what is the BCG vaccine and what might its place be in the fight against coronavirus?
By External Source
May 14 2020 (IPS)
This week, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced it will donate A$10 million to help fund an Australian trial testing whether a very old vaccine, BCG, can be used against a new threat, COVID-19. So what is the BCG vaccine and what might its place be in the fight against coronavirus?
The ABCs of BCG
The BCG vaccine has been used for nearly a century to protect against tuberculosis, a bacterial disease that affects the lungs. Tuberculosis is caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
BCG is short for Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, as it was created by Léon Charles Albert Calmette and Jean-Marie Camille Guérin in the early 1900s.
To make the vaccine, they used Mycobacterium bovis, a bacterium found in cows and closely related to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. They grew it on a nutrient-rich jelly in the lab for nearly 13 years. The bacterium adapted to this comfortable lifestyle by losing elements in its DNA it no longer needed, including elements that cause disease.
This process is called attenuation and it results in a live but weakened microbe that can be given to humans as a vaccine.
BCG is offered to infants in some parts of the world where there are still high rates of tuberculosis. It protects 86% of the time against some rarer forms of tuberculosis more common in children.
But it only protects about 50% of the time in adults.
Scientists and clinicians generally feel we need a better vaccine for tuberculosis. However, epidemiologists have noticed children who received BCG had significantly better overall health, with fewer respiratory infections and fewer deaths.
Immunologists suspect this is caused by a type of immune response called “trained immunity”.
Trained immunity is distinct from how we traditionally think of immunity, or “immune memory”, because it engages different types of immune cells.
Immune memory vs trained immunity
There are two main types of cells within our immune system: innate cells, which respond rapidly to microbes that cause disease, and adaptive cells, which initially respond quite slowly.
Adaptive cells include B cells, which make antibodies to block infection, and T cells, which can kill infected cells. Importantly, adaptive cells can remember particular microbes for years, or even decades, after we first encounter them.
This phenomenon is called “immune memory”.
When adaptive immune cells encounter the same microbe a second or subsequent time, they respond much more quickly, and the immune system can effectively clear an infection before it causes disease. Immune memory is why often we don’t get infected with a specific microbe, like chickenpox, more than once.
Most of our current vaccines exploit immune memory to protect us from infection.
For decades, scientists believed innate cells lacked the ability to remember previous encounters with microbes. However, we’ve recently learnt some innate cells, such as monocytes, can be “trained” during an encounter with a microbe. Training can program innate cells to activate more quickly when they next encounter a microbe – any microbe.
Some live attenuated vaccines, such as BCG, can trigger trained immunity, which can enhance early control of other infections. This raises the tantalising possibility that BCG could train innate cells to improve early control of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, to reduce COVID-19 disease or even prevent infection.
And as a bonus, BCG could potentially protect us against other pathogens too.
The BCG vaccine targets trained immunity, whereas most other vaccines target immune memory. Kylie Quinn, Author provided .
Could BCG protect against COVID-19?
We don’t know yet whether BCG will reduce the severity of COVID-19, but the vaccine has some interesting features.
First, BCG is a potent stimulator of the immune system. Currently, it’s used alongside other therapies to treat bladder cancer and melanoma, because it can stimulate immune cells to attack the tumour.
BCG also seems to benefit lung immunity. As we mentioned, children who have had the vaccine appear to get fewer respiratory infections.
There’s a study underway in Melbourne looking at whether BCG can reduce symptoms of asthma in children.
And finally, BCG has been shown to limit viral infection. In one study, human volunteers were given BCG or a placebo one month before being infected with a virus. Volunteers who received BCG had a modest reduction in the amount of virus produced during infection compared to those who received the placebo.
However, BCG can cause side-effects to be mindful of. It usually causes a small raised blister on the skin at the vaccine site and it can cause painful swelling in the surrounding lymph nodes.
Importantly, because it’s a live bacterium, it can spread from the vaccine site and cause disease, called disseminated BCG, in people who are immunodeficient, like people with HIV. This means BCG can’t be given to everyone.
Current clinical trials
The ultimate test of BCG as a preventative measure for COVID-19 is to run randomised clinical trials, which are now underway.
Researchers across Australia and the Netherlands are preparing to give BCG to the people who have arguably the highest risk of COVID-19: frontline health-care workers.
These phase III trials will collect data on whether workers vaccinated with BCG have fewer or less severe COVID-19 infections.
If BCG is shown to be effective, we’ll face other challenges. For example, supply of the vaccine is currently limited. Further, there are many different strains of BCG and they might not all provide the same protection against COVID-19.
Protection would likely start to wane relatively quickly. When trained immunity was tracked in humans after BCG, it started waning from three to 12 months after vaccination.
Protection would also not be as strong as what we see with many traditional vaccines, such as the MMR vaccine which protects against measles 94.1% of the time.
So BCG would be most helpful for people at high risk of exposure, but it wouldn’t replace a traditional vaccine based on immune memory.
These studies are important to give us options. We need a complete toolkit for control of COVID-19, consisting of anti-viral and anti-inflammatory drugs and vaccines. But an effective COVID-19 vaccine is likely still many months, even years, away.
By repurposing an old, well-characterised vaccine, we could bridge this gap and provide some protection to our health-care workers as they confront COVID-19.
Kylie Quinn, Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University; Joanna Kirman, Associate Professor, University of Otago; Katie Louise Flanagan, Infectious Diseases Specialist and Clinical Professor, University of Tasmania, and Magdalena Plebanski, Professor of Immunology, RMIT University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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By Lawrence Surendra
BANGKOK, Thailand, May 14 2020 (IPS)
US President Donald Trump’s battle with the World Health Organization (WHO) hides two important issues. One, the long running love-hate relationship between the US and the UN, and two, a better understanding of how global public health is governed and in the overall context of global governance.
We must first recognize, that notwithstanding Trump’s disdain for multilateralism and international institutions especially the UN, his behaviour is basically consistent with history of the US threatening UN institutions periodically by withholding financial contributions.
One should not therefore let the impression gain, especially among younger generations not familiar with global and international politics, that the US as a power is innocent and Trump is but a bull in the China shop of international governance and global public policy.
As for the love-hate relationship of the US with the UN, just rewind back to the days of President Reagan in the 1980s and which saw the peak of such hostility to the UN. Advised by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the US pulled out of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The latter decision though, was only a shadow play; behind the scenes the US severely undermined the work of important UN agencies like the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The UN Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) seen as opposed to US multinationals was dismantled. The resignation letter of Peter Hansen, the Danish Director of UNCTC then made him a cause celebre.
UN agencies such as UNCTC, working on a Code of Conduct for TNCs and WHO with its Drugs for All policy were viewed with suspicion by US corporate interests especially US pharmaceutical and agribusiness companies. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was not spared either.
The US made sure that the FAO was under the influence of US multinational companies especially US agribusiness and in critical areas such as the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources of the FAO and in the Codex Alimentarius to weaken and undermine regulation of US TNCs.
One cannot forget, the ignominious manner in which Dr. Gamani Corea the eminent Sri Lankan economist was asked to quit as Secretary General of UNCTAD by the US. Countries like India were singled out and the role they played at the UN monitored.
India’s independent international public policy then while seen as valuable for the international community was viewed as a threat to US domination of international institutions and attacked. India’s role at the UN was relevant to not only India’s national interests and the developing world but also to Europe and Scandinavian Countries.
India made significant contributions, for example, in the creation of the South Centre, an institution, that was relevant in contributing to the international public policy of developing countries; its relevance continues even more so in the context of issues such as global taxation regimes and how India, as well as developing countries are being deprived of taxes from TNCs.
The Reagan and Thatcher domination of the international arena in the 1980s saw the North-South dialogue being scuttled. Mrs. Gandhi, a trusted leader of developing countries and the global South, played a major role on their behalf, in trying to bring the North-South Dialogue back on track. She did this, even while India was facing the brunt of US pressure including in strategic and national security terms.
A meeting of world leaders in Cancun, Mexico, in 1981, was possibly the last of the North-South Dialogue meeting, where Mrs Gandhi met with Reagan to work out a compromise. However, what resulted was the South being thrust with the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations instead of the North-South Dialogue.
The Uruguay Round, after a decade or more of tortuous negotiations led by the US, and for US dominance in world trade though projected as promoting free trade, produced an elephant in the form of the WTO. The latter seems to have now metamorphosed to a mouse.
As for Trump and WHO, let us not make the mistake that withdrawal of US funding means any less influence of the US or its corporate interests in the WHO. More so in influencing global public health policies.
A must read and very relevant in this regard is the book by Chelsea Clinton (yes President Clinton’s only daughter) and Devi Sridhar, Professor at the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School, who holds the Chair in Global Public Health.
The book was published in 2017, as if anticipating the unique global public health crisis of today. Appropriately titled, ‘Governing Global Health’ with an even more piercing sub title, “Who Runs the World and Why?’, the book tells us as a lot about what is happening regarding how Public Health is governed globally.
In the Preface, they present a clear case as to why such a book now, and point out, that we live in the best of times as well as the worst of times and give reasons for saying so. The book deserves an in-depth review, but for now in the present conjecture of COVID 19 it is important to first bring the book to public notice.
The Covid Pandemic, has also kept social media abuzz with conspiracy theories especially around Bill Gates his Foundation and the profits to be made in the vaccines to be developed. This given the Gates Foundation’s large financial contributions to the GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) and the Global Fund.
While there may be grains of truth as in all conspiracy theories, unfortunately their wild allegations also damage serious important initiatives such as the UN SDGs (especially SDG 3) and the 2030 Road Map by making them part of these conspiracies.
Another reason to read this book, and be informed not only who the actors in global public health governance are, but more importantly how global public health governance has shifted from UN institutions governed by Member States to Global Public Health International NGOs and private companies.
This is especially so with the rise of this nebulous and ubiquitous practice (recognised by the authors) of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and its increasing dominance in international cooperation and governance including ironically the UN.
It might be nice to repeat the oft repeated statements of present and past UN bureaucrats about UN institutions being governed by Member States but they all miss a major reality of today’s world. A reality succinctly captured by Kofi Annan in 1999 and quoted in the book.
He has noted that, “our post War institutions were built for an international world, but we now live in a global world”. Negotiating this “global world” is not easy for nation states and more so for international and UN institutions. In this world crisis we need the UN more than ever before.
At this moment of deep crisis for global public health and global governance, we are fortunate that the late Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon of the past, we now have a Secretary General, in the person of Antonio Guterres who commands both respect and legitimacy. Even before the pandemic, he was faced with the unenviable task of steering the UN through massive financial constraints that it was already in.
The challenge for the UN and its agencies including the WHO is far greater now including establishing their legitimacy. The implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals which is in its fifth year of its launch will be seriously affected.
The role of the UN as a global public goods organization can be reclaimed by using the SDGs and thus also gain greater legitimacy for the work of the UN. This is the route to be taken for the UN’s own survival, not the narrow public-private partnerships that excludes wider partnership with other actors and will make a big difference.
UN staff, in an age of ‘ultra-nationalism’ should keeping with their allegiance to the UN and its Charter, vaccinate themselves from such toxic nationalism, and remind themselves that they are International Civil Servants serving the needs of global public goods.
They should reassure themselves that the shrinking budget of the UN for a global institution needed in a crisis, is no more than that of a small European City Municipality and the budget of the WHO is perhaps as much as a medium sized New York hospital and rededicate themselves with a new sense of ethics and purpose and work on synergy, coherence and partnership as the core thrust of their work.
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Excerpt:
Lawrence Surendra, an environmental economist, is former staff member of UN-ESCAP and has worked with UNU and UNESCO. He advises on the UN SDGs and currently a Council Member of TSP Asia (www.tspasia.org) and lives in South India.
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Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, prepping for a virtual press briefing with him, April 30, 2020, UN headquarters. The secretary-general had asked the current UN medical director, Dr. Jillann Farmer, to extend her term a few months during the coronavirus crisis. But now she is returning to her home country, Australia. Credit: ESKINDER DEBEBE/UN PHOTO
By Stéphanie Fillion, PassBlue*
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2020 (IPS)
“Are you a senior medical executive with expertise in healthcare management with oversight of clinical services and occupational health at a facility, state, national or international level? The United Nations Secretariat is seeking a Medical Director at the D-2 level in the Department of Operational Support,” an ad posting on the UN’s job portal reads.
Dr. Jillann Farmer, the current UN medical director, is leaving, so the main person in charge of advising whether the UN headquarters compound, in New York City, is going to remain open or closed in the pandemic will be replaced.
“This was the first time we had simultaneously to move into our own business continuity model, while supporting the rest of the world,” Dr. Farmer told PassBlue in an email during her last week at the UN, before returning to Australia on May 15. She is taking up a new job in Brisbane, her hometown.
