. The Ministry validation platform has been improved to speed up the process for Venezuelans, and a specialized group has been created to solve them in less than 15 days.

• Teacher training: Regarding integration into the school system, this Ministry has identified the need to strengthen teacher support to provide them with the necessary tools to implement the welcome and well-being strategy for the migrant and returned population within the education system. Currently, through the “All to Learn Program” and the school cohabitation system we aim to prevent any type of discrimination.

• School Food: The School Feeding Program has been improved so that migrant Venezuelan students can have access to this program under the same conditions as Colombian students. The only requirement is that the school and grade they are enrolled in are focalized by the local education authority. This has allowed us to serve in 2019 around 140,000 students, and in 2020 around 260,000 students of Venezuelan origin.

• Humanitarian corridor for education purposes: The National Ministry of Education has not only strived to guarantee education access to the Venezuelan population living in Colombia, but also to the population living in a situation of back-and-forth migration in the border zone. For them we designed a humanitarian corridor for education purposes, which has benefitted, since its creation, around 4,000 students living in municipalities in the border area, who study in schools in Cucuta, Villa del Rosario and other municipalities on the Colombian side of the border. Since the creation of the humanitarian corridor, the National Ministry of Education has led the necessary normative, technical, political and financial processes needed for its effective operation. Between 2015 and 2019, $13.137 billion pesos have been allocated for its operation, and for 2020, $5 billion pesos have been allocated.

• Technical assistance: To assist territorial education authorities in regards to the education for migrant population of Venezuelan origin, actions to provide general technical assistance for local education authorities and their directive teams from different areas of the Ministry of Education have been organized. To this end, meetings are programmed to take stock of the activities that are being implemented in the territories to guarantee education service provision, as well as well-being and permanence strategies.

ECW: While there are good practices that the Government of Colombia has developed, we know that welcoming such record numbers of Venezuelans to your country has also presented challenges. Knowing how this can strain local communities, particularly those hosting large concentrations of Venezuelans, could you elaborate on the model community and communications strategies to promote social harmony and discourage xenophobia, which has had a positive impact in schools, that the Government has put in place.

Minister Angulo: As a sector, we are committed to enabling the conditions and developing in each child, adolescent, youth and adult both respect towards diversity and a positive appreciation of differences.

To this end we have been working at identifying the best strategies for providing services for the Venezuelan population with education needs, to be able to offer them a service that accommodates their needs and recognizes their prior knowledge. Education is thus one of the best tools to prevent an attitude or behavior that goes against recognizing the dignity and equality of people in regard to their rights.

For this reason, we have promoted actions that allow us to:

• Strengthen the socio-emotional development of educators, children and adolescents to prevent and combat expressions, acts and manifestations of xenophobia, exclusion and stigmatization against migrant and other social groups.
• Design protocols with which we can identify risk and vulnerability situations migrants have to face in the social and cultural dynamics of school environments, to incorporate pertinent inclusion processes in the Institutional Education Projects of the schools.
• Produce reflection exercises to transform beliefs and views present in social representations to guarantee that all ethnic and cultural identities are valued based on equality.
• Stimulate dialogue and sharing of situations present in schools to improve school cohabitation and understand that diverse beliefs, interests and interpretations of reality exist in the education community, and that we need to value them as learning opportunities.

Understanding that migration is a social process linked to different factors, and that, until the conditions in the neighboring country and the provision of basic services like education, health and housing, among others do not improve, Venezuelan citizens will keep on seeking better life conditions in Colombia or other countries. In view of the above, we will continue working to:

• Strengthen disclosure processes of the available route and means for access to the education system.
• Facilitate transition and leveling mechanisms for Venezuelan students into the Colombian education system.
• Strengthen and activate cohabitation mechanisms to prevent xenophobia.
• Train and accompany teachers on how to receive migrant populations into the education system.
• Strengthen mechanisms that allow us to identify the demand for education services outside the education system.

ECW: With the number of Venezuelans who have fled into Colombia having reached 2.4 million, making it the largest humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere and among the largest globally, ECW has just provided seed funding totaling US$12.4 million for a multi-year programme to assist the country in addressing the educational needs of Venezuelan children and youth, as well as the children and youth in the communities hosting Venezuelans. Could you comment on the impact of this catalytic grant from ECW, and more specifically what activities the Ministry, in collaboration with a range of UN and NGO partners are planning to implement?

Minister Angulo: The project presented by Colombia within the framework of the multi-annual window of ECW has been turned into a tool to activate the participation of other actors, inject new resources and delve into the strategies we are developing.

We have worked with different actors to define and agree upon the priorities of the Multi Year Resilience Programme for Colombia, convinced that this seed funding can amplify the response we are currently already giving regarding the right to education for migrant people. With ally organizations who have been with us in the formulation process, we have agreed to focus the project on four lines:

• Increase access to education and permanence. Developing strategies to create opportunities for inclusive, gender-sensitive learning that will help children and adolescents with any disability, who have been victims of armed conflict or who are living with the effects of the migration process to overcome the barriers they find.
• Improve quality of education and learning: Through resources and materials for work in classrooms, teachers with the capacity to respond with pedagogical practices adjusted to the characteristics, interests and barriers that are found in crisis situations, and finally the support for parents and caregivers to strengthen their abilities to accompany the integral development process of their children at home.
• Promote socioemotional wellbeing and mental health: Provide support to parents and teachers to develop practical abilities for well-being and personal care, stress management and exhaustion prevention.
• Strengthen the education sector: Improve capacities for an inclusive response, with gender perspective, articulated between the national and local levels and sensitive to crisis and emergencies.

ECW: Recognizing that ECW’s grant is intended to kickstart the multi-year programme and acknowledging the strides the Government is making in implementing the country’s commendable peace accord, could you please comment on how important it is for the international community donors to fully fund the multi-year programme with an additional US$ 70.5 million in co-financing. What could happen to school children and their education if the funding gap is not be filled?

Minister Angulo: We thank ECW for the initial investment and ask the community of international donors and the private sector to give us support in our efforts to close the financing gap.

It is important to remember that Colombia has invested important resources to increase access to education for migrant and refugee children. We estimate that for 2020, the investment in education made by the government is close to US$120 million. However, the needs of children affected by the crisis are increasing, especially for migrant children who need more support to remain at school.

Parallel to this situation, in Colombia we must cope with multiple challenges. For example, the recent hurricane in the San Andres archipelago almost completely destroyed the education infrastructure. In La Guajira, due to flooding, many migrant and refugee children in informal settlements have lost their learning materials. The different emergencies we have had to respond to in Colombia exceed the capacity of any government.

We continue to be committed to providing quality education and protection to every child in our country. To achieve this enormous task, it is important to join efforts with the international community, made up of donors and partners in the private sector.

