Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls on President Ashraf Ghani during a visit to Afghanistan’s capital Kabul to show solidarity with the Afghan people. Photo UNAMA / Fardin Waezi/June 2017

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 11 2020 (IPS)

The world commemorated the 75th Anniversary to mark the end of the 2nd World War also called VE Day on 08 May 2020.

With her nation, and much of the world still in lockdown due to COVID 19, England’s Queen marked 75 years since the allied victory in Europe with a poignant televised address. From Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth said, “the wartime generation knew that the best way to honour those who did not come back from the war, was to ensure that it didn’t happen again”.

But the world is still at war. Proxy wars or localised conflicts are wreaking havoc on human development and humanity in virtually every corner of the world. By the end of 2018, wars, violence and persecution have driven record numbers of over 70 million people from their homes worldwide, according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. This is the largest ever displacement of humanity, post the 2nd world war.

Never has the appeal by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres been more pertinent: “The world is in pieces; we need world peace.”

The United States signed a historic deal with Afghanistan that outlines a timetable and exit plan for American troops, setting the stage for the potential end to nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan. The UN Secretary General welcomed the US-Taliban peace agreement. The United States won the unanimous backing of the UN Security Council on March 10, 2020 to this ambitious peace deal.

The implementation of the peace agreement will need leadership, courage and resolve and there will be spoilers who will attempt to upend the peace process. The road to peace will be characterized by violence, set-backs and numerous false starts, but it will need diplomacy, determination and drive to keep the peace process on track.

Hubris must not prolong the agony of this appalling war.

The war has cost over $2 trillion and killed more than 2,400 American soldiers and 38,000 Afghan civilians. As per various reports casualties among Afghan security forces are estimated to have reached around 40,000 between 2007 and 2017.

Wars are appalling. As a combat veteran, I have witnessed first-hand how armed conflicts have transformed some of our finest soldiers into shells of the people I once knew. Combat is savage, it is brutal, it is reckless, it diminishes us as human beings and jeopardizes our humanity.

General William Sherman once said, “It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, and more desolation. War is hell.”

There are no winners in Afghanistan, but let’s consider the consequences on all the women and men who fought in it.

Today, research backs up what soldiers have described for decades, and what was once called shell shock or combat fatigue. We have terms like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), chronic depression, cognitive impairment, and traumatic brain injury to help explain the symptoms suffered by active and returning soldiers.

U.S. Army soldiers on security duty in Paktīkā province, Afghanistan, 2010. Sgt. Derec Pierson/U.S. Department of Defense

For a long time, many of the grim statistics about war centred on fatalities and did not include the conflicts’ deep mental wounds. Today we have a better understanding of the kind of moral and psychological toll wars take on soldiers, their families, and communities.

The United States is a leader in the understanding of psychological and emotional damage to soldiers and has taken some steps to address their mental health. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have left between 11% and 20% of military personnel suffering from PTSD. As many as 375,000 US veterans have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries between 2000 and 2017, mostly caused by explosions.

But suicides in the US armed forces have continued to rise in recent years, reaching record levels in 2018 when there were 25 deaths per 100,000 service members. Former defence secretary Leon Panetta once said that the “epidemic” of military suicide was “one of the most frustrating problems” he had faced.

More than $350 billion has already gone to medical and disability care for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Experts say that more than half of that spending belongs to the Afghanistan effort.

Homelessness among veterans is pervasive, and soldiers still struggle to access benefits and healthcare if they suffer from mental health issues rather than from physical wounds. At any given time in the US, more than 40,000 veterans are homeless, constituting around 9% of all homeless adults in the country.

In the United Kingdom, spurred by a dozen suicides among Afghan war veterans in just two months, the government expedited new mental health programs to help deal with former military members’ PTSD and addiction.

What does this now mean for the Afghan security forces? They and their families do not have the same support structures.

All this ‘hell’, but to what end? Afghanistan remains one of the world’s largest sources of refugees and migrants. Since 2004 alone, more than 1.8 million Afghans have become internally displaced. Afghanistan’s human development and progress has been set back by decades. Women and children have suffered the most and countless are emotionally and psychologically scarred for life.

While we like to see soldiers as stoic and heroic, we must open our eyes to the fact that wars scar minds as well as bodies, often in ways medical science cannot yet comprehend.

Just like the world is desperately seeking a cure to end the coronavirus pandemic which has killed over 275,000 people so far and leaving a trail of human, economic and social misery, the world too must find a way to end wars, or else we may be defeated as a civilization.

Siddharth Chatterjee, is the United Nations resident coordinator to Kenya. Follow him on Twitter @sidchat1

This opinion piece was originally published in Forbes Africa.

 

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A Rohingya woman crosses the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh near the village of Anzuman Para in Palong Khali. Credit: UNHCR/Roger Arnold

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, May 11 2020 (IPS)

As the COVID-19 mayhem carries on in most countries, the role of mothers, daughters, and female caregivers have been affected the most. Besides looking after the household and home schooling children, they are also working on the front lines, actively or passively caring for their respective communities.

Globally, women make up the majority of workers in the health and social welfare sectors. Nearly one in three women work in agriculture and women do three times as much unpaid care-work at home as men. Two such women shared their stories with the IPS about giving back to their communities in their own adaptive ways.

Ferdousee Hossain, 24, is a retired teacher, mother of two and grandmother of three. She runs a few unnamed charities and two schools for rural villagers. In her late 60s now, she never thought she would face a situation like COVID-19 where she would be constrained and isolated. She feels alone, not being able to see her family and especially the children in schools.

During the month of Ramadan, in most Muslim countries, charity work reaches its peak and donations are gathered that sustain funds for the entire year. For her charity network, where she works hands-on, it has been very challenging to coordinate, but she has adapted to still serve where it has hit the most.

Thanks to Ferdousee, seven families of 45 members and an orphanage of 52 children under the age of 15 are surviving in the district of Barisal in Bangladesh, all whilst practicing social distancing for the last two months.

In her own words to IPS Ferdousee says, “I have put unlimited internet data on our cell phones and I call each family every day, delivering and coordinating relief work so they can survive. Since I am in the capital Dhaka, I use video calls to personally see the situation in the villages and verify with the appointed team member. Yesterday a girl needed $60 (5000 takas) for immediate medicine and treatment for someone who is battling cancer. An 18-month-old child needed powdered milk and emergency care.

“We have kept separate funds for such sudden needs. I have formed a chain of ‘relay-ers’ and our team distributes food and daily supplies after verifying with other members. I have to pay out-of-pocket for the team who are working on the front lines but in the current situation it is the least I can do”, she adds.

According to Ferdousee, It is difficult to send cash because it can be stolen. “We have faced fraud too, where people fake names and collect money sent by phone. So, we make sure that no cash is distributed. These people live under the poverty line, and on a regular day, they may earn less than $7 supporting a household of four.”

With COVID-19 lockdown in effect street sellers, small businesses, hawker stalls, rickshaw pullers and domestic help are all without work. Many chose to go back to their villages to save themselves from starvation. Local aid organizations have stepped up, but many are still going hungry without any work and do not know where aid is available.

Mobina Khatun is a Rohingya woman volunteer with UN Women. 
Credit: UN Women/Pappu Mia

“We ask around and get information from authentic sources and then get supplies delivered at their door,“ says Hossain, adding, “one of the village schools I run had 250 children. Now most have gone to stay at their home. Among them, 52 children are orphans and live in the adjacent orphanage. So, we are making sure they have food and safety and a routine is in place. Only 2 teachers who live on the premises go to get groceries always maintaining social distancing. Donations have been generated from North America and Canada and I am hoping to source more.”

From the Khulna District, Ruksana Akhter, a doctor and mother of three said she has been a healthcare worker for more than 15 years. When the news of COVID-19 broke, they had to make tough decisions as a family.

Ruksana stated to IPS “Every night I come home, I get scared for my own life and for my children. I wait outside and my older daughter sprays me down. We have ten thousand plus cases reported so far in Bangladesh and it might spread more. I work in the maternity ward and serve on the front lines. We have been supplied PPE but measures are still inadequate.”

“I am the only adult in the house and my daughter is just 17. I worry what will happen if I get infected? Their father is working in the Coronavirus cell and is serving patients day and night. He has left the house to keep us protected and is staying at the hospital quarters. It has been more than two months that I have not seen him.”

Rukhsana said “it is a relief to know that people are surviving but every time the phone rings at night a shiver runs down my spine and I take a deep breath before answering the phone. We are health care personnel and the country depends on our services.”

“It is challenging and mentally taxing for us,” she continued. “One of my friends died, and another colleague who is a doctor herself is now battling Coronavirus. As a mother, I have to keep mentally stable and come back to my children, smiling. As a wife, I have to support my husband over the phone to keep him motivated. We talk at times when he gets a chance, but I can feel his desperation.”

Women’s economic empowerment boosts productivity, increases economic diversification and income equality in addition to other positive development outcomes. Empowering women in the economy and closing gender gaps in the world of work is key to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. By 2030, The United Nations has planned to progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population at a rate higher than the national average. It can be concluded that if women, especially in developing countries, are facilitated with better support it will create a ripple effect of growth.

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Rani Tanveer, who was wrongly accused of killing her husband and spent 19 years in prison, is taking the Pakistan to court seeking compensation. Courtesy: BBC

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, May 8 2020 (IPS)

A former Pakistani child bride, who was wrongly accused of killing her husband at 13 and subsequently spent almost two decades in prison, is making history by being the first victim of a miscarriage of justice to seek compensation from the state, say legal human rights experts.  

This March, Rani Tanveer, who was released in 2017 after spending 19 years in prison, filed a petition seeking compensation.

Her lawyer has termed the petition nothing short of “iconic”.

“It would be the first time a victim is asking the state to compensate her for the miscarriage of justice meted to her,” Michelle Shahid, Tanveer’s lawyer from the legal advocacy group, Foundation for Fundamental Rights (FFR), told IPS over the phone from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. “I’ve come across numerous cases of wrongful convictions as a lawyer but rarely do these cases lead to accountability,” she added.

“One hopes her case begins a journey towards reform and restoring the public’s confidence in the judicial system,” Lahore-based lawyer and the country representative for Human Rights Watch, Saroop Ijaz, told IPS.

• Tanveer, her parents and brother were arrested in 1998 after her husband’s body had been discovered buried on his residence. The family had reportedly been the last to see him alive. Tanveer’s mother was released after 6 months, but her father and brother both died of tuberculosis after 11 and 15 years in jail respectively. 
• Tanveer was sentenced in 2001 and, even though she was not allocated state counsel, she attempted to file numerous appeals through the prison superintendent. These were, however, not filed.
• But in 2014 her case was taken up by legal aid organisation AGHS Legal Aid Cell and three years later her conviction was overturned.

Now she is seeking compensation. 

“Rani’s is a typical case that highlights the plight of those who suffer silently behind bars through no fault of their own, only to be exonerated years later, if at all,” said Shahid. She said that a negligent  and lackadaisical attitude could be found among the police, prosecutors, jail officials and even judges.

One of the reasons for this was because Pakistan does not have a “settled definition” of what constitutes a “miscarriage of justice”.

“Pakistan does not have precedent for payment of compensation/damages,” Ijaz told IPS over phone. “It has to start somewhere; I hope that it is this case,” he said. He added that Pakistan’s criminal justice system was “dysfunctional” and that people spent decades in prison to be acquitted later without so much as an apology from the state. He also made reference to “harrowing examples” where people were executed while their legal appeals were still pending.

Although Pakistan ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 2010, which in Article 14(6) clearly states that a person wrongfully punished for a criminal offence must be compensated, there is no such mechanism in place in Pakistan’s legal system for such redressal.

Last year, said Shahid, FFR in collaboration with its partner in the UK, Reprieve, released a report, that analysed the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s capital jurisprudence between 2010-2018.

“The study found that in 310 capital cases heard by the apex court between those years, 39 percent lead to acquittals. This means nearly two in every five prisoners sentenced to death in the study were wrongfully convicted and may have been innocent of the crime for which they were convicted and sentenced to death,” she said.

The study revealed “systemic flaws” in Pakistan’s criminal justice system which result in “tragic and often irreversible injustice”, Shahid said.

A  2020 report published by the Ministry of Human Rights, found there were 389 convicted women across Pakistan’s prisons while 755 women are currently undergoing trial. 

“Pakistan’s criminal justice system is in urgent need of reform and we are hoping that the court recognises that Rani is not alone in her struggle; countless innocent persons continue to be wrongfully convicted. This petition is an opportunity for the government to atone for its mistake and ensure that the state machinery collectively upholds its obligations towards citizens in the administration of justice,” said Shahid. 

However, Tanveer did not have a specific figure in mind in terms of compensation. “I have no clue how much I should demand,” she told IPS over the phone from Midranjha, a village in Sargodha district in the Punjab province.