The UN has not confirmed whether a successor for Dr. Farmer has been found yet.
Over the last few months, Dr. Farmer was the person advising UN Secretary-General António Guterres as to whether the UN should remain physically open in the New York City lockdown, and recommended that it do so as of mid-March, with the provision that UN personnel in the Secretariat should telecommute, affecting nearly 13,000 people. She has also consulted with the New York City authorities in her decision-making.
Despite recent infighting among some countries about whether the headquarters should remain physically closed or reopen for meetings of member states on June 1st, her departure does not seem to be political. In fact, Dr. Farmer did the UN a favor by staying during the pandemic, as her departure was first planned before the outbreak hit New York City on March 1st.
Dr. Farmer said she gave notice that she was leaving the UN in February and was supposed to leave in April for Brisbane to become deputy director-general for the Department of Health in Queensland, the second-largest state in Australia. She stayed because of a recent personal request from Guterres himself. She extended her stay overall at the UN for much longer than she has done before in her career.
“For most of my career, I have changed roles every 5 years or so,” she told PassBlue. “The SG’s [secretary-general] reforms and the changes it brought meant that extending for a couple more years was sensible, because my job changed a bit, but after 7 years, it’s time to move and look for new challenges. This was also an opportunity for me to return home and be close to my family.”
As medical director since 2012, Dr. Farmer has been in charge of the UN’s internal health care system, including oversight for UN personnel worldwide and more than 400 health care services, from primary care clinics to military forward medical services and hospitals, according to the organization.
Before she worked for the UN, Dr. Farmer had been a clinical doctor, a medical executive and a patient-safety improvement expert. During her term at the UN, she handled the UN’s response to the Ebola crisis, the Zika virus and now Covid-19.
The current crisis has been different because it hit the home base. “The biggest challenge was the headquarters of this vast global organization was also at the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States,” she said. “We started preparation for a pandemic in January, when the first signals of risk were given by WHO. Our guidance materials and advice were pushed out regularly to staff and diplomats from the end of January onwards. As the pandemic spread, there was an increasing demand for advice and support, and then New York City experienced its own severe outbreak.”
As of May 7, the UN reported 413 confirmed cases of Covid-19 among UN personnel globally and 6 deaths.
Jillann Farmer
Dr. Jillann Farmer, the UN medical director, is leaving after seven years leading the organization’s internal health care system globally.The decision to extend telecommuting for UN personnel working at the headquarters in New York City, which is the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, would never be easy. A note from Dr. Farmer to the office of the president of the General Assembly was leaked at the end of April, recommending that “maintaining the current arrangements until 30 June will allow stability during a period of great uncertainty, as we evaluate the impact on transmission of the loosening of the current containment measures.”
A spokesperson for the UN denied several times that the UN headquarters was going to remain partly closed through June, but then confirmed it this week. Dr. Farmer said her letter had been misinterpreted.
“My note of 29 April was to the Office of the President of the General Assembly and had nothing to do with closure of the building or telecommuting,” she said. “His office had asked for guidance regarding in-person meetings of member states and my recommendation was that in-person meetings should continue to be avoided whenever possible, regardless of the number of participants. Events should be virtual.
“Where there is no other choice, in person meetings should have the absolute minimum number of participants, and all should maintain standards of physical distancing, hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette. Persons who are experiencing any symptoms of ill health should not attend.”
The UN’s current decision is to extend the telecommuting plan of the headquarters from May 31 until the end of June, as recommended by Dr. Farmer.
Unicef, which is not part of the UN Secretariat but is based in New York City, is planning a three-phase reopening, a source told PassBlue. Most staff will be staying home through the rest of the year and staffing on-site will not exceed 40 percent through that period. A small percentage of staff may start in June, but nothing is definite, as it depends on what New York City and New York State authorities say.
As for those who return physically to the office, the source added, temperatures will be taken on entry, and the UN will provide protective gear, which must be used on premise — gloves and mask — when contact with others is unavoidable, like meetings or shared spaces. Apparently, planning has included a possible second wave of infection as well.
From the outset of the coronavirus crisis, there have been pushbacks within the UN, mostly from certain members of the Security Council, from working remotely. Russia still thinks that part of the work can be done in person starting in June. Dr. Farmer said she didn’t feel there was political pushback to her work during the pandemic.
“The politics of the United Nations in New York City are not always easy, but I am very pleased at the level of coordination between the UN, the diplomatic community and the City of New York,” she said.
After seven years spent at the UN, she is returning to Brisbane to a home, she said, “on 7 acres of beautiful bushland, with our very own kangaroos, koalas and kookaburras” and “is quite a contrast to my 580sq ft apartment in NY.”
*PassBlue is an independent, women-led journalism site that is considered the most influential media source covering the US-UN relationship, women’s issues, human rights, peacekeeping and other urgent global matters playing out in the UN. As a nonprofit news site, PassBlue is a project of the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs, supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and 100+ individuals and a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News.
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SG Patricia Scotland and President Kagame of Rwanda last year during the annual commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsis. Credit: The Commonwealth Secretariat
By William Ellis
TORONTO, May 13 2020 (IPS)
The Coronovirus pandemic has been an unforgiving test of advanced economies. Health systems in the United States, France, Italy, Spain, and the UK have been put under immense pressure, with shortages of doctors, ventilators, personal protective equipment and the capacity to test for the virus. Their economies have been battered and the consequences are spoken of in terms of the Great Depression.
Hope may have emerged as infection rates decline and governments consider easing lockdown measures, but for many developing countries the crisis has barely begun, and the human toll will be much greater than in any advanced economy. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), “For vast swathes of the globe, the pandemic will leave deep, deep scars.”
Advanced economies are trying to mitigate COVID-19’s impact through policy adjustments, and some have made remarkable progress. In the Commonwealth (a voluntary association of 54 independent countries), New Zealand and Canada have shown exceptional resilience through this pandemic.
Developing countries, however, are faced with much more difficult circumstances. In these countries, economies are fragile and medical resources are scarce. Most are commodity dependent and have seen prices fall by 21 percent so far this year. The cost of foreign debt repayments and imports have soared as the value of currencies in developing countries have declined by around 25 percent.
Some African countries have no ventilators at all – essential to those suffering from acute symptoms of the virus. Many countries are simply ill equipped to face a pandemic of global proportions. Malawi, for example, has only 25 intensive care unit beds for its 17 million citizens. And, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), African countries average $12 per citizen per year in health budgets. That is a stark contrast to the UK’s $4000 per citizen per year.
The Brookings Institute recently warned that the impact of COVID-19 on developing nations will be devastating: “2020 will be the first time this century that the number of poor people will rise.” This is in the wake of progress made between 2008 and 2013, during which time almost 100 million people per year were lifted out of poverty.
To stave off disaster in the world’s most vulnerable regions, the international community must do a lot more. Achim Steiner, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said that “Without support from the international community, we risk a massive reversal of gains made over the last two decades, and an entire generation lost, if not in lives then in rights, opportunities and dignity.”
The 26th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) was to be held, aptly, in Rwanda – one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa, with a reputation for innovation in many sectors, including health care. The event was recently postponed, however, due to the global pandemic.
Kigali skyline. Credit: The Commonwealth Secretariat
In a statement announcing the postponement, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda stated: “In the coming months, every Commonwealth nation will be fully focused on combatting Covid-19 and its socio-economic impact on our people… We look forward to welcoming the Commonwealth family to Kigali for CHOGM once the pandemic has been defeated.”
According to some, this kind of decision shows how international support has been lacking precisely when it is most needed. Ian Golding, a professor of globalization and development at Oxford University, recently wrote in the Guardian that “The US has turned its back on the world. The UK, like Europe, appears preoccupied with its own medical and economic emergencies; the ability of Commonwealth countries to cope with the pandemic appears to have fallen off its domestic agenda.”
But the Commonwealth is taking steps to ensure its members are supported during this global pandemic. It is hosting a virtual seminar series beginning on May 13, 2020, to help address the challenges they are facing and to exchange ideas for solutions with each other. It has also launched a web-based ‘Coronavirus Response Centre’ and tracker, designed to provide data-driven insights to help policymakers plan and respond to the pandemic.
Noteworthy is a specific online meeting to be held on May 14, 2020, for Commonwealth Health Ministers – its theme is “delivering a coordinated Commonwealth COVID-19 response.”
Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland told IPS: “With 54 member countries across five regions and 2.4 billion people in total, the Commonwealth is a powerful platform to propel coordinated multilateral action to tackle this pandemic.
“Commonwealth Health Ministers will convene virtually on 14 May, a few days ahead of the World Health Assembly. The aim is to review the coronavirus response at pan-Commonwealth, regional and national levels; share good practice strategies, solutions and models; and identify priorities for coordinated action.
“Ministers will also discuss continuing and co-ordinated action on other health challenges, including non-communicable diseases, malnutrition, immunisations, and malaria which are priority areas of concern among Commonwealth member governments.”
Rwanda school. Credit: The Commonwealth Secretariat
The virtual seminar series will be led by high-level participants from Commonwealth governments, the Commonwealth Secretariat and other policy experts. Here, participants will gain from the knowledge of other members, including those of Rwanda, the landlocked East African country that has managed to stem the spread of COVID-19 with expertise and skills it developed in tackling the 2018 Ebola crisis.
“In Rwanda, the response was swift, effective, and well organized with a clear objective and clear purpose,” Vedaste Ndahindwa, an epidemiologist working in the World Health Organization (WHO) in Rwanda said.
The Rwandan government was quick to recognize the threat posed by the virus and took to techniques employed in preventing Ebola from spilling into the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But, despite having the region’s best response to the outbreak, the number of confirmed cases in the country continues to rise. The country also faces the challenges of globalised interdependence. As trade and supply chains come to a halt across the globe, obtaining supplies during a global shortage is massively problematic. As Ian Goldin says, “globalization means that systemic risks anywhere are a risk to us all.”
Now, more than ever, we must look beyond our national borders and come together as a global community. If we are to avoid a massive humanitarian tragedy and protect the world from the backdraft of ongoing viral epicenters, it is imperative that governments everywhere come together with a cohesive and cooperative response to COVID-19.
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Yasmine Sherif is Director, Education Cannot Wait
By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, May 13 2020 (IPS)
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we estimated that 75 million children and youth – of whom 39 million are girls – were not able to access a quality education in countries impacted by armed conflicts, forced displacement, natural disasters and climate change-induced emergencies. The impact of COVID-19 has both globally and exponentially deepened the already existing critical education crisis.
Yasmine Sherif
In countries affected by humanitarian crises, restrictive movement measures (including curfews), have led to the closure of schools and loss of access to education, psychosocial services, school feeding, hygiene and protection – all components of a quality education.In many of these countries, weak infrastructure does not allow for remote learning through technology. In most parts of Afghanistan, in the Central African Republic or in Chad, to mention just a few, remote technological learning is simply not an option today – further contributing to the education divide. At the same time, we know that quality, inclusive education is a foundational Sustainable Development Goal (SDG4) necessary to advance all other SDGs.
In the words of the President of the UN General Assembly, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande: “Given the importance of education in achieving the 2030 Agenda, we must ensure that we urgently tackle the disruptions that the pandemic has already caused … While it has been easier for developed countries to transit to remote learning, many governments around the world found it difficult or impossible.”
The President of the UN General Assembly concluded, “We cannot allow this pandemic to widen the educational gap that already exists. I call on you all [193 Member States] to make cooperation in education a key element in your response to this pandemic.”
Indeed, in countries affected by armed conflicts and forced displacement, we can expect to see a significant increase in long-term loss of access to inclusive quality education due to COVID-19. We will see an increase in school drop-out rates and a reduction in psychosocial support and other protection mechanisms for students and teachers alike. This, in turn, will impact socio-economic development and the ability to build back better.
A crisis, however complicated it is, must be a trigger for immediate action, rather than a cause for delay. An early response stands greater chances of mitigating the impact and reduce the risk of a growing education divide. As the President of the UN General Assembly highlighted, education needs to be a priority within the COVID-19 response.
Thanks to the support of Education Cannot Wait’s strategic donor constituency, a coordinated, comprehensive emergency investment was rapidly released in April to UN agencies and Civil Society organizations to enable them to quickly deliver education support for vulnerable girls and boys in 26 crisis-affected countries.
This emergency investment empowers: Ministries of Education in developing catch-up programmes and condensed curricula to prevent loss in the school year; production of distance learning material for pre-primary, primary and secondary levels; home-based learning and special measures for children with disabilities; expansion of radio and television education; COVID-19 awareness raising for children, parents and teachers; disinfection of schools; access to improved water and hygiene facilities and supplies; psychosocial counselling; and, the continued payment of teachers’ salaries during the crisis.