Our objective is that all children receive the same opportunities, are protected and can learn. If the financing gap for this programme is not covered, we run the risk of not providing an integral education service that will allow children to learn, prosper and be prepared for the work force of the XXI century. If we do not act now with enough resources, many children will not have access to education, and many others will drop out. If we do not act now, it will be more difficult and expensive to address the topic of access to quality education where children can fulfill their dreams to complete their education trajectory.

ECW: In fully funding the multi-year programme in Colombia, could you elaborate on the important role that the private sector and philanthropic foundations can play, such as the KOYAMADA International Foundation (KIF), co-led by Colombia’s own TED Talk Speaker and producer Nia Lyte and her husband, actor and producer Shin Koyamada, and perhaps give examples of other foundations providing funding for children’s education in Colombia.

Minister Angulo: In the Colombian education sector, we work with both the public and private sector, as well as civil society and international organizations. We share a common goal: to leave no one behind. This work is strengthened by an inter-institutional approach which is based on experience and optimizes efforts and resources to respond to the particular needs of each region, including challenges already overcome, and those yet to be faced.

Being able to count on organizations like KOYAMADA International Foundation (KIF) and its work for the empowerment and leadership of young people and women, means it will, without a doubt, offer a great boost to the mobilization of resources for educational care, helping us reach those most in need and ensuring our commitment to quality education in long-term crisis contexts.

ECW: ECW would like to reiterate its gratitude for your remarks at the UN General Assembly side event this year entitled “THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION IS HERE: For those left furthest behind.” With Colombia leading the way for education under the very difficult challenges that the Venezuelan situation has created in the region, it would be good if you could comment on the importance of SDG 4 quality education.

Minister Angulo: The targets set for the Sustainable Development Goals, and in particular those of SDG4, are central elements for the 2018-2022 National Development Plan. One of our main pledges is the generation of conditions that ensure, progressively, a quality educational service, within the framework of a multidimensional approach (Atención integral). We want to positively impact the consolidation and monitoring of complete educational trajectories of all students.

In this regard, the country is focusing its efforts on the following areas:

a. As a fundamental right, quality education is one of our most important pledges and its progressive universalization stands as one of our main goals to achieve in order to move forward. This is based on the multidimensional attention approach and a cross-sector perspective.
b. Secondary education, as one of the educational levels lagging behind the most in the country today, requires special attention to strengthen and make it more relevant.
c. One of the great challenges of the country is to guarantee all the conditions of access, quality and permanence so that all people achieve a complete educational trajectory, from initial to post-secondary education, and also facilitate the transition to the labor market. In this sense, inclusion is one of the cross-cutting concepts that guide sectoral policies.

To achieve the aim of the Declaration of Incheon of Leaving No One Behind, the Colombian government has directed its efforts so that children from Venezuela, as well as all children and adolescents in Colombia, can enjoy quality education as a fundamental right and constitutionally enshrined public service. For this reason, we are committed to the assistance and protection of children to ensure their harmonious and integral development and the full exercise of their rights.

In this sense, the Ministry of Education has determined a management strategy that combines coverage and quality actions within the framework of the Welcome, Welfare and Permanence Strategy. Cross-sector coordination has been developed due to active search processes, effective enrolment, monitoring, knowledge generation and information-driven decision-making processes. This has allowed us to strengthen teacher skills, infrastructure, school food, transport and endowment, among others, which allow migrant students to benefit equally from the available strategies.

It is also important to mention that strategies are being strengthened to facilitate psychosocial support and the effective integration of this community into the Colombian citizen environment.

ECW: Our readers would like to get to know you a bit better on a personal level. Can you tell us what education means to you personally? Could you also share with us the three books that have influenced you the most personally and/or professionally, and why you’d recommend them to other people to read?

Minister Angulo: Education for me is the most powerful tool for the integral, personal and professional development of people. It also represents the epicenter where all social policy in the region comes together. Education generates social mobility and innovation, touches the lives of many people and is the axis of processes of development, resemblance and reconciliation, where I have developed my vocation of service.

As for the 3 books that have influenced me and that I would recommend that people read, they would be:

Love in the Time of Cholera by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, I recommend this book because it is a literary work that reaches the soul. It is dedicated to true love, a love that survives despite the challenges of a traditional city, and the changing times of the Colombian Caribbean from the late nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century. This book manages to portray human nature in a simple way, with beauty and humor, through a romantic story where the reader can feel the representation of love as the purest feeling, around each life is built.

Ética para amador by the Spanish writer Fernando Savater. I read this book in my teens and it really left an impression on me because it was a window into the world, and it led me to reflect on topics essential to life, which guide our decisions and explain why ethics, morality, freedom and choice are needed. This text reminds us that our greatest quality as human beings is to be able to think, to be aware and to create our future according to our expectations of it.

The last book I would recommend is Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning by Professor John Hattie. This research helps us to categorize in a very clear way how to improve the effectiveness of the school system, and I think it is a necessary book to read for those of us who work in education.

And from this text I can highlight two conclusions that are vital to me: the most influential aspect in learning is feedback, both the one offered by the teacher to the student and the one that the teacher receives from the student. In the first case, you have to distinguish between feedback and flattery, the latter has little value if it is not associated with the work that has been done. The teacher-student relationship also has a big impact. Developing a pleasant socio-emotional climate in the classroom, promoting effort, and involving all students requires that teachers step into the classroom with certain ideas about the possibilities of progress and the relationship with students.

 

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Future new building construction, which is an energy-intensive activity, will mostly take place in developing countries, not advanced economies. Construction site in Dubai. Credit: S. Irfan Ahmed/IPS.

By Philippe Benoit
WASHINGTON, Dec 16 2020 (IPS)

Energy efficiency (EE) is often marketed as a tool to save energy and money. The oft-repeated mantra is doing “more with less”, namely producing more goods with less energy. But, as set out in a recent World Bank report (which I co-authored), EE can do something that is often much more important for developing countries: it can produce the additional goods and services needed to raise standards of living. 

Shifting the focus from savings to more goods and services can help increase the uptake of EE in developing countries, thereby enabling them to grow faster while also promoting a more sustainable future for all.

EE deployment in these countries has suffered from a narrative that has too often been targeted at advanced economies.

From the European Union to Japan to the United States (under previous administrations and likely under the incoming Biden one), EE has generally been positioned as a tool to generate energy savings. Various other benefits are also recognized, notably employment generation and improved competitiveness which are often used to mobilize local political support.

Yet, the focus has tended to remain on EE’s ability to reduce things: energy use, as well as expenditures on energy and, more recently, greenhouse gas emissions. And, indeed, through a combination of EE and other factors, major advanced economies have succeeded in reducing their energy consumption, and they plan to use EE to achieve further reductions going forward.