But she did hope the compensation would be enough to buy things for her home like “a pair of charpais [woven rope bed], blanket and linen, an iron, a fan, a washing machine and a stove” — all the things her mother and brother would have given her as “dowry” when she re-married last year but could not because of their financial circumstances.

But now, in the midst of Pakistan’s current coronavirus lockdown, Tanveer thinks she was better off in the prison where she received three square meals and did not have to worry about anyone.

“I am a burden on my [second] husband,” she said. Two months ago when the lockdown began, she and her husband, like millions of others, lost their jobs as day labourers.

With no work or money, she said they had little choice but to move back to her husband’s village and live with her in-laws. “This coronay [COVID-19] has made my life miserable” as she has to bear the continuous jibes and scorn for her past life from her in-laws. 

“I also flare up at the slightest of provocation,” she confessed, adding: “No one understands me; sometimes I don’t even understand myself. Once the words are out of my mouth, I always feel guilty, but it’s too late,” she lamented.

Having been forced to live among strangers at the tender age of 16 may have affected her, Tanveer admitted.

But her husband, insisted she was not as bad as she made herself out to be.

“I keep telling her not to worry about the world or what my family says to her, as I am by her side; I love her smile and I think she is beautiful inside out,” he told IPS.

“Her past does not matter to me; she’s made me a better person and will now make my place a home.”

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Marcia Julio Vilanculos, pictured here in this dated photo with her baby, was one of the participants of a digital literacy training course at Ideario innovation hub, Maputo, Mozambique a few years ago. Only 6.8 percent of all Mozambican women, with or without owning a cellphone, use the internet. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2020 (IPS)

The digital divide has become more pronounced than ever amid the global coronavirus lockdown, but experts are concerned that in the current circumstances this divide, where over 46 percent of the world’s population remain without technology or internet access, could grow wider — particularly among women.  

“There were already deep divides in access to technologies including the internet and medical technologies, before COVID-19 began to spread,” Astra Bonini, Senior Sustainable Development Officer at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), told IPS. “The digital divide has been closing, but over 46 percent of people are still without access and among women, the rate is lower with over half of all women offline.” 

Exposing an already existing problem

The glaring lack of access to technology and the internet is only building on pre-existing inequalities between communities on matters of income, wealth, access to healthcare, electricity and clean water, living and working conditions, access to social protection and quality education, Bonini pointed out. 

How people are able to cope with the crisis depends heavily on the community they belong to, and where they stand with regards to the factors stated above. In essence, it begs the question: given social distancing is a key measure to contain the virus, and online access is the main way to stay connected, which communities have the tools to survive this pandemic? 

“With the need for high capacity healthcare systems and a nearly overnight transition to internet-based services, including remote learning and telemedicine, inequalities in access to technologies will leave people out and inhibit the options they have for getting healthcare and medical treatment, as well as for accessing distance learning and online information about reducing exposure to COVID-19,” Bonini told IPS. 

And the divide is not just being exposed when it comes to educational access. Other issues such as access to medical technologies, including ventilators and protective equipment are also “very unequal across geographies,” Bonini said.

Bonini was one of the speakers at the “Strengthening Science and Technology and Addressing Inequalities” webinar organised by UN DESA on Wednesday, May 6. Also featured were Maria Francesca Spatolisano, Shantanu Mukherjee, Deniz Susar, Marta Roig of UN DESA, as well as Fabrizio Hochschild-Drummond, the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the Preparations for the Commemoration of the U.N.’s 75th Anniversary. 

The topic of discussion was how science and technology can be implemented to address the current pandemic.  

In an interview with IPS, Susar, governance and public administration officer at UN DESA, pointed out that an estimate 3.6 billion of the world’s 7.8 billion people remain offline today, with the majority of them in underdeveloped countries. 

“Connecting them to the internet is not an easy job; it is not also a task only for governments, but the private sector,” he told IPS. “Cooperation is needed.” 

Only 30 percent of low-income countries are able to provide digital training access for their students, which is a testament to the experts Bonini pointed out. 

A recent launch of the “Learning Passport” initiative brought this issue further to light. While it was launched to make classrooms accessible for students stuck at home, the platform’s creators were not able to outline how to provide access to this facility for those without digital access. 

Bonini stressed the importance of expanding household internet coverage for families and students to have access to online classes and/or online learning opportunities, as well as for them to have access to health-related information. 

“There is an urgency to expand affordable internet access and to invest in STEM education to improve digital equity efforts,” Susar added. “There are many different initiatives around the world. More needs to be done.”

Collaboration between different actors of society

Both Susar and Bonini reiterated the importance of the private sector as well as for different actors in society to come together for a solution to address this gap.

“In general, policy makers can ensure everyone can have access by removing barriers,” Susar told IPS. “This can be tax incentives and or other subsidies. The private sector can do its part in the same way by providing affordable access and various options for different income groups.”

He added that partnerships between public and private entities can be effective in ensuring this, while academia and civil society can play an crucial role “in capacity building especially for vulnerable groups in acquiring digital skills”.

Bonini agreed and highlighted the importance of actions from all sectors as well. “Governments can lead the response, but the private-sector, civil society and individuals all have to be on board to make policies work,” she said.

While these relationships are being established and conversations are starting, Bonini suggested a more timely way to address this gap could be through outreach using radio, television or other means that are more likely already available in low-income households. 

“We need to understand people’s needs, we need to find resources needed to achieve these needs,” said Susar. “The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments to work together with other stakeholders to provide access. We can only hope that these partnerships can continue in the post-COVID19 world.”

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This is an opportunity for civil society to highlight the plight of migrant labourers that existed even before the pandemic.. Picture courtesy: Anand Sinha

By Nikhil Dey
RAJASMAND, RAJASTHAN, India, May 8 2020 (IPS)

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown us something that most of us haven’t seen in our lifetimes: Large numbers of people unable to have two meals a day. 

The tragedy is that the government has enough and more foodgrains to feed people during this time; the real issue is of distribution—both in terms of broken supply chains, as well as the insistence of the government to limit distribution to beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), ie, priority ration card holders. This approach is flawed because the NFSA has many exclusions, with some of the poorest of the poor, nomadic or Adivasi communities, and the urban poor being left out. Moreover, ration cards are of no use to migrant workers stuck outside their home state.

How much attention we pay to the millions who have been worst affected by COVID-19 and the lockdown will determine whether or not we come out of this crisis

There are similar issues of exclusion in other services as well, such as livelihoods and healthcare. This is where civil society must step in—to put pressure on the government to universalise these services.

We, at the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and through many networks, have been petitioning the government to distribute foodgrains to everyone, and we need to apply this kind of pressure at a larger scale. We’ve seen this work in the past, in the case of programmes such as NFSA (that focuses on food security) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)—both these were a result of consultative processes between the government and civil society. In fact, these rights-based legislations are providing us with the framework for public service delivery during this crisis, and they need to be effectively enhanced.

Therefore, if the government does not listen, we have to make them listen. I believe the people of this country know how to engage with the government—even when we disagree with our leaders, or they don’t listen to us. We live in a constitutional democracy, and the mantle therefore lies with citizens and civil society organisations to put pressure on the government, and to recreate society on the principles of equality, respect, and solidarity. In the short term, this means that we need to build a national movement to ensure that everyone gets access to food, livelihood, and healthcare.

But how can we do this, given the urgency of the situation and the restrictions that have come with it? What is our role in this massive national exercise to ensure that every citizen of the country has food to eat, quality health services, and livelihood opportunities? I believe there is plenty we can do.

 

Build a network of civil society

Civil society will have to build a network that cuts across the country. We will need to map the different organisations and groups providing relief in every district, block, and down to every village. We can do this because we have volunteers and workers—from field staff of nonprofits to government school teachers—all over the country, and we know whom we can contact for any information or assistance at any place.

The strength of civil society lies in knowing and being the small, decentralised units that have taken responsibility for their entire area—identifying the number of people in the area, the relief needed, the gaps in government relief, the challenges on the ground, and so on. By bringing them together and forming a network, we can enable these units to call upon each other for assistance, such as procuring material or rebuilding supply chains. Most importantly, the network can have a voice at the national-level that says everyone is entitled to benefits, even if they are not ration card holders or active workers under NREGA.

 

Stand in solidarity with those delivering essential services

COVID-19 is a high-risk disease, and we need to be very careful; but we cannot simply lock ourselves in our homes, because then those who are most vulnerable will not survive. Essential services absolutely have to continue. We have to build systems and mechanisms for safe delivery of services, and public servants have to be motivated, and given economic and moral support. Even though this has to be primarily done by the government, civil society organisations have a huge role to play as well.

For instance, we need to stand in solidarity with those who are currently delivering these services—frontline health workers, sanitation workers, people running ration shops and kirana stores, those making home deliveries of goods, and so on. We have to understand their problems and put pressure on the government to support them. The Delhi government recently announced insurance of INR 1 crore for frontline workers. That is the kind of security we should demand for every individual delivering services in this period. We have to build a movement around them.

These essential jobs could also be the answer to protecting the livelihoods of the poor during this time, by creating a fallback public works programme, unprecedented in scale. Civil society can demonstrate this model to the government. We need to chart the vital services required today, such as delivering rations and caregiving, and show to the government how people can be employed in these roles. This will not only help communities affected by the pandemic, but the mechanism of doing so might help others in turn.

 

Continue social movements in innovative ways

We might not be able to organise rallies or protests during the lockdown, but social movements must not stop finding ways to mobilise public opinion. When the lockdown first happened, we filed a case in the Supreme Court to say that all active workers under NREGA should be given wages for all 21 days. The case is being heard via video conferencing. So, we have to explore all options that help put pressure on the government.

We can engage with the state, send press notes, exchange information within our networks of civil society organisations, and document what’s happening on the ground. This way, we can raise issues at the state- and national-level. There are restrictions everywhere, but we cannot stop. We have to be innovative.

Civil society leaders and activists must also continue writing for newspapers and alternative media to highlight the situation of the most vulnerable, and do it in a more organised way, by taking the unheard voices and disseminating them using our networks. These must not just be confined to stories of suffering, but include positive stories and creative practices as well—of people working together despite socio-economic differences. Civil society can also help advocate that best practices in one state be replicated in others.

This is an opportunity for civil society to highlight the plight of migrant labourers that existed even before the pandemic—their work and living conditions, the insecurity of work, and the fact that they have no real social support from the state. We’ve heard people say that they didn’t realise that the migrant workforce is the backbone of our economy. Therefore, in addition to looking after their welfare and security, we must recognise their contribution, and build respect for them and their work—not as a favour, but as a means to empower them.

Many civil society organisations have been working with domestic workers, industrial workers, mine workers, street vendors, or other informal sector workers, but we haven’t managed to get them together and build them into the potent, powerful force that they could be. Perhaps now is the time for us to do that.

This is also an opportunity for civil society to counter the communal narrative that took over the country a few weeks ago. By taking the lead in organising multifaith relief efforts and highlighting positive stories of unity across religious lines, we have to show that the only way to overcome this crisis is by working together. We need to demonstrate compassion and care at this time, and shift the focus of politics to those values.

 

Work with the government

The role of civil society does not stop at putting pressure on the government. There are many areas that the government is unable to reach; we have to reach there. We have to use our transparency and accountability mechanisms to monitor the government’s work and make sure state resources are well-used. We also need to proactively find the gaps, and help fill those gaps.

The government structure is working well in some areas and not working in others. In some of those places, the government is itself asking for our help. Given the enormity of the intervention required, the government cannot do it on its own, and civil society cannot replace the vast role of the government in facing this crisis. While civil society organisations can take responsibility for one area and fully ensure the well-being of the people there, we must also work with local governments, help people access relief measures down to every rural and urban ward, and fill the gaps in the government’s response. Panchayats and local self-governments also have a very big role to play in this effort.

Apart from this, each one of us needs to think hard of the ways in which we can contribute. As individuals, we can immediately start looking at those around us—in our villages and our localities. Some of us can provide economic resources to plug the government’s gaps; others can take up the job of distribution. Individuals can also devote their time and join campaigns. There needs to be a concerted campaign for instance, to use the excessive foodgrain stocks to universalise the PDS, at least for the next few months. We also need to support the demand for an enhanced employment guarantee programme for rural and urban areas. We don’t realise how powerful the middle-class, English-speaking elite in India is; if they raise their voice enough, we will see improved situations around us.

And lastly, let us not forget democracy at this time—the right to speak, the right to challenge, the right to argue—because today, the only thing millions of poor people have is a voice. We need to amplify that voice to ensure that the most vulnerable get the most support, and those who are affluent only get something if it helps the most vulnerable. How much attention we pay to the millions who have been worst affected by COVID-19 and the lockdown will determine whether or not we come out of this crisis.

The article is based on Nikhil’s online discussion with the team members of Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives, Azim Premji University, and Azim Premji Foundation.

Nikhil Dey was one of the founding members of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS).