However, the needs remain enormous and urgent. Education Cannot Wait will therefore release a second round of investments in June. To this end, we have launched an appeal to both public and private sector donors for $50 million. We are deeply grateful to the United Kingdom and the LEGO Foundation for their swift contributions to cover 42% of the appeal, while Denmark has matched and frontloaded committed funding. However, at the time of writing, $29 million, is still urgently needed.
Unless we invest in education now – in the midst of the global COVID-19 crisis – much of the progress made through joint efforts among many different actors and organizations will be lost; perhaps irreversibly for millions of girls and boys, whose vulnerabilities will rapidly increase. Whatever befalls us in the coming ten years, whatever crises we face, there is one thing we cannot do. We cannot slide back on our progress and let the gap widen during the Decade of Action.
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Excerpt:
Yasmine Sherif is Director, Education Cannot Wait
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Mohammed Hussein Bahr Aluloom, Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations, addresses the open video conference with Security Council members in connection with the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). Courtesy: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2020 (IPS)
Iraq’s newly-announced leader has brought hope to a country embroiled in a 17-year-long conflict, but authorities must ensure that issues such as swift and rapid response to COVID-19, security concerns, and corruption among others are addressed with urgency, experts said on Tuesday.
The government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhim, which was announced last week, is “a long- overdue but very welcome development,” Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, said at a briefing on May 12.
Hennis-Plasschaert lauded the new government’s agenda to address a wide range of issues and added, “Iraq does not have the luxury of time, nor can it afford destructive petty politics.”
Al-Kadhim has said a key priority for his government is to address the current coronavirus pandemic and investigate cases of those who killed protesters in the last few months, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday.
While experts acknowledge that addressing the coronavirus is an urgent issue, with almost 3,000 cases and 112 deaths in the country, there remain concerns that other long-standing issues might be of higher priority.
“While the pandemic remains a serious issue, most Iraqi citizens are more concerned by the possibility of not being able to meet basic livelihood needs, in particular in light of the collapse of oil revenue,” Hassan Mneimneh, a scholar at the Middle East Institute (MEI), told IPS after the briefing. “The spread of COVID-19 has so far not been devastating, which complicates the effort of sensitising the general public to its seriousness.”
At the briefing, in welcoming al-Kadhim’s government, Hennis-Plasschaert further reiterated that containing the spread of the virus should be the top-most priority, especially since the Iraqi health system was “already near breaking point before the coronavirus outbreak”.
But realistically, this might not be as easy as it has been for other countries. As Mneimneh said, “A sustained total lockdown is not practical or enforceable, [and] contact tracing is virtually impossible, but some forms of social distancing and mandating masks in public may be possible.”
He added that an information campaign could be extremely crucial in order to contain the spread in the country.
Meanwhile, Hennis-Plasschaert reiterated the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ plea for a ceasefire in late March in light of the coronavirus pandemic. But with the Islamic State’s activities, Mneimneh said the issue is more nuanced than a straightforward answer.
“Note that the Islamic State terrorist group will certainly not abide by any such call, and therefore a sustained fight against it is necessary,” said Mneimneh, whose work has a special focus on radicalism and factionalism.
A massive highlight in the new government, however, is the glimmer of hope for minority communities and women. At the briefing, Hennis-Plasschaert said minority communities and women must have a representation in the government, which Mneimneh said is likely given al-Kadhimi’s reported record of “deliberate and pro-active attention” to both demographics.
“This is the moment of reckoning after 17 years of mismanagement and neglect,” Mneimneh said of the new government, highlighting the importance of the people of Iraq in driving through the new force of change, a sentiment also echoed by Hennis-Plasschaert.
“[Al-Kadhimi] assumes his responsibilities while Iraq undergoes its most acute existential crisis — with an empty treasury, grim outlook for revenue, and a potentially devastating public health crisis,” Mneimneh said. “The efforts of all Iraqis and friends of Iraq are essential to avoid the fall into the abyss.”
Related ArticlesThe post On the Agenda of Iraq’s New Government: An Empty Treasury, Low Revenue, and COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Excerpt:
While experts acknowledge that addressing the coronavirus is an urgent issue for Iraq's new government, there remain concerns that other long-standing issues might be of higher priority.
The post On the Agenda of Iraq’s New Government: An Empty Treasury, Low Revenue, and COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, just doesn’t have the financial resources to combat human trafficking. With 50 percent of this country’s 18 million people living below the poverty line, many are susceptible to the crime of trafficking. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS
By Charity Chimungu Phiri
BLANTYRE, Malawi , May 13 2020 (IPS)
Malawi is not doing enough to enforce its laws on human trafficking, resulting in a number of cases against perpetrators being dismissed by the courts, according to a local rights group. But local officials say that this Southern African nation — one of the poorest countries in the world — just doesn’t have the financial resources to do so.
Caleb Thole, the national coordinator of the Malawi Network Against Trafficking (MNAT), a coalition of NGOs, told IPS that they are concerned that the TIPF was empty and not enough assistance was being given to victims.
“When we’re rescuing victims they need to be fed, transported and kept in a shelter, but there are literally no funds in the TIPF, the government cannot show you any…there aren’t even shelter homes to provide safety for victims,” he said.
However, senior deputy secretary for Homeland Security and the national coordinator for NCCATIP, Patricia Liabuba, told IPS that government funding to TIPF has increased, but acknowledged there were financial shortfalls.
“Government funding from 2017 has increased gradually from $66,000 to $200,000 in 2019. It is an undisputed fact that trafficking in person issues are multi-sectoral in nature and that the key challenge is insufficient funds to provide shelter and protection services for the victims,” she told IPS.
Liabuba acknowledged the government was, by law, responsible for “repatriating victims and reintegrating them with the community as well as international victims”.
Modestar* was one of those young Malawian women who had been stranded overseas. She had left her home in Zalewa, a town in Malawi’s southern region for Kurdistan in northern Iraq, some 5,400 miles away, after being promised a well-paying job looking after the elderly.
But the salary she had been promised was slashed in half, and her phone and passport was confiscated upon her arrival. She was forced to work long hours caring for an elderly patient in a private home.
“I was not allowed to go outside of the compound. I worked long hours, at times from 7am to 1am [the next day], without getting paid,” she told IPS.
Eventually she was rescued by Iraqi police who had been tipped off by another woman who had also been in domestic service with Modestar. But the women soon realised they may not be able to return home, as the employment agent refused to return their passports.
“It took the police threatening to shut down their agency for them to agree to let us go; so they went and cancelled our visas and gave us our money and we left,” she recalled.
She had been fortunate that the ‘agent’ had agreed to pay her return airfare — but it was only as far as Johannesburg, South Africa.
While the TIPF is meant for repatriation, there had been no funding available for her. Instead, MNAT stepped in cover the costs her journey from Johannesburg back to Malawi.
Most cases of trafficking are localLiabuba pointed out that in Malawi, most women and girls are trafficked from rural areas “to work as prostitutes in urban centres and to foreign countries for forced labour, prostitution and sexual exploitation”.
Thole confirmed this: “The country registers between 15 and 20 cases daily nationwide, mostly from border districts such as Phalombe, Mulanje, and Thyolo. Cases are also reported due to cross border businesses with countries like Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa and also to countries such as Kuwait and the Arab Emirates seeking job opportunities.”
Liabuba said that in 2019 the country had recorded 142 trafficking victims, with 32 suspected traffickers charged.
“Following the prosecution and successful trial, 16 of the 32 suspects were convicted and four were discharged and the other 12 are being tried in different courts across the country,” Liabuba said.
Malawi’s Police Service had slightly different figures, stating that in 2019 140 victims of human trafficking where rescued, of which 65 were children.
Malawi Police Services’ public relations officer James Kadadzera told IPS that out of these cases, 48 suspects were arrested, prosecuted and are serving different jail sentences.
“Out of the 48 convicts the longest term was given to one who is serving 12 years imprisonment with hard labour; he was arrested in Phalombe on his way to Mozambique with six boys,” said Kadadzera.
But Thole said MNAT was concerned that many cases ended up being dismissed and that perpetrators are being fined for their crimes — which is against the law — instead of being given jail sentences.
“Convicts who are supposed to be jailed are being released on fines, with some getting light sentences. There’re some agencies which cannot even be questioned as to what sort of activities they’re operating in the country…law enforcement agencies don’t even fully understand the law and how it is supposed to be interpreted,” Thole told IPS.
Last year, Malawi was downgraded to a Tier 2 watchlist country by the United States Department of State. A Tier 2 country, means that while the country does not comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, they are making significant attempts to do so.
According to a U.S. Department of State report on trafficking in Malawi, the “government did not investigate or hold any complicit officials criminally accountable despite these credible allegations and several past cases of Malawian diplomats, police, health, and immigration officials engaged in trafficking abroad. The government did not report referring or otherwise providing protective services to any trafficking victims”.
Educate people about trafficking and create more jobsBut Kadadzera called for intensive civic education on trafficking, especially for young women and girls, who are disproportionately affected by the crime.
“Just last week a young lady approached us privately saying she was having doubts about a certain gentleman who claimed to be an agent who could help her get health care work in the United Kingdom. She had already paid the man [about $650] which she has since gotten back and swears not to get carried away again,” he said.
The U.N’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Malawi is one of the agencies working with the government to combat human trafficking.
“However, more needs to be done in creating services that increase employment opportunities and reduction of poverty among at-risk population,” said IOM Chief Commissioner Mpilo Nkomo.
Modestar is a case in point. While funding from the TIPF had not been available to her, upon her return home, MNAT provided her with capital, which she used to start a small business selling clothing and cosmetics.
But Liabuba acknowledged that the government needed to do more in its fight against trafficking.
“The Malawi government should do more to lobby with donor partners for resources for construction of shelters and direct assistance to victims of trafficking…enhance capacity for law enforcers, judicial officers, the National Coordination Committee and protection officers…and develop more nationwide educational programmes targeting mainly women and children,” she said.
But Thole told IPS there was lack of political will to eliminate human trafficking in Malawi.
“We need structures, systems and financial resources in place to support the fight against trafficking in persons in Malawi. Other countries like the U.S. have put stringent measures in place to deal with trafficking for example banning visas for domestic workers for Malawian diplomats. We’re currently we’re on Tier 2 on the watch list which means we’re slowly moving into Tier 3, which is the worst,” Thole said.
* Name changed to protect her identity.
** Writing with Nalisha Adams in Bonn.
This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.
The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.
The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.
Related ArticlesThe post Malawi’s Vulnerable Shortchanged in Human Trafficking Prevention Efforts appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Excerpt:
Malawi is a source, destination and transit country for human and sex trafficking. But the poverty-stricken nation, where almost 80 precent of its population is employed by the agriculture sector, doesn't have the funds to combat the crime.
The post Malawi’s Vulnerable Shortchanged in Human Trafficking Prevention Efforts appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Credit: Unsplash / Adolfo Félix
By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
BANGKOK, Thailand, May 13 2020 (IPS)
Memories of idyllic beaches and sonorous waves may seem far away while we remain at home. Yet, we need not look far to appreciate the enduring history of the ocean in Asia and the Pacific. For generations, the region has thrived on our seas. Our namesake bears a nod to the Pacific Ocean, a body of water tethered to the well-being of billions in our region. The seas provide food, livelihoods and a sense of identity, especially for coastal communities in the Pacific island States.
Sadly, escalating strains on the marine environment are threatening to drown progress and our way of life. In less than a century, climate change and unsustainable resource management have degraded ecosystems and diminished biodiversity. Levels of overfishing have exponentially increased, leaving fish stocks and food systems vulnerable. Marine plastic pollution coursing through the region’s rivers have contributed to most of the debris flooding the ocean. While the COVID-19 pandemic has temporarily reduced emissions and pollution on the ocean, this should not be moment of reprieve. Rather, recovery efforts have the potential to rebuild a new reality, embedded in sustainability and resilience. It is time to take transformative action for the ocean, together.
Despite a seascape celebrated in our collective imaginations, research shows that our picture of the ocean is remarkably shallow. Insights from Changing Sails: Accelerating Regional Actions for Sustainable Oceans in Asia and the Pacific, the theme study of this year’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, reveal that without data, we are swimming in the dark. Data are available for only two out of ten targets for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14: Life Below Water. Due to limitations in methodology and national statistical systems, information gaps have persisted at uneven levels across countries. Defeating COVID-19 has been a numbers game and we need similar commitment to data for the state of our shores.
Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
While there is much we cannot see, images of plastic pollution have become commonplace. Asia and the Pacific produces nearly half of global plastic by volume, of which it consumes 38 per cent. Plastics represent a double burden for the ocean: their production generates CO2 absorbed by the ocean, and as a final product enter the ocean as pollution. Beating this challenge will hinge upon effective national policies and re-thinking production cycles.