A different context exists in the developing world where standards of living are all too often inadequate.  In these countries, the key to progress lies in generating more and higher-quality goods and services for their populations: more and better housing, more and better consumer products, more and better transport services, more and better office buildings, more and better schools, more and better hospitals – but also less pollution.  The overall focus is on producing and consuming more rather than on using less.

Developing countries are looking to secure more energy to fuel this progress.  From India to Indonesia, from South Africa to South America, the developing world is projected to demand increasing amounts of energy.

Total energy consumption of today’s developing countries is projected to rise by about 30% from 2015 to 2030, at which point it will nearly double that of developed countries (figure 1).  This reliance of developing countries on increasing energy use to support their economic growth (in contrast to advanced economies where energy demand has generally already peaked) reflects in part their development situation.

For example, future new building construction, which is an energy-intensive activity, will mostly take place in developing countries, not advanced economies, including emerging economies such as India where over 70% of the built environment of 2030 has yet to be constructed.

 

Figure 1: Evolving energy consumption in developing and developed countries. Source: Energy and Development in a Changing World: A Framework for the 21st Century (Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy, 2019), figure 3, based on data from the IEA.

 

EE can ensure that this increasing energy consumption is used efficiently to raise standards of living.  The focus in the developing country context is less on producing “more with less” energy, but rather on generating “even more from more” energy.

Not only does EE help to decouple GDP growth from energy consumption, it also helps to magnify the impact of increasing energy use to power further economic expansion. Moreover, in these COVID times, EE can be particularly strategic for governments because its deployment generates employment (e.g., the hiring of workers to install energy efficient equipment).

And the coupling of EE and more energy can also provide benefits at the household and business levels.  Many of the poorer families in Asia, Africa and elsewhere want the opportunity to increase their consumption of modern energy fuels, for example for a refrigerator and other home appliances that generate the higher standards of living seen in other places.

Using efficient appliances is even better, magnifying, for example, the benefits of basic electricity access.  Similarly, businesses across the developing world are looking to expand their activities, increasing their outputs and growing their markets to generate larger revenues that can enable them to buy more energy to produce even more to sell.  EE can help them do this in a more efficient and profitable manner.

Unfortunately, traditional metrics for EE are at times ill-adapted to many developing country contexts.  These include metrics such as energy consumption/dwelling, energy for space cooling/square meter, or energy used for water heating/dwelling.

“Progress” is normally evidenced by lower levels . . . and this makes perfect sense in advanced economies whose populations will continue to enjoy high standards of living even as EE-generated energy savings deliver multiple benefits (such as energy security for the European Union).

But in the developing world, acquiring that first refrigerator (which will raise energy consumption in the dwelling), or installing air conditioning in public buildings (which increases energy use in areas previously cooled by fans) will elevate inadequate standards of living.

Irrespective of what might be inferred from a quick (albeit, incomplete and insufficient) scan of EE indicators, in the developing country context, this increased energy consumption per dwelling or per square meter of office space reflects progress.  It is development . . . and EE helps ensure that the equipment to deliver this advancement is efficient.

EE is also key to reaching global climate change goals.  For example, in the sustainable development climate model of the International Energy Agency, EE plays a bigger role (37%) in reducing emissions through 2050 than any other low-carbon tool, including renewables (32%).

This climate model also provides for rising energy consumption by non-OECD countries (a 16% increase between 2016 and 2040) to help to power their future economic expansion. The combination of more EE to support GDP growth, together with a deeper penetration of renewables and other low-carbon technologies, is the key to raising standards of living in developing countries while meeting global climate goals.

And achieving these goals will avoid the worst impacts of climate change that could devastate the vulnerable in the developing world and elsewhere.  When it comes to deploying more EE, the climate change challenge has transformed it from a “nice thing to have” into an “imperative”.

EE is a key to creating greater prosperity across the developing world because it enables even more goods and services to be generated from greater energy use so as to raise standards of living.

For developing countries, it is not about doing “more with less”, it’s about doing “even more with more.” As illustrated by the afore-mentioned World Bank report, pivoting the focus of EE from energy savings to the additional goods and services it produces can help to increase its deployment across the developing world . . . and this will promote stronger and more sustainable economic growth and social improvements.

 

Philippe Benoit has worked for over 25 years on international development issues, including in previous roles as Division Head for Energy Efficiency and Environment at the International Energy Agency and as Energy Sector Manager at the World Bank. He is currently Managing Director, Energy and Sustainability at Global Infrastructure Advisory Services 2050.

 

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Approximately 30 patients stay at Edwuma Wo Woho Herbal Centre, many with mental health conditions. At least half are shackled. Credit: Robin Hammond/Witness Change for Human Rights Watch.

By Kriti Sharma and Shantha Rau Barriga
Dec 16 2020 (IPS)

Long before the Covid-19 pandemic grounded much of the world, lockdown, confinement, violence, and isolation was the daily reality for hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities around the world. Many are locked in sheds, cages, or tethered to trees and are forced to eat, sleep, urinate, and defecate in the same tiny area, sometimes for years. Why? Simply because they have a mental health condition—a psychosocial disability.

This inhumane practice—called “shackling”—occurs because of widespread stigma surrounding mental health and a lack of access to adequate support services, both for those with these disabilities and for their families.

Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children—some as young as young as 10—have been shackled at least once in their lives in over 60 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

While Covid-19 has exposed the importance of psychological wellbeing and the need for connection and support within our communities, it has exacerbated the risk to people with psychosocial disabilities who are often shackled in homes or overcrowded institutions without proper access to food, running water, soap and sanitation, or basic health care.

Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children—some as young as young as 10—have been shackled at least once in their lives in over 60 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America

In many countries, Covid-19 has disrupted basic services, leading to people being shackled for the very first time or returning to life in chains after having been released.

Sodikin, 34, is one of many whose life has been upended by the pandemic. For more than eight years, he was locked in a tiny, thatched shed—just two meters wide—outside his family home in West Java, Indonesia. Without government services, his family felt they had no choice but to lock him up.

Within this small radius of his life, lit by a solitary lightbulb, Sodikin slept, went to the bathroom, and ate food that his mother would pass to him on plate through a window no larger than the palm of his hand. Over time, his muscles atrophied from the lack of movement.

Despite the odds, once he got access to mental health and other services, Sodikin rebuilt his life. He started to work in a clothing factory stitching boys’ school uniforms—becoming the breadwinner of his family—and even did the call to prayer at his local mosque, a prestigious community role. And the shed in which he was confined for eight years? His family torched it and grew a garden in its place.