 

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

The post The Role of Civil Society in Times of Crisis appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: United Nations

By Dr. Azza Karam and Dr. Mustafa Y. Ali
NEW YORK, May 8 2020 (IPS)

COVID-19 has spread to many nations around the world, and has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. In the global south, the COVID-19 pandemic has stretched the available medical and health resources, triggered economic shocks, and caused social upheavals and insecurity in many countries and localities.

While the pandemic has caused huge numbers of infections and deaths in the global north, the consequences in the poorer nations in the global south is acute.

Serious challenges arising from responses from authorities to contain the pandemic ranging from hard to soft lockdowns, curfews, limitations in movements, and social distancing, are causing strains in communities.

From fragile economies to ill- equipped health facilities and underfunded health programs, to the almost non-existent social security measures that would ordinarily cushion large segments of pupations from falling further into poverty, the impact on many communities in the global south will be grave.

While COVID-19 has not had a devastating impact on Africa as it has elsewhere, according to official statistics, we fear that this may change.

On the health side, health experts are already warning that the pandemic could yet exact a much heavier death toll in the region if it overwhelms local health services – as has happened in the United States and United Kingdom.

There are also concerns that the relatively weak health systems and patchy testing may be enabling COVID-19 to spread through Sub-Saharan Africa, without a means of registering any of this data.

The official figures to date locate much of the pandemic’s regional burden in places like South Africa, which has reported nearly 5,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and recently deployed hundreds of Cuban doctors to help fight its impact, and more than 1,800 confirmed cases in Cameroon, which has launched nationwide testing in April.

Two countries in the region, Lesotho and Comoros, have yet to officially report any cases, let alone Covid related deaths. According to a director of the African Center for Disease Control, the collapse of global cooperation has marginalised Africa in the diagnostics market, and its lack of hospitals combined with a high prevalence of HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition could lead to relatively high COVID-19 mortality rates.

Food security is another major issue. Speaking of concerns in Nigeria, Sister Agatha Chikelue, Executive Director of the Cardinal Onaiyekan Foundation and Coordinator of Religious for Peace’s interfaith Women’s Network, noted that people are afraid of dying of “Hovid” – the hunger caused as a result of loss of livelihoods from the lockdown.

Religious leaders join COVID-19 fight in Africa. Credit: United Nations

Small wonder, therefore, that Nigeria is one of the countries already struggling to consider reopening some of their businesses, in spite of dire warnings.

According to a UN report, Africa is home to more than half of the 135 million who suffer acutely from food insecurity, which means there are serious concerns about famines and the potential for a significant death toll.

In other words, we are speaking of very real fears that the Covid crises may cause famine in combination with the drought, which will have dire consequences on the conflict-affected countries in the continent.

John Letzing, Digital Editor of Strategic Intelligence at the World Economic Forum, lists some of the dynamics facing the continent as reported on by a number of different sources. Notably,

Some Africans may be suffering indirectly from the impact of COVID-19 while
abroad – in early April, images and video emerged of Africans in Guangzhou,
China, being subjected to passport seizures and arbitrary quarantine,
according to this report. (The Diplomat). Africa has undergone an incredible
journey to make routine immunization possible, though immunization
coverage in sub-Saharan Africa has stalled at 72%. Now, COVID-19 presents
a further threat to progress, according to this analysis. (New African)

Despite the heralding of the coronavirus, there are those who argue that Africa’s governments did little to prepare themselves, their systems, or their people. Other commentators note that many countries have made plans to ease coronavirus-related measures.

There is some speculation that lessons learned from incidents like the 2014 Ebola outbreak will contribute to some countries’ capacities to weather the storm.

The fact is, that one of the key containment measures—social distancing—will be impossible in the crowded markets, high-density informal settlements and dwellings shared by more than one family. Another oft repeated advise is that of frequent handwashing in clean water. But what happens when clean water to drink, is in very short supply for many households across the sub-Saharan African continent?

Moreover, it is inconceivable that governments will, on their own, be able to meet the needs of all their citizens in this COVID pandemic. Many were already struggling to do so even before the pandemic struck.

Besides offering spiritual guidance and support, which is increasingly needed in times of fear and uncertainty, faith communities and organizations in Africa as elsewhere, have, over the years, supplemented governments’ efforts to provide education, health, nutritional and other developmental needs to their communities.

They also have been in the forefront of peacebuilding initiatives, and in advocating for rights-based approaches to development, protection of, and ending violence against children and minorities.

With the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging communities and creating fear and despondency, faith-based and faith-inspired organizations are already providing and augmenting critical services in health care provision – including but not limited to palliative care – and as part of the supply chains (for food, medicines, spiritual relief) reaching the heart of communities.

Religious organisations are also key to disseminating accurate news about the impacts and effects of the pandemic, rendering more critical their services as communicators and advisers on behavioral changes needed to keep communities safe.

Those of us engaged in working with religious actors speak of 84% of the world’s people claiming an affiliation to a faith tradition. This applies to all the world, and the sub-Saharan African subcontinent is no stranger to religiosity and belief as normal in everyday lives.

In times of fear, most believers will turn to faith, and this means that religious institutions, religious leaders and religious NGOs are playing a key role including psycho-social healing of COVID-19 traumas.

The fact is, however, that not all faith actors play the same role. And even when most play a positive role in helping communities and governments to cope, this does not mean all do. We know that some faith leaders are adamant that congregating for religious worship is a means of healing, because “God will spare us”.

These messages are hardly helpful when science and life and death experience indicate that social distancing is not only advisable, but downright necessary.

While the UN Secretary General’s call for a global ceasefire to all conflicts has been echoed by many religious leaders around the world, the question remains whether actors involved in extremist groups using religion as their raison d’etre will contemplate heeding such calls.

In fact, COVID-19 lockdowns may even be opportunities to ramp up violence, as government security services are otherwise engaged. This begs two important questions we have yet to find answers for:

To what extent will those religious institutions involved in providing for the daily spiritual, psycho-social, humanitarian care for their communities, and already overwhelmed in reconfiguring the very nature of religious worship, find the wherewithal to engage with the ‘radical fringes’ in African contexts already deeply divided by conflicts?

And what impact will COVID-19 have on the very same armed groups still insistent on playing out their conflicts? Already, some of those who still carry weapons, are working to serve some of their community needs – providing food, water and even money to households having to do without.

And as they serve their communities’ needs, the extremist groups have also ramped up attacks. In March and April, armed attacks in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 37 %, adding significant strain on the already overstrained resources, currently re-directed to COVID-related emergencies.

Sheikh Ibrahim Lethome, Secretary General of the Center for Sustainable Conflict Resolution, and Convener for the GNRC (Global Network of Religions for Children) Horn of Africa Working Group on religious-based extremism, is not surprised that the extremist groups have fully seized the confusion and despondency that COVID-19 has thrust into already fragile communities.

These stretch from the Sahel in West Africa, the Horn of Africa to Southern Africa’s Cabo Delgado in Mozambique

Will COVID-19 offer an opportunity for a different trajectory for some of those groups? As these groups continue to plant bombs, kill and maim, what will become of armed insurgency in the name of religion, when COVID-19 hits hard in Africa?

The post Religion & its Discontents: Considerations Around COVID-19 & Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr. Azza Karam is the Secretary General of Religions for Peace International and Professor of Religion and Development at the Vrije Universiteit (VU), Amsterdam; Dr. Mustafa Y. Ali is the Secretary General of the Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC) based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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By External Source
May 7 2020 (IPS)

As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened in April, many Americans were shocked by the extent that black Americans were being disproportionately impacted: higher infection rates, more deaths and greater job loss.

But many black Americans were not surprised.

This is not new. The same dynamic has been going on at times of crisis for decades and generations.

As a labor economist and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor under the Clinton administration, I know that history has shown that black Americans consistently bear the brunt of recessions and natural disasters.

 

Economic history repeating itself

Prior to this pandemic, the worst economic downturns in post-World War II America were the 1981-82 recession and the Great Recession that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis. During those downturns, the jobless rate of black Americans peaked at 20.2% and 14.8% respectively, according to my calculations. From each downturn’s onset, it took 16 and 18 months to hit those levels.

Black Americans have historically borne the brunt of economic downturns, so they will need a disproportionate share of resources to create and sustain their resiliency, including policies that improve opportunity, lessen overall inequality and fight discrimination

This pandemic has eclipsed those figures in just one month. My estimate – based on the historic link between the unemployment rate and initial claims, and April’s data – has the black American unemployment rate already exceeding 20%, compared to a white unemployment rate of 13%.

Black Americans have higher likelihoods of losing their jobs because those jobs are concentrated in the hardest-hit sectors of the economy, such as hotels, restaurants, bars and other food services, and department stores.

Many who have kept their jobs face higher risks of infection because they work in “high touch” jobs such as transit workers and grocery clerks.

Further, because they tend to live in more densely populated communities, they also have a harder time practicing physical distancing.

This, along with the long-standing chronic health challenges of many black Americans, puts them at greater risks of infection, illness and death.

 

Fewer resources

Only when the public protested did they finally pass legislation that targeted additional resources to the neediest hospitals. It took until the second installment of the Paycheck Protection Program for many minority and women-owned businesses to get access to funds.

Black Americans also tend to have access to fewer resources, making it harder for them to be more resilient when faced with a challenge like a pandemic, recession or natural disaster.

This has been their experience during past economic recessions, but even during “normal” times, it is harder for black Americans to compete on a level playing field.

Lower wealth and smaller savings form part of a patchwork of long-standing structural barriers that mean that in times of economic hardship, black Americans tend to get hit hardest.

Fewer education opportunities, lower rates of work experience, discrimination in hiring and pay and having to live further away from where jobs are located all contribute to higher unemployment rates, lower earnings, greater part-time employment and more underemployment.

So too does the high rates of incarceration. Economists have found that when the incarcerated population is factored in, black Americans are in no better an economic position than they were back in 1950.

As a result of these barriers to well-paying, sustainable jobs, the budgets of black American families tend to be more vulnerable to economic shocks.

 

A false economy?

The figures also undercut pre-coronavirus claims by the Trump administration that in terms of jobs, black Americans have never had it so good.

Although the headline unemployment rate suggests black Americans over the last three years have experienced their best economy ever, when carefully examined this is not true. My analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that the share of black high school graduates that were employed just before the coronavirus crisis took hold is still well below its pre-Great Recession level. This is also true for black college graduates.

And it has taken over 10 years for the incomes of black Americans to return to its pre-Great Recession level. This all factors in to why the economic hit of the pandemic has been so hard for black Americans.

Trump likes to compare the economy during his tenure to President Obama’s economy, but such analysis doesn’t make sense. Trump inherited a strong economy, while President Obama inherited an economy that was reeling from the Great Recession. Trump should compare the economy under his administration to the first three years of President Bill Clinton’s second term, another peak in the economy’s expansion.

Under this comparison, the Trump economy looks less favorable for black Americans. Although the unemployment rate is lower, a comparison of the employment-population ratios – a measure that includes people not looking for work and is generally favored as a snapshot of labor market conditions – reveals that black Americans did better during the Clinton administration.

But when compared to past recessions, so too were many other Americans unprepared – even before the current crisis around 40% of American households could not pay an unexpected bill of US$400.

Globalization and technological change have weakened institutions such as unions. The Trump administration has undermined policies put in place to help create safe and fair workplaces.

Meanwhile, tax cuts that favor corporations and wealthy individuals and actions such as stock buybacks have further muted the impact of economic growth on Main Street.

The bottom line I see is that the U.S.‘s failure to maintain its investments in human priorities such as education, unemployment insurance, housing and community services, and health and recreation services, is threatening the ability of all Americans to bounce back from economic adversity.

 

Restoring resilience

So what next? As a member of the New Jersey commission advising the governor on how and when to reopen, I’m looking at immediate economic concerns. But a long-term federal plan will reach more people.

Instead of another rehash of what typically happens, I think many black Americans – along with many Americans of all backgrounds – want a new and different response to addressing racial inequality. Polling from before the current crisis found that a majority of people acknowledge that being black hurts a person’s chance of getting ahead.

Black Americans have historically borne the brunt of economic downturns, so they will need a disproportionate share of resources to create and sustain their resiliency, including policies that improve opportunity, lessen overall inequality and fight discrimination.

I suspect that many will say the country can’t afford that kind of investment. Past surveys have indicated a lack of general support for increased federal spending on needy Americans and it is not known if COVID-19 will have changed minds.

But I believe we can’t afford not to invest in better, sustainable communities. Failing to do so will condemn those left vulnerable – both black, and nonblack Americans alike – to suffer from future economic shocks.

 

William M. Rodgers III, Professor of Public Policy and Chief Economist, Rutgers University

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

 

The post Black Americans are Bearing the Brunt of Coronavirus Recession – This Should Come as no Surprise appeared first on Inter Press Service.