Environmental decline is also affecting dwindling fish stocks. Our region’s position as the world’s largest producer of fish has come at the cost of overexploitation. The percentage of stocks fished at unsustainable levels has increased threefold from 10 per cent 1974 to 33 per cent in 2015. Generating complete data on fish stocks, fighting illicit fishing activity and conserving marine areas must remain a priority.
Economic activity from shipping must also be sustainable. While the most connected shipping economies are in Asia, the small island developing States (SIDS) of the Pacific experience much lower levels of connectivity, leaving them relatively isolated from the global economy. Closing the maritime connectivity gap must be placed at the centre of regional transport cooperation efforts. We must also work with the shipping community to navigate toward green shipping. As an ocean-based industry, shipping directly affects the health of the marine ecosystem. Enforcing sustainable shipping policies is essential to mitigate maritime pollution.
The magnitude of our ocean and its challenges represent how extensive and collaborative our solutions must be. Transboundary ocean management and linking ocean data call for close cooperation among countries in the region. Harnessing ocean statistics through strong national statistical systems will serve as a compass guiding countries to monitor trends, devise timely responses and clear blind spots impeding action. Through the Ocean Accounts Partnership, ESCAP is working with countries to harmonize ocean data and provide a space for regular dialogue. Translating international agreements and standards into national action is also key. We must fully equip countries and all ocean custodians to localize global agreements into tangible results. ESCAP is working with member states to implement International Maritime Organization (IMO) requirements on emissions reduction and environmental standards.
Keeping the ocean plastic-free will depend on policies that promote a circular economy approach. This strategy minimizes resource use and keeps them in use for as long as possible. This will require economic incentives and disincentives, coupled with fundamental lifestyle changes. Several countries in the region have introduced successful single use plastic bans. ESCAP’s Closing the Loop project is reducing the environmental impact of cities in ASEAN by addressing plastic waste pollution and leakages into the marine environment.
Our oceans keep our health, the economy and our lives above the waves. In the post-COVID-19 era, we must use the critical years ahead to steer our collective fleets toward sustainable oceans. With our shared resources and commitment, I am confident we can sail in the right direction.
The post Healthy Oceans: Keeping Asia and the Pacific Afloat appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Excerpt:
Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP
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By Vladimir Popov
BERLIN, May 13 2020 (IPS)
In public health discussions, it is generally recognized that the social returns to health care investments are greater than the private returns, and much of such investments should be financed by the state.
Also, global benefits from national health care spending are greater than just the national benefits, while the costs of underinvestment in national health care are borne not only by the country in question, but also by the rest of the world.
Vladimir Popov
Extending life expectancy
First, governments have a responsibility to increase the life expectancy of their citizens, at least commensurate with their level of economic development, typically proxied by per capita income. Available evidence suggests life expectancy is strongly correlated with per capita income, but some countries are clearly doing better than others.
China, Japan and many European countries have higher life expectancies than their per capita incomes would suggest, whereas the converse is true of South Africa, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US, even when comparing purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita national income, probably due to their greater inequalities in incomes and healthcare access.
Income inequalities were low and access to health care was free and universal in the ‘communist’ countries. In the 1960s, life expectancy in the Soviet Union reached 70 years – nearly the level of much richer developed countries.
But the early 1990s’ mortality crisis, following the abrupt neoliberal reforms during Yeltsin’s first term, caused average life expectancy to fall by over five years! Even after this, life expectancy in former communist countries was, on average, five years higher than for other countries at the same per capita income level.
Universal access to health care in China before the 1979 market liberalization reforms weakened over the next two decades. However, things improved thereafter with the creation of a national health care insurance system, and especially with more progressive reforms after the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic.
How efficient is health care spending?
Second, countries must strive for health care system ‘efficacy’, so that greater health care spending commensurately increases life expectancy. Total health care spending as a share of GDP is correlated with life expectancy, but more spending in South Africa, Saudi Arabia and the US has been less beneficial, again due to unequal health care access.
Third, national governments have a responsibility to ensure a certain level of health care access for all, irrespective of personal means. The government share of total (public and private) health care spending has increased with per capita income.
But private financing shares in India, Brazil, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and the US were higher than in other countries with similar average incomes. Despite some notably exceptional less unequal countries, e.g., South Korea, greater reliance on private financing generally reduced life expectancy, implying that even high government health care spending is not enough to counter the negative impact of greater inequality.
South Africa, with one of the most unequal income distributions in the world, and its Gini coefficient inequality measure exceeding 60%, is a case in point. Over half of its relatively high (8% of GDP) health care spending comes from government. It is a higher proportion than in other countries at similar income levels, but has not raised mean life expectancy (64 years) to that of other countries at the same income level, such as Indonesia, with an average life expectancy of 71 years.
Coping with epidemics
Finally, fourth, national governments should be able to isolate and quarantine infected individuals in the event of an epidemic. Preliminary statistics for the Covid-19 pandemic suggest very varied death rates among countries.
These differences are partly explained by statistical variations: the higher the level of testing, the greater the number of infections and deaths attributable to Covid-19. As developed countries can generally afford far more testing, they may appear to have higher infection and death rates than developing countries, everything else being equal.
However, another likely explanation is East Asian governments’ early ‘symptomatic tracking’ (without testing) and isolation measures. In this regard, East Asian, Middle Eastern and North African countries have performed much better than most developed countries, where strict tracing, isolation, quarantine and ‘lockdown’ measures may be seen as draconian.
China trumps US
On all four counts, China has performed much better than the US: its life expectancy is higher than in most countries with similar levels of average income and health care spending as a share of GDP.
China’s government health care spending is higher than in other countries at a similar level of development, while its ability to contain epidemics via symptomatic tracking and isolation has been impressive.
China would thus come out well in such comparisons with the US whose health care performance indicators were generally considered poor even before the Covid-19 crisis underscored such differences, which have even larger implications in a US election year.
Vladimir Popov is a Research Director at the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute in Berlin.
This article is based on a longer paper with figures on the DoCRI website.
The post Why Some National Health Care Systems Do Better than Others appeared first on Inter Press Service.
The Bijoy Sarani Railway Slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: UNHabitat/Kirsten Milhahn
By Maimunah Mohd Sharif and Leilani Farha
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 13 2020 (IPS)
Public health officials are calling the “stay home” policy the sacrifice of our generation. To flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections, this call of duty is now emblazoned on t-shirts, in street art and a celebrity hashtag.
But for the 1.8 billion people around the world living in homelessness and inadequate shelter, an appeal to “stay home” as an act of public health solidarity, is simply not possible. Such a call serves to highlight stark and long-standing inequalities in the housing market. It underscores that the human right to shelter is a life or death matter.
Throughout this global pandemic, governments are relying on access to adequate housing to slow the viral spread through self-isolating or social distancing policies. Yet, living conditions in poor or inadequate housing actually create a higher risk of infection whether from overcrowding which inhibits physical distancing or a lack of proper sanitation that makes regular hand-washing difficult.
At the most extreme, people experiencing homelessness must choose between sleeping rough or in shelters where physical distancing and adequate personal hygiene are almost impossible. Homeless populations and people living in inadequate housing often already suffer from chronic diseases and underlying conditions that make COVID-19 even more deadly.
It is now clear, housing is both prevention and cure – and a matter of life and death – in the face of COVID-19. Governments must take steps to protect people who are the most vulnerable to the pandemic by providing adequate shelter where it is lacking and ensuring the housed do not become homeless because of the economic consequences of the pandemic.
These crucial measures include stopping all evictions, postponing eviction court proceedings, prohibiting utility shut-offs and ensuring renters and mortgage payers do not accrue insurmountable debt during lockdowns.
In addition, vacant housing and hotel rooms should be allocated to people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence. Basic health care should be provided to people living in homelessness regardless of citizenship status and cash transfers should be established for people in urgent need.
Steps should be quickly taken to establish emergency handwashing facilities and health care services for at-risk and underserved communities and informal settlements.
In many cities and countries, emergency measures are already moving in this direction.
Berlin opened a hostel to temporarily house up to 200 homeless people, catering to all nationalities. The Welsh government pledged GBP10 million to local councils for emergency homeless housing by block booking empty lodging like hotels and student dormitories.
A woman outside a community run water facility in Old Town, Accra Ghana. Credit: UNHabitat/Kirsten Milhahn
In South Africa where under half of all households have access to basic handwashing facilities and in Kenya, where it is under a quarter of households, governments are increasing access to water for residents living in rural areas and informal settlements by providing water tanks, standpipes, and sanitation services in public spaces.
Many jurisdictions, such as Canada’s province of British Columbia, have suspended evictions. The eviction ban means landlords cannot issue a new notice to end a tenancy for any reason and existing orders will not be enforced.
Spain, France, the United Kingdom and the United States have announced mortgage postponements in an effort to curb potential defaults.
National and local governments are also working with the private sector to tackle housing issues. For example, Singaporean firms with government backing are providing accommodation for Malaysian workers who had been commuting to Singapore daily.
And as they are no tourists in Barcelona, the city has agreed with the Association of Barcelona Tourist Apartments to allocate 200 apartments for emergency housing for vulnerable families, homeless people and those affected by domestic violence.
Some cities are leveraging citizen solidarity. Residents of Los Angeles are making hand-washing stations for homeless people living in a depressed area known as Skid Row which are installed and maintained by a local community centre.
All of these urgent measures and more are desperately needed and demonstrate the way in which housing is inherently connected to our collective public health. These successful interventions also show concrete ways that governments and communities can effectively tackle the pre-existing global housing crisis – a crisis which affected at least 1.8 billion people worldwide, even before the pandemic.
In 2018 the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless reported that homelessness had skyrocketed across the continent. In the United States, 500,000 people are currently homeless, 40 per cent of whom are unsheltered.
In April last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned that rent is currently the biggest expense for households accounting on average for one-third of their income. In the last two decades, housing prices have grown three times faster than incomes.
The current global housing system treats housing as a commodity. In times of crisis, the inefficiencies of the market are clear with the public sector expected to absorb liabilities.
This is not sustainable and many cities are struggling to find shelter for their citizens. COVID-19 has brought into sharp relief the housing paradox – in a time when people are in n desperate need for shelter, apartments and houses sit empty. This market aberration needs correcting.
Governments are at a crossroads. They can treat COVID-19 as an acute emergency and address immediate needs without grappling with hard questions and fundamental questions about the global housing system.
Or they can take legislative and policy decisions to address immediate needs, while also addressing the present housing system’s structural inequalities, putting in place long term ‘rights-based’ solutions to address our collective right to adequate shelter. Housing must be affordable, accessible and adequate.
COVID-19 is unlikely to be the last pandemic or global crisis that we face. What we do now will shape the cities we live in, and how resilient we will be in the future.
The post Housing is Both a Prevention & Cure for COVID-19 appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Excerpt:
Maimunah Mohd Sharif is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN-Habitat & Leilani Farha is the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, and Global Director of The Shift.
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By External Source
Beirut, Lebanon, May 12 2020 (IPS-Partners)
(UNESCO/Ministry of Education and Higher Education/ECW) – The COVID-19 pandemic has translated into a major education crisis. In Lebanon, 1.2 million children are affected by school closures and have seen their learning routines disrupted. While Lebanon has switched to distance teaching and learning to mitigate the effects of this disruption, challenges related to preparedness, infrastructure and capacity, as well as the digital gaps, have put additional strains on students, parents, teachers, and the educational authorities.
In this context, and in the framework of their educational response to the COVID-19 crisis, UNESCO’s Regional Bureau for Education in the Arab States (UNESCO Beirut) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW) quickly joined efforts to support the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in developing inclusive distance learning solutions to ensure that learning never stops.
As one of the tracks of the Ministry of Education’s strategy to respond to the COVID-19 crisis focuses on developing online learning as an alternative to school closures, UNESCO Beirut and ECW, with generous support from the French government, provided the Ministry with online learning material and digital resources to be used by teachers and students in Lebanon. 297 video lessons, covering Math, Science, and French classes, were provided by Reseau CANOPE, and are available on the online platform launched by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education for the COVID-19 response.
Minister of Education Dr Tarek Majzoub said: “We are happy to partner with UNESCO and ECW to facilitate inclusive learning opportunities for children during this period of sudden and unprecedented educational disruption. Special thanks to the French Government for its generous contribution that made this important initiative happen”, while adding: “This collective action will help build a more resilient system to develop more open and flexible approaches to reach all our children in Lebanon and to promote the values of citizenship, coexistence, and dialogue”.