 

Sodikin, a 34-year-old man with a psychosocial disability who was shackled for more than eight years in a tiny shed outside the family home in Cianjur, West Java. Credit: Andrea Star Reese for Human Rights Watch.

 

But when Covid-19 hit the locality of Cianjur in rural Indonesia, Sodikin’s hard-earned life crumbled. As his community went into lockdown, the factory closed, his daily routine was disrupted and all forms of community-based support were suspended. Sodikin’s family locked him in a room once again.

Michael Njenga, chairperson of the Pan-African Network for Persons with Psychosocial Disabilities, said that “restrictions on movement, such as lockdowns and curfews, have caused a disintegration in available support services.

Even in areas where mental health or other community-based services were available, the government redirected resources to other programs, specifically to address the pandemic. This has had a huge impact in our efforts to reach out to people who could now be locked up in institutions or even shackled within their communities.”

With extended lockdowns, physical distancing, and a widespread disruption in social services, the pandemic has frayed our sense of community and ushered in a looming mental health crisis.

Out of 130 countries that responded to a survey by the World Health Organization, 93 percent reported disruption in psychosocial services. More than 40 percent of countries had a full or partial closure of community-based services. In addition, three-quarters of mental health services in schools and workplaces were disrupted on top of about 60 percent of all therapy and counselling services. And while governments around the world have recognized the need to address mental wellbeing and provide psychosocial support, this has not led to an increase in voluntary services in communities.

Covid-19 marks a turning point for governments to pay greater attention to the importance of mental wellbeing and psychosocial support. Any one of us could experience a mental health crisis or secondary trauma from the uncertainty, fear, anxiety, and distress resulting from isolation, economic hardship, increased family violence, and daily challenges of this pandemic.

But consider what that means for someone whose life is confined to chains. Irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, or cultural background, health—including mental health—is one of the most basic and necessary rights of human beings, guaranteed under international law and key to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

As countries look to build back better, governments should focus on those most at risk, including the hundreds of thousands of people with psychosocial disabilities around the world who have lived, and still do live, in chains.

The risks of the pandemic for people who are shackled should be a wake-up call to governments to ban this practice, combat stigma associated with mental health, and develop quality, accessible, and affordable community services, including psychosocial support. Sodikin and countless others deserve a life of dignity, not chains.

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Excerpt:

Kriti Sharma is a senior disability rights researcher  and Shantha Rau Barriga is the disability rights director at Human Rights Watch.

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Former Ministry of Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed receiving credentials from newly Appointed UNDP Resident Representative and UN Resident Coordinator Siddharth Chatterjee, at her office in 2016. Credit: UNDP Kenya

By Rodney Reynolds
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 16 2020 (IPS)

Siddharth Chatterjee, who has served with the United Nations for over 20 years, has been appointed as the new Resident Coordinator in China, the world’s second largest economy after the United States.

UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters December 15 that his appointment follows confirmation from the Chinese government.

A product of Princeton, one of America’s prestigious Ivy League universities, Chatterjee, an Indian national and currently Resident Coordinator in Kenya, will take up his new post in the middle of January next year.

Resident Coordinators, said Dujarric, are the Secretary-General’s representatives for development at the country level. They lead UN teams supporting countries to recover better from the COVID-19 pandemic through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

China’s confirmation of Chatterjee’s appointment, particularly at a time of increased political and military tensions with India, is an indication, not only of Beijing‘s determination to strengthen multilateral relationships but also its recognition of Chatterjee’s outstanding track record in the UN system.

“Sid’s exemplary leadership leaves a lasting footprint in the execution of Government/UN collaboration impacting millions of lives in Kenya and the region. We presented the gift of a giant footprint as a reminder of the unforgettable journey that he has walked with the people of Kenya,” said Kenya’s Minister for Sports Culture & Heritage, Ambassador Amina Mohamed in her farewell tribute in a tweet.

Salim Lone, UN director of communications (1998-2003) under Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and Spokesman for Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga (2005-2013), told IPS a lot of work at the highest bilateral levels goes into such senior UN appointments in any nation, leave alone China.

“Sid’s case is even more complex as he is not merely an Indian but a former senior security official in a super elite military unit, especially at a time of open military tensions,” he added.

At the same time, this is a tribute to the Chinese maturity and the UN’s boldness in proposing Sid. A winning situation on all fronts, said Lone, a one-time UN Spokesman for Sergio Vieira de Mello in Baghdad (2003).

Amado Philip de Andrés, Regional Representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for Eastern Africa and the Horn, said “Sid epitomizes the new leadership model of the United Nations Resident Coordinator worldwide.”

“He has inspired us at the UN Country Team to go the extra mile to deliver the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) in Kenya while supporting Kenya to progressively become an innovation hub in the region,” he declared.

In his current post in Kenya, Chatterjee has led 23 UN agencies, funds and programmes to support the Government’s humanitarian and development agenda since 2016.

Described as an avowed champion for gender equality and prevention of gender-based violence, Chatterjee has worked in complex emergency settings, including in Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan (Darfur), Indonesia and with the UN Peace Keeping Operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iraqi Kurdistan.

He has also worked in United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the Red Cross movement, UNOPS and UN Security.

A highlight of his career was, the demobilization of 3551 child soldiers in South Sudan during the height of a conflict, an initiative he led in 2000.

He has also been featured by Forbes magazine for championing women’s rights and gender equality. He was interviewed by CGTN America where he commented on the important the role of Chinese peacekeepers in the United Nations and has also commended the Belt and Road initiative.

Chatterjee has written extensively on humanitarian and development issues in a variety of journals such as Newsweek, the Hill, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Al Jazeera, Forbes, CNBC Africa, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Reuters, Inter Press Service (IPS) the Global Observatory and mainstream Kenyan journals.

Chatterjee sees the increasing focus on South-South collaboration as an opportunity for China to provide global leadership for the acceleration of the SDGs in Africa.

He has spoken often about his passion for bridging the poverty gap in developing countries. His new focus is likely to be the push for Universal Health Coverage as well as accelerating rural development through agriculture, which provides the clearest pathways for getting out of poverty in rural areas.

Chatterjee says, “the UN and China can make available the tools, approaches and technologies to small holder farmers in developing countries so that they can increase production and productivity and leapfrog food security and the sustainable development goal on ending hunger or SDG 2”.

The new UN leadership in China will have a unique opportunity as a convenor, connector, and catalyser in the emerging partnership between China and Africa.