An animal market in Indonesia. Credit: TRAFFIC

By Steven Broad
CAMBRIDGE, UK, May 7 2020 (IPS)

At the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic is raging worldwide, causing human mortality and socio-economic disruption on a massive scale and it appears highly likely that profound impacts will continue for many years to come.

Although the precise origins of the disease remain unproven, there are strong indications of a wild animal source and a direct link to wildlife trade in China.

Even if evidence points elsewhere in future, the magnitude of the current outbreak places under an intense spotlight concerns raised by zoonotic disease experts over many decades about human health risks linked to wild animal trade in the increasingly inter-connected global economy.

As calls for new health-focused restrictions on wildlife trade have increased in volume in response to the current pandemic, some countries have taken immediate action. Building on immediate emergency restrictions placed on wildlife markets in January 2020, China is implementing a long-term prohibition on trade and consumption of wild animals for food as a public health protection measure.

Viet Nam is also considering new health-focused market restrictions and Gabon has introduced new species-specific trade restrictions. Looking ahead, there is a critical need to improve understanding of what sort of interventions might make the biggest difference in reducing risks of zoonotic disease emergence.

However, it is also important to work out how such actions might best complement, rather than conflict with, the range of existing conservation-focused wildlife trade regulation and management measures that are already struggling to contain over-exploitation of nature by people.

Zoonotic disease risks have not been wholly ignored before now. Many countries have live animal quarantine requirements and other rules governing the cross-border movement of meat, fish and other animal products.

Similarly, production, trade and use of live animals and products are subject to animal and human health regulations within domestic markets of most countries. However, such measures are typically designed primarily to address trade and consumption of domesticated species, the volume and value of which vastly exceed wild animal business.

As a result, the provisions of such regulations are seldom tailored to the specific dynamics and risks of the trade in wild animals.

Design of new interventions should be based on evidence-based assessment of disease-related vulnerabilities in current wild animal trade chains. Based on study of past cases, experts point to heightened risks of zoonotic disease spillover in places where large numbers of stressed live animals of different species (wild or domesticated) and people are in close proximity, such as transport hubs, holding facilities and markets.

However, there remains considerable uncertainty about differentiation of risk levels between different wild animal species (or species groups) and about the likelihood of transmission from different wild animal parts and products.

Credit: TRAFFIC

There is a wide range of options for future intervention based on assessment of such risks. Prohibitions on trade and consumption of certain species or products could be warranted. This would likely require new or modified national legislation in many countries, as most current restrictions are explicitly justified by conservation threat levels and jurisdiction is often limited to import/export controls only.

Such measures would of course face the same challenges that undermine existing wildlife trade laws: enforcement is inconsistent, often under-resourced, undermined by criminality and corruption, and given insufficient priority by governments. Risky trade may simply continue through illicit markets.

It is possible that the greatest benefit might come from changes in management practices for holding, trade and processing wild animals in trade. These might include regulatory or voluntary private sector measures aimed to improve animal husbandry, increase separation between species in trade, enhance sanitation at holding facilities and improve personal protection for workers.

These measures may again require modification of existing animal and human health legislation, but there is considerable practical experience from the domesticated animal sector that could be applied to this challenge.

Despite the clear imperative for action provided by the tragic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be critical to ensure that remedial restrictions on wildlife commerce are tailored to achieve specific risk reduction goals and designed to take into account potential negative impacts on social equity, livelihoods, and indirect conservation impacts.

Such measures also need to be set in the context of other zoonotic disease pathways and risk factors that need careful attention, such as land-use change, domestic livestock management practices and other human/wildlife interactions.

It is also vital that amidst the urgent need to reduce zoonotic disease threats from wildlife trade, the ongoing drive to address over-exploitation threats to wildlife does not lose momentum. It is of course possible that new health-focused restrictions on wild animal trade and increased scrutiny of wildlife commerce more generally owing to its likely connection with the pandemic may reinforce conservation-focused action.

However, trade in what may be identified as higher risk sectors, such as that of live wild mammals and birds, makes up a small proportion of the global wildlife trade. The greatest over-exploitation threats are faced by marine species and the biggest wildlife trade flows are of timber and other wild plant products.

There is additional cause for concern that socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic may be driving new trends in wildlife trade patterns that need careful attention. Past disease outbreaks linked to wild meat trade have led to increased demands for marine fish and there is already evidence of greater attention to wild plant-based medicinal treatments and tonics.

Although some illegal wildlife trade flows may now be suppressed by transport interruptions and retail market closures, there is every likelihood that criminal syndicates will move fast to rebuild illicit businesses and exploit diversion of government enforcement resources to other priorities.

A new focus on human health risks linked to wildlife trade practices is certainly warranted as a component of wider thought and action on the relationship between people and nature as the COVID-19 epidemic persists.

The response should be targeted, appropriate to the task and its design grounded in experience gained from past wildlife trade interventions. In the same way that human and environmental health are intimately connected, it is essential that new health-focused wildlife trade interventions are considered in concert with those already focused on conservation gain.

The “super-year for biodiversity” may have been delayed, but the imperative for conservation action remains.

An abridged version of the article appeared in the April issue of the TRAFFIC Bulletin, available for download at: https://www.traffic.org/site/assets/files/12779/bulletin-32_1-final-web.pdf

The post COVID-19 & Human Health Risks Linked to Wildlife Trade Practices appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Steven Broad is Executive Director, TRAFFIC, the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network

The post COVID-19 & Human Health Risks Linked to Wildlife Trade Practices appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Franciscka Lucien is Executive Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. Joel Curtain is the Director of Advocacy at Partners in Health.

By Franciscka Lucien and Joel Curtain
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti and BOSTON, May 7 2020 (IPS)

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have a historic opportunity to help stabilize a world reeling from COVID-19. Doing so will require the institutions to change course and aggressively support poor countries’ ability to invest broadly in the government services their populations need.

The pandemic is exposing the consequences of four decades of reduced public spending in the Global South, much of it mandated by the World Bank and the IMF (often called “International Financial Institutions” or “IFIs”). Those consequences were already painfully apparent to people in Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere, who were massively protesting the loss of public services until the pandemic kept them home.

Starting in the 1970s, the IFIs imposed loan conditions via “structural adjustment programs” that forced sharp cuts in government spending in developing countries and constrained their ability to tax, to regulate business and to protect workers. These programs forced significant reductions in public health, education, agricultural support and other important social and economic programs.

Structural adjustment also transferred power from national governments, which are accountable to their citizens, to corporations and IFIs. These entities were empowered to make decisions affecting people’s lives without those impacted having any say. This transfer of power accelerated when the 1980s credit crisis made countries desperate for loans, especially because the IMF’s seal of approval was a prerequisite to loans by other creditors.

Haiti accepted structural adjustment in return for financial help during its democratic transition in the mid-1990s. The conditions forced the government to eliminate half of its civil servants, privatize public services, and slash tariffs that had protected farmers.

Twenty-five years later, foreign actors have increasing access to Haiti’s economy, but Haitians have limited access to healthcare and other basic services. Spending on public health went from 16.6% of the national budget in 2004 to 4.4% in 2017, and there are currently an estimated 124 ICU beds and 70 ventilators for 11 million people. The shriveled health and sanitation budgets had catastrophic consequences in 2010, when cholera-contaminated sewage leaking from a UN military base spawned the worst cholera epidemic of modern times, with over 800,000 sick and 10,000 killed. After seeing their country ravaged by a disease that can be stopped with clean water and adequate sanitation, Haitians are bracing for the worst from COVID-19.

Although the IFIs have abandoned “structural adjustment” as a term, Global South governments are still recovering from the programs’ effects, and the IFIs continue to impose loan conditions that limit spending for government services. The response to the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to repair this damage with support that enables countries to invest in resilient systems that can respond to a range of crises, and deliver basic government services like healthcare and education.

Seizing this opportunity requires returning power to people, and their governments. The IMF took a small step in the right direction April 13 by deferring debt payments for Haiti and 24 other countries. Debt relief for low- and middle-income countries, coupled with a massive allocation of the IMF’s reserve currency ― Special Drawing Rights ― would provide governments a more appropriate level of financial flexibility. On April 17, the World Bank announced a new Trust Fund to help countries prepare for disease outbreaks.

The IMF’s Managing Director, economists and many governments have backed these common-sense measures. The US government has not, which raises the issue of power within the IFIs. Voting power at both IFIs is skewed profoundly in favor of wealthy countries, with low- and middle- income counties having only 40% of the vote despite representing around 85% of the global population. This power imbalance is both a symptom and a cause of rising global inequality.

The US has one of every six votes in the two IFIs. A bill filed last week would direct those votes to support Global South governments’ investments in the public education, healthcare and other services their citizens need, without imposing inappropriate conditions. The bill, called the Robust International Response to Pandemic Act., was sponsored by Representatives Jesús García (IL-04), Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) and Mark Takano (CA-41). The rest of Congress should rise to the challenge COVID-19 is presenting and pass the bill.

The post Time for the World Bank and IMF to Be the Solution, Not the Problem appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Franciscka Lucien is Executive Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. Joel Curtain is the Director of Advocacy at Partners in Health.

The post Time for the World Bank and IMF to Be the Solution, Not the Problem appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: UNFPA

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 2020 (IPS)

The world’s poorer nations, reeling under an unrelenting attack on their fragile economies by the COVID-19 pandemic, have suffered an equally deadly body blow: being buried under heavy debt burdens.

Abiy Ahmed, prime minister of Ethiopia who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, said last week that in 2019, 64 countries, nearly half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, spent more on servicing external debt than on health.

Ethiopia alone, he said, spends twice as much on paying off external debt as on health. “We spend 47 percent of our merchandise export revenue on debt servicing”, he wrote in an oped piece in the New York Times.

According to the UK-based Jubilee Debt Campaign, some of the countries battling debt burdens include Lebanon, which spends about 41% of its revenue on debt service; El Salvador, which spends 38% of its revenues on debt service; and South Sudan, which spends 29%.

And these are not necessarily the most highly-indebted poor countries in the world — Sri Lanka pays 48% of its revenue in debt service, and Angola 43%.

On April 15, the Group of 20 countries (G20) offered temporary relief to some of the world’s lowest-income countries by suspending debt repayments until the end of the year.

But, regrettably, their best offer fell far short of expectations.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a “debt standstill” across all developing countries affected by debt vulnerabilities. This includes external public and commercial debt.

“The private sector’s voluntary and well-coordinated engagement in debt relief discussions is crucial”, he adds.

In 2020, “we expect to lose the equivalent of more than 300 million jobs; a decline in global trade between 13 and 32 per cent; remittance flows to low‐ and middle‐income countries to drop by around 20 per cent; and foreign direct investment to decline by 35 per cent,” the United Nations warned last week.

Clemence Landers, a Policy Fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD), told IPS the G20 bilateral debt suspension is a good start, but it’s only a temporary stopgap measure.

In the months ahead, she pointed out, it will be clear that some countries need deeper and more permanent relief.

“The global community should use this time to establish the broad contours of an orderly debt relief process that distributes the burden equitably between all bilateral and commercial creditors”.

In parallel, argued Landers, the international financial institutions should find ways to deploy financing packages above levels that they have already announced to ensure that net flows to countries are robust. But an effective and orderly process is far from a given.

“It will largely hinge on the G20’s ability to provide an ambitious plan and maintain strong political pressure to achieve a coordinated approach,” she declared.

Professor Kunal Sen, Director United Nations University– World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), told IPS the recent announcement by the governments of the G20 countries of a debt moratorium for the poorest countries is a welcome initiative as it allows these countries to allocate the funds that would have gone to service external debt to deal with the immediate needs of the pandemic.

According to Jubilee Debt Campaign, the suspension covers debt payments by 77 countries to G20 and other governments, from 1 May to the end of 2020, estimated to be $12 billion.

The payments will not be cancelled but come due to be paid between 2022 and 2024, along with interest accrued in the meantime. There will be a review by the G20 before the end of 2020 as to whether further action will be taken.

The G20 announcement also calls on private creditors to similarly suspend debt payments, and calls on multilateral creditors to explore options for doing so.

The G20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union (EU).

The Ethiopian Prime Minister said at the very least, the suspension of debt payments should last not just until the end of 2020 but rather until well after the pandemic is truly over.

“It should involve not just debt suspension but debt cancellation. Global creditors need to waive both official bilateral and commercial debt for low-income countries,” he declared.

Richard Ponzio, Senior Fellow and Director of the Stimson Center’s Just Security 2020 Program, told IPS the G20 Finance Ministers wisely agreed on a ‘time-bound suspension of debt service payments’, between now and the end of the year, for 77 of the world’s poorest countries.

“Now it’s time for private creditors, who are owed USD $3 billion (or a quarter of total debt), to step up and participate in this initiative,” he noted.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect countries in different ways, once they begin to transition from the current emergency to a full recovery phase, the G20 should revisit the need to sustain this policy, in 2021 and 2022, on a country-by-country basis, with the goal of helping all countries adversely affected by the pandemic to get back-up on their feet, Ponzio declared.

Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director at the Oakland Institute, a leading US-based policy think tank, told IPS the Covid-19 pandemic has unleashed a crisis of untold proportions – the disastrous impact of which is being felt by the poorest and poor nations.

According to the World Bank itself, COVID has pushed about 40-60 million people into extreme poverty, with best estimate being 49 million.

Bank’s projections suggest that Sub-Saharan Africa will be the region hit hardest in terms of increased extreme poverty, she said.

“At such a time, an inclusive bailout requires that united global response should ensure a just recovery and transition to a better future for those most in need.”

She pointed out that Central African Republic has just three ventilators, Sierra Leone has 13, Liberia has three, South Sudan has four.

Mittal said developing countries should be boosting healthcare systems to defend against the virus and protecting their economies and the poor, instead of using precious resources to pay off external debt, which anyway never benefitted the communities.

“These loans were often generated for so called “development” projects which have failed to bring development to the countries or populations that were intended to benefit”.

At this time, she argued, it is pertinent to cancel bilateral, multilateral and private debt for this year and instead, emergency additional finance should be provided. This time also calls for real negotiations around debt cancellation.

Above all, it is important to ensure removal of loan leverage to open up markets and force reforms such as the opening of land markets in Ukraine. Loan programs intended to control economies and natural resources have to stop, said Mittal.

Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Director of Jubilee Debt Campaign said the G20 offer is a first step in dealing with the magnitude of the coronavirus debt crisis, but much more needs to be done.

The G20 deal keeps vital money in countries for now, but today’s suspension will soon become tomorrow’s debt crisis unless payments are cancelled in full.

“We urgently need a UN-led process to cancel external debt owed to all creditors, for all countries in crisis,” said Clifton.

“The suspension of debt payments to private creditors is only voluntary. The UK and New York can make sure it happens by introducing emergency legislation to prevent any lender suing a country for stopping debt payments during the current crisis”.

Otherwise, she argued, “the real beneficiaries of today’s deal could be rich speculators who keep being paid thanks to debt suspensions by other lenders.”

Meanwhile, several Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines, have taken a severe beating primarily because of a sharp fall in migrant earnings resulting from the closure of industries and construction work in the Middle East and Gulf nations due to COVID-19.

According to the New York Times, millions of Indians who work in the Arab world — particularly in the oil-rich countries of the Gulf — have lost their jobs in recent weeks as Arab economies have contracted under lockdown.

“We have been getting distress calls from the Gulf,” said Mahesh Kumar, a spokesman for India’s foreign ministry.

The Times said Indian media have reported more than 150,000 Indians in the United Arab Emirates requesting to be evacuated — and that several large naval warships have already been dispatched to the UAE and the Maldives.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post World’s Poor Hit by Double Jeopardy: a Deadly Virus & a Devastating Debt Burden appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Quechua indigenous farmers from the town of Huasao, in the Andes highlands of Peru, cut insect repellent plants in front of Juana Gallegos' house, while others prepare the biol mixture, a liquid organic fertiliser that they use on their vegetable crops. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
HUASAO, Peru, May 6 2020 (IPS)

It’s eight o’clock in the morning and Pascuala Ninantay is carrying two large containers of water in her wheelbarrow to prepare with neighbouring women farmers 200 litres of organic fertiliser, which will then be distributed to fertilise their crops, in this town in the Andes highlands of Peru.

“We grow healthy, nutritious food without chemicals,” she tells IPS, describing the sustainable agriculture she practices in Huasao, a town of about 1,500 people in Quispicanchi province, 3,300 metres above sea level, in the department of Cuzco in south-central Peru.

It will take them four hours to prepare the “biol”, a liquid fertiliser composed of natural inputs contributed by the local farmers as part of a collective work tradition of the Quechua indigenous people, to which most of the inhabitants of Huasao and neighbouring highlands villages in the area belong.

“Between all of us we bring the different ingredients, but we were short on water so I went to the spring to fill my ‘galoneras’ (multi-gallon containers),” explains Ninantay.

The women, gathered at the home of Juana Gallegos, work in community. While some gather insect repellent plants like nettles and muña (Minthostachys mollis, an Andes highlands plant), others prepare the huge plastic drum where they will make the mixture that includes ash and fresh cattle dung.

They keep working until the container is filled with 200 litres of the fertiliser which, after two months of fermentation in the sealed drum, will be distributed among them equally.

Making organic fertiliser is one of the agro-ecological practices that Ninantay and 15 of her neighbours have adopted to produce food that is both beneficial to health and adapted to climate change.

They are just a few of the almost 700,000 women who, according to official figures, are engaged in agricultural activities in Peru, and who play a key role in the food security and sovereignty of their communities, despite the fact that they do so under unequal conditions because they have less access to land, water management and credit than men.

That is the view of Elena Villanueva, a sociologist with the Flora Tristán Centre for Peruvian Women, a non-governmental organisation that for the past two years has been promoting women’s rights and technical training among small-scale women farmers in Huasao and six other areas of the region, with support from two institutions in Spain’s Basque Country: the Basque Development Cooperation agency and the non-governmental Mugen Gainetik.

“During this time we have seen how much power the 80 women we have supported have gained as a result of their awareness of their rights and their use of agro-ecological techniques. In a context of marked machismo (sexism), they are gaining recognition for their work, which was previously invisible,” she told IPS.

A group of women farmers are ready to head out to the plots they farm on the community lands outside of Huasao, a rural town in Peru’s Andes highlands department of Cuzco. They are wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, because they depend on their production for food and income from the sale of the surplus, to cover their household expenses. CREDIT: Nayda Quispe/IPS

This group of women farmers is convinced of the need for nutritious food that does not harm people’s health or nature, and they are happy to do their small part to make that happen.

“We want to have a variety of food constantly available, but taking care of our soil, water, plants, trees and air,” says Ninantay.

“We no longer use chemicals,” says Gallegos. “Thanks to the training we have received, we understood how the soil and our crops had become so dependent on those substances, we thought that only by using them would we have a good yield. But no, with our own fertilisers we grow lettuce, tomatoes, chard, artichokes, radishes and all our big, beautiful, tasty vegetables. Everything is organic.”

Once they were producing their fresh produce using agro-ecological techniques, the women decided to also begin growing their staple crops of potatoes and corn organically. “I see that the plants are happier and the leaves are greener now that I fertilise them naturally,” says Ninantay.

Villanueva says these decisions on what to plant and how to do it contribute to new forms of agricultural production that meet the food needs of the women and their families while also contributing to the sustainable development of their communities.

“With agro-ecology they enrich their knowledge about the resistance of crops to climate change, they carry out integrated management of pests and diseases, and they have tools to improve their production planning,” she explains.

And even more important, “this process raises their self-esteem and strengthens their sense of being productive citizens because they are aware that they are taking care of biodiversity, diversifying their crops and increasing their yields,” she adds.

Thanks to this, these peasant women are obtaining surpluses that they now market.

Three times a week, Ninantay and the other women set up their stall in Huasao’s main square where they sell their products to the local population and to tourists who come in search of local healers, famous for their fortune telling and cures, which draw on traditional rituals and ceremonies.

The agro-ecological women farmers set up their stall three times a week in the main square of the rural municipality of Huasao to sell lettuce, tomatoes, Chinese onions, radish and other fresh produce. They are now marketing their wares in compliance with the health regulations put in place in response to the coronavirus pandemic, for which they have received training from the municipal authorities. CREDIT: Nayda Quispe/IPS

Coronavirus alters local dynamics

However, the measures implemented by the central government on Mar. 15 to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have reduced trade, by not allowing outsiders to visit Huasao, known locally as “the village of the witchdoctors” because of its healers.

But the work in the fields has not stopped; on the contrary, the women are working harder than ever.

“We used to have the income of my husband who worked in the city, but because of the state of emergency he can no longer leave,” says Ninantay. “My fellow women farmers are in the same boat, so we continue to harvest and sell in the square and what we earn goes to buying medicines, masks, bleach and other things for the home.”

Initially, she says, the husbands didn’t want their wives to participate in the project and stay overnight away from home to attend the training workshops. But after they saw the money they were saving on food and the income the women were earning, “they now recognise that our work is important.”

Their husbands, like most Huasao men, do not work in the fields. They work in construction or services in the city of Cuzco, about 20 km away, or migrate seasonally to mining regions in search of a better income.

So the community lands, where each family has usufruct rights on three-hectare plots, were left in the hands of women, even though the title is usually held by the men. With the opportunity offered by the Flora Tristán project, they have increased their harvests and are no longer merely subsistence farmers but earn an income as well.

Despite the pandemic, the women obtained permission from the authorities and received training on the care and prevention measures to be followed in order to market their products under conditions that are safe for them and their customers.

Their stall at the open-air market in the town’s main square is already known for offering healthy food, and on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays they run out of vegetables and other products they offer. They also sell their wares in other fairs and markets.

Their stall in the municipal market is also seen as an alternative to return to more natural foods in the face of the increasing change in eating patterns in rural areas.

“Many people don’t want to eat quinoa or ‘oca’ (Oxalis tuberosa, an Andean tuber), they prefer noodles or rice,” says Ninantay. “Children fill up on sweets and junk food and they are not getting good nutrition, and that’s not right. We have to educate people about healthy eating if we want strong new generations.”

She stresses the importance of people understanding that nature, “Mother Earth”, must be respected.

“We have to recover the wisdom of our ancestors, of our grandmothers, to take care of everything that we need to live,” she warns. “If we do not do this, our grandchildren and their children will not have water to drink, seeds to plant, or food to eat.”

Flora Tristán’s Villanueva announced that the 80 women farmers in the programme would participate in initiatives for the recovery of agricultural and water harvesting practices based on forestation and infiltration ditches, using native trees known as chachacomas (Escallonia resinosa) and queñuas (Polylepis).

The women hope that their experience and knowledge will be extended on a large scale, because although they share with their families, neighbours and relatives what they are learning, they believe that the authorities should help expand these practices.

“We would like not only Huasao, but all of Cuzco to be an agro-ecological region, so that we can help nature and guarantee healthy food for the families of the countryside and the city,” says Gallegos, convinced that if they could do it, everyone can.

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By External Source
May 6 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Denmark is Education Cannot Wait’s (ECW) third largest donor, with US$79.1 million in contributions to date. In this insightful interview with Denmark’s Minister for Development Cooperation, Rasmus Prehn, we explore the importance of girls’ education and gender equality, the humanitarian-development nexus, expanded engagement with the private sector, education in emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic and more. A former high school teacher, with a master’s degree in social science, Minister Prehn has been a member of Danish Parliament since 2005, and was named Minister for Development Cooperation on June 27, 2019. Minister Prehn is the former chairman of the Danish Research, Education and Further Education Committee, a tireless advocate for education in emergencies, and a true champion for achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG4: inclusive and equitable, quality education for all.

Denmark is a strong political advocate of education and girls’ education in emergencies and crisis countries. How do you see investments in education in crisis countries bringing transformative change for the overall development agenda?

RP: Education holds a huge potential for transformation. Both in respect to giving children the tools they need for a sustainable future and in respect to transforming society as we know it into a place where girls and boys, women and men, have equal rights and opportunities. An educated girl can significantly increase her income as compared to girls with no education. Her future children will have a much higher chance of surviving the first five years of their lives.

Girls living in emergency contexts are of particular risk of being out of school. They are also at higher risk of sexual- and gender-based violence, including teenage pregnancies and child marriage. Their sexual and reproductive health and rights are often under pressure during times of crisis. Supporting education is also a way to address these risks, as education provides a foundation for increased gender equality and for the protection of the rights of women and girls.

Denmark’s investments in education in crises have a two-fold aim: 1) to ensure continuity of learning for children so that they have the tools for a better future 2) to re-define gender and social norms and raise girls and boys to be equal citizens with equal rights and opportunities.

Since Education Cannot Wait became operational in 2017, Denmark has also become one of Education Cannot Wait’s biggest strategic donor partners and has made major investments in Education Cannot Wait over the past years. What are the key incentives for investing in this relatively new global fund?

RP: Denmark is very committed to work more effectively across the humanitarian-development nexus to ensure more sustainable education outcomes in areas affected by conflict and protracted crisis. This was a key incentive for Danish support to ECW right from the start and for the large contributions that have placed Denmark among the largest donors to ECW.

For the same reason, a key priority for Denmark is that ECW focuses on its mandate to bridge the humanitarian-development nexus to secure long-term education impact. This is only more relevant in light of COVID-19, which has led to the close down of schools in more than 190 countries worldwide. When responding to the COVID-19 crisis, there was a need for immediate action to enable continued learning and address protection risks linked to children being out of school, while also supporting resilient education systems.

In response to COVID-19, and as the LEGO Foundation – the philanthropic arm of a Danish world class private sector company – increased its support to Education Cannot Wait – you also decided to frontload financing for Education Cannot Wait. This is a wonderful way for governments and private sector to provide matching support. How would you describe this model example of engaging private sector?