This cooperation comes within the framework of UNESCO’s project “Supporting francophone teaching and learning in Lebanon”, funded by ECW with the support of the French government, and launched in November 2018. The project aims to promote the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning in French for vulnerable Lebanese and non-Lebanese students enrolled in public schools, and is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.
UNESCO’s Regional Director for Education in the Arab States, Dr Hamed al Hamami, said: “From school closures, to isolation, to a persistent sense of anxiety, the effects of this pandemic are greatly impacting children and youth. Despite the crisis, learning should never stop. This is why UNESCO is committed to supporting the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in developing remote learning solutions and ensuring inclusion and equity for all learners, so that no one is left behind. Our cooperation with the Ministry will not only help ensure continuity of education but can also contribute to building a more resilient education system for the future, through providing teachers and students with new learning material and resources ”.
Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, stated: “Lebanon deserves all our support and cooperation. UNESCO has years of experience in modeling, testing, and sharing some of the world’s most innovative learning solutions, and their ideas are now available for nations like Lebanon amidst this crisis. The admirable efforts of the Lebanese Ministry of Education to enable online learning brings equity and access to education for vulnerable children, including refugee and displaced girls and boys. This is how we empower these children to improve their learning, while unlocking the amazing potential for innovation. Our appreciation and gratitude to the Government of France for making this possible.”
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Additional Resources
Notes to Editors:
Information on the Education Cannot Wait Global Fund and its investment modalities are available at: www.educationcannotwait.org
About Education Cannot Wait (ECW)
ECW is the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies. It was launched by international humanitarian and development aid actors, along with public and private donors, to address the urgent education needs of 75 million children and youth in conflict and crisis settings. ECW’s investment modalities are designed to usher in a more collaborative approach among actors on the ground, ensuring relief and development organizations join forces to achieve education outcomes. Education Cannot Wait is hosted by UNICEF. The Fund is administered under UNICEF’s financial, human resources and administrative rules and regulations, while operations are run by the Fund’s own independent governance structure.
Please follow on Twitter: @EduCannotWait @UNESCO @YasmineSherif1
Additional information available at: www.educationcannotwait.org www.unesco.org
For press inquiries:
Anouk Desgroseilliers, adesgroseilliers@un-ecw.org, +1-917-640-6820
Kent Page, kpage@unicef.org, +1-917-302-1735
For other inquiries: info@un-ecw.org
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Woman gives birth to healthy baby in …., Democratic Republic of the Congo, facilitated by the delivery that day of emergency reproductive health kits. Credit: UNFPA
By Anand Grover and Ximena Casas
May 12 2020 (IPS)
“When I was 13… I got pregnant from my older brother… He raped me starting when I was 11,” a girl from Guatemala told one of us in 2015. She was one of the 2 million girls under 15 worldwide who give birth each year, often due to sexual violence.
The Covid-19 pandemic is putting girls like her at even greater risk. While lockdowns reduce the spread of Covid-19, they also drive a global spike in reported violence in the home, and leaving some women and girls isolated with abusers, leading to increased unwanted pregnancies.
The pandemic is putting enormous pressure on health systems around the world as governments work to contain the virus and treat sick people. But governments also need to sustain other essential services, which according to the World Health Organization include sexual and reproductive health services.
The right to non-discriminatory access to women’s health services is part of the right to health under international law and domestic law in most countries. Governments need to find ways to protect this right, even in the pandemic
Overloaded hospitals, travel bans, lockdowns and border closures are making access to those services increasingly difficult. Poor and marginalized women and girls, including those with disabilities, especially risk losing access to needed services. And some governments’ responses are making matters worse by discriminating against women and girls who need them.
The pandemic is exposing and exacerbating existing inequalities. More than 5 million families in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean already spent more than 40 percent of their annual non-food household expenditures on maternal health services before the pandemic. With poor families hardest hit by the pandemic’s economic consequences, they are likely to find it even harder to get quality maternal health care.
Governments need to make sure that people can get these services, regardless of ability to pay, and that pregnant women not only get pre-natal and birth care and have the right to make decisions about their labor and delivery plan.
But they also need to protect everyone’s choice about whether to become pregnant or continue a pregnancy. The International Planned Parenthood Federation reports that the pandemic has forced them to close thousands of family planning facilities—either due to government orders or social distancing needs— Colombia, El Salvador, Pakistan, Germany, Ghana, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have each had to close at least 100 such facilities.
Directors for Marie Stopes, an organization that provides contraception and safe abortion services in many countries, in Uganda and Zimbabwe said they have waited in vain for supplies to arrive. “We’re expecting a huge shortage of contraceptives in African countries,” one said. In Venezuela, thousands of women who previously travelled to neighboring Colombia to obtain contraceptive supplies are now blocked by border closings. Manufacturers warn of a global condom shortage because manufacturers are locked down to halt the spread of the virus. The shortages of contraceptive supplies increase the risk of unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and the need for abortion.
Anti-choice politicians and organizations are capitalizing on the pandemic by urging governments to prohibit abortion care during the crisis. In the United States, 11 states have tried to limit access to abortion. Poland’s Parliament is considering regressive legislation to eliminate legal access to abortion in some cases and to criminalize sexuality education.
Abortion cannot be delayed, and denying access violates human rights.
The right to non-discriminatory access to women’s health services is part of the right to health under international law and domestic law in most countries. Governments need to find ways to protect this right, even in the pandemic.
Denying these services will undermine women’s ability to recover from the pandemic. And increased pregnancies or unsafe abortions could increase pressure on already overburdened health systems.
The pandemic is reshaping our world, but it is also an opportunity to reshape reproductive health services. This might include expanded use of telemedicine, and making information available online. Expanding access to medical abortion at home, as England, Scotland and Wales have done, can help. In communities with limited access to technology, governments should ensure that health providers have the equipment and resources they need to safely reach patients.
Governments should monitor supply chains closely and seek solutions if contraceptive shortages arise, including redistributing available supplies across localities and even countries. They should ensure access to contraceptive information and services, including emergency contraception and abortion care.
Governments should put protecting sexual and reproductive rights up front in their response to Covid-19. These services are essential to women and girls—and their families– surviving and remaining healthy and are needed more than ever during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Anand Grover is the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and Ximena Casas is a women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The post Protecting Women’s Reproductive Health During the Pandemic appeared first on Inter Press Service.
A woman works on a community vegetable garden in Bulawayo. For a while now, small-scale farmers and other community gardeners scattered across Bulawayo have concentrated on producing on-demand horticultural products such as tomatoes, cabbages and onions. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS
By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, May 12 2020 (IPS)
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’ second city of some 700,000 people, has experienced a shortage of vegetables this year, with major producers citing a range of challenges from poor rains to the inability to access to bank loans to finance their operations. But this shortage has created a market gap that Zimbabwe smallholders — some 1.5 million people according to government figures — have an opportunity to fill.
“Smallholder farmers are the highest producers of diverse food crops, some estimate that they supply over 80 percent of what many of us [in the whole country] are even currently consuming,” Nelson Mudzingwa, the National Coordinator of the Zimbabwe Small Holder Organic Farmers Forum (ZIMSOFF), the local chapter of the Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers Forum (ESAFF), told IPS.
Smallholder farmers have long been feeding this Southern African nation by producing the bulk of the country’s maize staple, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform programme — where late former President Robert Mugabe’s government urged black Zimbabweans to take ownership of white-owned farms in 2000 — is generally considered a failure that resulted in the country, which was once considered the breadbasket of Africa, becoming a net food importer.
But for a while now, small-scale farmers and other community gardeners scattered across Bulawayo have concentrated on producing on-demand horticultural products such as tomatoes, cabbages and onions. This shift in the food production matrix has only increased since the country announced the COVID-19 lockdown on Mar. 31, which is meant to end this Sunday.
According to the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET), Zimbabwe’s lockdown has crippled the movement of agro-products, further increasing shortages from larger farms across the country.
“Smallholder farmers have continued to supply the urban markets that are open daily, which is a clear testimony of what smallholder farmers are able to produce despite very limited support,” Mudzingwa told IPS.
From the backyard the supplies Bulawayo vegetable market…From a small plot at her home in Bulawayo’s medium-density suburb of Kingsdale, Geraldine Mushore grows all sorts of greens: from peas to tomatoes to onions and lettuce. This has become her hustle, she said, at a time many Zimbabweans are seeking ways to escape grinding poverty.
Mushore set up her thriving 900-square-metre green garden less than two years ago but wishes she had started it sooner.
“It started as a small experiment to see what I could grow, if I was up to it. But now it is my full-time occupation,” she told IPS.
Mushore sells her produce in bulk to vendors in Bulawayo’s bustling downtown vegetable market and also to local supermarkets.
“The business just grew itself, I suppose. The borehole has been a boon especially now when larger farms are failing to meet the demand for greens as many rely on rainfall or have boreholes that are no longer pumping any water,” Mushore told IPS. She added that while she had been doing well previoulsy, since the lockdown her business has been thriving.
…to the reclaimed plot that’s thrivingIn Ntabazinduna, a hamlet 30 km from Bulawayo, Joseph Ntuli has a thriving vegetable garden on some 2,000 square metres of his 18-acre plot.
While the plot is dominated in large part by thorny bushes, Ntuli has cleared the portion of land to grow cabbages, tomatoes, peas and carrots.
Demand for fresh produce has grown this year on the back of economic hardships that has seen families abandoning preferred protein-rich diets such as meat, fish and chicken in favour of vegetables that cost less.
“We used to be overshadowed by bigger farms who produced much of the vegetables in this part of the country but we see now they are struggling which has put even more pressure on us to supply vegetable markets and feed our people,” Ntuli told IPS.
He said that while previously he would sometimes have to watch his produce rot because he had no customers, now he sells at least 20 crates of tomatoes a day, and has since had to hire extra help.
“I am supplying the Bulawayo market and people there say other vegetables are actually coming other parts of the country far away because there is a shortage from our own local producers,” he said.
Demand may soon outstrip supplyAs smallholders farmers across the country start growing more produce, there are concerns that demand will outstrip supply as these farmers lack the sophisticated and well-financed production lines of commercial farmers.
“Smallholder farmers have been up to the task to feed the country although they have fallen short in terms of meeting demand.
“The demand, especially for the upper end of the market such as supermarkets, [and before the lockdown] hotels and restaurants, has largely been met by imports of horticultural produce. The smallholder farmers on the other hand, have largely met the demands for the medium to lower end of the market largely through such localised outlets,” said Ali Said, chief of the food and livelihood support programme at the Food And Agriculture Organisation of the U.N. in Zimbabwe.
“Smallholder farmers are also a major supplier of such institutions like boarding schools and hospitals in their localities. If current bottlenecks to horticultural production by smallholder farmers are addressed, they can produce enough to meet demand,” he told IPS.
Mudzingwa agrees.
“Massive food production needs capital resources, which smallholder farmers should have access to without stringent conditions,” Mudzingwa told IPS.
Intervention from government and private investors neededLast year, Zimbabwe established the Zimbabwe Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion project (ZIM-SHEP), with support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
According to the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural resettlement, smallholder farmers are the country’s major horticulture producers and ZIM-SHEP is designed to assist these farmers with specialised skills and also help with access to markets.
Self-taught farmers such as Mushowe have already shown the contribution of smallholders in meeting local needs, despite the lack of access to agri-finance.
“I wouldn’t mind having more space to expand vegetable production but I am also aware that expanding will require more resources which I cannot afford at the moment,” Mushowe said.
Despite the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) supporting Zimbabwe through the Smallholder Irrigation Support Programme, where communities are provided with irrigation systems with particular interest in horticulture, such support is yet to reach Ntabazinduna farmers such as Ntuli.
“We would certainly welcome any form of support. We have already proven to ourselves how much we are contributing towards feeding such a big city like Bulawayo. Obviously we can do more, but for now this is what we can do,” Ntuli told IPS.
FAO’s Said said smallholder horticulture production can grow with proper interventions from both government and private investors as they have already proven their capability to meet localised needs.
“Climate change and the accompanying reduced rainfall and dry spells has dealt a huge blow to horticultural production, most of which rely either on surface and underground water. The water sources have become unreliable and no longer able to sustain crop production throughout the year as in the past. There is thus need to ensure availability of reliable water through drilling of boreholes and well as construction of dams and weirs where feasible,” Said told IPS via email.
For now, smallholder farmers like Ntuli and Mushore are doing what they can with their limited resources to keep their local communities fed.
Related ArticlesThe post COVID-19: Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Farmers Step into the Food Supply Gap appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Excerpt:
As small scale farmers step up growing more horticulture produce, there are concerns that demand will outstrip supply as these farmers lack the sophisticated and well-financed production lines of commercial farmers.