 

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A group of children being instructed by a teacher in an inner-city community. She has painted blackboards on walls to continue her lessons in the pandemic after schools were closed. Credit: Kate Chappell

By Kate Chappell
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Dec 16 2020 (IPS)

In Jamaica, school playgrounds are deserted, filled only with phantom shrieks of delight. Blackboards remain devoid of arithmetic and uniforms hang wrinkle-free in closets. When the first case of Covid hit Jamaican shores in early March, the government closed primary and secondary schools and over 500,000 children transitioned to remote learning. The majority of schools have yet to resume face-to-face classes since the March 13 closure.

Across the world, 1.6 billion children do not have access to school as a result of the pandemic, according to Unicef.

It is this mass absence that experts are flagging as one of main explanations for an increase in instances of physical, psychological and sexual abuse of minors. And even if children are not directly endangered by their caretakers or people in their community, they are suffering the effects of the pandemic, experts say.

Close to one year after the pandemic struck, which to date has killed over 1.6 million people and sickened over 72 million, these effects on children are just beginning to be unearthed. What is already clear though, is that children, especially those living in poverty, are suffering at many levels, and there is often nowhere to turn.

“What we have heard from our partners is that although there is no hard data at the moment, social workers and community workers are seeing an increase in incidents of abuse, incidents of violence, and what is even more troubling is some of the kids who are experiencing these things, they are unable to access the persons who under normal circumstances, they would have gone to make a complaint or a report to assist them in a situation,” says Janet Cupidon Quallo, child protection specialist with Unicef Jamaica.

The lack of a contact point is one of the challenges, Quallo says. “We realize the extent and the significance of school providing that anchor in terms of the psycho social aspects of their life.”

For the children experiencing any type of abuse, before the pandemic, they were under the watchful eye of a guidance counselor, a teacher or even someone in the community. Now, children are isolated and unable to communicate as freely as they could prior to the pandemic. They are in close proximity with their abusers, oftentimes unsupervised. Or, if caregivers are aware of abuse, they may not want to take the risk of going out in public and contracting the disease to make a report to the police.

The chances of being abused also rise as parents and caregivers experience increased financial stress as a result of job or income loss, and then take that out on children. Additionally, with more time spent on devices, children are online for more hours now, which puts them at risk of cyber-bullying or being targeted by predators. Amidst all these heightened risks, there are diminished or even no venues for children to report what is happening to them.

Diana Thorburn, director of research at the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI), which has recently completed a report commissioned by Unicef on the socio-economic effect of the pandemic on children says that schools can serve as a safe space for vulnerable children. “Spending more time at home puts children at increased risk of being abused by a family member or caretaker,” she says, adding that schools are often a source of nutrition and information on personal care.

Diahann Gordon Harrison, Jamaica’s Children’s Advocate, an office that was created in 2006 as a commission of Parliament to protect children’s rights, would likely concur with this conclusion. “There is the issue of having children who live in unsavory environments, who may live with their perpetrator if they are victims of abuse,” she says. “They are almost trapped, without an outlet for disclosure.” In fact, Harrison reports that for the period of May 2019 to May 2020, there was a 76 per cent decline in reports to her office. She also notes that reports for January and February, 2020 were on track to exceed instances of abuse over last year. According to the government’s Child Protection and Family Services Agency, it receives 15,000 reports of abuse per year.

Globally, a study from Unicef bears the reality out that children are lacking a mechanism to report instances of abuse. It found that “1.8 billion children live in the 104 countries where violence prevention and response services have been disrupted due to COVID-19. Children may not be able to report abuse because they do not have access to a phone, they may be overheard by parents or caretakers, or they do not have phone credit.

Betty Ann Blaine, founder of Hear the Children Cry. Credit: Kate Chappell

Betty-Ann Blaine, founder of Hear the Children Cry, which focuses on missing children, says her organization has never seen the number of reports so low. Prior to Covid, her organization would receive up to 150 reports of missing children per month. “Since Covid, the numbers have been cut in half. We’ve never seen a figure so low since we have been tracking the problem.” As soon as Blaine got word of Covid on Jamaican shores, she anticipated many problems.

“When we heard that schools were going to be closed across the country, we were already concerned because from many years of experience, we know that when children are out of school, they tend to be more vulnerable to certain types of hazards,” says Blaine. Those hazards include physical and sexual abuse, she adds. The lack of education is also taking a toll.

“The other major issue that concerns us is the lack of access to formal education. I heard it being bandied about that as high as sixty per cent have not had any formal education since the lockdowns of schools. The poor and working classes mainly don’t have access to devices, they don’t have the kind of access to connectivity, wifi, and some live in communities without even broadband.”

In addition to the obvious scourge of abuse, Child’s Advocate Harrison says the effects of the pandemic are multi-faceted. Results from preliminary educational tests administered since the onset of the pandemic are not promising, she says. Some children are also missing out on the basic necessities of life such as routine health checks as their parents cannot afford them. Not to mention the emotional damage. “You had a lot of keyed up adults and parents, and children sensed this, and they feed off this frenzy.”

Statistics compiled by CAPRI and published for a Unicef report show that poverty is an insidious magnifier of the effects of the pandemic:

In Jamaica, eight in 10 households with children experienced a reduction in income, with that figure even higher for female-headed households, those in rural areas in those with lower socio-economic status. The study also found that due to restrictions from the pandemic, just under 45% of households have experienced a shortage of food.

For a small island developing state that is anticipating a 10% contraction in the economy, recovery will be difficult as government tries to cope with competing needs. In the meantime, private and public sector collaborations are focusing on establishing a 24-hour help line for youth who need to reach out for help.

Until this is set up, Blaine worries.

“I worry that the children must feel abandoned, helpless, powerless, because who do they call? How is this going to be done? There are more questions than answers.”

 

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During Yasmine Sherif’s visit to UNRWA schools in Ein El Hilweh, Lebanon, she told children, “I believe in you, and I believe in your strength.” ECW continues to support Palestine refugee children in Lebanon to overcome the impact of COVID-19 on their education. Credit: ECW/Fouad Choufany

By Maria Aoun
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec 15 2020 (IPS)

Education and health care were high on the agenda when the United Nations vowed to work toward a better future by setting 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be met by 2030.

The global COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with harsh socio-economic challenges over the past few years, have led to several countries being off track to meet the SDGs. Lebanon is one such country: Lebanon hosts the largest proportion of refugees per capita of the local population in the world, and since 1948, it has been home to a large Palestine refugee community. Since 2011, it has seen more than one million Syrians – many of them children – cross the border into an already over-stretched and under-funded society with pre-existing and continuing education challenges for refugee, host-community and Lebanese children. Most of these refugees live in harsh conditions with children having limited or no access to education whatsoever. According to a 2018 assessment conducted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 58% of refugees between the ages of 5 to 18 were out of school and living in extreme poverty.