RP: Denmark firmly believes in partnerships and collaboration to solve the challenges faced in the world today. We need to work together at all levels to make sure we leave no one behind. Collaboration across the public and private sector is one important way of ensuring progress towards common goals. We recognize and much appreciate the role and support of the LEGO Foundation towards education in emergencies. The Danish Government and the LEGO Foundation are currently strengthening collaboration in the area of education. Through close strategic dialogue and coordinated actions such as the matching support, the aim of the collaboration is to ensure synergies towards common goals and the realization of SDG4. We hope that this can set an example for enhanced private and public sector collaboration also in other sectors.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a global impact upon all areas of virtually everyone’s life. What does Denmark see as the top three priorities moving forward to achieve SDG4 (quality, inclusive education), particularly for crisis-affected children and youth already impacted by armed conflicts, forced displacement and natural disasters – and now doubly hit by COVID-19?

RP: For Denmark, quality and inclusive education is key for learning outcomes. At the same time, both quality and inclusiveness in education are impacted by the context in which children are learning. When the surrounding world is unsafe and uncertain, a pre-condition for children to learn is to ensure a protective environment. Therefore one key priority is a holistic cross-sectoral response that includes access to health care, psychosocial support and protection measures as part of education efforts.

COVID-19 has indeed added a double concern to education in emergencies. A concern that only further stresses the need to develop resilient education systems that are able to deliver quality education in crisis contexts. Be it pandemics, natural disasters or wars. A significant element is to ensure that we reach those furthest behind by using innovative and context-specific methods for distance learning. It is also important that we consider that education quality is not only about the number of children accessing education or learning outcomes, but also about teaching methods, curriculum and the social environment in schools between students and teachers, and students and their peers.

A particular concern for Denmark are the consequences that the school closures caused by COVID-19 have for both girls’ and women’s rights. We know that education is one key element to prevent social and gender norms that drive harmful practices. Where pre-COVID-19 projections showed that a decline in harmful practices could be reached, post-COVID-19 projections show that more girls will be exposed to female genital mutilation and child marriage. Therefore, quality education and establishing inclusive conditions for girls in schools through addressing harmful social and gender norms is a key priority for Denmark and also is the reason why we are part of the ECW gender reference group. The classroom reflects the surrounding society and the reverse is also true. We must work at all levels to create inclusive conditions for girls’ access to school.

As a Member of Parliament, you have been the Chairman of the Committee on Research, Education and Further Education. What does education represent for you on a more personal level? How does this influence you in your work as a policymaker?

RP: I could not be a bigger champion of education and skills development: this is the key to create the hope for a better future. I have immense respect for the potential offered by education at all levels to change norms in a positive way. This is why I have been preoccupied with education since my early youth. I have myself worked as a high school teacher for 8 years. I have also been a teacher in the Danish folk high schools (“højskoler”), which is an education institution invented in the 1830s with the aim to help people qualify as active members of society with the means to change the political situation and meet across social borders.

###

About Education Cannot Wait: 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 @YasmineSherif1 @KentPage
Additional information at: www.educationcannotwait.org

For press inquiries: Kent Page, kpage@unicef.org, +1-917-302-1735
For press inquiries: Anouk Desgroseilliers, adesgroseilliers@un-ecw.org, +1-917-640-6820
For any other inquiries: info@un-ecw.org

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Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), briefs Security Council members during the open video conference in connection with the International Criminal Court and the situation in Libya. Courtesy: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 6 2020 (IPS)

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday highlighted crimes against humanity and grave mismanagement of the law in Libya during a release of their latest report on the North African nation. 

Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, said enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, hate speech, and severe maltreatment of detainees remains a massive concern in the country that’s been caught in a civil war since 2014 with administrations in its capital Tripoli pitted against Benghazi. 

Bensouda warned of serious violence due to armed conflict in the region, resulting in a large volume of civilian casualties from air-strikes and shelling operations. She also called on “serious and urgent reforms” regarding the prison situation across the country.

“Arbitrary detention and serious mistreatment of detainees affects not only migrants and refugees but also thousands of other people detained in prisons and detention centres across Libya,” she said during the May 5 virtual briefing.

“Many people are detained without lawful basis or denied their fundamental procedural rights,” she said. 

Furthermore, those detained – many of whom are women and children – are put at risk for abuse such as murder, torture rape and other forms of sexual violence, she said. 

This is further strengthened by testimony from formal detainees who have claimed they were subject to “brutal methods of torture”.  

Many have died after being subject to torture and not being given access to timely medical care. 

She also noted that, “derogatory and dehumanising language” have permeated both traditional and social media. 

“This is cause for concern,” she said. “This type of language generates both hatred and fear in the community and deepens divisions within society. It sows the seeds of crimes against targeted groups of individuals and foments conditions in which mass atrocity crime can occur.”

“Leaders and prominent members of the community have a special responsibility to lead by example to refrain from hate speech,” she added. “Anyone who incites fear, hatred and division in the community causes harm not only to those targeted but also to society as a whole.”

Shortly following the ICC’s briefing on Tuesday, Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said the U.N. Support Mission for Libya (UNSMIL) “remains concerned at the continued fighting in the country and reiterates its call for a cessation of hostilities during the holy month of Ramadan”. 

Dujarric added that the UNSMIL’s acting special representative Stephanie Williams remains engaged in outreach efforts with mediators as well as other international partners, including those involved with the Berlin Conference, in order to ensure that Libya can return to proper political process. The main objectives of the Berlin Conference, held in January, was to find consensus among concerned member states on the Libyan crisis.  

“It’s important that all the parties involved, whether Libyan or those who have influence over those parties, move in the same direction, and that is towards political talks,” Dujarric told the Associated Press at the briefing. 

The report came a little after the first anniversary since the Libyan National Army (LNA), a rebel group led by defected general Khalifa Haftar, orchestrated an attack to seize the Libyan capital Tripoli from the U.N.-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).  

Since the coronavirus pandemic has become a priority for governments around the world, experts fear this may be putting the crisis in Libya on the backseat of international diplomacy and in turn giving way for the crisis to continue, according to recent analysis by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). 

“As European officials shy away from the Libyan dossier to tackle the pandemic at home, there are concerns that efforts to secure a political solution to the conflict will be severely weakened,” ACLED said in an analysis shared in April.  

At the end of March, the Secretary-General had appealed for a global ceasefire in all conflict areas as communities — especially those who are in transit or in conflict — are at graver, more complicated risks of the coronavirus. 

Over a month later, Haftar announced a “truce” as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began. However, GNA forces reportedly said they would not adhere to this temporary ceasefire as they did not trust him to keep his word.

On Tuesday, as the report was being released, Al Jazeera reported an attack by the GNA on an airbase under the control of Haftar’s leadership, ensuing in heavy fire exchange between forces on both sides. The airbase was reportedly a key facility that was used to attack GNA forces, according to the report.

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The post Enforced Disappearances, Arbitrary Detentions, Hate Speech & Attacks on Civilians – ICC Report on Libya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A young boy in Pakistan receives an oral polio vaccine (OPV). Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Laura Mackenzie
May 6 2020 (IPS)

Interruptions to vaccination programmes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could result in new waves of measles or polio outbreaks, health experts warn.

A growing number of one-off immunisation campaigns and national routine vaccine introductions are being delayed amid social distancing and other measures to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2, leaving millions unprotected.

With both preventive campaigns and routine immunisations impacted, “we’ll have an increasing number of children who will become susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases and that will definitely lead to outbreaks”,

Richard Mihigo
World Health Organization’s Africa office
Uptake of routine immunisations has dropped in many vulnerable countries, with people unable or unwilling to travel to sessions — something that was also observed during the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

With both preventive campaigns and routine immunisations impacted, “we’ll have an increasing number of children who will become susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases and that will definitely lead to outbreaks”, says Richard Mihigo, programme manager for immunisation and vaccines development at the World Health Organization’s Africa office.

Coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, “such outbreaks will not receive the same attention as in normal times”, he adds.

“We saw this during the [2013-2016] Ebola outbreak in West Africa, where we had an outbreak of measles at the same time. And recently we’ve seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo that an ongoing outbreak of measles has killed more people than the ongoing outbreak of Ebola. But all attention was on Ebola.”

Following the WHO’s recommendation last month that all mass vaccination campaigns should be suspended in response to COVID-19, Mihigo says mass preventive campaigns — which help to fill in the gaps in places with weak routine immunisation — had been put on hold in almost all African countries, while campaigns to target existing outbreaks are being considered on a case-by-case basis.

Those halted include preventive measles campaigns in Chad, Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Sudan, as well as in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than 6000 people have died since last year in the DRC in what is currently the world’s largest measles outbreak. These campaigns alone had aimed to reach 21.2 million children under the age of five, Mihigo says.

Meanwhile Gavi, the global Vaccine Alliance, which vaccinates almost half of the world’s children, announced earlier this month that 14 major immunisation campaigns supported by the alliance had been postponed, along with four national routine vaccine introductions.

These delays, which impact campaigns against polio, measles, cholera, human papillomavirus (HPV), yellow fever and meningitis, have affected at least 13.5 million people in 13 of the world’s least-developed countries, the alliance says, cautioning that many more delays are expected. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which partners with Gavi and the WHO, has also recommended that all polio vaccination campaigns be paused worldwide.

Countries with fragile health systems and ongoing conflicts — many of which are yet to feel the full impact of the novel coronavirus — are most at risk, says Charlie Weller, head of vaccines programme at the Wellcome Trust.

She too highlights the DRC, where Ebola has struck in areas of active conflict, as a country particularly at risk: “The impact to their health system and how they will be able to manage through and beyond COVID-19 is a very big concern.”

Gavi chief executive, Seth Berkley, warns that the international community needs to act to prevent potentially devastating outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.

“The legacy of COVID-19 must not include the global resurgence of other killers like measles and polio,” he says.

However, some experts believe that a rise in cases of vaccine-preventable diseases are inevitable.

When vaccination coverage goes down, inevitably more outbreaks will occur, including of life-threatening diseases like measles and polio, WHO deputy director-general Zsuzsanna Jakab says.

WHO spokesperson for polio eradication Oliver Rosenbauer says that although temporarily halting polio vaccination campaigns was the “only recommendation to make under this new reality”, the organisation was anticipating an increase in polio cases as a result — including a possible spread of the virus to new areas.

Echoing Mihigo’s warning about COVID-19 distracting from other disease outbreaks, Rosenbauer stresses the need for continued polio surveillance and a return to vaccination campaigns “as rapidly as is safely feasible”.

“We must not forget that as long as children in Pakistan are at risk of polio paralysis … then all children in the world, wherever they live, could one day be affected by polio,” Rosenbauer adds. Pakistan and Afghanistan are currently the only countries in the world still affected by the wild poliovirus, WPV1.

Once the immediate COVID-19 crisis is over, experts agree that the speedy and effective implementation of catch-up vaccination campaigns will be vital — a matter that could be complicated by US President Donald Trump’s recent threats to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to the WHO.

But Weller stresses that although investment in catch-up campaigns is vital, there will be no quick fixes.

“It’s not just about putting a band-aid or plaster over a dip in vaccine coverage,” she says. “It’s about helping those countries to strengthen their health systems for the long term.”

 

This story was originally published by SciDev.Net

The post Polio, Measles Outbreaks ‘Inevitable’, Say Vaccine Experts appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Richard Cupitt
WASHINGTON DC, May 6 2020 (IPS)

Even during this pandemic, perhaps especially during this pandemic, the global institutions to help prevent the spread of biological and chemical weapons to proliferators or terrorists must continue their work.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted in a recent address to the UN Security Council, the focus on the pandemic has created new opportunities for terrorists to exploit.

In the realm of biological and chemical weapons proliferation, three important instruments and their related institutions must meet the challenge of doing their important work under widespread travel bans, social distancing and misinformation campaigns: the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW); the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) and the BWC Implementation Support Unit (BWC-ISU); and United Nations Security Council resolution 1540 (2004) and the 1540 Committee.

COVID-19, the CWC and the OPCW

Although much smaller than the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in staff and budget, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) must facilitate the implementation of arguably a more extensive verification regime under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), with tens of thousands of potentially inspectable facilities located in almost every country in the world, a challenge that a pandemic only magnifies.

The OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias set up an internal task force to monitor COVID-19 and its potential impact on the organization in late January and then responded swiftly to March guidance issued by the Netherlands (which hosts the headquarters of the OPCW) and by the World Health Organization (WHO) to have approximately 90% of the OPCW’s 500 plus staff work remotely, while cancelling all non-essential travel, including for training, through May 1.

More importantly, the OPCW postponed for rescheduling as circumstances warrant, capacity building events, inspections of facilities with scheduled chemicals and former chemical weapons facilities, inspections related to abandoned or old chemical weapons, and deployments and missions to Syria.