The post COVID-19: Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Farmers Step into the Food Supply Gap appeared first on Inter Press Service.
By Ian Goldin
Oxford University, May 12 2020 (IPS)
Covid-19 is the most significant event since the Second World War. It changes everything.
It brings great sadness to many of us as we lose loved ones, as we see people losing their jobs, and as we see people around the world suffering immensely.
But it also provides an opportunity for a reset and new start for humanity. It teaches us how closely we are all interwoven together, how a problem in one part of the world is a problem for all of us.
It gives us time to pause and reflect about our individual lives, allowing us to reset and reprioritise. And it provides an opportunity for businesses and politicians to reset too. Even isolationist politicians must now understand that we can only thrive as humanity if everyone thrives.
We can only prosper if the world is prospering. And we can only be healthy if people everywhere are healthy.
Covid-19 provides a call for action. Not only to address the medical and associated economic emergency, but to ensure that we will never see a pandemic which could be even more dreadful than this one.
If we can learn to stop pandemics, we would have learnt to cooperate to stop the other great threats that we face, like climate change, antibiotic resistance, cascading financial crises, and cyber and other systemic risks.
We need to learn from history.
The First World War was followed by austerity and nationalist attacks on those who were blamed for the conflict. What followed was the Great Depression, rise of fascism and an even worse world war.
However, at the height of the Second World War visionary leaders created the framework for a harmonious world. The Bretton Woods Institutions for reconstruction and economic development, the Marshall Plan, the rise of the United Nations with its manifesto to unite ‘we the people’. The 1942 Beveridge Commission in the UK which called for the creation of the social welfare state.The aim was to honour the youth that had died in the trenches and to overcome the suffering to provide a vision of a better future.
No wall high enough
The pandemic has risen from what I’ve called in my book of this title, The Butterfly Defect of globalization.
The interconnectedness of complex systems means that what happens elsewhere, increasingly shapes our lives. In the 2014 book I predicted that a pandemic would lead to the next financial crisis, even worse than the one of 2008.
The fact that we are now interconnected makes it imperative that we manage systemic risks, and that we care more about what happens elsewhere.
There is no wall high enough to keep out the great threats that face us in our future, and not least pandemics and climate change.
But what high walls do keep out is the ideas of how to change things, is the sharing of experiences of common humanity, the technologies, the people, the investment, the potential for tourism and exports, and the ability to cooperate.
This is essential because these threats require that we work together. If we bunker down we will see escalating threats.
Pandemics are unusual in that they are the only threat that faces us that can come from any country. This one happened to come from China. But it could equally have come from any country in the Americas, Africa, Europe or elsewhere in Asia.
As technology is evolving, with new capabilities to sequence pandemics and spray viruses from drones, the risk is rising rapidly in richer countries, so both rich and poor countries are a potential source.
As pandemics can come from anywhere stopping pandemics requires global cooperation. For most of the other global threats that we face like climate change, cascading financial crises or antibiotic resistance, a very smaller set of actors account for a very big share of the problem.
Radical ideas become reality
Covid-19 has highlighted the urgency of managing global risks. It also has shown us that these spill over to every aspect of our lives, and are devastating for economies.
Radical economic remedies are being implemented that were previously unacceptable. Being guaranteed an income was regarded as a radical idea six weeks ago and is now adopted many European governments.
The idea that governments would bail out any company and give them a lifeline was unacceptable six weeks ago, and now has been enacted. The levels of debt and deficits that governments are taking on, were regarded as heresy six weeks ago.
We know from the mortality statistics, that young people are far less likely to die from COVID-19 than elderly people. And yet young people are sacrificing their social lives, their jobs, their education, their prospects to protect the lives of older people.
We owe the youth a brighter future. We owe them the promise that this will be the last pandemic of this nature. We owe them the promise that we will address climate change, that we will create jobs, employment and better prospects for them. For this, we are likely to see not only a bigger role for government, but higher levels of taxes.
The pandemic has revealed the extent of health inequality.
The data shows stark differences based on income levels. These are being exacerbated as poorer people are less able to work from home and more likely to be made unemployed. They also have less savings.
The pandemic is increasing inequality within countries, and it is widening the gulf between them. Richer countries have more resources, they have more ventilators, they have more doctors, they have more capacity to create a safety net that is strong, to guarantee everyone a basic income and to ensure the survival of firms. This is not an option for African, Latin American and South Asian countries.
Physical distancing is an impossibility when you’re sharing a small home with six other family members, or when you have to go in crowded transport to work to put food on your table.
The medical emergency in being compounded by an economic emergency, putting hundreds of millions of lives at risk of starvation and creating the biggest shock to development in the post war period.
Covid-19 demonstrates the butterfly defect of globalisation is a dire threat to us all. It poses a test for leaders everywhere. It challenges governments, businesses and individuals to behave differently. How we respond to this test will determine not only our individual prospects, but that of humanity.
The post COVID-19: Why We Must Reset Our Thinking appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Excerpt:
Thinking the Unthinkable first published this article by Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development at Oxford University.
His books The Butterfly Defect and Age of Discovery predicted that pandemics would cause the next economic crisis.
The post COVID-19: Why We Must Reset Our Thinking appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Secretary-General António Guterres holds a virtual press conference to promote a report on his call for a global cease-fire during the Covid-19 outbreak, April 3, 2020. A Security Council draft resolution supporting his call was knocked down by the US on May 8, facing a low chance for revival. Credit: LOEY FELIPE/UN PHOTO
By Dali ten Hove, PassBlue*
UNITED NATIONS, May 12 2020 (IPS)
After six weeks of negotiations, the United States shot down hopes for a resolution to be approved in the United Nations Security Council on May 8, refusing to back worldwide cease-fires as the US continues to castigate China and the World Health Organization for the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, momentum behind tenuous cease-fires is vanishing, experts say.
The long-awaited moment for the Council to approve a resolution supporting the UN secretary-general’s March 23 call to pause fighting in war zones during the coronavirus crisis may be gone for now.
The resolution had come close to getting through, it seemed, by Thursday night, May 7, according to some diplomats. France and Tunisia had circulated a redraft of the resolution, obtained by PassBlue, with compromise language about the WHO.
The new formulation expressed support for “all relevant entities of the United Nations system, including specialized health agencies,” in obvious reference to the WHO without naming it. The organization is the UN’s only specialized health agency.
France brandished its diplomatic skills as a permanent Council member to get the draft put under silence procedure — a span of time allowing parties to object — until 2 P.M. Friday, Eastern Daylight Time.
Hopes were high among most Council members that the resolution would see the light of day by the deadline, especially because on Friday the Council was holding an enormous meeting, albeit online, with an array of high-level government officials to commemorate the end of World War II in Europe.
The latest draft resolution — it has gone through numerous iterations — had overcome many obstacles laid by the US and China. Estonia was the first Council member to submit a draft resolution on the pandemic in early March but was swatted down mainly by China for including human-rights references, one diplomat said.
Then, a French-led draft was circulated, focusing on the global cease-fire; it was eventually merged with one led by Tunisia. That version, with more changes, was the one put under silence procedure late last week.
Around noon on Friday, May 8, silence was broken, even though several diplomats told PassBlue that senior US officials had shown signs the night before that the US was on board. But on Friday, Russia also said it needed more time to consider the draft; as one diplomat put it, Russia woke up and had to insert itself into the process.
In rejecting the draft, the US State Department said that the Security Council should either proceed with a resolution limited to support for a cease-fire or a broadened resolution “that fully addresses the need for renewed member state commitment to transparency and accountability in the context of Covid-19.”
Back on March 23, as the world came to grips with the gravity of the spreading coronavirus, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appealed to warring parties to observe cease-fires to help fight the coronavirus by ensuring that humanitarian aid supplies could get through conflict zones. “The virus does not care about nationality or ethnicity, faction or faith. It attacks all, relentlessly,” he said. “That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire.”
Widely viewed at first as noble but impractical, the appeal nonetheless received the backing of governments, civil society and armed groups globally. “I was surprised by the initial success of the call,” said Richard Gowan, the UN director for the International Crisis Group, a think tank in New York.
He said he “was inclined to view it a little skeptically in late March, but a significant number of armed groups did respond positively. I think Guterres may have had a greater impact than he first expected.”
The UN says 16 conflict parties in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and East Asia have declared unilateral pauses in fighting since Guterres’s appeal. This has notably included a cease-fire by Saudi Arabia in its war with the Houthi insurgents in Yemen.
Nevertheless, the Houthis have not agreed to a pause, and the Saudis have been bombing Yemen during an extended cease-fire they agreed to weeks ago.
According to the Yemen Data Project, the Saudi-led coalition has carried out at least 83 air raids with up to 356 individual strikes from April 9 to April 30, the most recent information available.
Despite the early success of Guterres’s appeal, the Security Council has so far not endorsed it and remains virtually silent on Covid-19, except for issuing “press elements” — the weakest formal response the Council can offer publicly — when it met in a closed virtual session on April 9.
The statement that emerged from that meeting said that the Council members “expressed their support for all efforts of the Secretary-General concerning the potential impact of COVID-19 pandemic to conflict-affected countries and recalled the need for unity and solidarity with all those affected.”
“I’m afraid that momentum is now dissipating,” Gowan said about Guterres’s appeal, as several other cease-fires declared in its wake have since broken down, including one announced in Colombia by the ELN militia, or, in English, the National Liberation Army.
“I think that a Security Council resolution supporting the call in late March or early April would have been very positive,” Gowan added. “Sadly, the Council has waited too long.”
The US, a veto-wielding member, has strongly objected to any expression of support for the WHO in all versions of the Council draft resolution.
The draft by France and Tunisia backing the cease-fire appeal, circulated on April 21, said in notes, “compromise related to the language on WHO to be decided at the end of the negotiation.”
China had insisted on a clause commending the organization for its efforts against the pandemic, while the US, which has suspended its funding of it, refused to agree to a reference to the agency.
The Trump administration also pressed for addressing the origins of the new coronavirus to embarrass China, demanding that it be named the “Wuhan virus” in reference to the Chinese province where Covid-19 is believed to have originated.
The call for countries’ obligations to be transparent was also a demand by the US, directly challenging China. Other requirements — including lifting sanctions, by Russia and others, and exemptions of combat pertaining to counterterrorism, by the US and Russia — were also overcome, according to diplomats.
The Trump administration’s denunciations of China and the WHO are widely viewed as distractions from its own sluggish response to Covid-19, as recent polling in the US finds that more Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
China’s posturing in favor of the WHO may in turn be meant to embarrass the US, Gowan said, and compensate for China’s mishandling of the coronavirus when it emerged.
“The relationship between Washington and Beijing has grown worse and worse recently,” said Jeremy Greenstock, a former British ambassador to the UN, who spoke with PassBlue from Oxfordshire, England. “It’s pathetic, really, that they are scrapping like this when they need to be cooperating.”
At a press conference on April 30, Guterres expressed disappointment about Security Council infighting in the middle of a deadly pandemic. “The relation between the major powers in the world today is very dysfunctional,” he said. “It is obvious that there is a lack of leadership.”
As Gowan said: “What’s depressing about this is that basically everyone would sign onto the cease-fire. It’s being held hostage by this WHO issue, which is sort of pathetic.”
*PassBlue is an independent, women-led journalism site that is considered the most influential media source covering the US-UN relationship, women’s issues, human rights, peacekeeping and other urgent global matters playing out in the UN. As a nonprofit news site, PassBlue is a project of the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs, supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and 100+ individuals and a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News.
The post US Pulls the Plug on a UN Global Cease-Fire Resolution appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Excerpt:
Dali ten Hove is the researcher on the memoirs of former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, "Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World," to be published in 2021. He is a general director of the United Nations Association of the Netherlands and a former trustee of the UNA-UK. He has a master's in international relations from Oxford University.
The post US Pulls the Plug on a UN Global Cease-Fire Resolution appeared first on Inter Press Service.
A health worker in Kasubi Food Market, measuring the temperature of people accessing the market. After washing their hands with water and soap, everyone is screened to check the temperature, and an isolation tent is set aside to manage suspected coronavirus cases, Kasubi Food Market, Kampala City, Uganda. Covid-19 response. April 2020. Credit: WaterAid / James Kiyimba
By John Garrett, Kathryn Tobin and Chilufya Chileshe
LONDON, May 12 2020 (IPS)
The coronavirus pandemic underscores the profound fragility and unsustainability of today’s world. It exposes the chronic underinvestment in human health and well-being and the consequences of a relentless exploitation of biodiversity and the natural environment.
Despite the pledge by 193 governments in adopting the historic Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, COVID-19 and the accelerating climate crisis threaten to undermine the progress made and to increase global poverty levels for the first time in decades. Global leadership—governmental and corporate—has been found seriously wanting.