Unabated political conflicts along with an escalation in corruption in late 2019, combined with forced pandemic lockdown in 2020, the Lebanese currency devalued by 80% devaluation. Soon enough, school tuitions became unaffordable with 55% of the Lebanese population living under the poverty line according to the Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA). Additionally, the pandemic forced the shifting of in-class school lessons to online classes; yet, many students did not have access to appropriate educational materials nor internet connections to follow through with their regular studies.

These hurdles to achieving progress towards SDG 4 (inclusive and equitable quality education for all), worsened after the devastating Beirut blast in August 2020, that devastated almost the entire city, causing the mass destruction of at least 163 schools in the capital of Lebanon. Over 85 thousand students were affected as a result, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The country has received substantial external aid to help rebuild Beirut and bring it back on its feet. Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, which is helping transform the delivery of education in emergencies, in close coordination with UNESCO Beirut and the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education, quickly provided US$1.5 million as a first emergency response to rehabilitate 40 heavily damaged schools in Beirut and to provide new school equipment for 94 public schools to replace those damaged in the blast.

This came on the heels of an initial grant by ECW for education in Lebanon that ran for a year and half from August 2018 to help refugee and host community children’s access to quality education. The Director of ECW, Yasmine Sherif was on the ground in Lebanon over the past week, along with a team of experts, to meet government, UN and civil society partners in Lebanon and to assess first-hand and strategize the roll-out of a new multi-year education resilience programme, especially as COVID-19 challenges continue.

Refugee children at Al Abrar ITS, Lebanon, where ECW is supporting NGO partner AVSI to increase learning for thousands of Syrian refugees and vulnerable Lebanese children impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: ECW/Fouad Choufany

IPS sat down with Yasmine Sherif and the ECW team including Nasser Faqih, Chief of Strategic Partnerships and Maarten Barends, Chief of Humanitarian Liaison, to discuss the current state of children and education in Lebanon and what their mission to the country has discovered so far.

IPS: What do you see as most lacking at the moment for Lebanese students, especially after the multiple disasters for Lebanon in 2020?

Sherif: The biggest barrier to deliver quality and inclusive education to marginalized and crisis-affected Lebanese children and they are many, Syrian refugees, Palestinian refugees, and anyone else who is marginalized, is financial resources. Lebanon is facing the severe impact of multiple crises on the lives and education of the country’s children and youth – socio-economic challenges, COVID-19, a large refugee population, and most recently, the devastating Beirut explosion. This is why I urgently appeal for additional funding to support these children. We must all invest in education in Lebanon today; if not now, it may soon be too late. I am calling on public and private sector donors around the world to support Lebanon’s education system with the fierce urgency of now.

IPS: While funds have been allocated to the rehabilitation of damaged schools and to deal with COVID-19, what is a sustainable plan for Lebanese students in terms of access to quality education for the years to come?

Faqih: Because of the crisis that happened with Syrian refugees there has been a lot of pressure on the public [schooling] system and there has also been a challenge in the quality of education in English language of instruction schools and francophone schools. Now with the economic crisis, many Lebanese children are shifting away from private education back to public education, so this putting more pressure on the public education system and it needs urgent funding support. To achieve long-term changes, I think eventually we need to look at the quality of education in terms of curriculum; enhancing the capacity of teachers; and, ensuring that Universal Education, which has always been the motto in Lebanon, is continued and public schools retake their place again.

IPS: What did you see in terms of school lessons taking place in the face of COVID-19 challenges and measures?

Sherif: Due to the pandemic lockdowns, much of the learning now is done online, through remote learning, often via Smartphone. But if you only have one Smartphone in the family but several children, it obviously impacts access to learning. But people in Lebanon are resilient and they know the importance of education for their children. I was inspired by those who, even if there are four children in a family, that Smartphone is being shared between all. Yesterday in the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) camp they showed us how they abide by the blended approach [hybrid system] which is applied all over Lebanon now. It’s a double shift of dividing the students in half, one week one group comes to school with social distancing and the other week[it’s] the other group’s turn.

Refugee children and their families meet Yasmine Sherif along with NGO partners Save the Children and Mouvement Social in Halba, north Lebanon. With ECW-funded education programs, children’s educational futures are being transformed for the better. Credit: ECW/Fouad Choufany

Sherif told IPS that the main purpose of the team being in Lebanon was to review the education crises the country is facing and to advocate globally for more funds to facilitate access to education for all. She especially emphasized the importance of creating education opportunities for marginalized communities and refugees during the global pandemic. ECW is now working in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education on a multi-year education resilience program for the next three years in Lebanon.

During their visit, the ECW team met with multiple Lebanese organizations to layout plans to execute the new multi-year resilience program investment to support the education of refugees, host-communities and Lebanese children. ECW has already invested $6 million and is planning an additional $11 million in 2021, for a total of least $17 million. The multi-year program focuses on capacity and access to education, amongst other factors and is renewable every three years. Sherif explained that long term commitment to education is only possible if governments take “concessional loans with a very low interest rate” and reiterated that ”grants alone will not help Lebanon get its education system back”. Sherif told IPS that if the world recognized the several different crises being experienced right now by Lebanon and stood in solidarity by increasing financial aid to its educational sector, Lebanon could still achieve SDG4 by the year 2030. “It is simply a matter of taking action now,” she emphasized.

One other active partner on the ground, Jennifer Moorehead, Country Director of Save the Children told IPS that they are providing each child with a learning kit including basic stationary, learning aids, etc., as well as mobile data recharge cards so that children are able to engage in activities through online support. This learning kit is crucial, given the difficult socio-economic situation of many families.

During her six-day mission in the country, Sherif met with: Lebanon government representatives, including the Minister of Education and Higher Education; the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator; UN agencies, including UNRWA, UNESCO, UNICEF and UNHCR; civil society and bilateral partners, including Save the Children, AVSI, NRC, IRC and World Vision; and in-country donors.

 

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Protests in New York City against racism and police violence, following the death of George Floyd. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Débora Leão and Suraj K. Sazawal
São Paulo/ Washington DC, Dec 15 2020 (IPS)

Few images better illustrate the recent decline in civil liberties in the United States than that of peaceful protesters near the White House being violently dispersed so Donald Trump could stage a photo-op.

Moments before the president emerged from his bunker on June 1 to hold a bible outside a boarded-up church, federal officers indiscriminately fired tear gas at people who had gathered in Lafayette Park to protest about the police killing of George Floyd. This was far from an isolated incident: nationwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality have been met with widespread police violence.

Since May, the CIVICUS Monitor, an online platform that tracks fundamental freedoms across 196 countries, documented dozens of incidents where law enforcement officers, dressed in riot gear and armed with military grade-equipment, responded to Black Lives Matter protests with excessive force. These include officers driving vehicles at crowds of protesters and firing tear gas canisters and other projectiles at unarmed people, leaving at least 20 people partially blinded.