Director-General Arias pointedly noted that this meant that the OPCW would be unlikely to meet its schedule of 241 inspections for facilities with scheduled chemicals this year. On April 17, the Director-General extended the ban until June 1.

Credit: United Nations / Giovanni Diffidenti

As the OPCW adjusts to working remotely, other work of the OPCW has continued, from enhancing its online presence, to working on its new ChemTech Centre, to releasing a new report on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

The OPCW has also welcomed the annual national declarations required under the CWC. However, national authorities in many countries are also coping with the impact of COVID-19, with differing degrees of success.

Moreover, the OPCW will likely face increased strain on its budget and contributions. This is likely to have already emerged as the OPCW has moved more toward seeking to prevent the re-emergence of chemical weapons with a new focus on attribution of chemical weapons use and chemical security.

A deep economic recession will likely mean cuts in the national budgets for implementing the CWC obligations of States parties – already a concern – and financial support for and attention to the OPCW. Even worse, the illness or even death of at least a few key national officials seems likely.

Only recently, moreover, have States Parties decided to take on several important new tasks, such as adding chemicals to its Schedules for the first time, expanding its efforts on chemical security, and creating new mechanisms for attribution, in no small part because of a resurgence in use of chemical weapons for warfare, terrorism and assassination.

Without significant financial and material support for their efforts, States Parties and the OPCW seem ill placed to implement these new tasks in the coming year.

COVID-19, the BWC and the BWC-ISU

For the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the pandemic has made the possible consequences of a malicious release of a biological agent – mountains of death and debt – clearer than ever.

At the same time, State Parties have long recognized that efforts to implement biosecurity measures usually complemented and enhanced biosafety and public health, such as improving disease surveillance, improving secure diagnostic laboratory capacity, or building general capacity to respond to disease outbreaks.

Not surprisingly, many national governments have entertained the need to adopt and implement the BWC and contribute to its strengthening. And the requests for assistance have increased enormously according to several sources (although which requests, if any, that have gone to the BWC is confidential).

Although the BWC has no verification regime, its members do report on confidence building measures, assistance activities and advances in science among other implementation efforts.

BWC activities usually revolve around two short sessions, the Meeting of Experts (MXP) and the Meeting of States Parties (MSP), but States Parties must also prepare for a Review Conference in 2021.

Unfortunately, all of this work, including efforts to address assistance requests through an on-line database, must be serviced by a talented but pathetically small support staff, i.e., the BWC – Implementation Support Unit (BWC-ISU), which consists of three full-time staff members located at the United Nations offices in Geneva.

Moreover, even before the pandemic shortfalls in the budget for the BWC and the BWC-ISU have been significant enough to raise questions about even having a meaningful MSP.

While COVID-19 has surely emphasized the need for improving implementation of the BWC and of the roles of the BWC and the BWC-ISU, the pandemic seems likely to reduce government capacity and income, while paradoxically creating excessive expectations for what the BWC and the BWC-ISU can do in response to such global turmoil.

COVID-19, UNSCR 150, and the 1540 Committee

United Nations Security Council resolution 1540 (2004) is the international legal instrument that creates the binding obligations on all States to prohibit a range of illicit activities while controlling legitimate ones related to items, including dangerous pathogens like COVID-19.

As with the BWC-ISU, the UN Security Council subsidiary body that monitors and facilitates implementation of the resolution, informally known as the 1540 Committee, will also hear new calls to improve the low levels of implementation of the resolution’s biosecurity elements, which typically complement and support public health efforts to prevent and respond to pandemics.

Located in New York City, the 1540 Committee and its Group of Experts, continue some of their work remotely, such as reviewing reports and other materials on national implementation and receiving assistance requests, while facing limits on other aspects of its work, such as training and outreach efforts.

Most important, in early 2020 the 1540 Committee and some of its key supporters had launched a series of activities for the 3rd Comprehensive Review of the resolution, which it needs to complete before the mandate of the Committee expires in April 2021.

Most of these events now have been suspended and some will likely be abandoned. In most cases, these activities were meant to give voice to those not on the Committee, i.e., the other 178 UN Member States not on the 15-member Council, civil society organizations, and industry, all of whom have key roles in furthering implementation efforts.

Under a shortened schedule to hold these events, these voices will struggle to be heard. Although not working under quite as severe financial constraints as the BWC-ISU, the pandemic and its associated recession will likely reduce important extra-budgetary support for the work of the 1540 Committee and, more importantly, turn national attention away from closing other gaps in implementation.

Particularly in regions where States already struggle to meet their obligations, e.g., Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia, already scarce government resources will have to go towards fighting the pandemic.

The pandemic also will, moreover, put added pressure on some commercial enterprises to engage proliferators, terrorists, and other criminals to avoid financial ruin. To expand on the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the COVID-19 pandemic has made an already vulnerable world even more vulnerable to exploitation by proliferators, terrorists, and criminals.

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Excerpt:

Richard Cupitt is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Partnerships in Proliferation Prevention program at Stimson. His areas of expertise include WMD nonproliferation, export controls, and foreign policy.

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By Lars Hein and Daud Khan
WAGENINGEN, Netherlands / ROME, May 5 2020 (IPS)

Globalization has been a driver for increased prosperity world-wide, but it has been in reverse in the last years due to the growth of populism in the USA and Europe. The COVID-19 pandemic may well provide further momentum to increasingly national-interest oriented policies in the west.

Nevertheless, a common response to COVID-19 is needed, where rich countries support developing countries in alleviating the impacts on the poor. COVID-19 offers an opportunity to revive collaboration world-wide, but the public and political leaders in North America and Europe need to broaden their perspective on mitigating the pandemic’s impacts.

The last decades have seen the emergence of a highly interlinked world. There has been a massive increase in global trade, travel and tourism and this has brought major benefits to most of the world’s population with incomes rising and poverty dropping.

However, as with all such major trends there have also been losers in the rapid process of globalization. In developed countries, income inequality which had been falling since the Second World War, started rising again. Combined with this was a growing resentment from workers who were unable to shift out of dying industries, such as steel and textiles, where imports from developing countries were better and cheaper.

The COVID-19 pandemic may well be the last nail in the coffin of globalization. Firms in USA and Europe will step away from the long supply chains and just-in-time deliveries that helped drive down costs. All countries will attempt to build up production of “essential goods” including medical supplies and possibly even food items

The globalized system has been increasingly under threat for the past several years, particularly from populist parties working on fears and resentment of those who feel left behind by globalization.

The COVID-19 pandemic may well be the last nail in the coffin of globalization. Firms in USA and Europe will step away from the long supply chains and just-in-time deliveries that helped drive down costs. All countries will attempt to build up production of “essential goods” including medical supplies and possibly even food items.

All this will impact trade, especially from developing countries. At the same time credit and investment flows will be largely focused to helping domestic enterprises in developed countries with little left for flows to developing countries.

This reversal of globalized production chains is bad news for developing countries, coming at a time when the medical emergency responses to COVID-19 are drawing heavily on public and private resources, and lockdowns are hitting output and employment, both in the formal and informal sectors.

While globalization has many faults, it is useful to understand it did allow both developed and developing countries to substantially raise living standards. But much was built on the backs on workers in developing countries.

Many workers, often women, worked for long hours in unhygienic and unsafe factories producing clothing and manufactured components; in Africa, thousands toiled in mines to extract minerals needed for production of laptops and smartphones.

These workers were the silent victims of globalization who only came to the news when there was a fire in a garments factory or the collapse of a mine shaft. They are better off – many above the poverty line – but it remains a grim existence with the risk that even a small shock will send them spiraling back into poverty and destitution.

With the pandemic likely to lead to severe recession in the USA and Europe, much Government attention will turn to supporting those affected in their own countries and within the EU. This will certainly be the case in the USA where the coming presidential election will find the Republicans beating the drum of America First.

But there is likely to be similar rhetoric across Europe. Many have learned from their handling of the refugee/immigration issue that solidarity does not win votes. The economic impacts of COVID-19 are particularly high in Southern European countries.

In the coming year, a lot of the political energy in the EU will be wasted on a debate on how to balance support for dealing with the impacts of COVID-19 and pointless transnational funding of outdated institutional and economic models. Despite this political turbulence, efforts to alleviate the economic impact of crisis in OECD countries will take off. These will include increasing credit to businesses and the self-employed, delaying tax collection and ensuring basic income support.

However, in the emergency, there is hardly any mention in the policy and public debate of the impacts of COVID-19 in developing countries, let alone the economic impacts on the poor in these countries. But turning the backs on developing countries will be an epochal mistake for the USA and Europe for moral, economic and political reasons.

It is quickly becoming clear that the economic and social impacts of COVID-19 in developing countries will stretch far beyond the immediate medical and social costs. Currently, the WHO is reporting some 255,000 deaths from COVID-19 globally, and more than 3.6 million confirmed cases.

These numbers are very likely to underreport cases and fatalities in developing countries, where COVID-19 is rapidly spreading, but medical and testing equipment are in short supply. However, the secondary impacts may well go far beyond these primary effects. Hundreds of millions of people, many of who work in the small scale services sector will suddenly find themselves without jobs.

Traditionally, many of these people relied on informal networks in time of stress and hardship. However, safety nets that work through family and friends are unlikely to be sufficient: many relatives that could otherwise provide support will also have lost their job.

Family relations may be under strain from the lock-down: a doubling of domestic violence has been reported as a consequence of people’s confinement to their houses and neighborhoods in combination with job losses – putting further strain on social networks. Many of the poor will lose an important part of their savings to cope with the current crisis, affecting all phases of life including schooling, marriage and pensions.

Throughout developing countries, government, NGOs and private charities are rapidly gearing up to meet the immediate food and medical needs of the poorest and vulnerable sections of the population. But what is needed goes beyond the life-saving relief and survival support that is currently being offered.

Governments in developing countries will soon need to start to think about what are the key next steps to minimize damage to their economies and societies. In spite of the current crisis, it is crucial that OECD countries reach out to these governments and offer their support: the challenges to rebuild institutions and economies will exceed the capacities of many developing countries.

The support needed is diverse. Clearly, in the short term there is a need for medical assistance and, in the poorest countries, food support. This is immediately to be followed by debt relief – government and companies need to be able to survive the crisis so that economies can be built up quickly when COVID-19 has started receding.

A main priority for the poor in developing countries relates to reentering the labor market. In the short term, increased competition for jobs can be expected, potentially affecting pay levels. In addition, there is a need to rebuild financial buffers for events such as funerals, weddings and sickness, and for old age; ensure the continuation of education opportunities; address domestic violence, and sustain the psychological health of those affected by COVID-19 or its indirect impacts.

These responses would need to involve a broad range of national and multinational bodies including the IMF and UN agencies, NGOs and development aid agencies. Given the complexity and scope of the task, substantial funding and careful planning and coordination would be required. Also the private sector should take its responsibility. Potentially debt relief for companies could be made conditional on assisting employees coping with COVID-19 impacts.

Unfortunately, there is as yet very little attention in the West for mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 in developing countries. There is very little if any debate on how developing countries can be assisted in dealing with the various impacts of COVID-19.

Nevertheless, a slow response will only exacerbate the economic and social aftermath of the crisis in these countries. We are at a turning point: poverty reduction, pandemics, climate change and other global challenges require immediate and coordinated responses.

The COVID-19 crisis offers a choice: rebuilding global collaboration based on shared interests, education, respect and support for those in need, or an increasing focus on own short-term interests that will only lead to building up the next crisis and reduce capacities to cope.

Hence, we call for an urgent start of the debate, in particular in the West, on the various efforts needed to deal with COVID-19 focusing on those that need this support the most, i.e. the poor in developing countries.

 

Lars Hein is professor in environmental systems analysis at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He worked in over 30 developing countries as UN staff and while employed in the private sector.

Daud Khan is a former senior United Nations official who now lives between Italy and Pakistan. He read Economics at the London School of Economics and Oxford University where he was a Rhodes scholar. Khan holds a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

 

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Data is important in ensuring gender equality, and experts say as traditional means of data collection may no longer be possible under the current COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns, this provides an opportunity to collect data in more innovative ways. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, May 5 2020 (IPS)

The current coronavirus pandemic can offer insight into how to shake-up traditional methods of data collection, and might provide an opportunity to do it in more innovative ways, in turn enhancing progress towards gender equality.

“Necessity is the mother of invention, and when you look at society’s crisis – whether that’s a health crisis or natural disaster or war – [they] really force us to think about the ways of working and whether or not they’re serving us well as a community,” Susan Papp, Managing Director of Policy and Advocacy at Women Deliver, an international organisation advocating around the world for gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women, tells IPS.

The global pandemic has highlighted loopholes and dangers in traditional systems across the world: healthcare access, the economy, tools to address gender violence.