At least half of the world’s population do not have access to essential health services. Three billion people lack basic handwashing facilities, over a billion people live in dense, slum conditions and are therefore unable to practise physical distancing, and 40% of health care facilities globally lack hand hygiene at points of care (WHO/UNICEF JMP 2019).
The virus and resulting lockdowns threaten the livelihoods of 1.6 billion workers, and a few months ago 11,000 scientists declared clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth faces a climate emergency. These combined social, economic and environmental crises show the need to make real progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and inspire new, collective action towards a more just, equitable and sustainable global order.
Central to this agenda is finance. Yet even before widely-instituted lockdowns and the resulting economic recession, financing to achieve the SDGs was woefully insufficient.
WaterAid’s research on financing universal access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Pakistan (SDG 6 targets 1 and 2) indicates shortfalls multiple times that of current levels of financing.
Other studies show that this is common across other SDGs, with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network identifying a US$400 billion annual funding gap to deliver the SDGs in Low Income Developing Countries (LIDCs).
No single country or individual can resolve these issues in isolation. National efforts by LIDCs to mobilise increased domestic resources to tackle the pandemic and invest in the SDGs must be backed by a global, coordinated and comprehensive response far exceeding the support provided to date.
Last week, the UN Secretary-General launched a framework focused on mitigating the socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic through a “human-centred, innovative and coordinated stimulus package reaching double-digit percentage points of the world’s gross domestic product”.
This is very welcome, but crucially it must be built on equitable, affordable and sustainable foundations—rather than a mountain of new debt and subsequent austerity which followed the 2008 financial crisis.
Financing this unprecedented global stimulus requires a comprehensive package of fundamental reform—long advocated by civil society and movements for economic justice—comprising debt relief, taxation, international aid, reserves, and subsidies.
This structural transformation should be urgently instituted both as part of immediate response to COVID-19 and as permanent redirections and safeguards on international economic and financial systems.
Debt relief from the IMF and World Bank and G20 is a positive start, providing temporary fiscal space, including for public spending deprioritised in the face of crushing debt service commitments.
But as the Jubilee Debt Campaign, Oxfam, Christian Aid and others have advocated, widespread unconditional cancellation of public and private debt is what is really needed, overseen by an independent sovereign debt workout mechanism under the aegis of the United Nations.
Zambia’s US$1.5 billion external debt servicing requirement in 2020—now only partially alleviated—compares with budgets for health of US$215 million and for water, sanitation and hygiene of US$91 million (2019).
Debt cancellation is just one example of the transformation required in financial relationships between high-income countries and LIDCs to enable governments to address COVID-19, effectively target public goods and services, realise human rights (including the right to development) for all, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, and achieve the SDGs.
Global structures of taxation also require a wide-ranging overhaul. Church leaders in the UK recently highlighted how US$8 trillion sits in off-shore tax havens, with developing countries deprived of up to US$400 billion every year in tax avoidance and evasion.
In similar vein, the IMF has previously revealed that almost 40% of Foreign Direct Investment is completely artificial: it consists of financial investment passing through empty corporate shells with no real activity. Ending these practices, and ensuring democratic oversight of corporate profit, is crucial to ensure that governments – and their people – benefit from revenues earned in their countries.
Further, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and implementing carbon taxes can both end incentives that deepen the climate emergency and release new funds for sustainable development. As the IMF has recently recognised, this is especially crucial in stemming the immediate tide of COVID-19 and greening the economic recovery. The organisation would do well to make reporting on these issues a core and mandatory part of its Article IV surveillance.
While the IMF has taken some steps to free up liquidity for health and stimulus spending to address COVID-19, the UN Secretary-General, UNCTAD and others have called for a new allocation of Special Drawing Rights to bolster developing countries’ foreign exchange reserves, stimulate economies and release funds for spending on health and public services.
Mobilising the full financial power of the IMF in support of its member countries—in an initiative which is affordable for LIDCs—would be a welcome repeat of action taken in 2009. This would also represent a return to the initial post-war vision of the Bretton Woods institutions as instruments of multilateral response to crisis and underdevelopment.
In tandem, a widescale fulfilment of Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments – meeting and exceeding the longstanding target of 0.7% of GNI – is required. A handful of countries have fulfilled this commitment: now is the time for other high-income countries to join them—going above 0.7% in a “Race for the Top”.
COVID-19 has exposed the fragility of even the most powerful countries and companies: as former UK PM Gordon Brown points out, in today’s interconnected world they are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.
But the hit to donor countries’ economies should not be used as an excuse to shirk global responsibility or turn away from multilateralism: like the climate crisis, COVID-19 illustrates that even when immediate effects are localised, the implications are global. The EU and others have launched an important initiative in pledging support for the WHO’s COVID response.
It can only be a first step, however: €7.4 billion, like the US$2 billion sought by the World Food Programme to address acute hunger impacts, is in stark contrast to the trillions being found for national rescue plans by OECD economies.
Only a major influx of funding–overseen through principles of transparency and accountability and the participation of civil society–can enable the concerted political action and system strengthening required to end the pandemic, deliver the Paris Climate Agreement and achieve the universal promise of the SDGs.
Private finance has a key role to play, but currently investment and lending decisions are not sufficiently aligned with environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, and affordability for LIDCs remains a major concern. Over a year ago, we called for a new public finance target for high-income countries, to ensure their climate finance commitments were genuinely additional to the fifty-year-old promises on aid.
This global plan for renewal and sustainability is now more pressing than ever, to enable governments to finance their development priorities and achieve their sustainable development agreements, including universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene and the transition to a zero-carbon global economy.
Scientists estimate we have ten years to restore the world to a sustainable pathway and avoid the compounded and catastrophic effects of climate change. Addressing the health and economic impacts of COVID-19 while turning towards climate justice will require no less than a complete transformation of the current financial system and global economy.
Almost eighty years ago during World War II the British economist William Beveridge provided the intellectual foundation for the UK’s National Health Service, which now forms the backbone to the country’s response to the pandemic. In launching his seminal report, he said that “a revolutionary time in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching”. We would do well to heed his words today.
The post Finding Money for Public Health, Green Economic Recovery & SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Excerpt:
John Garrett, Kathryn Tobin and Chilufya Chileshe are members of WaterAid’s policy team from UK, US and Southern Africa offices.
The post Finding Money for Public Health, Green Economic Recovery & SDGs appeared first on Inter Press Service.
Street checkpoint in Wuhan, China. Credit: UNV
By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 12 2020 (IPS)
Although Wuhan local authorities undoubtedly ostracized local medical whistle-blowers, notably Dr Li Wenliang, who suspected a new virus was responsible for flu-like infections in Wuhan in late 2019, official responses were apparently not delayed, and possibly even expedited, as the novel character of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for Covid-19 infections, was not immediately self-evident.
On 12 January this year, China publicly shared the genetic sequence for Covid-19 with the world. On 11 February, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses named the newly discovered virus causing Covid-19 the “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)”.
From praise to conspiracy
US President Donald Trump went from praising China for its transparent handling of the Covid-19 outbreak in January, after securing a deal ending escalating trade tensions, to accusing China of lack of transparency in March.
Anis Chowdhury
As he ratcheted up his criticisms of China’s handling of the virus outbreak, POTUS threatened China on 18 April with consequences if it was “knowingly responsible” for the pandemic.Trump has also accused the World Health Organization (WHO) of being ‘China-centric’, suspending its funding at a time of exceptional need. Even the mainstream media has joined such attacks on ‘soft targets’, such as UN multilateral or inter-governmental organizations, constrained by their governance from robustly defending themselves.
Initially, President Trump had downplayed the pandemic threat, promising “it will all work out well” and insisting “it was totally under control”. Then, after grossly mismanaging the US epidemic, the Trump administration switched to a blame game, becoming ever shriller in his rhetoric as his approval ratings continued to slip from an initial all-time high.
Trump has insisted on terming Covid-19 a “Chinese virus”, and has tried to persuade allies to join him in blaming China for the pandemic. He has since ‘upped the ante’, by insisting the outbreak — which China could have stopped, but refused to, according to him — as worse than the Pearl Harbor or 9/11 attacks.
Japan, Taiwan and others seeking to mobilize against China’s ascendance have joined the anti-China, anti-WHO alliance. With US elections less than half a year away, the epidemic’s politicization is undermining the desperately needed multilateral cooperation needed to address the pandemic and its many ramifications.
Conspiracy theories
While some kooks still claim that the Covid-19 pandemic is an elaborate hoax, there are more biological warfare ‘conspiracy theories’, of varying degrees of plausibility, going around, with some actively promoted by politicians, even governments.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
A coronavirus, referring to the European crown-like physical form or features of a virus, was first found in chickens in 1937, and has featured in various different contexts since, with coronaviruses first identified in humans in 1965.The internationally very influential right-wing media (e.g., Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, especially Fox TV) and some influential public intellectuals continue to feed various versions of the China conspiracy theory although Western intelligence agencies have found no evidence of China either deliberately or accidentally releasing the deadly virus.
The scientific evidence thus far is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutated naturally, resulting in at least three distinct strains, and could not have been ‘manufactured’ in a Chinese, US or other laboratory. Yet, conspiracy theories persist, with those blaming China of the worst getting the most publicity in a US election year.
Meanwhile, the supposedly ‘centrist’ mainstream Western media have also contributed by publishing various more plausible stories invoking ‘circumstantial evidence’ to blame China for causing the global pandemic, and worse, of a deliberate ‘cover-up’.
Imperialist apologist’s conspiracy theory
Celebrated UK imperialist apologist historian Niall Ferguson, now at the Hoover Institution, cites the venerable New York Times (NYT) for the now oft-repeated claim that China unleashed seven million potentially Covid-19 infected, and therefore infectious, Wuhan residents on the rest of the world for most of January before imposing a lockdown.
Long the hub of Chinese industry, Wuhan is a city into which millions from the rest of Hubei and the two neighbouring provinces commute – not unlike the millions travelling daily into and out of New York City (NYC) from NY state, New Jersey and Connecticut.
But despite the heavier international traffic from NYC airports, no credible source would accuse NYC’s daily commuters of all travelling to the rest of the world in any particular month, even before a major holiday comparable to the lunar new year.
Flights of fantasy
Ferguson even claimed that although China cancelled all flights from Wuhan to other Chinese cities on 23 January, regular direct flights from Wuhan to London, Paris, Rome, New York and San Francisco continued through January, and in some cases, into February.
Although such flights were undoubtedly scheduled and advertised, all direct international flights from Wuhan were cancelled, and those from other cities via Wuhan were redirected to bypass China’s Covid-19 epicentre.
Daniel Bell, a Canadian professor, who had strongly criticized China’s authorities for grossly mishandling the epidemic at the start, challenged Ferguson’s implication that China deliberately allowed, if not encouraged, contagion beyond China, particularly to the West.
When asked for the basis for his claim, Ferguson sent Bell a link to a NYT story, which did not corroborate Ferguson’s claim that direct commercial flights from Wuhan to the US continued after 23 January, and well into February.
Similarly, other source links sent by Ferguson to Bell turned out to be ‘economical with the truth’, inaccurate or wrongly interpreted. Simply put, very little of the ostensible evidence Ferguson invoked actually supported his own allegations.
‘Heads, I’m right, tails, you’re wrong’
Ferguson eventually conceded that he had wrongly alleged that regular flights abroad left Wuhan after 23 January, but retaliated by questioning Bell’s other scholarship, including his recent book on China, and insisting that China should have cancelled all international flights in an updated blog.
Ferguson also challenges official data from China, citing the authorities’ revision of its data as new information becomes available – as one hopes others do as well, especially as the world struggles to understand and address new phenomena.
It should be amusing to see Ferguson’s considerable skills deployed for his next analytical contortion as he addresses new evidence, e.g., that a Paris hospital patient was already infected with Covid-19 in December despite no history of travel to China or contact with any known infected person.
Perhaps Ferguson will uncover communist Chinese bats from Wuhan infiltrating Parisian escargot markets.
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By C R Abrar
May 11 2020 (IPS-Partners)
A spectre is haunting the conscientious citizens of Bangladesh—the spectre of the Digital Security Act, 2018 (DSA). By now the law has become synonymous with curtailment of freedom of expression and repression. The recent developments of involuntary disappearance, re-appearance and subsequent detention of several commentators and social activists have raised the alarm if indeed we as a nation are shying away from upholding one of the cardinal principles of the Muktijuddher Chetona (the spirit of the Liberation War) to freely express our views.