Throughout the year, journalists and health workers, clearly marked as such while covering the protests, have been harassed and assaulted. In one incident caught on live TV, a news reporter and camera operator from Louisville, Kentucky were shot by police with pepper balls while covering protests over the police killing of Breona Taylor.

This sustained repression of protests and an increased crackdown on fundamental freedoms led to the USA’s civic space rating being downgraded from ‘narrowed’ to ‘obstructed’ in our new report, People Power Under Attack 2020.

This disproportionate response by law enforcement officers to protesters goes beyond what is acceptable practice when policing protests, even during an emergency. Under international law, people have a right to assemble freely. Any restrictions to this right must be proportionate and necessary to address an emergency or reestablish public order.

The systematic use of excessive force and tactics such as kettling and mass arrests to enforce curfews raise troubling questions about the role of law enforcement agencies in responding to mass protests. The use of such tactics is contradictory to the alleged goal of maintaining public safety and health as they escalated tensions and prevented people from dispersing in a peaceful manner.

Even more concerning, they relocated protesters from open, outdoor spaces to police stations and other indoor facilities that often lack adequate space to allow for distancing, placing people at heightened risk for exposure to COVID-19.

Black Lives Matter Protest June 2020 Washington, DC. Credit: Geoff Livingston // creative commons

While recent brutality against protests for racial justice is concerning, the decline in basic freedoms in the USA began before this crackdown. The repression seen in 2020 was preceded by a wave of legislation limiting people’s rights to protest.

In recent years, several states enacted restrictive laws which, for example, criminalise protests near so-called critical infrastructure like oil pipelines, or limit demonstrations on school and university campuses. Increased penalties for trespassing and property damage are designed to intimidate and punish climate justice activists and organisations that speak out against fossil fuels.

In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, some of the ‘anti-protest’ bills introduced this year seem particularly cruel, for instance, by proposing to make people convicted of minor federal offences during protests ineligible for pandemic-related unemployment benefits.

Growing disregard for protest rights underscores wider intolerance for dissent. In parallel with restrictions on the freedom of peaceful assembly, the USA also saw an increase in attacks against the media, even before Black Lives Matter demonstrations erupted. Over the past three years, the CIVICUS Monitor has documented the frequent harassment of journalists by the authorities and civilians while covering political rallies or when conducting interviews.

Correspondents critical of the Trump administration or reporting on the humanitarian crisis in the USA/Mexico border region sometimes faced retaliation; documents obtained by ‘NBC 7 Investigates’ in 2019 showed the US government created a database of journalists who covered the migrant caravan and activists who were part of it, in some cases placing alerts on their passports.

In January 2020 a journalist was barred from accompanying Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an official trip to Europe after Pompeo objected to the questions by another reporter from the same outlet.

The harsh treatment of people wanting to express themselves and the decline of civil liberties is part of a broader global decline in fundamental freedoms. Our new report shows less than four percent of the world’s population live in countries that respect the freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression.

Each country’s civic space is rated in one of five categories: ‘open, ‘narrowed, ‘obstructed,’ ‘restricted,’ or ‘closed’. The USA was one of 11 countries downgraded from its previous rating.

In the Americas, three other countries showed significant declines: Chile and Ecuador were downgraded to ‘obstructed’ and Costa Rica’s rating changed to ‘narrowed’. In the first two countries, as with the USA, rating changes reflected unnecessary and disproportionate crackdowns on mass protest movements.

Violations of protest rights were common across the region, with detention of protesters and excessive use of force among the top five violations of civic freedoms recorded this year. In addition, the Americas continue to be a dangerous place for those who dare to stand up for fundamental rights: across the world, 60 percent of human rights defenders killed in 2020 came from this region.

Stopping the erosion of fundamental freedoms requires a robust response. Governments must take steps to repeal legislation restricting the freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression and make sure those who violate these freedoms are held accountable.

In the USA, the incoming Biden administration must actively work to reverse the narrowing of civic space. To rebuild trust between people and law enforcement, for instance, the Department of Justice should investigate misconduct and discriminatory practices at local police departments.

The authorities must engage with civil society and human rights defenders to create an environment where they are able to fulfil their vital roles and hold officials accountable.

 

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Excerpt:

Débora Leão is a Civic Space Researcher at CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance. She has a Master of Public Policy degree. Prior to joining CIVICUS, Débora worked on advocacy and research related to civic participation, urban development and climate justice.

 
Suraj K. Sazawal serves on the board to Defending Rights & Dissent and is co-author of ‘Civil Society Under Strain’, the first book to explore how the War on Terror impacted civil society and hurt humanitarian aid.

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Though these proposed changes have a potential to transform early learning in India, a lot will depend on how we actually implement them. | Picture courtesy: Nilesh Nimkar

By Nilesh Nimkar
THANE, MAHARASHTRA, India, Dec 15 2020 (IPS)

It is after almost 34 years that the central government approved the new National Education Policy 2020 on July 29, 2020. This document contains comments on the entire education system and its various recommendations are being heavily debated.

Some believe it to be a revolutionary policy, while others see it as a step towards the dilution of children’s fundamental right to education.

Many educators and practitioners in the field of Early Childhood Education (ECE) have welcomed this policy because it prominently mentions ECE, which has remained a relatively neglected field in previous policy documents.

However, merely highlighting the importance of ECE in the document is not enough. Creating a well-thought-out plan for the universalisation of ECE and its effective implementation would require a dedicated public budget for it, and the policy is silent about this.

The term Early Childhood Education (also known as pre-primary or pre-school education) traditionally refers to the education of children aged three to six years. In India, the current condition of education for this age group lies at two extremes.

In urban areas, pre-schools cover certain topics (such as letters from the alphabet and numbers up to 100) from the curricula of Grades 1 and 2. On the other hand, in rural areas, education in the anganwadis does not go beyond storytelling and teaching some songs and poems.

In fact, as a society, we are unclear about what should be taught to this age group, and how it should be taught. This lack of clarity reflects in our pre-schools.

 

ECE in the NEP 2020

Historically, ECE in India has remained relatively neglected. This started with the Kothari Commission Report of 1965-66, and continued with the Right to Education Act of 2009, which did not recognise education as a fundamental right for children between three to six years.

In contrast, the NEP 2020 envisages a five-year foundational stage of education: Three years of ECE and the first two years of primary school. In other words, ECE is now supposed to extend from ages three to eight. An important point to note here is that the changes proposed in NEP 2020 are necessarily curricular in nature and not at the level of the physical facilities for ECE.