“Because things are moving so rapidly with COVID-19, it shows how important and how reliant we are as a society on data systems. And that our old ways of interacting with data is not sufficient to be able to protect our people, to make sure they are healthy and they have opportunities,” she adds. 

Papp shared her thoughts just a few days after United Nations Women released a brief on how to collect data on violence against women and girls (VAWG) under the current circumstances, given heightened cases of domestic violence cases women and girls around the globe are facing. The brief also states that under the current circumstances, traditional means of data collection may no longer be possible.

Meanwhile, access is a huge issue for the collection of data since technology plays a key role in ensuring that information is communicated. In cases of VAWG, use of technology may exacerbate the situation with an abuser. 

These concerns highlight the need for accurate and important data, as well as the challenges posed in trying to attain them. IPS speaks with Papp on the importance of data in ensuring gender equality, as well as the challenges of the current methods being used — and how that can be changed in “innovative” ways. 

Inter Press Service (IPS): Why is accurate data collection important to ensure gender equality? 

Susan Papp (SP): A gender equal world is healthier, wealthier and more productive. We need to be able to have an understanding of the reality of women and girls in order to advance gender equality. We’ve seen that what gets measured has the best chance of getting done. And really reliable and timely gender specific data is crucial to that accountability. 

World leaders can make a lot of promises about creating a more gender equal world but without data you have no way of knowing whether those promises are part of reality. 

Furthermore, you need to be able to have that data to point where the gaps in services are and where the problems exist for girls and women. Because without that, policymakers are shooting in the dark. And you can’t have policies that are ill-informed and don’t portray the whole picture. 

Susan Papp is the Managing Director of Policy and Advocacy at Women Deliver.

IPS: According to Women Deliver, only 13 percent of countries have a gender statistics budget. How could such a budget hold governments accountable in ensuring gender equality?

SP: It’s critical in the treatment of the SDGs that gender statistics are invested in, that statistical offices and divisons are able to collect data disaggregated by sex, with an intersectional lens. So, ideally, they would be starting to think about gender data that would look at questions around sexual orientation and sexual identity as well. 

Right now, there is a tremendous lack of information for non-binary gender identities. So how are they counted and how are their needs and realities reflected? 

Too often, [for] girls women and non-binary individuals, their needs are completely not reflected and in order to understand those needs, you need to have better data system. 

IPS: How does that apply to the current situation?

SP: What we need to do as a community is maybe be a little bit less purist in our approach to data collection methods and use a moment like COVID-19 as an opportunity to really innovate about collecting data in real time. And [to] find ways to verify that data that may not necessarily be as rigorous and as time consuming as the past mechanisms for verifying the data.  

IPS: What would being more innovative entail? 

SP: It’s examples as documented by the World Bank, or Bloomberg’s initiative in New York for contact-tracing, using GPS, credit card data to be able to track where you’ve been, whether or not you may have been in contact with someone who has the virus: that is the future and I think COVID-19 has really been an eye opening moment for us to recognise that the way we’ve been collecting data and information in the past is no longer serving our world well. 

IPS: In that sense, data collection can be conflated with compromising privacy, with women and gender non-binary people being especially vulnerable to it. Is there any conversation on that conflict?    

SP: Absolutely. And you’re starting to see some really good principles being developed and come out around this. 

A lot of the data that’s been collected historically on VAWG had been collected face to face. And now, a lot of that data needs to be collected virtually and leveraged through things like mobile phone platforms, phone hotlines. Some real principles have been set that have been very useful around safety, privacy and confidentiality around women’s responses, doing no harm, making sure that the data collectors have some sensitivity training and that they understand the ethical and safety principles that they need to hold. 

IPS: In terms of collecting data, what would you say is the main factor that poses an obstacle for government and local leaders?

SP: Data can be expensive to collect, and it can be really expensive to analyse. And I think the lack of investment in data is one thing that needs to be resolved. Second, a lot of really amazing data do exist, but the problem may lie in understanding how to access and use that data in a way that’s ethically responsible, in a way that protects the identity of people, so that it’s still useful yet anonymised. 

A lot of the processes, though very brilliant and important work by the U.N., need to be reconsidered. The world is moving at a much more rapid pace than it was before and [we need to think about] how to reconcile the very puristical standard data collection and analysis methods and usability with some of the more emerging needs with open data.

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Thousands of youth gather in Rome on Friday, Mar. 15, 2019 to join the climate strike. Credit: Maged Srour/IPS

By Diana Gheorghiu
LONDON, May 5 2020 (IPS)

As social distancing, quarantines and lockdowns have spread across the globe to slow the spread of coronavirus, they have imposed some of the greatest worldwide restrictions on public gatherings in living memory. These restrictions may be necessary for public health, but they require the most anxious scrutiny to prevent them being misused to quash legitimate political expression and discriminate against protesters, including children and young people who mobilise.

And while large scale street protests may temporarily be on hold in much of the world, there is an opportunity to rethink how we can protest, expanding online forms of collective activism and developing the protections that must be afforded to children protesting online.

 

How does coronavirus affect protests?

Children have the same right to protest as adults and they have been exercising this right in the streets with dramatic impact across the world. The global school strike for climate movement, led by Fridays For Future and sparked by Greta Thunberg, has shaped modern climate activism; the social inequality protests in Chile were kickstarted by high school students; the mass demonstrations over the killing of schoolchildren at a rally in Sudan pressured the military regime for reform; the national school walkout to protest gun violence in the United States captured the national debate; and Indian children have been actively involved in protests against the new citizenship law which may render many people stateless.

Under-18s’ right to protest derives mainly from two human rights protected under international law: freedom of expression (the right to express ourselves freely) and freedom of peaceful assembly (the right to peacefully come together with others and express our collective opinions). However, assemblies in the streets have been dramatically curtailed by the emergency measures aimed at stopping the spread of coronavirus. According to the COVID-19 Civic Freedom Tracker, 94 countries currently have measures in place affecting assembly, for example the suspension of events and bans on non-essential movement.

A number of these restrictions are problematic. Some emergency measures expressly discriminate against under-18s. Multiple countries have imposed curfews, including some which apply only to children and young people, for instance in France, Russia, Turkey, Colombia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Other measures raise suspicions that they may be put in place to stifle political dissent. For example, El Salvador and Kyrgyzstan banned some mass rallies due to coronavirus, despite reporting no cases at the time. Iraq, which has seen the largest and bloodiest anti-government protests since 2003, also prohibited public gatherings.

In this context, some have rightly pointed out, from a language perspective, how the term ‘social distancing’ can be misread by citizens and misused by States as a ban on all public gatherings, including collective activism. However, coronavirus measures are in fact about physical distancing only; socially, people are still connected and politically active, with many exercising their right to protest off the streets, in various settings.

 

How can under-18s protest when the streets are empty?

Climate activists have suggested a variety of alternatives to street protests, such as cacerolazos (banging on pots and pans or making music) from windows, doors or balconies; webinars; teach-ins (educational forums on current issues); mass call-ins; online storytelling; and artivism workshops. Greta Thunberg encouraged student protesters to join strikes online. On 24 April, Fridays For Future groups in Germany staged the biggest digital demonstration yet, with over 230,000 livestream viewers and 40,000 tweets.

 

But is an online protest really a protest? Does the label matter?

Yes, it is. Yes, it matters.

We usually think of protests as occasions when people gather together to express their disagreement with something. In thinking this, we make three assumptions: that people gather for a common purpose, that they express their views at roughly the same time and that they come together in a common place. Our experience of protests also means that we readily situate them in public spaces, such as the street.

But in the case of the youth climate strikers, whether they skip (home)school to join a Fridays For Future webinar or share photos of themselves holding placards on social media, school students are still engaged in protests: they have a common purpose and act more or less simultaneously. The only thing that’s changed is the setting of their protest – and for good reason. Greta Thunberg explained that “In a crisis we change our behaviour and adapt to the new circumstances for the greater good of society”.

What the coronavirus pandemic shows us is that we need to question our assumptions. Recognising that protests are held not just in a common physical space, but also for example online, matters. It helps us understand that differing rights concerns arise in different protest settings. That protests allow us to help shape how societies are governed, even in times of crisis, makes this recognition all the more crucial.

 

What does this mean in practice?

Regarding online protests specifically, national laws need to account for potential risks against access to the internet, dissemination of information and protesters’ privacy and safety.

Perhaps most relevant to younger teenagers who want to protest online, the question of age-based access is significant. Popular social media platforms still impose a minimum age to join, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which all require users to be at least 13 years old. For this reason and more, author and activist Naomi Klein underlined in a recent Talks For Future webinar that young protesters may need to move away from corporate information platforms.

Once online, the question of protesters’ privacy is especially pertinent. In some countries, children are forbidden from taking part in unauthorised protests, including in Russia, so when mobilising online, encryption and anonymity tools are essential to concealing one’s identity in order to avoid government sanctions. Any ban on these tools, such as Iran’s prohibition on encryption technologies through its national legislation, could severely undermine children’s freedom of assembly online.

Meanwhile affecting entire country populations, including under-18s, are national internet shutdowns. Thirty-three countries shut down the internet in 2019, an increase from the 25 that did so in 2018. In most cases it was to curb protests, with governments spuriously citing public safety, fake news and national security concerns.

The worst offenders were India, Venezuela, Yemen, Iraq, Algeria and Ethiopia. Particular sources of information may also be targeted. In Myanmar, for example, the government blocked access specifically to some ethnic media outlets.

In practice under-18s have shown us that collective mobilisation can continue beyond the street, with youth climate protesters in many countries exercising their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly online. But for this to happen in every country, peaceful activism must be protected across the board, no matter what setting it may take place in.

 

Diana Gheorghiu conducts legal and policy research and analysis at CRIN, the Child Rights International Network

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By Osamu Kusumoto
TOKYO, May 5 2020 (IPS)

The new coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to wreak havoc across the world, as the number of infections and deaths rapidly rise. It has the potential to infect anybody regardless of age or gender. There are grave concerns that the economic fallout from COVID-19 may be comparable to that of the Great Depression. According to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, there are 2,064,668 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 137,124 deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus causing COVID-19). In Japan as of noon April 15, there were 8,100 cases of COVID-19 , 119 deaths, and 901 patients discharged from hospitals.

Osamu Kusumoto

Responding to cases showing acute symptoms caused by this virus requires an extremely high level of emergency medical care. Observance of basic preventive measures such as wearing masks, washing hands, gargling, and practicing physical distancing is proving to be effective. While rapid progress is being made in the development of a vaccine, our healthcare systems are on the brink of collapse as the number of patients increases.

This situation is related to population issues because the spread of infection increases exponentially relative to population density. The outbreak in Wuhan quickly spread because it is a mega city of 11 million people.

The Ebola hemorrhagic fever is another infectious disease that caused global fear because it gripped regions of Africa intermittently from 1976 to March 2019 with 30 regional outbreaks. Until the outbreak in West Africa in 2014, the majority occurred in rural areas with relatively small populations.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is far greater in scale. Globalization breaches physical gaps which means that whatever occurs elsewhere inevitably becomes our own problem. However, attendant challenges such as reproductive health (RH) and family planning attract little attention despite its enormous contribution to the spread of Covid-19.

Although it may not be possible to verify the following 1994 US data (since no results from other studies of a similar scale are available), it represents current world averages. It shows birthrates from planned and unplanned pregnancies and the rate of abortions, which were 50.4%, 23.0%, and 26.6%, respectively. This shows that about half of the number of lives born into the world were planned, the other half unplanned, and about the same number of lives as the number of all births were lost to abortion.

Using these ratios, a simple estimate can be made applying statistical data of the UN Population Division. If the annual average number of births is 139.53 million from 2020 to 2025, then 95.81 million of these births would be planned, 43.72 million unplanned, and 50.57 million will end up in abortion. Tragedies like this occur every year. It will have a cumulative impact which continues to affect the very foundations of society.

COVID-19 instills a genuine fear in society because we never know when we will fall victim to the disease. On the other hand, the cited issues evoke only a sense of indifference because of the notion that “it has nothing to do with me.” This fails to raise a sense of social concern.

After COVID-19, the world will appreciate more that when it comes to infectious diseases, there is no such thing as “someone else’s problem”. The principle should be the same for problems concerning the environment and the population. It may be difficult for people to realize this now but, from a long-term perspective, they will have a decisive impact on our world. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) clearly demonstrate keen awareness on inter-dependence in today’s world.

The singularity of AI is likely to accelerate separation in production and labor and precipitate changes that are more far-reaching than the capitalist revolution. In the free market, brought about by information revolution, an oligopoly of wealth represented by GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) has emerged, but consumers with purchasing power may disappear. If social norms that underpinned our society until recently are lost, despite the notion of “being able to have a rewarding life by working diligently”, social disorder may emerge.

COVID-19 is forcing our society to change. We must view this as an opportunity to rise to the occasion and build a new society to achieve the SDGs.

(The author is Secretary General and Executive Director, Asian Population and Development Association (APDA)

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