A few recent cases will corroborate the above statement. On May 6, businessman Mushtaq Ahmed and cartoonist Ahammed Kabir Kishore were sent to jail and Dhaka Stock Exchange director Minhaz Mannan Emon and Rastra Chinta organiser Didarul Islam Bhuiyan were shown arrested a day after they had reportedly been picked up in a case filed under the DSA allegedly for spreading “rumours”. Five persons based in Sweden and Germany and six more unnamed persons have been named for “tarnishing'” the image of the father of the nation, “hurting” the spirit of the Liberation War, and “spreading rumours” about COVID-19, army and other security forces among others, on social media.
Cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore, began profiling “life in the time of corona” while Mushtaq started spreading anti-state propaganda, the complaint noted. It was further claimed that authorities had detected “anti-state chatting” in the WhatsApp and Messenger exchanges of Mushtaq, Minhaz and Didarul. The original complaint was annexed with 60 pages of screenshots and a compact disc as evidence, and a 2-page list of articles seized and details of their Facebook profiles, including the URLs.
The government move came at a time when citizens were reeling from the bizarre developments centring the involuntary disappearance of journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol (March 10), his re-appearance in the border town of Benapole (after 53 days) and subsequent placement in detention. The authorities’ attempt to present Kajol as an absconder from justice failed to gain traction. The CCTV footage of some people surrounding his motorbike just prior to his disappearance, the initial refusal of two police stations to register the family’s attempt to file a case, the lack of progress in investigation, improperly detaining him under Section 54 of Criminal Procedure Code to secure time to frame other, publicly humiliating him by handcuffing his hands behind his back (a practice reserved for those accused of violent crimes such as rape, murder, terrorism and the like) and “law enforcement agencies’ overdrive to keep him in prison” at a time when courts are dysfunctional, all point to the fact that Kajol has been deprived of due process of law and may perhaps be a victim for freely expressing his views on matters of public interest.
Detaining individuals on charges of “spreading rumours”, “tarnishing image” and “hurting spirit of Liberation War” for an unstipulated period in a situation when they cannot seek protection of higher judiciary amounts to arbitrary action. It may be recalled that initially Kajol had been detained under Section 54, violating the guidelines framed by the High Court and upheld by the Appellate Division. As the hearing of the government’s review petition is still pending those guidelines continue to remain in force. Therefore continued detention of Kajol under Section 54 appears to be in breach of the law.
It is a matter of the courts to decide whether charges brought against the above accused for “spreading rumour”, “tarnishing image” and “hurting” a sentiment are tenable or not. In most instances of involuntary disappearances, including the ones above, does not the denial of law enforcement agencies of any knowledge of whereabouts of victims amount to making a false statement? Evidence is replete that in a number of cases victims are shown as under arrest if and when they are produced before the court, some weeks and even months after they were reportedly disappeared. Should not the errant members of law enforcement agencies be held accountable for such gross misconduct?
These recent actions of law enforcement agencies have triggered widespread protests. Rights groups documenting the excesses committed by state agencies have noted that following the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been an increase in instances of involuntary disappearance, extra-judicial killing and human rights violations. In most cases the actions were justified on ground of tackling rumours. The feeling is pervasive among rights activists that COVID-19 may have come as a boon to that section in the administration that is disposed to remain unaccountable and non-transparent, and thus quash dissent and public scrutiny.
The country is going through a testing time. It is the need of the hour to face the COVID-19 challenge in unison. The gradual rise in the infection curve with no sign of receding and the worsening conditions of the masses reinforce the fear that we are yet to chart out appropriate course of action. Framing a suitable response necessitates discussion and debate among all stakeholders and that entails tolerance of diverse views and free flow of information. The watchdog role of civil society only ensures transparency and accountability of the public functionaries and also of non-government initiatives engaged in humanitarian assistance. Those in the administration should not only welcome citizens’ engagement but create enabling conditions to facilitate the process. At the very least, it entails state’s unfettered pledge to uphold the fundamental rights of the citizens guaranteed by the constitution. All responses to COVID-19 must therefore be “evidence-based, legal, necessary to protect public health, non-discriminatory, time-bound and proportionate”.
In order to do away with the prevailing dreary and fatalist frame of mind of the people it is incumbent on the authorities to immediately release those detained under the DSA, make every effort to recover those who became victims of involuntary disappearance, and not proceed any further with the frivolous cases of defamation. Scrapping the DSA and instituting a credible commission of enquiry with adequate authority to look into the cases of involuntary disappearance and extra-judicial killings will go a long way to re-establishing citizens’ trust in the state.
As the custodian of the constitution, the Supreme Court may consider taking immediate measures to ensure people can seek its protection without any hindrance and (in the interim, until such a system is put in place) advise the executive branch to strictly uphold fundamental rights of the people guaranteed by the constitution and act in accordance with the law, and only in accordance with the law.
CR Abrar is an academic.
This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh
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Africa is grappling with managing diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis as health systems that are unable to cope with both this and the coronavirus pandemic. Sleeping under a net and taking antimalarial pills helps prevent malaria. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS
By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, May 11 2020 (IPS)
Experts across Africa are warning that as hospitals and health facilities focus on COVID-19, less attention is being given to the management of other deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which affect millions more people.
“Today if you have malaria symptoms you are in big trouble because they are quite close to COVID-19 symptoms, will you go to the hospital when it is said we should not go there?” Yap Boum II, the regional representative for Epicenter Africa, the research arm of Doctors Without Borders, told IPS.
“Hospitals are struggling because they do not have the good facilities and equipment; it will be hard to take in a patient with malaria because people are scared. As a result the management of malaria is affected by COVID-19,” Boum, who is also a Professor of Microbiology at Mbarara University of Sciences and Technology in Uganda, said, pointing out that HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis were also being ignored.
In fact, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that four times as many people could die from malaria than coronavirus.
“With COVID-19 spreading, we are worried about its impacts on health systems in Africa and that this may impact negatively on the delivery of routine services, which include malaria control. The bans on movement will affect the health workers getting to health facilities and their safety from exposure,” Akpaka Kalu, team leader of the Tropical and Vector-borne Disease Programme at the WHO Regional Office for Africa, told IPS.
The WHO has urged member countries not to forget malaria prevention programmes as they race to contain the COVID-19 spread. Without maintaining prevention programmes, i.e. should all insecticide-treated net campaigns be suspended and if access to effective antimalarial medicines is reduced because of lockdowns, malaria deaths could double to 769,000 in sub-Saharan Africa this year. At the same time the agency has predicted that some 190,000 people could die of COVID-19.
According to the WHO, as of today, May 11, Africa has recorded over 63,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 2,283 deaths in 53 affected countries in the region.
Poorly equipped and understaffed national health services in many countries in Africa could compromise efforts to eliminate the malaria scourge, noted Kalu.
Africa must cope with COVID-19 without forgetting malariaMamadou Coulibaly, head of the Malaria Research and Training Center at the University of Bamako, Mali, concurred that the pandemic was straining health systems in developing countries. He urged malaria-endemic countries not to disrupt prevention and treatment programmes.
“To avoid this catastrophic scenario, countries must tailor their interventions to this challenging time, guaranteeing prompt diagnostic testing, treatment, access and use of insecticide-treated nets,” Coulibaly, who is also the principal investigator of Target Malaria in Mali, told IPS.
Mali is one of the top 10 African countries with the high incidence of malaria.
Malaria needs more national moneyKalu stressed that domestic financing for malaria was needed. He commended the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and other private sector partnerships that have provided funds for malaria. But he pointed out that this was neither ideal nor sustainable unless national governments contributed a lion’s share to malaria control.
While pleased with progress made towards eliminating malaria in Africa since 2008 when the Abuja Declaration on Health investment was signed, Kalu said Africa could do better.
“For the first time in our lifetime, the human being and the world is realising that the most important thing we have is our health,” said Boum, questioning why African governments have all not prioritised health spending despite the Abuja Declaration.
“With our borders closed we are all being taken care of in the poor health system that we have built,” Boum, told IPS. “There is no more flying to India, London or the United States. We are all in the same boat because we have not invested what we were supposed to invest and I hope beyond the pandemic, we will make health care a just cause and even manage to go beyond the 15 percent health investment agreed upon.”
With the current level of investment in health systems, the WHO fears Africa will not achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG3 on ensuring healthy lives and wellbeing for all and ending malaria by 2030.
“We do not want a situation where we are protecting people from COVID-19 and they die of malaria and other diseases,” Kalu told IPS.
“We are not asking governments to put money in malaria alone but in national health systems. COVID-19 is showing that Africa needs facilities and equipment which it does not currently have to effectively deal with the pandemic.”
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Credit: Oxfam America
By Abby Maxman
BOSTON, USA, May 11 2020 (IPS)
NGOs, at the international, national – and most of all local – level are on the frontlines every day.
I just heard from Oxfam staff in Bangladesh, that when asked whether they were scared to continue our response with the Rohingya communities in Cox’s Bazar, they replied: “They are now my relatives. I care about them — and this is the time they need us most.’”
These people – and those that they and others are supporting around the globe – are at the heart of this crisis and response.
As we talk about global figures and strategies, we must remember we are talking about parents who must decide whether they should stay home and practice social distancing or go to work to earn and buy food so their children won’t go hungry; women who constitute 70% of the workers in the health and social sector globally; people with disabilities and their carers; those who are already far from home or caught in conflict; people who don’t know what information to believe and follow, as rumours swirl.
Looking more broadly, we see that the COVID-19 crisis is exposing our broken and unprepared system, and it is also testing our values as a global community. COVID-19 is adding new and exacerbating existing threats of conflict, displacement, gender-based violence, climate change, hunger and inequality, and too many are being forced to respond without the proper resources – simple things like clean water, soap, health care and shelter. We must be creative and nimble to adapt our response in this new reality.
Most vulnerable communities
We know too well that when crisis hits, women, gender diverse persons, people with disabilities and their carers, the elderly, the poor, and the displaced suffer the worst impacts as existing gender, racial, economic and political inequalities are exposed.
Abby Maxman
These communities need to be at the center of our response, and we, as the international community, must listen to their needs, concerns and solutions.Access
As we continue to ramp up our response, we must have access to the communities most in need. Likewise, COVID-19 cannot be used as an excuse to stop those greatest in need from accessing humanitarian aid.
Border closures are squeezing relief supply and procurement chains; Lockdowns and quarantines are blocking relief operations; And travel restrictions for aid workers have been put in place, disrupting their ability to work in emergency response programs.
Authorities should absolutely take precautions to keep communities safe, but we need to work at all levels to also ensure life-saving aid can still get through and people’s rights are upheld.
Local and national NGOs are on the frontline of the COVID-19 response, and communities’ access to the essential services and lifesaving assistance they provide must be protected. We also know that with effective community engagement, we can gain better and more effective access to communities.
Humanitarian NGOs and partners are adapting our approaches to continue vital humanitarian support while fulfilling our obligation to “do no harm.”
This adaptive approach, and our experience of ‘safe programming,’ shifting to remote management where possible; and scaling back some operations where necessary—will all be crucial as COVID-19 restrictions continue to amplify protection concerns and risk of sexual exploitation and abuse.
Funding
To mount an effective response, we must draw on our collective experience, but this crisis also offers an opportunity to change the way we work, including setting up new funding mechanisms to allow our system to leverage the complementary roles we all play in a humanitarian response.
Overall, NGOs urgently need funding that is flexible, adaptive, and aligned with Grand Bargain commitments. Our work is well underway, but more is needed to get resources to the frontlines.
We need to better resource country based pooled funds, which are crucial for national and local NGOs. Now more than ever, donors must support flexible mechanisms to increase funding flows to NGO partners.
Next Steps
In closing, the international community needs to come together to battle this pandemic in an inclusive and a responsive way that puts communities at the heart of solutions. Even while we respond in our own communities, we must see and act beyond borders if we are ever to fully control this pandemic.
The planning and response to COVID-19 need to be directly inclusive of local and national NGOs, women’s rights organizations, and refugee-led organizations leaders. We must address this new threat, while still responding to other pressing needs for a holistic response.
This means continuing our response to the looming hunger crisis, maintaining access to humanitarian aid, and supporting existing services including sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence services.
We need to ensure humanitarian access is protected to reach the most vulnerable.
And funding needs to be quickly mobilized through multiple channels to reach NGOs and must be flexible both between needs and countries.
This much is clear: We cannot address this crisis for some and not others. We cannot do it alone. The virus can affect anyone but disproportionately affects the most marginalized. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that our global response includes everyone.
We owe it to those dedicated staff and their honorary “relatives” in Cox’s Bazar, and all those like them around the globe, to get this right.
This article was adapted from Abby Maxman’s comments as the NGO representative at the UN’s Launch of the Updated COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan on May 7, 2020.
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Excerpt:
Abby Maxman is President & CEO of Oxfam America
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