The existing infrastructure of anganwadis, pre-primary sections attached to schools, and independent pre-school centres are expected to be strengthened for ECE and this can be done only if the government works out a clear roadmap. It also suggests that there should be continuity between the ECE curriculum and Grade 1 and 2 curricula. Though these proposed changes have a potential to transform early learning in India, a lot will depend on how we actually implement them.

 

Implementing the recommendations

The English saying, ‘the devil lies in the details’, implies that a seemingly easy task can become quite complicated once we get into the details. It is likely that a similar situation will present itself while implementing the recommendations of NEP 2020.

Closely connected with ECE, there is a section on the development of foundational literacy and numeracy in the policy. In this section, NEP 2020 recommends introducing three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic) into ECE. This is in spite of the fact that previous policies speak out against their inclusion.

This, combined with the fact that the education department has been entrusted with curriculum development, has become a cause for worry among many people working in ECE. They think that the currently informal nature of ECE may give way to education that revolves around reading, writing, and arithmetic.

 

Why are the three Rs given so much importance?

One of the reasons why reading, writing, and arithmetic have been given so much importance in the NEP 2020 is most likely influenced by the following targets India has set under the Sustainable Development Goal 4, which pertains to quality education:

1. By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy.
2. By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care, and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education.

Given this, the focus on these areas in the NEP 2020 seems unavoidable. But the larger question here becomes: is it correct to stress on reading-writing-arithmetic at a very young age?

 

Literacy education: Theory versus perceptions

One of the factors that plays a role in the growing focus on early literacy is society’s perception of it (which does not necessarily align with theoretical evidence).

In India, there is hardly any discussion or research about how to teach reading-writing to young children. One finds diverse beliefs about the concept of early literacy not only in the general public, but also among educators. Some prominent ones include:

1. Any literate individual can teach children to read and write, with little or no training.
2. Children cannot read and write without a thorough command on the letters of the alphabet.
3. It is necessary to teach the entire alphabet properly in pre-school (ABCD for English, Varnamala and Matras for Hindi or Marathi, and so on), so that children can pick up reading-writing quickly in Grade 1.
4. Children should be taught reading first, followed by writing.
5. Once the children know the alphabet, they become literate and start reading and writing almost automatically.

All these beliefs reflect the traditional perspective on literacy education, which considers reading-writing as skills, albeit slightly complex ones. Therefore, the approach to teaching these skills involves breaking up each skill into small parts and learning them one by one.

As a result, the classroom interaction revolves around tasks like repeated practice of standing and sleeping lines or curves as parts of letters or learning individual letters of the alphabet one by one. In pre-schools, it is common to see children practicing a letter or number through repeated copy-writing.

This approach ignores some salient aspects of reading and writing. The primary objective of reading is meaning-making. Through the construction of meaning, it is also expected that the reader should think critically about the thoughts and information expressed in the text. Both these aspects are completely neglected in the prevalent skill-based literacy instruction.

In the western world, an alternative approach to teaching literacy called the Emergent Literacy Approach was proposed in the 1960s. This approach considers literacy development as an integral part of children’s overall development.

It proposes that children need to develop some critical ideas related to printed language and the process of reading and writing much before the formal introduction of the letters of the alphabet. Some of these ideas are as follows:

1. Written language is just another form of the spoken language. What we speak can be written and can be read later.
2. Somebody writes a book and when we read it, we try to understand what the person has written.
3. Writing has many uses. For example, to make lists, to write letters, to label objects, etc.
4. Spoken language contains sentences. Sentences contain words. Words contain sounds.
5. It is possible to manipulate the sounds in words. It is possible to link them with a symbol.

Researchers in the field argue that children from literate homes already have an understanding of some of these ideas, and they learn the remaining when they come to pre-school.

However, children who come from homes which are not literate, such as first-generation school-goers, have to depend solely on the pre-school to learn these ideas.

In such cases, the pre-school plays a very important role. Many techniques have been developed all over the world to teach these ideas to pre-schoolers. Any good quality literacy instruction programme cannot afford to miss these well-established insights.

 

Learnings from an ECE intervention

Quality Education Support Trust (QUEST), where I work, has been working in the field of ECE for the last few years. We have implemented a literacy programme based on the Emergent Literacy Approach in more than 1,700 anganwadis across Maharashtra.

The data collected so far has shown extremely positive results. We tracked the achievement of anganwadi children during the intervention years and continued to track the same children even after they had moved to primary school; and compared the same with a control group.

After three years of intervention we saw a significant difference of about 19 percentage points on school-readiness test between the control and intervention groups in 2016. This gap persisted even after the intervention ended and the children moved to primary school, when they were tested using a grade-appropriate test.

The decline in the mean scores of both the groups in the year 2019 could probably be attributed to the weak inputs in the primary grades. This shows that early intervention has a long-term impact on children’s learning. However, it is necessary to continue this input in the primary grades.

This aligns very well with the recommendation of NEP to consider the three years of pre-school and first two years of primary schools as one curricular stage.

The number 1,700 may sound very small if we consider the total number of anganwadis in Maharashtra (about 1,08,005), but it highlights the need for continuing the input from pre-school to the first two years of primary school. These types of insights from small-scale experiments need to be taken into account while evolving a large-scale implementation plan for the foundational stage proposed in NEP.

 

So how do we go ahead?

From this discussion, it is apparent that there is a huge difference between society’s perception of literacy education and the picture that emerges from the theoretical framework and from small-scale experiments. To make foundational literacy a success, it is critical to define early literacy in the light of the theoretical framework.

The proposed ‘National Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Mission’ is expected to lay down such a framework. At this juncture, it is also necessary to have clarity and consensus on the objectives of foundational literacy. Further, it is important to recognise literacy as a means to understand and express thoughts.

Literacy development is a continuous process, and is an important aspect of children’s development. Without this understanding, it would be risky to bring together pre-school centres and early grades of primary school. To put it simply, it would be a welcome change to extend the informality of preschool to Grades 1 and 2. However, it would be detrimental for children if the prevalent skill-based literacy education and evaluation of primary schools is brought down to pre-schools.

To bring this change on a massive scale in a country like India, we need to not only provide appropriate inputs to teachers, but also to create awareness in the community at large. During implementation, if the prevalent popular perception of literacy is taken as a base—instead of the theoretical framework and the insights from empirical work—it is likely to prove harmful.

 

Nilesh Nimkar has over 20 years’ experience in the field of early childhood education, elementary education, teacher education and curriculum development. He has initiated several innovative programs for teachers and children, specially in the rural and tribal areas. He has received the Maharashtra Foundation Award for ‘Outstanding social work in the field of education’.

 

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

The post India: National Education Policy 2020 Could Transform Early Childhood Education If Implemented Effectively appeared first on Inter Press Service.